undergrounds | water's sweet but blood is thicker

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water's sweet but blood is thicker

I. COMING HOME - [OPEN TO FIRST RESPONSE OF EXISTING CR]
Kyle had told nearly everyone he knew of his returning home to America indefinitely. He didn't tell anyone about his return. The trip home to deal with estate issues, property problems, renter concerns, and so on was basically nothing but work. It broke his heart to be in his childhood home again, even though he still couldn't bring himself to sell it. He both loved and hated the reminder of home and all that he had lost, missing his family more than he could bear for a time. He resolved things surprisingly quickly, and also found himself missing the new life he'd created in London more than he expected.

He took the underground from Heathrow to his area, getting off a couple stops early to walk the rest of the way. He appreciated the crisp air, needed it to clear his head. It was half the reason he'd stayed sane in South Africa, those walks. With his duffel on his back, everything felt more familiar. He missed his unit, his family, his girlfriend. But missing people had never slowed him down before and it sure as hell wouldn't now. Which is why he sensed that the person nearby was more than a stranger.

II. DRINK N DRINK N DRINK N FIGHT - [OPEN]
Maybe it was the comments about vampire rights, or maybe it was the way the guy hit on the girl down the bar. Whatever the case, Kyle couldn't help but dislike the asshole and it was only a matter of time before he intervened to shut the guy down. The argument was basically guaranteed and the escalation to physical violence inevitable. The other guy got the first hit, Kyle was quick to return, though his focus was more on defensive moves than offensive. Getting off the X. A few more hits, the asshole's friends cheering him on and Kyle hoping the kindness of strangers would be enough to see him through if need be.

It was the interference of a third party that finally put an end to the pub brawl and Kyle couldn't help but be embarrassed at so easily succumbing to such actions. He was supposed to know how to exercise restraint. He did know. He just didn't like to sometimes.

[Feel free to be the asshole, the intervening party, or to assume the bartender intervened and approach Kyle after.]

III. DID YOU MISS ME - [CLOSED TO NANCY]
Kyle's fight had backfired a little, or a lot, when he was jumped on his way home later. It was a few human civilians against a trained soldier used to fighting vampires. It didn't last long, with the assholes scattering once he put up a decent defense. Still, three against one left him with a few good bruises, a very sore rib cage, and one hell of a bloody and possibly broken nose. There was only one person he trusted that he could turn to, not wanting the hassle of the hospital and potential police involvement.

He sent Nancy a text: Miss me? I'm shirtless and bloody. Come over when you can?. It wasn't the ideal way to tell his friend that he was back in town, but it would have to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Nancy had been working when she got Kyle's text, and thusly it was a bit of time before she managed to get over to his place. She remembered the way, and once she was on her way, it didn't take long for her to get there.

She hadn't realized he was back in town, of course, but her worry that he was injured had her far more concerned than that he hadn't told her he was back. She rapped on his door, hoping he didn't mind the general state of her disarray. When the door swung open, Nancy held herself back from giving him a hug.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," she says with a bright smile. Then she gets a proper look at him. "Good lord- what happened?"

Kyle's already shirtless, lounging around in some sweatpants and mostly asleep on the couch when Nancy finally knocks. He wakes immediately, turning to the door with mild paranoia from his jet lagged state until he finally sees her and remembers inviting her over.

"Hey you," he greets her with a grin, standing from the couch as much to greet her as for her to get a better view of his injuries. By this point, most of the free blood from his nose has been cleaned and it's only swollen, bruised, with blood in the nostrils. His chest and side are already bruised, though he's less concerned about that.

"A little misunderstanding with a guy in a bar." He shrugs, moving around the couch to close most of the distance between them. "I'm worried about my nose. Can you look at it? I can't tell if it's broken."

Nancy gives him the driest look she can muster. "A little misunderstanding," she repeats, not believing a word of it. That looks like a big misunderstanding.

"Sure, I can do that. Give me a moment, yeah?" She's going to make herself at home, tossing her purse and leather jacket aside, and most importantly: kicking off her pumps. Now, significantly shorter and barefoot, she moves closer to him.

"Can you sit?" She gestures back at the couch, taking a seat next to him. The height difference between them is such that it's easier for her to take a look when they're sitting. "Though if it's broken, there isn't much I can do."

"Of course." He gives a warm smile before leaning back on the top of the couch, giving her all the time she needs. It makes him feel good that she's so comfortable here, then he feels the pang of loss from Alex being gone and Nancy loving a vampire.

He ignores the feeling, moving around the couch as indicated to take a seat, leaning forward to offering her a better look. It's odd how intimate the situation is without feeling intimate. "I can go to a clinic if it's broken. If it's not, no use in wasting the money."

"Thanks," she says, moving to sit where he'd been laying moments before. She tucks her bare feet under herself, and she raises herself up on her knees. Gingerly, she touches the swollen area, frowning.

