Annie Sawyer (rentaghosts) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-02-22 01:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, annie sawyer, john mitchell |
Who: Annie and Mitchell
What: Someone's a stalker
Where: Target
When: Valentine's Day (backdated)
Rating: G
Status: Complete
The very early parts of the day at Target were quite busy. People were rushing in and out to buy last minute (and really last minute) gifts for their loved ones. Once it got to be later in the day, things tapered off until they were nearly empty. Sometimes there would be a straggler who would come in that was so late, they were going to have to give gifts tomorrow and be in the dog house. Annie tried not to laugh too much about the whole thing, but when it kept happening, she couldn’t help it much.
Now that it was winding down, Annie was taking to straighten up in her area. Sometimes she would stop and ring up someone’s purchases but mostly she was straightening. She talked to customers and wished that this day would end. There was only about forty five minutes until the store closed and she could go home. Thank god. Despite that, she was in a fairly good mood. She’d gotten a lovely gift from Owen, though it had been followed by a fight. She had left the house before anything really happened, but she was glad to get out of there.
Ever since he’d seen Annie’s post show up on Valarnet, Mitchell hadn’t been able to think of anything else but the other girl, who in his dreams was the ghost that he and George lived with. Mitchell had wondered, ever since he’d dreamt about George and Annie, what it would be like if either of them showed up in the OC and now that Annie was there, he wasn’t exactly sure how he was supposed to act. He couldn’t exactly tell her that not only had he dreamt about her, but that she was a ghost, but he didn’t think he could wait around until she started dreaming.
Mitchell wasn’t going to tell Annie about the dreams, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t just happen to run into her somewhere and where else to try that than where she worked? Of course, just because he knew that she worked at Target didn’t mean that she would necessarily be working. However, Mitchell appeared to be in luck, because as he wandered around the store, he just happened to catch a glimpse of the girl, fixing up an aisle. Seeing her, in the flesh, was extremely weird, especially since she was wearing red and not the grey and white that she’d worn in the few dreams that she’d been in.
At first she didn’t notice anything, because she was trying to pay attention to the customers and her job. She thought she noticed a guy that was slightly recognizable, but didn’t really know if it was him. After all she had just seen him online and that was it. A tiny little picture wouldn’t relate to someone in person. Of course eventually she noticed that he was still wandering near her aisle and hadn’t moved on. He obviously must have been looking for something that he couldn’t find.
Eventually she decided to see if she could help, and wandered over to see if she knew him and if she actually could help. “Um hello!” she announced. “You’re um.. Mitchell, right? From.. the internet?” That sounded so awful.
Despite the fact that he had thought he was being inconspicuous, Mitchell had actually been really obvious and was actually surprised when Annie approached him. Usually he was so much smoother than this. “Yeah. Annie, right?” He said, pointing at her, a slightly nervous grin upon his lips as he spoke. Oh yeah, it wasn’t obvious that something was up at all.
So very obvious. It was a wonder he hadn’t been at the end of the aisle, just kind of staring at her and looking up to see if she’d notice or something. Clearly she had. She gave a smile and nodded. “That’s me. Funny seeing you around here.” That was as close as she was going to get to accusing him of waiting for her down the aisle there. “Need help finding something?”
As out of whack as he was at the moment, the story came to him almost instantly, “I moved into my house back in December and I’m crap at decorating. My living room is probably the only room, besides my bedroom that has furniture and I despise Ikea.” That part wasn’t a lie. Mitchell really did hate Ikea for whatever unknown reason. “So, I was hoping to find something to make the place look a little less empty.” It was a good story and in some ways it was actually true.
Annie ooh’d a bit, not finding any lie in his story. It wasn’t like she actually sat there and judged whether people were lying or not. Though she thought that perhaps he was there for the things, but stayed for her. Or something like that. “Ikea is hard when you don’t know um..Swedish, or whatever it is. You can get lost in there.” She said, like she actually knew from experience. “Would you like some help? From me, I mean.”
Mitchell couldn’t help but smile as he listened to her. She was just like the Annie in his dreams except for the fact that she didn’t have an accent. That was a little strange, but wouldn’t it have been stranger if she was exactly like the girl in his dreams? He wasn’t exactly sure, to tell the truth. This whole dream thing was still new to him. “I’d enjoy that.”
