undergrounds | walking with strangers (March & April Catch-All)

Something about wounded birds was always... calming, somehow. Not enchanting, exactly, but Henry felt an immediate fondness towards women who had been broken in a way he typically could not feel for anything else. It struck some protective chord deep in his chest, generally dormant, and made him more disposed to listen, learn, and like; much akin to a Greek tragedy, someone had to be inhuman not to feel anything at all when faced with something lovely and cracked. Even if that feeling were dull, like in an echo chamber far away, it was still something.

The bruises, with his poor eyesight, he'd have yet to noticed; the brace, however, made him more lenient towards the idea that this might be someone worth speaking to. Pain and regrowth were what made individuals human, after all.

A nod, in thanks, and going to sit. Placing the coffee down a little roughly, as if he could not quite help it, but the books were placed more tenderly on the table top before he turned his eyes back to her.

"Too crowded." He agreed... or stated, depending on her opinion of busy places. "But there's something nice about small shops, when individual voices become a chorus." The background noise was near deafening now, but it was so much better than hearing individual conversations. Old women whining, children pouting, men snickering.

The coffee hit the table and Nancy made a small face, pursing her lower lip just slightly at the noise. She leaned forward, to see if the coffee had spilled. Nothing. So she said nothing about the matter.

"There is, isn't there?" She smiled around the space fondly. "I just moved to the area, I'm trying to get a good sense of what's what yet. But I do like this one." But they were supposed to be talking about voices. "But I think I like it better when it's a bit quieter." And here they were, adding to the noise. Oh well, he was handsome enough she didn't mind a bit of conversation. She was only killing time, after all.

"New to the area...?" He let the question taper off, earnest, inquisitive, but not pressing. She sounded English, so he wasn't sure if she meant to London, or to this part of the great web of the city. Either way, he wasn't especially good at fishing for conversation, but he made for a willing listener. Listening was the least he could do, after intruding upon her space-- but softly enough so that she could choose to ignore the question or cut if off quickly, if she'd rather be left in silence and felt the intrusion acutely.

"Yes. I mean- obviously you're American." So many Americans in her life, goodness. Regardless, Nancy thought her London accent was obvious, the littlest twinge of Cockney in there. Because she's a poor Dickens character, let's be real here. It mostly came out now when she was drunk. But she didn't expect a random handsome fellow to know that, so here we were.

"But if you've been here long enough to pick up a few favorites, I mean." The city was so large that keeping a favorite in one area when you moved to another and going out of your way to visit it seemed rather silly. Nancy kept her favorites to the different neighborhoods. Easier that way.

Honestly, she didn't mind the conversation, and she'd gone too far now to back out.

"Obviously." Agreed, with a faint hint of surprise in the way his mouth lilted up, just at its edges, brief. Accents had never been problematic for him to mimic-- on the streets of Paris, who would say he was 'obviously an American'? A rare quirk that living in England provided him, and he still found it a little bit charming, even if it felt brutish to be called out by his own voice.

"And this is your particular favourite?" Not a bad cafe, but nothing extraordinary. Surely a Londoner knew of better. "I'm afraid most Americans have only heard of Notting Hill, Kensington, Saint James' Park. It's refreshing to explore the rest." He didn't find these areas preferable, exactly, but more anonymous.

Apparently a lot of people found bluntness charming. Who knew?

"Not yet," she said, raising her mug to take a drink. "I'm still exploring. I just moved around here." Ever since she got kicked out of her flat that she'd had for years. "So I'm trying to get a feel for the area. But I do like it. Better than your usual Cafe Nero or Starbucks." She liked places that had more flair to them.

"Do you go to University here, then?"

"I have always wondered at the irony of drinking at a coffee chain named for a Roman Emperor who ended the Julio-Claudian dynasty with suicide and rebellion." Given, a slight shrug of shoulders, always a bit awkward and jerky. "But then, I suppose it's just the Italian for 'black coffee'."

A single shake of his head.

"I finished University."

Not graduated, but. Moved on from.

"And you?"

"I-" Oh. Wow. Wow, this guy was smart. She hadn't considered the Emperor, let alone known of his existence until he spoke. Huh. Nor did she even consider it was Italian. "I had no idea about either of those." The more you know.

She nods. "Well, congratulations on that. I never went." Her schooling had been anything but usual, in one of the worst schools in London. She'd left the second she could, and had a terrifying number of truancies. "Not something I had any interest in." Maybe she had, once. But reality had set in and she knew it would never happen.

Another smile. Rare, to complete the motion so often... but rarer still that he had the pleasure of speaking to someone so plain and normative. He'd already decided there was nothing remarkable about this woman... she was no Camilla, she wasn't particularly tall and willowy, her features were English rather than Greek, and she spoke in a plain way. But that was comforting. He'd always found such people easier to talk to, to listen to, even if they so rarely became his friends. Their stories were colorful, varied, filled with the banalities of every day life that meant they were connected to the world, rather than above it. He'd always appreciated the Roman virtue that to be above citizens meant to know who they were, meant to be one, to understand. There were no games, no pomp, no politics. Easy.

"No matter." He gave, in answer to the fact that she hadn't been schooled. His own history with education was rocky and untraditional, at best. "What do you have an interest in?"

Oh, yes, Henry. Her life was very bland. How quickly one judges. Something something, books and their covers. But at least he didn't go on a "how could you not be educated?!" rant, because she probably would have dumped her hot coffee on him. It had happened before.

Of course, Nancy had no idea about any of this, and was really just pleased with a normal conversation. She spent too much time talking with young boys and men she was working with. Her interests, however, were not exactly great for small talk. No matter, she could lie her way out of a paper bag. "I love the theatre," she told him, because she'd been to a production of Les Misérables once. "And I'm really quite social. I suppose, if I ever did school, I'd consider being a nurse."

"The tragedies, or the comedies?" Most of the theatre he knew were the old plays, and most modern plot lines, from what he could grasp, were built on the bone and frameworks of their ancient ancestors. "A nurse-- not an actress?"

He wouldn't ask her what she did now, though that was always the question he was most curious about. No matter. If she wanted to share it, she would.

"Why limit yourself?" She tells him, because she really didn't want to get into a discussion which was built on one of her lies. "Yeah. There isn't exactly much money in acting. I like to be practical every once in a while."

Honestly, she was dreading the question. I'm a prostitute never got her far with random coffee conversations.

walking with strangers (March & April Catch-All)

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