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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Right. Microwave. She grabs a bowl and puts it in for fifteen seconds, then dumps the brownie mix into the other bowl with the eggs and stirs them while she's waiting for the butter to melt.

"You sure? You did almost die." The microwave dings and she takes the bowl out, pours the butter into the mix and stirs that together. "How big's the pan? There's bake times for... 8 by 8, 9 by 9, and 11 by 17."

"That's why I'll be here. Safely away from the burning hot things.- Ow!" He pulls his hand quickly out of the water, as if just burned, and turns the water temp down a little. It's all joking, but he hopes to do what he can to make her laugh. He turns it back up as evidence of the facade and continues washing.

"Uhhhhh," he looks over at it, making a facial shrug. "9 by 9, I think?"

"What h--" Alex drops the spoon and starts towards him before realizing that he's joking. She's fine with being overdramatic about injuries after the fact, but faking them at all isn't her idea of humor. For a split second she was actually worried about him.

"Very funny." She shoots a glare at him before going back to stirring. The box says the batter is supposed to be thick, and once it feels about as thick as it's going to get, she starts scraping it into the pan. "We've got about half an hour before it's ready."

"Cool. Want to set the timer there?" He nods to the stove timer as he moves on to the pot, washing it quickly and setting it aside. He rinses his hands, dries them on a towel, then crosses his arms as he leans sideways against the counter to face Alex with a cocky smile on his face. "You were worried about me."

It takes her a few moments to figure out how, but she sets the timer and then turns to him, only to find him with that smile of his aimed right at her.

"What? No, I--" There's only so much verbal flailing she can do before she simply has to admit the truth. She was worried about him, and the best she can do is try to frame it in as mitigating a light as possible. "I thought you burned yourself."

"It's okay. You can worry about me. I won't take it personally," he teases, maintaining that grin and the casual posture against the counter.

Another half an hour is a blessing. That gives him more time to tease her, to joke around, and maybe even to learn more about her. The question of where her training came from still niggles at the back of his mind, but it's not a question he really intends to ask unless it comes up somehow. For now, he'll settle for the basics. "I wouldn't want your boyfriend to feel threatened."

She gives him a deathly serious look to disguise the fact that yes, she was worried, and no, she doesn't want to make a big deal about it because that would be admitting that she already cares about him, and she's not sure she's ready to actually care about someone again.

She heads back to the table and grabs her glass, so she has something to focus on besides him.

"I, uh, don't have a boyfriend." As much as she knows it would be a bad idea to let this get beyond friendship, it's suddenly important to make sure he knows she's single, even if he is really obviously fishing for that information.

Kyle rolls from his side to lean back against the counter instead, a more comfortable position. He watches her for a bit before turning his attention out to the living room area to stare at nothing in particular. He was pretty sure she was single, agreeing to meet him at his place for cooking lessons and all, but he wants to make sure before he begins pursuing anything. "Good. I hate making strangers feel jealous."

He gives an intentionally obnoxious smile before settling to a smaller, sincere one. "How are your groceries working out, by the way?"

He's coming on a little too strong, but Alex is pretty sure he's joking. Mostly joking. She doesn't want to give him the wrong idea, though, so instead of joking back, she raises an eyebrow and says, "We just cooked pasta together, okay?"

It's better to stop this in its tracks before it turns into something that will only end up hurting them both.

She takes a sip of water and then quickly turns away from him to put the glass back on the table, buying herself a few seconds. There's still a long time before the brownies will be ready, and she desperately hopes they can spend it talking about groceries, or doing anything besides dancing around the fact that he maybe wants more out of this than she's ready for. "I tried to cook the eggs this morning, they turned out soggy and burned."

"Delicious pasta," he retorts, ever playful. Kyle likes confusing the issue because it keeps it from ever becoming too emotional or too real. They aren't even at the level of asking each other out, let alone having a good one romp in the sack. Keeping things light and teasing about it lets him feel a little more normal without the commitment of actually flirting. At least not until he finds someone worth spending the time and effort on.

"Sorry to hear it. How good are you at following directions?" He asks as an idea occurs to him. To prevent her from getting paranoid, he elaborates before she can even ask. "My aunt has a few cookbooks. I don't think she'd mind if I loan you one to try out some recipes."

The pasta was pretty delicious, she has to give him that. And at least he's not pushing it. That makes it easy for her to relax again and settle back into joking around with him.

"Delicious pasta," she agrees with a slight smile, her way of saying that even if she's not interested in anything romantic, she does like him.

Alex frowns in confusion at the question, and opens her mouth to answer when he quickly explains. "Great, I can set fire to my apartment twice as efficiently." It's a nice gesture, though, so she gives him a real, genuine smile and says, "But I'll give it a try."

"That's a little too much responsibility for me," he argues, equal parts joking and sincere. "Maybe I can loan you the book after a few more classes, when you're feeling more confident in your skills. What do you want to learn right now? There have to be more basics you want to know that we can talk about or work on or whatever in the... seventeen minutes until the brownies are done."

