undergrounds | wake up

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wake up

(1)

Kyle was new to the area. Hell, he was new to the country. As easy as it was to pick up the basics - public transit, prices, slang - he was having a harder time learning the small and intertwining streets in his neighborhood. He felt almost constantly lost, which made him almost constantly anxious about knowing his exits and whether he would ever find his damn AWOL C.O. he'd come to find in the first place.

It's one such night, disoriented on the way back to his shared flat from a quiet drink at a pub, that he stumbles into something he thought he left behind. Kyle knows what he's looking at the moment he sees it. The vampire feeding on the teenage boy who seems near unconsciousness.

"Hey!" He yells without thinking, waving his arms as if trying to chase a coyote off from a stray stash of food. The vampire, in a stroke of luck for Kyle or perhaps to keep his face hidden, decides to take off rather than engage in a conflict, dropping the now passed out boy into the street. Kyle runs over, ripping off his shirt to apply pressure to the wound on the kid's neck, then looking around for someone - anyone - nearby. "Hey, I could use some help here."

(2)

Post traumatic stress is never an easy thing. Although Kyle never receives full on hallucinations like a couple of his brothers had struggled with, the traumas continue to sneak up on him occasionally, clouding his judgment and ratcheting his anxiety into high gear. This time, it's in the middle of his run. He's not even sure if it was a scent or a sound that set him off. Maybe the combination. Whatever it is, it forces him to stop and focus, to breathe through it.

He takes a seat on the nearby bench, legs shoulder-width apart, forearms on his knees, eyes closed, head down to hide his face. His mandated counselor told him it was the most efficient breathing position. Now he uses it to relax, to try to force the body working against him to calm down and get back to the present with him. And he probably looks troubled, if not a little crazy, to the passersby, but that's rarely been a concern for him.

(3)

Vampires are real. Kyle learned about that some time ago, when Cooper came to his hospital room and gave him a reason to live and fight through the Fever. He'd been trained in that specialty, hunting, and it had been most of his tour in South Africa. What unnerved him was learning that they were everywhere. The problem wasn't contained to an area, as he'd been lead to believe, but the creatures sprawled in various corners of the world, thriving on the suffering and death of humans. So, yeah, he took it upon himself to do something about it.

Kyle has a split lip, a couple seriously bruised ribs, a swollen and bruised cheek, and some bloody scratches on both an arm and his neck from the fight. But you should see the other guy. The vampire lays dead on the ground, a broken pool cue shoved through his heart. All things considered, Kyle feels like he got off pretty well.

To the casual observer, it looks like a bar room brawl gone bad. Which is why, when he hears someone behind him, Kyle tenses and silently curses in his mind. The soldier lifts his hands to either side of him in a gesture of surrender, showing he's unarmed. "It's not what it looks like."

(4)

Hoping to settle in faster than the average, Kyle's out running errands throughout the day. He's picking up some new clothes, having arrived with only his backpack's worth of stuff, and groceries for the apartment. At the same time, he pops in to occasional shops to apply for jobs. Sweeper, clerk. Anything with decent pay at a local joint who will accept an American with a military background in a questionable economy.

[Feel free to bump into him shopping, or be in a shop when he asks for work, or anywhere in between. Fairly open.]

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Alex shoots him an unamused glance. It is a little funny, but she doesn't plan on letting him know that. Then she switches her focus back to the mushrooms until he speaks again.

"Or when it turns out they've been lying to you for years." That's real, the kind of thing she wouldn't normally share, but right now, at least for the moment, she feels comfortable with him, like he might get it.

She's never had a lot of friends - even when she was a kid it was mostly just her and Yuri. She wonders, not for the first time, if Yuri's still alive, or if he was killed that night along with his parents.

She stops chopping for a moment, and brushes a loose lock of hair behind her ear before glancing at Kyle again, her eyes narrowed. She's not really offended, but she narrows her eyes and tries to frown, even though the frown is on the verge of becoming a smile. "Aren't you supposed to be telling me how to make a sauce or something?"

"Or that," he agrees. Kyle recognizes the sincere insight for what it is, again surprised by her choice. He thought she barely liked him at all and yet here she is, in his kitchen, admitting to vulnerabilities. He mixes the sausage around a bit, then flashes a grin at her faux accusation. "Or something."

