undergrounds | Tell me that I'll figure it out...

He's not sure if he prefers the little nuisance back to his old self as opposed to the terrified pre-teen he'd been. Both had been equally annoying in different ways. "Already fixed. Also had t'fix the door too, in case you were wondering. Now this has been a thrilling chat, but I have to go back to falling asleep in front of The Lady Who Waited Forever now."

While Cooper generally had an attitude, it was exacerbated this time by the knowledge he'd screwed up. He'd had a member of the Nest who needed help, and instead of taking care of a major and dangerous problem, he'd let him slip away. All because he'd chosen the safety of his girlfriend over the potential victims that could have befallen the fangs of a amnesiac child vampire.

Joscelin reaches out, rather forcefully grabs Cooper's hand, and stuffs a stack of crisp, new £20 notes into it. He has no idea what repairing a window actually costs, but £300 ought to cover it, right? "There. For your pains. And this is for Nancy." He's also carrying a shopping bag; he shoves it at Cooper. Inside are the clothes she'd given him. They've been cleaned and pressed, rips and tears magically repaired.

"We're even now." It sounds surprisingly like a threat.

He sets the bag down just inside the entryway, not letting go of the money. Cooper folds his arms and draws himself up to his full height. Usually that doesn't do a whole lot considering there aren't many people who are shorter than five-foot six, but in this case, it makes a difference. "Isn't that typical? You think if you throw enough money at something, it'll make the problem go away."

He tosses the money back at Joss. "Feck your money," he says, his accent butchering the first word. "I don't need it."

This is as close as Joscelin ever gets to apologizing. He's not used to having it thrown back in his face.

"It's not a fucking payoff!" He glares up at Cooper. "I'm clearing a debt. Wipe your ass with it, if that's what you want; I've no power to tell you what to do. Nor do I particularly care." Cooper makes him so angry and he's not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because he sees himself reflected in the other vampire in ways he's not particularly comfortable with. There aren't many vampires physically under eighteen left in the Nest; most had been of Joscelin's own creation and had been purged along with him. Cooper is one of only a handful of others.

And that makes them too much alike to ever be friends.

Edited 2017-04-23 04:00 (UTC)

"For someone who's been around six hundred years, you still know jackshit about how t'deal with people." He looks at Joss and wonders if that's what is going to happen to him. If he reaches that age, with everyone mortal he knows now long dead and gone, will he be just as jaded and cynical? He'd like to think not, but he never could have predicted how his personality had morphed from the carefree young lad who'd died in the Rebellion into what he is today.

"If you really didn't care, you wouldn't have come. Why are you here, Joss?" He's sensing the other's emotions, but all he can sense is the anger bubbling on the surface.

"Seven hundred." It comes out before he means it to. It doesn't necessarily help his cause that he's correcting Cooper on his age, but those extra eighty years are important to him. And that's most of a century, right?

Joscelin is angry. He's not entirely sure why he's here himself; if he tried to pay reparations for all of the damage he's caused over his lifetime he wouldn't have any money at all. But it rankles. It's all he can think about: he's been completely helpless for ten days and there are those who could've taken advantage of his weakness but didn't. Instead, they'd tried to help. Protected him, even. Why had they done that?

He doesn't understand it. He wouldn't have done the same for them.

"I told you: I'm clearing a debt." He says it just a beat too late. It's an obvious lie, even for someone who can't sense emotions.

Edited 2017-04-23 06:06 (UTC)

His correction just annoys Cooper further. Petulant little child. If only he could have just tossed him down the nearest elevator shaft. But he held no delusions. If they got into a physical altercation, Cooper would get his ass kicked.

He can tell the obvious lie. Groaning, he rests his head on the door frame. "Tá tú den sórt sin a pian," he mutters against it. You are such a pain.

He's going to have to figure out what Joss really wants, since it's clear the child vampire isn't going to tell him outright. Approaching him with attitude hasn't worked, so maybe he should try a different tack. "C'mon in. Let's talk over a few mugs of blood." He turns around, leaving the door open as a invitation. Joss can choose to take him up on it or just leave.

Being invited in is helpful. Joscelin follows Cooper into the flat, glaring daggers at him the whole time. He finds a table and leaves the money on it; he refuses to take it back. Cooper can do with it whatever the hell he sees fit.