Edited 2016-02-13 02:50 (UTC)

Alex shrugged. Cooking was something she had never given much thought to, so she wasn't sure what the basics were or what she wanted to learn. "Can you explain how to scramble eggs in seventeen minutes?"

"Easy. Oil or butter. Lots of it." He pauses, as if that's all the information she could possible need, before he realizes that it's nothing at all to someone not already with at least a passing understanding of cooking. He drops his head into a tilt and continues. "Turn the pan up to.. medium, medium-high maybe. Crack the eggs into a bowl and scramble them, then pour in. Keep mixing. Should cook pretty fast."

Alex just shook her head, making an unimpressed face at his directions. Sure, oil or butter, and she probably hadn't used enough of either this morning, but that wasn't too much help. The rest of the instructions were a little more helpful.

"I'll try again tomorrow," she said, determined to eventually get it right.

"Call me if it sucks and I'll try to help you un-fuck it up," he offers with an exaggerated smile. Such a generous offer from a knight in shining armor. Or something. Kyle straightens from the counter to grab his water, taking a long drink and then returning to the comfort of his leaning again. "I'll give you a week. If you haven't gotten it down by then, we'll make some next class."

As if these are official classes with an actual schedule.

"Oh, I'll get it down by then," Alex retorts, taking that as a challenge. She can definitely conquer scrambled eggs in a week. It might involve buying a lot more eggs to experiment with, but she can do it.

"Next time you can teach me something else." There's a moment where her breath almost catches at the realization that she's making actual plans to see him again, that she's treating it like such an obvious thing that it's not worth even considering that they won't see each other again. But she plows right ahead. "You've got all those cookbooks, we could make something really fancy."

"I can't wait," he replies immediately, recognizing the established challenge for what it is. Kyle has no doubt in his mind that she'll make it happen now that he set a deadline to it.

As to the rest, he holds up his hands, palms forward in a vaguely placating gesture. "Yeah, alright, alright. Slow down. Remember how I said I'm not really a cook either? Let's see what we can do about getting you to feed yourself for a week without any fires and then maybe- maybe we look at something fancier."

"Alright," Alex says, moving towards him. She squints at him and crosses her arms over her chest, smiling slightly but trying to look serious. "If I can cook something for myself every day this week without setting anything on fire, you have to teach me how to make something really fancy next week. Deal?"

It's an almost impossible challenge, but she's sure she's up for it. And it's a nice distraction from any awkwardness between them.

Kyle finds himself oddly aware of how close she is, even though there's still some distance between them. He ignores it, flashing a smile to counteract her own and straightening from the counter to bring them just that little hint closer together.

"It's a deal," he agrees easily. Because it's Kyle, he adds, "And if you don't?"

Alex shrugs, finally allowing herself to smile as she moves past him to check on the brownies. "Then obviously you have to teach me more of the basics."

"Lucky me," he quips idly, watching her as she moves past him and resisting the urge to reach out and touch her. Kyle moves past the thought easily, turning only enough to look at her from his comfortable spot on the counter. He takes another sip before setting his water on the counter behind him. "How do they look?"

Alex opens the oven and frowns at the brownies. There looks as though there might be a thin crust beginning to form on top, but nothing too solid yet. "Still mostly liquid."

She closes the oven door again and puts both hands on the counter, leaning forward. "We've still got about ten minutes to kill." And she prefers to find some way to kill it that involves the minimum amount of awkwardness. "So what do you do for fun around here? Besides go out and help strangers buy groceries?"

Edited 2016-02-13 06:38 (UTC)

"Oh, that's really the pinnacle of entertainment around here. You should try it sometime." Kyle uncrosses his arms, planting his hands on the edge of the counter and still leaning back against it. "Other than that? Go for a run, look for a job, grab a drink. I don't know the neighborhood very well yet. I like movies, sports, training. Dancing, sometimes."

He shrugs. It's not a question he gets very often and one he finds surprisingly difficult to answer. "Honestly? It's harder than I thought to re-adapt to civilian life, so. I'm just trying to keep busy."

Alex grins at him. Most of those things do sound fun, though she can barely imagine Kyle dancing, either in a ballroom or a nightclub.

She understands what he means when he says it's hard. Re-adapting to civilian life, maybe that's what she's doing too, if her life before this could even be called civilian. She hasn't thought of it that way, since she's still making contacts, gathering resources, trying to find the best way to assassinate someone. But she's got rent now, and groceries to buy, and no phone calls at odd hours or people trying to kill her because of who she works for, and that's as close to being a normal citizen as she's ever been.

"Busy's good." Focusing on finding a way to kill Semak is what keeps her from having to think too hard about everything she doesn't have anymore, and what she left behind in America.

She decides to specifically mention the one thing on his list that seems new and interesting to her: movies. "I saw Iron Man recently. I really liked it."

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