Nico slipped to the inside of a right cross and missed a hard incoming hook, running directly into Reina’s fist and swearing loudly in a mix of highbrow Spanish and rural Nova Scotian slurs.
(Once, Gideon had taught him how to say something in Mermish—which was a blend of Danish, Icelandic, and something Nico classified as vaguely Inuit—but had also warned him that, pronounced incorrectly, it would summon a sort of half-ghost, half-siren sea-thing, so it hardly seemed worth it to use. Max was not particularly helpful with profanity, as he was stubbornly prone to overuse of the same one: “balls.”)
“You’re out of sorts,” remarked Reina, wiping sweat from her brow and eyeing Nico as he stumbled back, dazed.
It took a moment, but eventually his eye stopped watering.
“Maybe you’re just getting better,” mumbled Nico half-heartedly.
“I am, but that was your mistake,” Reina observed with her usual regard for his feelings.
“Yes, fine.” Nico slumped down to sit on the lawn, sulking a bit. “I suppose let’s call it, then.”
Reina gave the grass a derogatory look (it may have insulted her; she had mentioned once that certain types of English lawns had a tendency to be excessively entitled) but eventually sat uncomfortably beside him.
“What’s wrong?” asked Reina.
“Nothing,” said Nico.
“Fine,” said Reina.
It was, in nearly every sense, the opposite of the encounter he’d had shortly before this one.
“You’re lurking,” Parisa had called to Nico from inside the painted room, turning a page in her book without looking up. “Stop lurking.”
Nico froze outside the door frame. “I’m not—”
“Telepath,” she reminded him, sounding bored. “You’re not only lurking, you’re pining.”
“I’m not pining.”
(Okay, so maybe it wasn’t totally different from his conversation with Reina.)
“Just come in here and tell me what’s bothering you so we can move this along,” said Parisa, finally glancing up from what Nico was surprised to see was a vintage copy of the X-Men comics.
“What?” she prompted impatiently, following his line of sight to the comic with a look most closely described as exacting. “Professor X is a telepath.”
“Well, I know,” said Nico, fumbling.
“You don’t think he’s based on a medeian?”
“No, I’m just… never mind.” He paused, rifling the hair at the back of his head with a grimace. “I’ll just—you’re busy, I’ll—”
“Sit down,” said Parisa, shoving out the chair across from her with her foot.
“Fine. Yes, alright.” He sat heavily, clumsily.
“You’re fine,” said Parisa. “Stop fretting.”
“I’m not fretting,” Nico said, bristling a bit from the wound to his manhood, and she glanced up.
It was really so desperately unfair she was so pretty, Nico thought.
“I know,” she said. “That’s my origin story, if you’ve been paying attention.”
Immediately, Nico faltered again. “I know,” he said, more to his feet than to anything. Was this what it was like to be Libby? He was almost never so oafish, nor so concerned with his own oafishness. He’d met plenty of pretty girls, and certainly a handful of attractive mean ones. He should have been prepared for this.
“I’m not mean,” Parisa corrected, “I’m brusque. And before you facetiously blame a language barrier,” she added, pausing him once he opened his mouth, “I am also conversationally trilingual, so that’s not an excuse.”