Well sure it would be stranger, she would be dead, Mitchell. In any case, Annie was full of grins and smiles as long as they weren’t talking about Owen. “Well okay, let’s see.. tell me about your place, and what kind of um.. motif you’re going for.” Then she’d see if they had anything like that in stock.
Still smiling, Mitchell told her about the house and how it was big and mostly empty still, because before he’d moved in, he had never spent more than a few months in any one place when he wasn’t touring so he hadn’t had too much to bring along. Not to mention, he’d been in rehab for a couple of months before that. “I don’t really have a specific motif or anything. I’ve never had to decorate my own place before, so I don’t even know what I’m looking for really.” Well that was a bit of a lie, because he’d been looking for Annie; however, he couldn’t exactly take her home with him.
Annie hmm’d a bit, and looked around as she listened. Right, something for a musician, and not something that would make him embarrassed to have out in front of his friends. “Well I guess that makes this easier. I like eclectic places, ones that don’t have all one set thing going on. It’s boring otherwise. Who wants to go into a house where there’s nothing but sunflowers everywhere?” She made a face and hm’d a bit. She didn’t want to give him all music stuff either. “What sort of things do you like then? Besides music.”
“Eclectic is good.” Annie was extremely likable and it wasn’t difficult at all to see why they had gotten on so well in the dreams that he’d had about her, “I watch that MTV show with the celebrities showing off their homes and everything matches and they have all this expensive shite made of crystals and other fucking ridiculous things that no normal person would ever buy and I can’t imagine doing that myself. Just because I’m famous doesn’t mean I have to be an obnoxious twat about it. At home I just want to be myself.” He didn’t want to have to tiptoe around for fear of breaking some ridiculously priced monstrosity.
For some reason the thought of the guy in front of her with one of those mtv cribs just made her laugh a little. “You don’t want a diamond toilet? Because though we don’t have those in stock, I’m sure we can find one.” The whole thing was rather ridiculous really. Why people did that was beyond her. “It’s probably a good thing you’re not an obnoxious twat.” So far he didn’t seem to be, and he seemed to have decent taste. That was always good. “Well then you just let me know what you like.”
Mitchell laughed as well, shaking his head, “Although, I have thought about a life size chess board in my backyard.” His grin was enough to assure her that he was joking. The backyard had definitely been one of the selling points of the house, but mostly because of the pool and grill/bar; not because it was big enough for something ludicrous like a life size chess board. “While I do need more furniture, what I think I need right now is something to hang on the walls. Mirrors or artwork or something along those lines.”
Annie grinned a bit, though by the look on her face she clearly liked the idea of life size chess pieces. Though she only laughed as if to play it off that she didn’t think that was pretty cool. Of course she didn’t even know how to play chess, so that was probably a moot point. “Oh well fair enough. Maybe a pool in the shape of a piano or Elvis?” Now that sounded awesome. Thinking about it, she realized that if she had a bunch of money, she would be one of those people who spent it all willy nilly. Oops. “Mirrors and artwork, okay.. down here.” Though there artwork wasn’t exactly the best, it was good enough maybe.
Mitchell definitely wasn’t an art connoisseur or anything like that, so he wasn’t about to go out and spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on some painting of a piece of fruit or something ridiculous like that, so in his opinion, Target artwork was just fine with him, “I need something for my entryway. There’s this large wall and it’s blank at the moment. I feel like I need some sort of mirror there or something” What had started as a trip to get a look at Annie was actually turning into a trip of necessity as well. It was like killing two birds with one stone.
Then they were sure to find something that he wouldn’t mind hanging on his wall. If it was up to her, she would have put up a couple of posters and then some nice things. But then Owen always made the decisions about that sort of thing. None of her own things were up on the walls. But that didn’t matter much, right? “If it’s the first thing people see when they come in, maybe not a mirror. It might startle someone? Just a thought.” Though there were some other cool things he could hang on the walls. Target wasn’t all bad.
“Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.” Mitchell ran a fingerless gloved hand through his hair, “Then again, I’d always know whether or not the people coming in were vampires if they had to pass a mirror first.” Yeah, it was kind of lame and if Darcy was there, she’d find a way to turn it around on him since she was convinced that his dream self had to be a vampire since he hung around with a werewolf and ghost, but as cool as Mitchell was trying to act around Annie, he was still a little nervous.