He settles down on the couch without further invitation, trying very hard not to think about the last time he'd been here. But that's just it, isn't it? His problem. Why he's here.

He stews in his annoyance and frustration for several moments before blurting out: "I need your help."

Cooper pulls out two bags of blood from the fridge and pours them into a pair of mugs. About thirty seconds in the microwave and they're at about the temperature that a warm body would be. He hands one over to Joss and sips his own at the other end of the couch.

"That's a first," comes the automatic response. Cooper bites his tongue and goes in for another try. "I mean, help with what?" Joscelin was a proud vampire, and if he had come here for assistance, it meant the situation was really serious.

Reheated blood is never nearly as good as fresh, but Joscelin takes the mug anyway and drinks. Blood is blood; he's a vampire. It works.

He doesn't miss Cooper's little slip, and the look he gives the other vampire could curdle milk. Why is he even here? There's obviously no love lost between them. But this is a problem he can't go to Jean-Claude with because Jean-Claude's position is far too tenuous without Joss making trouble for him. It has to be Cooper.

He looks away.

"I was cursed. Back...then. I need your help finding the witch who did it."

Cooper manages to refrain from being a smart-ass by taking a large gulp of blood. He waits for Joss to tell him while he's here.

Now there's a problem he can actually solve. Cooper has some standing among both the vampires and their human allies. Surely, one of them would know something. "That I can help with. Who'd you piss off lately?" He felt like this was going to be a long list, but hey, they could start from the top and work their way down to the bottom.

"You don't expect me to keep a dossier on every human I drink from, do you? A little black book, maybe? It would be quite a long list."

He frowns.

"But, as it happens, I had a bit of a dry spell in terms of...human deaths." About seventy years, in fact. Fat lot of good it had done him. "It was to strengthen my case for reentry into the Nest, under Millicent's rule." But then she'd died and he'd had no reason to continue the ruse. "So unless someone kept an exceptionally persistent grudge, it would have to have been between June and November of last year. I've been on a short leash since then, with Jean-Claude in control and all." He fingers the daylight ring hanging around his neck, under his shirt.

"But I don't have any names or concrete numbers. One blood bag is much the same as another."

"That does help narrow the stretch of time." Otherwise, they'd likely be here a week sorting out victims. Cooper's already got his phone out and is dialing numbers. He's got a good bead on most of the vampires and human allies in the Nest. "You start thinkin' up anyone who stands out while I make a few phone calls."

Cooper tried first one number and then the next. The first few turned out to be duds, but on the fourth one, it seemed like he got a bite. "Really, Diego? You think it was when? I'll ask." He turns back towards Joss. "Who do you remember killing in the weeks after Millicent bit it?" He's hoping the numbers aren't too high. Joscelin could be a vicious little thing when he wanted to be.

Joscelin looks blankly back at Cooper. "Can you be more specific?" After Millicent bit it had been something of a one-vampire blood bacchanal for a few days. He'd taken his frustrations out on the city of London in general and left a sizable body count.

He hadn't exactly been thinking straight, though he's not going to let Cooper in on that particular piece of intelligence.

"I suppose...there was a...dog walker in Islington. And a woman near Finsbury Park Underground station. And...more, but I really can't recall any details."

Of course he would have gone on a free-for-all over the entire city. One would have thought he was newly turned instead of a vampire three times as old as Cooper.

"That'll do." Cooper gets back on the phone, relaying the information. "You think it was which one? The dog walker? I'll ask him again."

He turns back to Joss. "This dog walker, what did they look like?" Cooper had a lead, but he was going to need more information.

"He was tall?" Everyone is tall when you're four-foot-seven. Cooper is tall as far as Joscelin is concerned. "God's wounds, Cooper, it was two o'clock in the morning off some alleyway. I wasn't looking for distinguishing features."

He feels distinctly uncomfortable sitting here. Asking for help is already completely unlike him; watching the other vampire phoning his contacts like a detective in a bloody television show does very little for his already delicate ego. It makes him even pricklier than usual. "It was the night Millicent died. That's all I remember. Surely, even a fucking saint like yourself has been blood-mad before." It had been his first kill in seventy years. Of course he would have gone a bit overboard with it.

Cooper pushes at a muscle throbbing in his eyes. "Joscelin, you are not being helpful." Next thing he was going to tell him is that he had an epidermis and was breathing.

