Unseasonably Joyous [Open, Mostly to Agents]

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

"Infant holy, infant lowly/For his bed a cattle stall..."

Feliks had always had a thing for Christmas carols, especially the ones he had heard growing up, and in his opinion the Christmas season was much too short for all the caroling he wanted to do. It was a precious thing to him; when he sang his favorite carols he could almost hear his parents' voices accompanying his own light tenor.

"Cattle lowing, little knowing/Christ the babe is Lord of all!"

He was attracting more than a few strange looks, skipping down the street towards his home a few turns away and singing a Christmas carol in January, but he didn't actually care. He was just in a very good mood today.

"Swift are winging angels singing/Noëls ringing, tidings bringing/Christ the babe is Lord of all!"

Maybe this wasn't the brightest idea, really, given that the respectable businessmen of the city were all emerging from their offices having ended their workday and staring at him as if he had gone mad. In fairness, they probably thought he had. It was a distinctive song he was singing, not generally the sort of music that one normally expected to hear in public—and especially not in January. Starting to feel slightly uncomfortable, though not nearly enough to stop singing, Feliks switched languages.

"W żłobie leży! Któż pobieży/Kolędować małemu"

That garnered a different type of odd looks, but it felt good to be singing in Polish, the language Feliks' parents had always preferred to speak at home. Sure, maybe they wouldn't have approved of him skipping down the street in a women's-style coat, singing loudly, with his hair flying in the wind like this, but he was always absolutely certain that they loved him no matter how out of the ordinary he was.

"Jezusowi Chrystusowi/Dziś nam narodzonemu?"

Nobody was approaching him, for some reason. That was interesting; sometimes people reacted to his singing by asking him to quiet down, but this time nobody seemed to dare. Was this song more intimidating than usual? He found the idea unlikely, given that it was about a baby and that was generally not an intimidating subject at all. But he often found that people reacted in unusual ways to other languages--sometimes with offense that someone would dare say or sing things they didn't understand, but sometimes with fear or awkwardness. The part of him that wanted to learn was intrigued by this phenomenon, since he himself found both reactions utterly baffling.

"Pastuszkowie przybywajcie/Jemu wdzięcznie przygrywajcie/Jako Panu naszemu."

As he finally reached the doorstep of his apartment building, Feliks decided that the first verse in each language was enough singing for the moment, though he was probably going to start up again shortly. He was on the point of letting himself in when he thought he felt eyes on him. With an air of curiosity about him, he looked either way down the street to see who else was about. Seeing nobody who raised his suspicions, he unlocked the door and entered the building, absentmindedly picking up in his carol where he had left off.

"My zaś sami z piosneczkami..."

((OOC Note: Koko had waaaaaay too much fun writing this. And especially too much fun looking up two languages' worth of lyrics to a certain Christmas carol. Research addiction incoming!))

[Aoife O'Neill]

It was good to be home. Whilst there had been many things she had enjoyed about her year living in Paris - the culture, the sights, the food, even the men - as the twelve months had gone by, Aoife O'Neill had surprisingly found herself missing London. There was something about the lack of rain which had made her oddly homesick, and she certainly did miss being surrounded by her native tongue when she had been away. (Then again, at least she had been able to improve her French! That was something she could show off to Francis and Vash at a later date.)

The Irishwoman had taken herself off on an early evening stroll that day, after the usual series of meetings with M and the CI organisation of the government. Aoife had been back in the UK for almost two weeks now, yet she had hardly returned to MI6 after the huge blow-out concerning her most recent mission. She had felt a little guilty about that; there were still many of her colleagues she had yet to see and give belated Christmas gifts to. Already it was the start of January, yet her recent submersion in offices politics had prevented her from spending Christmas with her friends and... dare she say it... pseudo-family that was MI6.

Really, Aoife wanted to fix that soon. Already M had mentioned that she would be sending Agent O'Neill out on another mission to infiltrate the Russian Bratva soon, yet Aoife still hadn't properly settled back into London after so long in France. January was going to be a busy month at this rate, that was for sure. It was a shame - no sooner had she gotten a moments reprieve, she was thrown straight into the deep end again. The British Secret Service really did over-work their employees. If agents were not killed out in the field, they would probably end up drowning in paper work or just toppling over from exhaustion.

Aoife was currently making her way back to her apartment block through the busy crowds which were flooding the streets of London at the end of the work day. Her thoughts had been mulling over everything which had happened recently: the CI meetings, certain things M had been saying to Aoife recently, and Michael Collins. There was something about that man... she just couldn't put her finger on what it was.

She was pulled out of her musings as she approached her intended destination by the sound of singing (what sounded like a Christmas carol, of all things) in a language she could just about understand. Polish. The redhead found herself breaking out into a huge grin as she ran forward to catch the door before it slammed shut in her face, just in time to catch the tail end of a familiar head of long blonde hair.

"Oi, Feliks!" Aoife called out to the man, her soft accent warm and cheerful on that cold January evening as she jogged up behind him. "Long time no see. You seem to be in a good mood."

SPOILER: Click to show

Feliks Łukasiewicz: Koko! I replied as promised! ;w; Let the awesome bffs/character foiling begin~ Fsst I'm sorry if my reply was crappy.

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

Feliks heard his name being called, and to his delight he thought he recognized the voice doing the calling. The young man turned around, breaking off where he was in his carol, and saw that it was, in fact, his Irish friend. “Aoife! It's been a while!” he greeted her enthusiastically.

It had been months, perhaps even as long as a year, since Feliks had seen Aoife. He didn't know where she had been, and although he was curious he wasn't going to ask. That just wasn't done, not in their line of work. She looked well, though, especially with that great big grin on her face.

“You seem to be in a good mood,” she commented, and he grinned broadly in response.

“Ever had one of those days when you just feel like singing?” he inquired playfully. “The caroling season is way too short, you know. So I thought I'd stretch it out a little longer... for a couple more months. Why not?”

Humming quietly under his breath (while the lyrics echoed distantly in his head, “Jak ubogo narodzony/Płacze w stajni położony...”), he gave Aoife a more thorough looking-over. He did see some signs of stress and tiredness, which he hadn't even noticed on first glance because they were so ubiquitous among people who lived in the agents' housing. It was a stressful life, being a secret agent, no matter what part of it they were working. But his friend's hair was as bright as ever, and her smile was clearly sincere. It was nice to see Aoife again, for certain.

He wouldn't dream of asking what she had been doing, but more general polite questions weren't verboten. “How's life been treating you lately?” he asked casually. “Not too rough, I hope?”

Somewhere behind him, a door slammed.