undergrounds | This Can Only End Well (Sept. 1st)

What: Dinner party! Hope you like appetizers for dinner. And wine. And disaster.
Where: Nancy's flat in Enfield
Who: Eames, Arthur, Cooper, Kyle- time to meet the boyfriend, everyone!
When: September 1st.

Though the affair is set to be somewhat casual, Nancy has spent hours on that Thursday cleaning her flat, preparing food, and generally getting ready. Thursday night because Friday nights tended to be good nights for business, so she wasn't sacrificing nearly as much if she had everyone over on a Thursday.

The idea she'd had was to introduce everyone to Cooper officially. Get Eames to see that it was a great idea to date him, and maybe Kyle would be completely smitten with the idea of Cooper's existence in her life and allow Nancy to invite the vampire in to their future apartment. Cooper was important to her, she loved him. And she wanted others to see what she saw in him as well.

When the first guests arrive, Nancy's already had a glass of wine in her hand, ready to play dutiful hostess immediately. There's wine, magically chilled, as well as whisky and gin and some beer. For food, it's a lot of little appetizers, finger food, really. She has no idea what she's doing, truthfully, and just hopes that everyone has a good time.

Oh, and she made a cake.

If you're wondering where Juliet is, she's trying to eat the shrimp.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kyle doesn't mind being sized up. He endured enough of it for a lifetime in his military career and now it seems almost natural to be immediately judged. It helps that he knows he's fit and looks good, with solid posture and a strong stance, generally speaking.

He offers a charming smile in exchange for Cooper's and resists the urge to immediately judge the man for his single name. "Oh, sheesh. First she helped me with some magic stuff, then I kept getting injured and she patched me up. Between you and me, I think she just likes seeing me with my shirt off, but I won't complain about free medical care."

Kyle has never been a client and has no interest in sounding like one, but he can't help but poke at the boyfriend a little. It's as much an unconscious desire to assert his friendship with Nancy and compete as it is a conscious decision to have fun. But he does try to make it clear it's all in good fun. "That's all she's seen off, if that's what you're wondering. Well, okay, one time she technically saw me with my pants off, but I wasn't fully naked, so I don't think it really counts."

Edited 2016-09-17 09:33 (UTC)

"Sounds like you two have quite the friendship." He will not be allowing himself to get jealous. So she's seen Kyle a few times without his shirt on. Shit happens. She'd also put up Cooper for a couple of weeks when he'd been coming down from fae blood. Hell, he's a good-looking man, and Cooper can't deny that. He's tempted to ask Kyle to take his shirt off right here purely for curiosity's sake, but he doesn't know him well enough to joke around with him yet.

"That's better than how she and I met." He lowers his voice so that Nancy won't overhear them. "She wouldn't like me tellin' anyone this, but I sorta almost ran her over with my cycle. So glad I didn't."

"We do. I care about her a lot." He shrugs. Kyle makes sure his tone conveys the innocence of that sentiment. Poking fun is one thing, but there's no sincere desire to compete there. Well, not much of one anyway. Except he does care about her and Cooper's story hits a little on his protective button.

"I have a question. How do you go from almost running her over and paying her for sex to caring about and loving her?" It's asked nonchalantly. He's not looking to start a brawl, but it's something he genuinely wonders and which Nancy doesn't seem able to answer.

Cooper's eyes go a little flinty when Kyle asks that question. If he'd been trying to get a rise out of the vampire, he couldn't have picked a better question. "Let's make one thing clear. I paid t'feed off of her. I never paid t'sleep with her." There was a very big difference in Cooper's mind, though arguably, the act of feeding was in some ways even more intimate than that of pure sex.

"As for how it happened..." He shrugs. "...as the kids say, it's complicated. We would talk a lot about this 'n that. I saw something in her that that was both older than she looked and very young at the same time." It was hard, being eternally stuck in the body of a teenager, and trying to find anyone to have a meaningful relationship with him. Nancy had fit both sides of him. "I started t'care for her beyond just someone t'feed off of. Took a while, but we both figured out what we were lookin' for was each other. So that's how it happened."

Kyle visibly tenses at Cooper's clarification. He assumed it was the latter, that Cooper was a little bit of a sleaze who turned out to allegedly have a heart of gold. It wasn't unheard of, after all. But paying to feed on her was something else entirely, something he hated, and it took every fiber of his being not to punch Cooper in the face right then and there.

"Do you still feed on her?" He asks tightly, not able to hide his disapproval even if he wanted to.

Cooper's eyes narrow and go hard. He takes one deep breath and then another, willing himself not to lose his temper, though he desperately wants to put Kyle through a wall. His voice, when he finally speaks, has a low note of anger to it. "That's between me 'n her. I don't think you've got the right to ask."

Through his haze of anger, he's reminded of the own stabs of jealousy he used to get whenever he knew Nancy was out visiting a client. It had been borne of both love and worry. He suspects it's no different for Kyle. His tone shifts. "Look, I know you care about her 'n you probably don't think much of me. But I'd walk out into the sunlight before I'd hurt her. Rest assured of that if nothing else."

Kyle has to physically bite his tongue to resist the barrage of remarks those floodgates open. How Cooper doesn't have the right to feed, how feeding on her is hurting her, and so on. It's only because he promised Nancy that he would make an effort that he's holding back, even as his body tenses and cortisol and adrenaline pump through his system in preparation for a fight. His body's been trained, with a memory of its own, on how to react to vampire threats.

"I'll believe it when I see it," he offers, the most neutral response he can manage. Kyle crosses his arms to help assuage his desire to punch the thing. "You know she deserves better than you, right?"

"Ouch. That hurts." The sarcastic words are out of Cooper's mouth before he can even think. Well, he hasn't hit Kyle yet, so he's living up to his promise to Nancy to be nice. The sarcasm just comes second nature and it's a bit harder to control. The fact the young whelp is looking like he wants to fight him is laughable. Cooper would wipe the floor with him.

He laces his fingers behind his neck, sighing as he looks up at the ceiling. "I know she does." Nancy deserves much better than some ex-fae blood addicted old vampire who can't ever give her the family she really wants or grow old with her.

At least he recognizes that. It's the best compromise he can manage, now knowing that not only is Nancy dating a damn vampire, but the bastard's feeding on her as well. It sounds like the people who get kidnapped and become affectionate with their kidnappers and he wonders if Nancy's the type to get into an abusive relationship and would he even know. He makes a mental note to keep an eye on her as best he can.

"Great." It's all Cooper gets before Kyle pivots and marches off towards the kitchen.

This Can Only End Well (Sept. 1st)

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