Thick smoke trailed from between her lips, lazily tracing a line to the sky. "Nik? You out here?" with a sigh that flushed the rest of the smoke riddled breath from her lungs Nikki replied.
"yeah, I'm out here Jude." Taking another deep drag from her cigarette.
"I thought you might be." The blond leaned forwards to rest his forearms along the metal banister that circled the mall's roof, neither spoke after that. Nikki continued to drag at her crumbling cigarette; her figure slumped against one of the huge vents, devoid of any of her usual spark. Nikki sighed out the last lungful of her precious sin and dropped the smoldering stub to be crushed by her heel. "So brah, you wanna talk?" Nikki gave a sigh, she seemed to be doing that a lot today and pulled another cigarette from her 'emergency pack' and gesturing it towards Jude in question. Jude gave a grateful smile and pulled one from its dwindling number and a multicolored lighter from his pocket, gesturing to her in his turn.
"Such a gentleman," Nikki quipped, leaning over to breath in the fire, lighting up again. Jude laughed as he lit his own cigarette.
"So?" he questioned, taking a drag, "What's on your mind, dudette?"A sidelong glance and a stream of smoke dredged a smile from his friend's strawberry-tainted lips.
"Nothing."
"Ah come on, brah. You can't lie to me." Nikki gave a teasing groan.
"No, but it's never hurt a girl to try." It was Jude's turn to grin.
"Never hurts to try what?" Jude asked lightly, trying and succeeding in drawing out another small smile.
"Anything" Nikki breathed out, a nicotine laced prayer. "Everything"
"Two words; cigarettes, meth" laughter bubbled from Nikki's throat, not the harsh cynical cackle that she normally used, but a bright true laugh; Jude was the only one allowed to hear Nikki laugh.
"You got me." She took another taste of her nicotine filled indulgence, "I just- I don't know." She emptied her lungs and sank until she was a Nikki-puddle propped against the vent. "It's harder. To be around him, ya know? I'm supposed to be the cold-hearted bitch, but I let my guard down for him."
"And he abused the privilege." Jude clipped, moving to sit beside her and lazily throwing an arm around her shoulders
"Yeah." Nikki mumbled softly, leaning into Jude's warmth and taking yet another drag on her cigarette. They were silent for a while, lost in separate trains of thought.
Nikki was the first to stand, dropping and crushing her cigarette in one smooth motion, brushing the debris off the seat of her pants. With a soft smile she reached out hands much softer than the person who owned them, with his signature lazy grin Jude grabbed her wrists and hauled himself up.
"I've got to get back to work. The clones may actually start to wonder where I am." Nikki said, her cool tone off set by her small smile.
"Eh no problem brah, I shouldn't leave Stick It for too much longer anyway."
"NO. We wouldn't want the food to come alive and start a rebellion." She snarked, well he thought it was snark, if it wasn't well, he'd just be careful around the more suspicious looking globs. She gave a low chuckle at his expression.
"I'll see you later Jude"
"Later Dudette" Jude moved too quickly for Nikki to react, she would have never allowed him otherwise, and placed a small kiss onto her magenta lips. She gave him a bright smile and gave an answering kiss to his slightly stubbled cheek.
Jude shook his as she walked away, he wondered why Jonesy would ever give up a girl like her. Maybe he just didn't like the taste of cigarettes and strawberries.