He moves over next to her to look at her work. "Cool. I'm going to borrow this." Very deliberately not touching her, Kyle slides the knife out of her hand and uses it to quickly cut up the garlic, which he tosses into the third pan. Then he holds the knife out, handle first, towards her again. "First thing, throw a bunch of shit in a pan. Olive oil, garlic, mushrooms, squash, maybe some little tomatoes. Cook that for awhile, add some spinach. Mix in the meat once it's cooked. Add to the pasta. Easy."

He picks up the squash and offers it to her to cut. "The hard part is timing. Squash takes a long time to cook, spinach is fast. Water takes for-fucking-ever to boil."

Alex just stands there, perfectly still, as he takes the knife from her. It's kind of sweet, how careful he's being, but it's also a little annoying.

"I'm not made of glass, you know." It's a simple observation, not meant to be snippy or accusatory. "I promise I won't attack you again." She definitely won't lash out at him over nothing, and she's sure she has enough self-control that, unless he does something stupid like her without warning again, it won't come to blows.

She takes the knife back from him when it's offered, and starts cutting up the squash, half-listening to his instructions. "How do you cook the meat?" That she definitely has to figure out. It'd be great to be able to cook her own meat.

"I told you I wouldn't touch you and I keep my word," he retorts with a light smile. It's encouraging that she's becoming more comfortable around him, but he means what he said. Besides, he understands automated responses and trauma. Not everything is a conscious choice. "Unless you're giving me permission to break it."

"Uh, for this? You put it in a pan over like, medium, medium-high maybe. Flip it over and mix it around, try not to burn it. If it wasn't ground up, you could use a lid to help cook it all the way through." He's half making this up as he goes. Kyle has a decent idea of how to cook some basics, but he's no chef and trying to be precise about things like when meat is done or what temperature to use is not his forte.

"I mean..." She stops cutting for a second and looks at him. She almost can't believe he's not making fun of her, but he seems sincere. "Don't treat me like that. Like I'm gonna snap if our hands happen to touch."

She quickly finishes chopping up the squash, and moves to dump it in the same pan as the garlic. "So put the water on first, then vegetables in one pan and meat in another, then the spinach. She reaches for a tomato to chop it up and toss it in with the squash and the garlic, trying to take charge even though she has no clue what she's doing.

Kyle stops and turns to look at her, even as she continues cutting. His free hand pulls into a fist at his side as he turns back to the pan. Then it unravels and he continues on, dismissing his frustration. She doesn't want him to touch her, she gets mad at him for not touching her. It's a frustrating thing to navigate, but he tries to let it go.

"Yeah," he agrees distractedly, turning the heat down under the sausage and turning it up under the vegetables. After she finishes with the tomato, he stops with a small sigh and turns to face her again. He's too frustrated to drop the subject.

"Tell me how to treat you." It's not angry or accusing, said with a degree of expectation but not one of judgment. "I'm not the brightest guy and I'd appreciate it if you could give me a road map. What was it about me boosting you up at the store? That it was unexpected? The intimacy? Your waist? Being in the bread aisle? You don't want me to treat you like a special snowflake, I don't want to treat you like a special snowflake. So help me understand."

Alex really doesn't want to have a serious conversation, or to talk about her feelings or her damage or whatever. She'd much rather just have a normal afternoon with a nice, normal guy who'll make dumb jokes about tater tots and pretend she's normal too. The major flaw in that plan is, of course, that she's not normal, and neither is Kyle.

She sets the knife down and turns towards him. "You came up behind me and grabbed me when I wasn't expecting you to. What did you think I was gonna do, give you a medal?" She reaches for his wrist, hoping to pull his hand towards her, palm up. At the same time, she snatches up the knife and tries to put it in his hand. "We can pass each other stuff, okay? This doesn't have to be weird. Just don't, you know, grab me. And don't treat me like a special snowflake." She reaches for the pasta, hoping the water's started to boil by now. Otherwise she'll just have to keep staring at him, which would make the whole situation a lot more awkward than it already is. She wants to just move on and get back to cooking. "Just... cut up some spinach and I'll figure out how much pasta to cook."

Kyle watches and listens, letting her take his hand and holding the knife when she gives it to him. When she moves away from him to check the boiling water and pour the pasta in, he shifts behind her to set the knife on the counter just on the other side of her. It's close proximity without touching, testing the waters to some extent without really being a conscious thought.

"You don't cut spinach," he says finally, returning to his lighthearted and teasing ways. He has a better sense of what it is that sets her off now and can, hopefully, avoid those things. At least he knows she can handle herself if he oversteps. That helps. Kyle moves back around to the other side of her as before. "I think you're making enough to feed an army, but that's okay. Leftovers are good."