Cooper's eyes narrow as he once again fantasizes about tossing the little nuisance down an elevator shaft. No, he's promised to help, and he needs to make amends for his screw-up. "Let's compare who's the bigger monster later. I'm trying t'help you solve a problem right now."

He gets back on the phone. "He says he was tall. Maybe. I know, but work with me here. There has to be something you've heard." He listens for a few minutes. "Uh-huh. Thanks. You've pointed us in the right direction." He hangs up and turns to Joss. "According t'Diego, who heard it from a meta human in Daybreak, there's a witch who apparently has been lookin' for the person who killed her brother months ago. He was out dog-walkin' when he met a most unfortunate end."

Of course he had an epidermis and was breathing, Cooper. Now you're just being insulting.

Joscelin shrugs. "I let the dog go." He's not that horrible. He quite likes dogs, though he wouldn't have one himself and has eaten a fair few of them on hungry nights.

He can't help but glare as Cooper goes back to talking to Diego like he doesn't even exist. In a perfect world he would be grateful to Cooper for helping him with his problem, but this isn't a perfect world and he's an ungrateful little shit. "The poor man," he replies insincerely. "Odd that his bitch of a sister didn't just try to kill me if she wanted revenge. Why waste the energy on a curse?"

"Oh, you let the dog go. Do you want a gold star?" Cooper sits back down on the couch, putting his feet up so that Joss is forced down to the other end. Yes, he is a mature adult vampire, why do you ask?

He does look seriously as he mulls over what they've learned. "Well, if it was me, I'd want the punishment t'fit the crime. You killed someone who couldn't fight back, so she put you into the same state of bein' helpless and vulnerable for a few days. It could have been a helluva lot worse if Nancy 'n then Cesare hadn't found you."

"I'm aware of that," Joscelin sighs, wrinkling his nose at suddenly having smelly Irish feet shoved in his face. He scoots further away from Cooper. "How can I not be? Frankly I'm surprised only one person died while I was loose on the city. I had significantly less control the first time around, when I was actually turned." He'd killed more than thirty people then. "I am grateful to both Nancy and Cesare for the assistance they provided." And he means that sincerely. It could have gone so much worse.

Cooper's serious mood continues as he thinks back to waking up in a crypt back in 1798. His eyes are far away as he remembers waking up, the rope marks from his hanging still around his neck. "You 'n me both. Never a picnic when you're newly turned." Cooper hadn't even had a sire to help him through it. Scared and confused, the young teenager had been every inch the monster all the legends and myths made vampires out to be. Those early years were all a blur of blood and death.

He looks down the couch to Joss in surprise. "I think that's the first time I've ever heard you say you were grateful t'anyone."

Joscelin's also far away. He'd woken in a mass grave, three bodies on top of him. He had died with his eyes open, not so delirious from pain and fever to not understand what was happening to him. He remembered taking his last breath in the dreamy way one remembers falling asleep. And then he was awake again. And hungry.

He looks up at Cooper. "I don't see why you're so surprised," he shrugs. "I haven't lived this long by not giving credit where credit's due."

Cooper comes back to the present moment, tearing himself away from two-hundred year old memories. He'd come a long ways from that moment, a young, frightened vampire whose first meal had been a gravedigger in the graveyard. Older if not precisely wiser.

"You're usually, I dunno, so sardonic. I rarely hear anythin' genuine like that from you."

"I would have died." He isn't looking at Cooper anymore. He is usually far more sardonic and selfish than this, but Cooper is another vampire, and a physically young one at that; they have a lot more in common than not. "Someone would have figured out what I was, handed me off to a hunter, and I would have ended up dead. Or I would have taken off my daylight ring and walked outside on a sunny day. Maybe that's even what the witch was counting on; I don't know. I do know that without your...woman and Cesare Borgia I would have died. I rather enjoy continuing to exist."

Edited 2017-04-27 01:09 (UTC)

Cooper can hear the pause in Joss' words when he mentions Nancy. He can think of several substitutes that he was probably thinking, none of them flattering. Still, he's not going to solve anything by picking a fight. They'd already tried that in the entryway. "Well, you got the luck of somebody on your side." This could have turned out with Cooper reading Joscelin's obituary in the London Lambast Daily.

"So are you gonna retaliate against that witch?" He can't very well stop him, but they both know how JC's been wanting the Nest to play nice with everyone else.

Tell me that I'll figure it out...

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