The Elysium event was, on the one hand, min-numbing. On the other hand, Nick was treating it like any other mission he’d ever been assigned. That is to say, he was taking his job seriously. Theoretically, all he technically had to do was serve the vampires in the establishment and not fuck up. A little more realistically, he had to listen for information that was needed for Brandon. He was able to complete both successfully, despite his lack of an effective knee brace for the evening. He’d gone without, thinking the proper one would stand out too much and look poorly on them. Fortunately, Endrik had given him some blood afterward, which helped immensely.
Sleep had helped too, and he felt accomplished this morning, having written down what he could remember and getting a walkthrough on a place for Endrik. The problems didn’t start until he’d contacted his sister, which snowballed into he, Alyssa, and Ryan all meeting up over at his parents’ place to get his dog back. He should have known that it wouldn’t have ended there, either. To his surprise, Ryan and Alyssa got along great. It was a little creepy. To complicate his life further, he wound up playing chauffeur for everyone to go help Alyssa find an apartment she liked – he just…wasn’t given a lot of say about who was going and who wasn’t, so he just begrudgingly accepted.
Admittedly, his mind wasn’t completely focused on the situations at hand, unless he had to pay attention to the road (though he was fairly certain Liv tried to interject as subtly as was Liv style about being a good rommate). It was still surprised at just how well the loves of his life were getting along, while trying to ignore what-ifs in the back. One time when he did snap to attention? The line, “Who said Nick would be the one staying the night?”. It was a joke, he knew. A coy quip thrown by Alyssa, but he found that he didn’t like it very much. Now, it didn’t surprise him so much that he didn’t like it – after all, he still had a lot of feelings for her. The sudden intensity of that dislike before laughter drowned it out? That surprised him.
Afterward, Alyssa took them to dinner, to thank them for helping her out. Nick had a hard time driving there and back, so far as conversational focus went. His mind was deciding to taunt him with an image of Alyssa with someone else, or even of Ryan and Alyssa together as he was left in the dust. What if they make you choose between them?his mind posed at one point, while a tiny, hopeful voice whispered, What if they want a poly relationship?. He liked that voice. He took a deep breath when they parked at the restaurant finally, planning to pass it off as a wince of pain if anyone asked, working on shoving all that doubt and anxiety away in order to try and enjoy the dinner before doing business later.