undergrounds | but there was no sound, there was only me and my disgrace

closed to natasha, august 16
The strange thing is, the numbness sets in first. Before the panic, before the fear. He's starting to wonder what being with these people is doing to him. But the clarity is almost worse. After the first murder, the night after had been a huge blur, the anxiety eating out all of the memories, making them fuzzy and unfocused and all that was left was the imprint of the intense feelings, but not the specifics. This clarity though...the blood on his hands was going to be there for a long time.

But he knows how to get away with murder, and he knows how to solve this problem. That's what he was always doing, solving problems for other people, but this time he has no one to blame for himself. So he swallows his nausea and cleans up the crime scene.

And then...And then...

The sickness starts to set in and the anxiety and the tension and he hates himself too much to be alone with himself. He needs someone else, and even while the loathing tells him he doesn't deserve it, logic knows he needs it. He seeks out Natasha. She's the only person who is stable enough to deal with the bizarre shit he's been dealing with. The only person he can trust with this information without it hurting her.

"I...Natasha, I need to talk."

open, august 18
Do you know what today is? Do you? Here I'll key you in - it's the full moon. And everyone's new favorite baby werewolf is finding out the hard way what that means for the first time. At least he's smart - he's not sure he's really going to transform (but he can feel it, and he knows it instinctively and that's kind of creepy to him), but he's not about to hang around somewhere he can fuck things up more than he has. So here we are, a little before sundown, and he's just chilling in the forest, stashing an extra pair of clothes behind a tree (look, he's seen werewolf movies before), and biding his sweet time before he turns into a giant hungry dog, or whatever.

open, august 19
The morning after, but not the fun kind. At least he's got the Walk of Shame™ thing down, yesterday's clothes secretly stuffed in a briefcase, today's clothes only slightly tousled and only slightly woodland-tingled (a leaf here, some dirt on the cuffs on his pants, no big deal). He looks like a very hung over, very much needing coffee, normal millenial though, by all other counts. He's pretty sure he didn't kill anyone last night so while he's exhausted, he's also pretty happy. What a world, that that's something to be excited about.

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"I'm pretty sure I didn't eat a squirrel." I mean, he has no idea, but anything is better than eating a person so honestly even if he had eaten a squirrel he really wouldn't care that much. "Afterglow isn't as nice as sex." He shrugs, trying to play it off. He is in pain. A lot of pain, really, but he's trying not to think too hard about that.

"Better a squirrel than a rat." Don't ask him how he knows what a rat's blood tastes like. He's gone through some lean times in his life. "Any way you look at it, you probably got a bad case of fleas right now."

He pats the seat of the motorcycle behind him. "Want me t'drop you off anywhere? I guarantee I'll be faster than hoofing it." He drives like a maniac thanks to his higher reflexes, but he has yet to get into a car accident in all the time he's been in the city.

"Sure you're not afraid you're going to catch some?" He's not going to turn down help. The last thing he needs is to be late to work, he can already imagine the lecture he's going to get if he does.

Without waiting for an answer he climbs on anyway and gives the address of his professor's office in the City. Work and not getting chewed out is more important than pride.

Cooper pulls out two pairs of riding goggles out of a pouch that's strapped alongside the vehicle and hands over one of them to Connor. "For bugs," he explains, revving the engine before taking off.

Cooper drives like a madman, swerving around taxis with only a hairsbreadth of space between them and certain doom, screeching to a halt at red lights like they're his personal enemy, and at one point even hopping up on the sidewalk and speeding along for a few meters before jumping back onto the street. He turns his head and shouts the words back at Connor as they get stranded at another red light. "Still back there?"

Connor pulls on the googles, well aware that they probably both look stupid, and holds on to Cooper. He's not overtly phased by this, although it wouldn't be his first choice after a long night. Cooper's not really the best driver but he's not really afraid for his life. City living. Gets to everyone.

"I'm not dead yet, that's a good sign, right?"

"Not much that will kill ya now. Just stay clear of the wolfsbane." As if to prove his point about the supernatural being hard to kill, he takes off going faster than he needs to to. He turns his head slightly and warns, "Hold on tight!" Then he pops a wheelie, more for the sake of showing off than anything else.

Cooper's laughing and hooting like a maniac. There's something about motorcycles that makes the vampire feel free and alive the way nothing else does. It was worth it to live into the twentieth century just to experience them.

He wasn't expecting this, though. He holds on tighter and yelps. Has he mentions he feels like he's vaguely hungover? This is definitely not helping at all.

"Cool. Great."

Cooper gets Connor to his professor's place with plenty of time to spare. He screeches the bike to a sudden halt that nearly has them overshooting the road and ending up on the sidewalk. Cooper takes his goggles off and they sit jauntily in his hair. "Piece of cake." He turns back to look at the newly-minted werewolf, giving him a friendly thump on the shoulder despite how pale the man looks. "You survived your first night 'n your first morning after. Congratulations."

It's weird, how he's getting something like friendship with Cooper. Maybe all vampires weren't so bad. The free ride and not being late is a pretty sweet deal. The words of support, too, even if they're a little sarcastic.

He takes off the goggles and hands them over. "Thanks," and he means it. "Let me buy you a drink sometime." He pulls out a business card from his pocket. Of course he has business cards, but more importantly they have his cell number on them. "You've gone out of your way more than once for me now."

Edited 2016-08-25 05:01 (UTC)

Cooper looks over the business card, running a thumb over the edge before putting it in his pocket. Fancy. Very nice. Here he was thinking that only old men still had them.

"I told you I wish someone had done the same for me. Guess I've just got a soft spot for those that are new to this whole...whatever you want to call it." That moment when someone's life got turned upside down because now they were officially part of the supernatural community. There needed to be a term for that. Maybe there was in another language like French.

"Yeah," Connor nods. Cooper doesn't need more words to explain, he understands. They're in this together, at least, and that's more than most people can say about terrible situations. "I'll see you around, yeah?"

"Count on it, Fuzzy," Cooper replies. So he's become friends with a werewolf. Who would have thought? He revs his motorcycle up and it lets out a puff of black smoke. He takes off down the street amidst the cloud, narrowly swerving around a truck that's just pulling out.

but there was no sound, there was only me and my disgrace

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