"I'll try not to make this hurt," she says, and actually moves to touch the nose itself, feeling for broken bones.

It doesn't occur to her, how intimate it was. But she was the sort of girl that had grown up doing this for her brothers and for her ex-boyfriend. She'd doctored her own wounds so many times that this felt natural. What may have made it more intimate was she was fresh off of work, the red of the puncture wounds on her neck just visible under her makeup. She'd take care of those properly when she got home, just like every night.

Kyle holds as still as he can, not minding her gentle touch. Until it's not so gentle and suddenly hurts. He flinches when she touches it before forcing himself to stay put. While seriously swollen and bruised, it doesn't seem to actually be broken. Not that he knows that, with the way his face feels on fire.

His eyes fall on the bite marks on his neck, so he closes his eyes. It's an unpleasant reminder of where they left off and the things he'd learned about her shortly before leaving. It makes him angry and he hates it, but he's not going to cut off their friendship for it. Not yet, at least.

"Thanks," he murmurs as she continues to send fresh waves of pain rolling across his features and back into his sinuses.

"Sorry," she tells him at the flinch. "But I think that settles it- we'll have to get you to A&E." That was the English version of the emergency room.

She removes her hands, wiping them on her skirt. Extra blood on her clothes was the least of her worries, it's why most of her clothes for work were dark.

"So what exactly happened?" She settles down next to him. "D'you want anything to help with the pain? I think I've got something..." She reaches her hand out and her purse flies into her hand.

Kyle shakes his head, opening his eyes to look at her. "A&E? I'm not going to the hospital. I'll go to a clinic tomorrow. What happened to those magic creams and gels you had to help healing and pain killing? I was hoping for one of those."

Her purse flying over is both surprising and not. He's almost grateful to see her doing something with her magic. Kyle takes Nancy's hands in his, looking her in the eyes. "I'm fine, Nance." His tone shifts to his usual nonchalance. "I really just called so you could see me shirtless. I wanted to do something nice for you."

An intentionally flashy grin.

Nancy rummages around in her purse and looks up at him. "I came here right from work, and most of my medicines are still in Enfield." Which she needed to talk to Cooper about, if she was going to continue to live with him, or return to the Enfield flat. It was musical flats for her.

She lets him take her hands, removing them from her bag and looking up at him. Still shirtless and bloody and bruised.

"Oh, yeah?" She raises an eyebrow. "Trying to distract me from the fact you've been back in town for how long now?" She understands, though. If he had been back in town for weeks, well, she didn't blame him for not wanting to contact her, then.

Kyle's oblivious to the insinuation that she's staying somewhere else, with her medicines left at her old place. Instead, he gives a sheepish smile and drops her hands from his. Even with leaving on such questionable terms, he still feels guilty about his nearly silent return.

"Since this morning," he clarifies. It's important to him that she know that, that it hasn't been that long and he's not using her for her medical skills. Kyle was planning to call her soon. This made it easier though, helped to set his pride aside and worked as an excuse that didn't involve asking her to lunch or some other rendezvous cliche that risked her vampire of a boyfriend joining her. "The flight had some turbulence, but wasn't too bad. Thanks for asking."

Nancy, in all her glory, swats at his bicep. "oi! I would have asked eventually!" She doesn't think twice about her actions, about how her cockney accent comes out when she teases him.

"Welcome back, then, Kyle. I missed you." She did. it would have been nice to have someone else neutral in all of this to go to. Someone on her side always; with no hidden agenda. Someone to be her Kenzi, in a way.

She missed that little witch.

"So did you get me a present or not?" She may have been used to men bringing her presents from far off places. Like America.

"You too," he murmurs, although it's a little bit awkward. Kyle missed Nancy and their talks, but things have become complicated now and he didn't miss all the bullshit drama of the vampires. Even if he started suspecting that the bastards were in America as well.

At her question, he looks genuinely surprised and quickly covers it with a very obviously fake smile. "Uh.. yeah, of course. I got you.. Uh.." He reaches over into his duffel, still mostly packed aside from his laundry, and pulls out a bag of candy corns to offer her. "Do you guys have candy corns here? I got you candy corns."

He totally forgot. But candy always makes a nice gift and he has several bags.

Even more has happened since he's been gone. Midnight fell, Vampires are even more hated, and Nancy has been swept up in all of it. They'll never agree about vampires, she knows. But she can try because they're not all bad.

But now isn't the time to talk about that.

She's too distracted by candy corn.

"no! what are they?" She accepts the bag and opens it. "Try some with me?"

"It's candy! It tastes like sugar, but it's a very important fall staple in the American household. You've lived a deprived life until this very moment. Bask in its simplicity and the glory of its Halloween coloring." He reaches over to take a couple out of the bag and pops them in his mouth, chewing idly away. Objectively, candy corns are kind of a strange candy and suits the American palette more than the British probably, but he'll be damned if he doesn't try to get all his friends hooked on the stuff.