Alex is so engrossed in pouring pasta into the water, trying to keep her mind on that instead of on the conversation she doesn't want to have with him, that she's not really thinking about how much she's pouring. As soon as he speaks, she realizes that she's dumped almost the entire box into the pot - way too much for just the two of them. Probably too much even if his aunt and uncle join them.

A little self-consciously, she sets the box down and clears her throat. "Hey, too much is better than too little, right?" Almost immediately, the pot starts boiling over, water spitting out onto the stovetop and some of it even splashing into the vegetable pan. Alex grabs a dishcloth before realizing that she doesn't have any clue how a dishcloth is supposed to help.

Kyle tilts his head and is halfway into agreeing with her when the pot water spills over, jumping into the pan and almost immediately spitting hot oil in all directions. He turns down the heat on the boiling water, cursing under his breath and flicking his hand as a spot of oil lands on it. His expression tightens with the pain, not from the actual injury but from intruding memories that accompany it.

"Back up," he tells Alex, turning around to dig in a drawer for the lid to the pan. Kyle's great at delegating in a crisis, but only to people he knows and can trust to understand him. Otherwise, it's a hell of a lot easier for him to tackle the emergency himself when he can. In an effort to hide his brief trouble, he adds, "Hot oil bad."

Kyle manages to get the lid on the pan, the boiling water now simmering thanks to the lower heat. Then he turns to offer her a smile. "First, save yourself. Then save the food. Then the stove, I guess."

Alex backs up. Normally she would do something to help, but she knows in this particular instance, she doesn't know what to do and he seems to have a handle on it, so she finds some other way to be useful than jumping right into the fray. She makes for the sink, wets the cloth, and turns back in time to see him smiling at her.

"Are you alright?" she demands as she takes his hand - this time giving him no choice in the matter - and presses the damp cloth to the spot where the oil hit him.

Kyle looks up with surprise as she takes his hand, both forceful and gentle. He moves to close some of the distance between them, admiring her. His old self kicks in for just a second and he's halfway to kissing her before he remembers that's a bad idea, lingering in that space for an extra beat before withdrawing with a laugh at himself.

"I'm fine, thanks." He replies with a wide grin, trying to shake off whatever the hell went through his mind as he pulls back to his own space, still allowing her to examine and treat his hand if she wants. He turns to look up to the ceiling, leaning back on the edge of the counter. "Water and oil don't mix. If there's an oil fire, don't throw water on it. Ever. Smother it or use an extinguisher."

Edited (wrong icon) 2016-02-06 21:19 (UTC)

The last thing Alex expects is for him to move in like that. Suddenly, what she hoped would be something simple, something to make her feel normal, seems incredibly complicated. Every reason why she shouldn't be making friends - let alone anything more - comes rushing to the forefront of her mind, and she leans away from him, her stomach twisting into a knot. He's cute, he seems nice, and it's possible he might understand some of what she's been through. That doesn't make this a good idea.

"Right," she says slowly, not really paying attention to him as she looks down at his hand, carefully peeling the damp cloth up to check the burn.

Kyle pulls his hand away from her, not defensively but in the interest of moving on entirely. He recognizes her reaction for what it is and knows he already pushed it too far. Classic Kyle. He shakes his head a little, at himself, and straightens from the counter to check on the food, pulling up the lid to stir around the vegetables for a bit and adjusting the heat.

"Looks ready for the spinach," he adds, turning to retrieve the package from the fridge. If Kyle's good at one thing, it's ignoring all potential awkwardness and plowing ahead as if everything's normal. Still the jock in that sense: playing dumb works wonders. "Do you want to check the pasta? Grab a spoon, pull a piece out, and see if it tastes right."

Alex grimaces as she crumples up the cloth and drops it on the counter. She opens her mouth to say something, but he's already moving on, and maybe that's for the best. Pretending it didn't happen might make everything worse, but on the other hand, she doesn't want to talk about it.

"Yeah, sure." She tentatively tastes a piece of the pasta, and makes a face. "Still kinda crunchy."

He chuckles at her response. "You're a pro."

Kyle adds a few handfuls of spinach to the vegetable pan, stirs it around a little, and then puts the lid back on. He looks over their mini feast. "Sausage is done, vegetables'll be done in a minute, and pasta needs a few. Not bad. We almost timed it out right. I should have had you put the pasta in earlier."

He leans back against the counter again, feeling sincerely chill with everything under control, and finally takes a moment to examine his hand. It's a small burn, helped by Alex's immediate attention, and will probably heal normally so long as he doesn't aggravate it too much. "So what do you do, Alex? Work, school, paint the town, make it rain?"

