undergrounds | DECEMBER OPEN POST

1. COFFEE SHOP
It starts in the cafe that morning. It's a Saturday and he's got the day off from Hillingdon and Guardian work alike, and with two weeks until the holidays, he realizes that he's running out of time to do his shopping. He's got no idea what his plans are -- last year Lancelot had invited him over for the whole stretch of the holiday, will he be doing that again? Now that they're... Whatever they are. Whatever this is between them. He feels as if he's walking around with a bubble inside of himself, something that fills him up with joy at the thought of it, but fragile too. It's too fresh to be safe and solid yet, and he knows he's thinking about it too much, too hard, dwelling, but that's the nature of his mind and his emotions.

Maybe three days to spend together is too many, at this point, he contemplates to himself, as he shuffles forward in line at the shop. Should he bring a bag, just in case? Should he ask? He doesn't want to sound too disappointed if the answer is no. It's Lancelot's flat, it's his right to make these decisions. He should know before though, so he can bring what he needs if he should. He doesn't want to have to go back out. What if the other man would change his mind then?

It's while these thoughts are spinning around his head, while his guard is lowered and vulnerable, that it sneaks in. The music, quietly piped in around them, as it is in all coffee shops world-wide at this time of year. Christmas songs. He'd been avoiding them so far this year, but he'd been so caught up in his thoughts he'd forgotten. He can tune the music out so long as it's popular and new, but as he approaches the counter, as he places his order and then waits for his drink to be prepared, one of the older, more wholesome, traditional tunes comes in. A song that works its way in through your ears and settles down in your gut for the long haul.

Worst of all, it's too cold to sit outside and escape it. Faolan finds a seat with his coffee and his pastry and the seasonal music and proceeds to eat and drink, growing progressively moodier with each changing of the tracks.

2. SHOPPING
At least there are so many people milling about at the shops that the holiday music starts to blend in with the background noise of the place. Small blessings, Faolan thinks to himself, as he walks through yet another shop and just stares at the items on display there. He has no idea what he's getting for Lancelot. Something for his dog, of course. Maybe something silly, highlighting the man's oddly high affection for the dog. But this time he wants to get him something nice too. Something... Thoughtful.

He's not really sure what this is between them, but he wants to let him know that he appreciates it. He appreciates him. That he... Well, there's another holiday coming up that will have higher expectations as far as emotion is concerned, but he wants him to know that he does care. In his own way.

Lancelot is so easy-going he'd like anything. But what would he like, that's the real question for Faolan to answer. What do you get to impress a man who's already said he doesn't need to be impressed?

Standing staring at the window display and lost in his own thought, Faolan starts to hum the earlier Christmas song underneath his breath. He keeps a tight leash on his past, on his music, on the talent there and the life he might have led. But it has its ways of creeping in through the cracks despite himself. Suddenly realizing what he's doing, he stops, and quickly casts a glance about to check if anyone had caught him at it.

3. HILLINGDON [closed to those with a reason to be at Hillingdon House]
He hadn't really needed to come back to Hillingdon House, but Faolan finds himself making his way back there anyway. After all, there were things here he didn't have back at his flat. Like sellotape. And a fully stocked kitchen. A man can't live on takeaway alone, nor can he continuously mooch off of Lancelot's hospitality, for that matter. Anyway, he's got things to preoccupy himself with upstairs in his office once he's done, instead of sitting alone in his flat with his thoughts rattling around in his head.

He's making himself a cheese sandwich and soup. It's not very complicated, but it's probably somewhere on the far edge of Faolan's capabilities as they stand right now. Wondering if he's made the right decisions as far as his gifts are concerned -- he certainly hopes so, at least. Still wondering whether he should text Lancelot to ask him about his holiday plans.

It's while his mind is so preoccupied, while he's heating soup on the stove and letting his mind wander around in circles again that the song comes back. It's been a long day, and Faolan's guard is so lowered, the words just slip out, his voice low and slightly rough without any warm-up, but the melody is obviously there, and so is his talent. All of those years in training, he can't just forget them simply because he wants to.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight..."

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The humming gets Nancy's attention. She's out browsing for gifts for the boys', as well as for those she cares about most- Caroline, Cooper, Eames, to name a few- though very little actually makes it's way to the register. Magic and light fingers make petty theft easier than ever before. But when she looks up and notices who it is next to her, she stops.

Shit.

Faolan sees anything, he'll go to the Night Council, or worse, straight to Lance and he'll not only be disappointed in her due to her mild case of kleptomania, but Sylvia will find out. And she'll be banned without question.

Nancy decides that that's enough shopping at this particular spot today. She turns to go, but underestimates the proximity of herself and Faolan, bumping into him.

"Maybe stop singing and pay attention to your surroundings, yeah?" She asks him. Despite their rather decent conversation before, she's still got her guard up around him.

Faolan startles slightly, not only at the fact that someone's just bumped into him, but at their pointing out his singing. Humming, technically, but still. Too close for comfort. This season really gets to him, more than any other, makes it harder to ignore the fact that singing, music, they used to be some of his favorite things. Back in another life, when he'd been another person. Back home in Ireland, before his world had been turned inside out.