Following his lead she takes a handful, but only pops one in her mouth. It's a little waxy in texture, but soon she's tossing a few more back. "Not bad! Can we consider me a little less deprived, then?" She winks at him.

"I'll have to share with my brothers." They always loved when she brought food over. Especially sweets.

"A little," he agrees with a teasing grin. He goes to toss another into his mouth and accidentally hits his nose, which reminds him how much the thing hurts. Kyle drops his head back onto the body of the couch, resting it there with a casual smile to show it's not some dramatic motion. But it does bring him down a little from his oblivious bliss and forces his tone to something less humorous.

"Catch me up, what'd I miss?" He means to leave it there, but Kyle can't help but add, "You still with that boyfriend of yours?"

"Careful!" Nancy chides him, but leans back herself, relaxing into the couch.

God, what hadn't he missed? Nancy has to laugh a bitter laugh at it all. "Well- yes, I'm living with him right now... Enfield was taken over by Redbright, and the burned Abby's home to the ground." She presses her lips together. "A lot of them were exiled. But I ran to Cooper's." And he had taken her in, no questions asked. He'd held her close and let her cry and kept her safe at a time when leaving the apartment could have been bad.

"Luckily I've been pardoned of my involvement with Midnight." She was a little proud of that, the smallest of smiles tugging at her lips. "So that's what you've missed." This calls for her to pull her flask out of her purse. She uncaps it and holds it out to Kyle. "Gin?"

Nancy living with Cooper sounds like a nightmare to Kyle, but it's something that's quickly overshadowed by everything else. His hands clench into fists at his side and the muscles in his torso tighten and tense with his anger. He thought it would be okay to leave, not thinking things could escalate this substantially.

"I'm good," he responds, distractedly waving away the gin. "Has anyone seen Abigail lately or is she still AWOL? And why did you get pardoned?"

It's a good thing, given the options of being murdered - he assumes that's what the alternative would be - or pardoned, but it seems odd that she would be without some kind of betrayal to her old faction. And Kyle's never been comfortable with the idea of someone betraying their unit, even if he understands it and forgives it. It's the kind of thing that permanently affects ones' trust of a person.

It's not a nightmare, truthfully. It's wonderful. He loves her, they don't talk about her work, he tells her about wild nights at bars with Carey Grant. It's perfect. Better than anything she's had before. She almost doesn't want to return to her home in Enfield, but they still need to talk about it.

Nancy shakes her head "I haven't heard from her. I feel awful- I couldn't even come to the banishing. I feel like I'm the worst friend." She closes her eyes, groaning. It's hard to talk about.

"Because a man I know offered to sponsor me, and go in front of the Council and plead my case during the Night's Pardon." She pauses as she drinks again. "It's this thing they do in September every year. Gives people a chance to be pardoned for things they may or may not have done. He wanted me to have a chance. Something I've never really had." Not much has changed since she was pardoned. Just that she can walk down the street without being afraid of being arrested anymore.

"A chance?" Kyle echoes, not understanding what she means. He gets why she sought the pardon and is grateful for whoever helped her get it, but it still feels disingenuous somehow. Now she has to go about hiding who she is, possibly even more than she did before. And he continues to worry about Abigail too.

"You're not a bad friend," he adds, because it has to be said. "I'm glad you're okay."

She nods, and glances down at the candy between them. "I've never really been on the right side of the law before, Kyle." Now, she could do this without Fagin. Now everything she'd done before she was pardoned was erased. She didn't have to worry about rigging the election or having aided in the destruction of Mr. Norrell. She was free of it all.

"Thank you."

"Does that mean you got a new job?" He asks, surprised. Kyle's certainly not opposed to Nancy finding a more normal job in a shop or something, but he offered to help her before and was turned down. She seemed to like what she was doing and the idea of her changing it so suddenly made him wonder at the influence of her monster boyfriend rather than any independent life choice.

Cooper had absolutely no influence on Nancy's profession, thank you very much. He actually hated what she did.

She shakes her head. "No, I don't. No one would hire me, anyway. I still don't legally exist in the outside world."

"There are ways around that," he replies without hesitation. Not that Kyle feels all that good about breaking the law, but sometimes the spirit of the law trumps the letter of the law in cases of ethics and morality. Even if it hurts his soldier pride to admit as much. She deserves a fake identity if it means having a better - and safer - life. "If you change your mind."

He'll leave it at that. There's no reason to push Nancy on the subject of her job. And it does make him feel a little better that she's still sleeping around while dating the monster. Maybe she's not so far gone as he believed.

To her, it wasn't sleeping around. There was no emotional connection. Just a few minutes of feeding, a few minutes of sex. It was quick and dirty and rarely anything to write home about. She also refused to kiss her johns, as so many did. Only Cooper got to kiss her.

She nods. "Thanks, Kyle." She appreciates it, she really does.

She takes another drink of her gin. "I'm glad you're back."

water's sweet but blood is thicker

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