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

"No 'hi, how are you' first?" Eames tuts like he's actually disappointed by this. Truthfully he'd vastly prefer to get straight to it too, but that doesn't stop him uttering a disappointed "the youth of today..." under his breath as Cooper takes his seat.

Once he's sat and drinking, Eames decides he'd beat cut to the chase.

"You voted in favour of Daybreak's petition."

He says it flatly, no anger or upset. Just stating a fact.

"Social niceties are for people who actually give a shit." He's already managed to piss off half the vampires in his own Nest at one point or another, so what's a fae lord on top of everything else?

He doesn't bother to deny it. There's no point. Eames already knows exactly what has happened or he wouldn't have bothered summoning the vampire Marquess to this meeting. "I did. Funny how one little vote can make all the difference." That was right, Cooper had been the deciding vote on the matter.

This smug little shit.

He's angry, of course he is, but mostly he just feels more of that bone-deep exhaustion. He honestly doesn't even have the energy to be angry at Cooper for more than a moment, settling on that easy disdain he feels for most vampires.

"Why?" It's a simple question, one he asks with genuine interest in the answer. Because for all his bluster about wanting inclusivity it sure seems like he doesn't actually give a fuck.

"Why?" Cooper leans forward, elbows on the table, drink forgotten for a moment.

"Because it seems t'me while every other group of the supernatural persuasion has rules as to how to act, fae have got none. This seemed like a good way to get everyone in line." There was also the fact that Cooper just didn't like fae personally. He'd been on the receiving end of one too many fae-induced curses and spells.

"Bullshit," Eames hisses, turning a little to face Cooper squarely, and leaning forward in response. Maybe it's what he really thinks, maybe it isn't. It's bullshit either way.

"I have gone above and fucking beyond to keep my people in line with laws we never agreed to, even the ones concerning where we're allowed to go and how." His voice and expression are cold, dispassionate. A sharp edge that hints and just how fucking insenced he is that Cooper would try and justify himself this way. He'd much rather just be told it's because he hates the fae.

"Even when your lot were murdering up and down the city, skinning wolves and putting fae in irons, I waited until the Council disavowed you before lifting a single damn finger," Eames leans back in his chair, gestures broadly around them with a shrug and a quirk of his eyebrow. "But fuck us, right? The vampires get their seat back like nothing happened and slavery is legal now."

Oh, he's riled up Cooper's temper good and plenty. His eyes go hard and flinty, not a trace of light in them. He grips his glass hard enough to make the glass threaten to crack beneath his grasp. "You want t'know the real reason, Eames? I've never much cared for fae. Hell, I downright hate the lot of you. But don't pretend to be so lofty and above it all with that shiny halo of yours. You'd fuck the lot of us right over if the positions had been reversed and don't deny it. I may be a selfish monster, but at least I don't hide it behind a polished veneer like you lot do."

He goes on. "Maybe if you'd ever bothered to look at me like I was something other than something that got scraped off the bottom of your shoe, it might have swayed my mind that there was someone decent amid the whole lot of you. But it doesn't matter." He leans back. "What's done is done."

Wow.

Eames actually laughs at that. Sharp and sudden, switching gears from outraged to amused in an instant. It's not as if he's wrong, Eames would certainly fuck over near enough everyone if it suited his interests, but to do it out of this level of self-pitying bitterness? It's so beyond him it's actually hilarious.

"So... I hurt your feelings, is that it?" Eames shakes his head, apparently intent on playing with fire today. "Christ, I know you look like a teenager, but I'd have hoped someone in your position wouldn't act like one too."

And there goes the glass, shattered in Cooper's grasp. He wonders how many teeth he could knock out of Eames' pretty face before he got cursed into next week. Three, he's thinking. Maybe four.

He's just getting more and more riled up. Cooper's temper has gotten him in trouble before, but he's just charging ahead, damn the consequences. "Why'd you really ask me here, Eames? Was it for the good of the fae? Because all I'm seeing right now is a petty, self-centered little man who's upset things aren't going his way for the first time in a long while."

"I asked you here because I wanted to understand what it is that makes a man who claimed to want to change things for the better support a woman who sends her people out there with cages."

The anger is back, remembering Samantha coming into his territory to capture his people, but it's not in his manner. Gestures and voice perfectly conversational, even as he considers how many hardwood bullets it'd take to put this little man down.

He could argue with Cooper, but frankly he doesn't actually care about this poor attempt at insulting him. Eames just sighs, bored, and takes a sip of his drink. A million things flit through his head that he could say to needle him — from jabs about his capability to the incredibly trite pointing out that Nancy is so impossibly wrong about what a good person she thinks Cooper is — but he decides against it. Just waits to see if he's going to lash out again.

In some ways, he thinks the lack of engagement might get to Cooper more.

"You could have guessed my motivations from the start. Seems like you brought me all the way out here just because you wanted to sit there all smug-like while I lost my temper." He sweeps the shattered glass onto the floor and goes to the bar to get a new one, giving him mind time to cool down.

He's fizzled back down to a temperature that won't fry an egg on his head by the time he returns. He trying to figure Eames out. He just sits there, lofty and aloof like he's above it all. "So what do you want t'be done? You won't convince the Night Council to change their position on your own. Half of 'em were for it to begin with."

He could've guessed, but that's not the same as knowing, and he's never seen any indication that Cooper had a hate for them that ran so deep.

It's funny though, Cooper's opinion of him seems to be so different to how Eames sees himself that it might as well be a totally different person. He'd probably laugh if he'd said it out loud.

By the time Cooper returns, Eames is helping himself to a second glass of scotch and he frowns a little at the question. "Like I said, I wanted to understand your position," he answers simply. Cooper's a new face on the Council, a relative unknown quality. Eames had foolishly thought the man was smarter than this; he won't make that mistake again.

Cooper doesn't bother to sit back down. They're pretty much done here. They've got the measure of each other. He doesn't bother with any parting jabs. Eames would just turn them against him anyway. "Well, now you do." Cooper snatches up the bottle of scotch to take home. Nope, Eames does not get to keep it.

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

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