Looking back on it now, he thinks it was the hair. That copper-red hair that would be everywhere at once, standing up with a life of it's own or flattened down in odd places, over the bronze-golden skin. If Teddy Basilnox was an element, he'd be metal. Living metal. And if his hair was copper and his skin was bronze, then his eyes were liquid mercury. Nico remembered how they had first flashed at him, passing in the dining hall, those mercury eyes and the grin that followed. That stupid, mischevious, endearing grin that kick-started the months to follow. Nico remembered all this, and he would forever, for one simple reason. Because for the first time in his life, when he saw that smile directed at him from across the dining hall, Nico Di Angelo smiled back.