Who: Beckett Samuels & Nikki Malloy What: A little Lorien style training. Where: An abandoned warehouse in NYC. When: Friday, April 15, night Warnings: PG-13 level violence, probably some swearing
It'd been kind of weird, for Beck, living somewhere that wasn't a squat. Somewhere with things like electricity, running water, central heating for the cold winter months that he and Nikki didn't have warm enough clothes for. Except they did have warm enough clothes now, thanks to Nikki's brother and his friends. Sure, Adam claimed that the clothes he handed Beck were worn out ones that he was just going to get rid of, anyway, but Beck wasn't dumb. He might have just been an inch taller than Adam, but Adam was a little broader than him. The clothes fit him a little too well to have been bought for Adam. Besides, he'd forgotten to take price tags off of them, before. He was pretty sure that Nikki's new clothes weren't actually hand-me-downs from Adam's 'friend', either. Especially since Adam hadn't ever said which of his friends it was.
Maybe Beck should have refused the charity, but he wasn't dumb enough to turn down warm clothes in the middle of winter, especially when he knew that they'd be running the second that it got too dangerous to stick around X-Factor. It hadn't happened yet, but that didn't mean that it wouldn't, especially since Adam's tries at figuring out what Casing was up to, and how to catch him, hadn't hit anything major, yet. He figured there must have been something that'd come up, anyway, because Adam wasn't exactly as crazy about the hunt as he had been when Beck and Nikki'd first decided to give him a shot at helping them with it. Beck wasn't sure exactly what it was, and he wasn't about to ask. The guy had been a little more cheerful, lately, but he was still kind of scowly and intimidating.
He and Nikki had kind of slipped on the training, a little. Not on purpose, or anything. They'd meant to do it, it was just that it'd been cold, and miserable, and while they'd been used to it before, Beck at least got kind of spoiled with not having to be out in the middle of it pretty quickly. He liked things like real beds with real sheets. He'd never had those before, unless it was when he was crashing with a one night stand. Being able to stay in when it was snowing outside, and having staying in be way better than being out in it, was pretty cool. That meant that when there'd been a choice between staying in and doing whatever they could find to distract them around the X-Factor office and getting out into the cold, Beck had always voted for staying in. Most of the time, he'd claim it was because BK didn't want to go. BK was always pretty good about putting on the sad puppy face and rolling around on the floor. He was a good dog. He had Beck's back.
It was getting warmer, though, and there wasn't any reason to put it off anymore. Especially after Connor had snuck up on Nikki and scared her. There wasn't going to be any more putting training off, after that, at least after they'd managed to track down the duplicate Connor for the regular Connor to reabsorb (and that would never stop being creepy) and they were safe from the possibility of running into him on the streets. They'd already picked out some places to train in private in the city. It'd been one of the first things that they'd done, when they decided to settle there for a while, and they'd just had to check back to make sure that the places that had been decent for it at first were still decent now that they'd been living in luxury (for them) for so long. Beck had left BK back at X-Factor, dozing under Adam's desk since he'd figured out that Nikki's brother was a huge sucker. Beck figured it was probably okay. After all, he'd managed to survive on the streets with them for a long time. He was probably too tough for any of the food that he begged from Adam to actually do anything to him.
That meant that there at least wouldn't be any audience when Nikki kicked Beck's ass.
Beck wasn't sure if being dressed better made him and Nikki more or less conspicuous than they had been when they'd been living on the street. Now, he guessed that they mostly looked like they were out for a date in a bad part of town. Before, everyone had known what they were, even if they didn't know what they were doing. More likely that someone would try to mug them, he guessed, now that they looked like they might actually have something worth taking. Man, they'd regret it if they did, though. He glanced over at Nikki as they approached the building they were headed for, trying to gauge exactly how seriously she was going to take training that night. It was a pretty good way to determine how much he was going to regret stalling on it, in the morning.