Alex keeps stirring the pasta, feeling like she needs to be doing something. It's surprising how easy he makes it to feel like nothing incredibly awkward just happened, but she still wants to keep busy and have something to focus on.

"Nothing." It's not like she could produce coworkers or classmates if she lied, and she doesn't see any harm in admitting that particular truth. There are plenty of young people between jobs in the big city. "My parents left me some money and I wanted to get out of the States, so I came here. I had a marketing job, back in New York, but it..." She pauses, trying to figure out how best to phrase the next part of that sentence. "It didn't work out."

She finally stops stirring and smiles at him. "What about you? Are you a chef or something?" she asks, teasing.

Parents dead, moving far away. He wonders if she, like him, was running to something or if she was running from something. He nods to the remark about it not working out, understanding the sentiment. There's some form of training she's leaving out somewhere in there and trying to go from any kind of formal training to an office job might be difficult. Or maybe he's overthinking it.

"Not even close." He smiles. "Former US military. Served my time, didn't really have anything to go home to. Decided to visit my aunt and uncle here and, uh, now just lookin' for work, hoping to stay for awhile."

It's not entirely the truth. His pursuit of his old C.O. is what brought him to London and his relatives are a convenient place to stay until he can find his feet. Still, knowing that vampires exist here and all the other shady supernatural shit, he can only assume that Cooper's caught up in it all somehow. It's the last thing he wants to drag innocent civilians into.

That explains the PTSD and the combat training. She isn't sure what she was expecting, but it's almost a relief how ordinary that story is. A military guy who wanted to go somewhere new.

She smiles back at him, starting to relax again. "The pasta's probably done by now, Chef Sutton." She reaches to turn the heat off under the pot.

Kyle's so used to the third degree with his stories, he's actually surprised when she leaves it at that and doesn't probe into where he was stationed or for how long or where his parents are and doesn't he want to go home. It's almost a relief living someplace where most people have no idea he was military or don't care. Maybe he's running from something as much as running to.

He shakes his head at the nickname, jokingly disapproving as he grabs the strainer and puts it in the sink. "You know how to drain it?"

"Yeah, you put it in the thing," she says with total confidence, pointing to the strainer. She picks the pot up and does just that, dumping the pasta out in a big cloud of steam as boiling water splashes around the sink. It's a little more dramatic than she was expecting, but none of the water gets on her.

"Now we mix it up with the other stuff and eat it, right?"

"Yeah. Now we mix it up and eat it," he affirms. While he'd normally use the same pot, now he snags a casserole dish and sets it on the counter, replacing the knives and cutting board, which he tosses into the unoccupied side of the sink. He moves to turn the heat off on all burners, stirring up the vegetables again before stepping away from the stove. "Alright. Make it happen."

He sets out a wooden spoon for her if she needs it, then moves to pull out plates, glasses, and utensils for them. "You're hungry, right? You didn't make all this to take home for later?"

Alex shakes her head as she pours the pasta into the casserole dish, using the spoon to make sure she's got all of it. "I'll take the leftovers home." There should be enough for a few days.

She grabs each pan and empties both into the dish, stirring it all together vigorously. "Would your aunt and uncle want any?"

She's fairly intimidated at the prospect of meeting them, but the polite thing to do is offer, and Alex can be polite when the occasion calls for it.

"Nah, they're going out for date night tonight. Besides, I think they're probably better cooks than us anyway." He teases, holding a plate out toward her to begin serving herself. "What do you want to drink? Water, juice, beer? I think there's a Red Bull in there too.."

It's both comfortably familiar and entirely foreign to Kyle to be eating with Alex like this. Pleasantly engaging with a near stranger, sharing a meal in his home like proper adults. The thought gives him a pang of loss at the memory of his own parents and he has to push past quickly it to avoid darkening his mood.

"You know, this looks great, but next time we should make something quick and easy, so you can actually feed yourself like a normal slacker."

"That's really nice, that they go out on date nights." It's so sweet and domestic and human, and for a second all Alex can think about is the life she never got the option of having. She can almost picture leaving the pack, forgetting about Semak, and settling down in a place like this with a guy like Kyle, going out on date nights or staying in for movie nights, doing all the normal, boring things that humans did. But of course that's impossible, and almost as soon as the thought comes to her, it's gone.

"I think my usual Chinese take-out dinners count as feeding myself like a slacker." She takes the plate and starts piling food onto it. "Water's good. I like it with lemon, if you've got any."

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