He turns to make comment in response to the snide remarks and finds himself startled again. Nancy. Of all the...

"I wasn't--" he starts despite himself, though he cuts the train of thought off pretty quickly. Frowning at her as he does.

"Humming, then, whatever." She rolls her eyes at him. She remembers their last meeting. She'd tried to pick him up before realizing who he was. They'd had a drink, maybe a bit more understanding, but the fact still remained: he'd left Kenzi.

She wants to ask him what he's doing here, but they're in public, and she doesn't even care.

"Just watch it next time, yeah?" She'd probably never sounded quite so Cockney in her life.

He raises his eyebrows slightly at her. His expression says, without needing to say it aloud, that he hadn't been the one moving, excuse you. She isn't the only one that can be sassy when she wants to be. And he's feeling embarrassed at being caught out like that, it means he can be extra sassy if he so chooses.

"You're right," he counters. "I'll make sure to keep a lookout for the next person who tries to body-check me on their way of fleeing a store before anyone catches them in their game." He gives her a steady look. He knows exactly why you were running. He's been in your shoes himself before, after all.

Nancy gives him such a look because how dare he accuse her of something like that when she was trying to put it back because he was there. How rude could you possibly be, Faolan?

She crosses her arms in front of her chest and lets out a huff of air. "What is it they said about assuming? something something me and you?"

Faolan keeps his eyebrows raised in a face that clearly says he doesn't believe a word of what she's saying. He'd been there, after all. Maybe not exactly in her position, but he'd been there, desperate for money, finding the easiest way to get what he needed was to push the law a little. Still. The fact that she's refusing as she is doesn't give him much faith in her.

"What do they say about the fact that it takes one to know one?" he replies, casually.

But there's the thing: she doesn't know. She has no way of knowing how similar they are. She frowns, abandoning all pretense at this point.

"You've got no idea," she tells him. He's never had to buy gifts for her brothers, never had to deal with having a rich boyfriend that you didn't ever feel you could ask for money from, never had to have stealing so engrained into her mind that half the time it isn't wrong.

"I put it all back." Pointedly, very much like the young woman she was. No, rather, brattily because that's exactly what she could be, when she needed to.

He raises his eyebrows at her pointedly. He supposes it would not normally be so easy to speak so freely about himself as he is finding it as of late, but maybe it's the season bringing up memories of a better life he'd had before, or maybe it's the fact that he's actually finding himself happy with his lot in life, for the first time in over a decade at that.

"Don't I?" he asks, in turn. "I'm hardly the right person to go about reporting you, if that's what you're worried about. Certainly not to the police. And what would I tell Lancelot -- I can hardly give away where I was without having to explain I was here for him."

He realizes a little late in the game that he's standing in front of a case of expensive things that decidedly wouldn't be gifts for just any old friend. He turns his gaze away, suddenly catching himself out yet again.

His eyebrow raise is met with her own well-drawn eyebrows. "No, you don't."

But she wouldn't give him any more to work with. Especially not when she was sure it would get back to the Night Council. speaking of: "It's not Lance I'm worried about you telling. But I'd rather not have my pardon revoked." dealing with the police was easy, she'd done it before.

So he was here for Lance. of course. She looks from Faolan to the case and back again. "Cuff links is what you posh sort give each other, yeah?"

'You posh sort', she says, and he raises his eyebrows at her again, turning back to Nancy to shoot her an incredulous look. Not necessarily about the idea of the cufflinks -- though he'd had something more personal than the cufflinks in mind -- but more in regards to her description of Faolan himself.

"Posh?" he asks her, bluntly. "Is that what you think of me? Of Lancelot?" If Faolan is posh, he can't imagine what she must think of actual posh people.

"You've seen his flat," she says, gesturing vaguely. "Certainly far more posh'n I'll ever be." She even lets her Cockney accent flair up a little, though she usually did her best to keep it hidden.

Okay, so she had a really great place to live right now, but she knew that was only temporary. Any day now, what she'd built up would be lost. Things didn't ever stay good in her life for long, and she'd be back on the streets in more ways than one.

Faolan keeps his eyebrows raised as he regards her carefully. Yes, he has seen his flat. Many times, from many different angles. Hell, he's probably seen more of Lancelot's flat than a lot of other people have at this point. But at the same time...

"The man wears tshirts with dog slogans on them," he says, as if sharing the thought would explain his incredulity at her insistence that the pair of them are so far above her as that.

"That doesn't mean anything. My boyfriend's got himself a right posh place, and he wears nothing but white t-shirts." Like, Hanes t-shirts. Not 100-dollar-Armani t-shirts.

So suck on that, Faolan.

Faolan throws his hands up in the air after a moment, and bursts out, "Are you really going to keep arguing this with me? So you think he's posh. I think you're wrong. He would too, if you asked him yourself. He's done very well for himself though, given everything he's had to come up against, but if I give him a pair of cufflinks," he says, with a note of finality, "he's going to look at me like I'm growing turnips out of my ears."

DECEMBER OPEN POST

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