The joke made her laugh a little and shake her head in amusement. “Oh yes well if you’ve got vampires coming into your house, I guess that’s a good way. You can always not say they can come in. I read you have to invite them.” She didn’t think anything about it, she just thought it was pretty amusing. “You should get a mirror then, if you like it.”
“Good point. If they can’t get past the door then I probably don’t need the mirror.” Mitchell laughed, glad that she didn’t seem to think that his joke was incredibly lame. “Artwork in the entryway then. Mirror...in the dining room. Or what will be the dining room once I get a dining room table.” He really was going to have to go furniture shopping soon.
“True, but maybe it’s a good idea to have both security measures. Just to make sure.” Vampires were wily apparently. Even if the joke was lame, she wasn’t going to laugh at him. Not to his face anyway. “Most people put a mirror above the couch on a wall or some such. Unless you put the couch near the window.” She shrugged a little.
“My couch is against the wall so I have a large empty space above it. The only other things in there at the moment are my entertainment system and my guitar.” Not to mention the notebooks he’d been writing in and a box of books that he still needed to get a bookshelf for, but he wasn’t going to bring those up at the moment. “I can’t have my couch by the window, because I expect to turn around and find someone staring in at me. And in my profession, it could happen.” Mitchell had never had a stalker, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get a little paranoid about that possibility every now and then.
Ah so his place was pretty much bare. They definitely had to load up the cart with things then. She picked out different pieces and showed them to him so that he could say yes or no. With the yeses she put them in the cart and then went to something else. “Oh god that would scare the heck out of me. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want that either.” Okay so they would maybe put a mirror there? If he wanted one. Or in the hall. It was up to him.
“You know, this would be a lot easier if you’d seen my place,” As he said it, Mitchell realized that it was possible for her to think of it as a pick up line and he ran a hand through his hair once more, “I mean, cause then you’d get a feel for the size of the place.” Since moving in, Darcy and Draco were the only people who had actually been over his place and he’d been wanting to have some sort of party for awhile, which mean that he had to finish furnishing the place, so even though this trip had started as a way to get a glimpse of Annie, it was actually proving to be quite helpful.
Annie giggled and nodded her head. “You’re right, it would be.” Apparently she hadn’t thought it was a pickup line. If only because she had Owen so why would she even think that some guy was hitting on her? “Well you know better than I. So maybe you should pick out what you think is best. Or perhaps come back with someone who knows the space. I’m always here, working.” It wasn’t like she was going anywhere.
That was probably a good idea, because right now his mind was only half focused on decorating while the other half was focused on Annie and the dreams and trying not to tell her about them. Yeah, freaking her out wasn’t part of the plan for the evening, “Maybe that’s a good idea. I mean, friends shouldn’t let friends decorate alone, right? That’s how people wind up with fucking ugly paintings of birds and things.” However, bringing Darcy with him probably wasn’t a good idea either, because it was entirely possible that she’d wind up saying something to try and embarrass him in front of Annie. At that moment, an announcement played over the speaker system, informing customers that Target was closing soon. “I think that might be my cue to leave.” Not that he really wanted to of course. Okay, now maybe he was getting a little stalkerish and he knew it.
Sadly at the moment she would just look at him as if he had three heads, if he brought up something about having a dream about her. Especially since it happened before she even knew who he was. Talk about creepy. “That’s a good idea, otherwise you end up with a house that looks like Dennis Rodman put it together or something.” She just remembered his MTV Cribs being really completely terrifying. Or maybe that was Marilyn Manson. “You really don’t want ugly paintings of birds.” That was for sure.
Ah right, time to go home. Woohoo. Annie smiled and then handed over the cart. “They do tend to frown upon finding people who are locked in overnight. That would probably be bad.” She was having fun talking to him, but well “Not to mention that I desperately want to get out of here,” she said with a laugh.
Mitchell smiled as he accepted the cart from her, “Well, I don’t want to keep you any longer. Thank you so much for the help, Annie.” Mitchell definitely planned on coming back and next time he’d have a more well thought out story, “Perhaps we’ll see each other again soon.” What Mitchell really wanted was for Annie to have a dream that included him so that he could talk to her about them, “Have a good night.” With that, Mitchell headed towards the registers, glancing over his shoulder at Annie once as he did so.