These Mortals Be

We that are true lovers run into strange capers;

But as all is mortal in nature,

So is all nature in love mortalin folly.

~As You Like It 2.4.53-56

"I was thinking we could do these two passages," Tessa said, holding open her copy of The Tempest and showing him the pages she had dog-eared. "Unless you had any other ideas."

Nico shrugged. School was over and they were working in the library. Or rather, Tessa was working, and he was trying to, but kept getting caught up by how her hair looked in the light that streamed in through the windows. "Your idea sounds good."

Tessa glanced at him. "Were you even paying attention when Mr. W-S assigned the project?" She rolled her eyes at him, but didn't sound mad at all, which was good. "We're supposed to analyze two quotes and write a paper about how they relate to The Tempest as one of Shakespeare's last works."

Nico said something intelligent along the lines of, "Uh, okay."

"And I was thinking that we could use two of Prospero's speeches from the end of the play – the one from the epilogue and this one in act 5 – see, it starts with 'Our revels now are ended' and it's really cool because Shakespeare's being all meta about it and it's almost as if he's Prospero—"

"Whoa, slow down," Nico said. "I'm sorry, but what are you talking about?"

Tessa laughed as if she got this reaction a lot. "Sorry. I was thinking about this last night—"

"You were thinking about Shakespeare in your free time?"

"Hey, I have to do something while Valerie gives the squad a lecture on how to put on eyeshadow."

"You're a cheerleader?" Nico exclaimed. Valerie Earnshaw, he had learned, was the captain of the varsity cheerleading squad (and Chris's girlfriend of the week).

"What," Tessa asked, "Is it really that unbelievable?"

Nico tried to recover some semblance of tact. "It's just… not what I was expecting."
"And what were you expecting?"

He dodged the question. "Cheerleaders actually spend practice talking about make-up? I thought that was just in the movies."

"It's a Valerie thing," Tessa said. "She's insane."

"And you're on her squad because…?"

She sighed. "Because this school has no gymnastics team and cheerleading counts for gym credits."

"You get out of gym for yelling really loud and waving pom-poms?"

"I get out of gym for being tossed in the air by underclassmen that have no idea what they're doing. And putting up with Valerie."

"It's just…" Nico started.

"I' m not a bottle-blonde wearing skimpy clothing and ten pounds of make-up?"

"Well, yeah."

"I wouldn't talk about stereotypes if I were you," Tessa said.

"What do you mean?"

"Let's see… black converse, dark jeans, T-shirt for some death metal band I've never heard of…" she ticked each point off on her fingers, "and you spend your free time studying up on Greco-Roman mythology. Yeah. Total punk-rocker bad-ass right here."

"What?" his voice cracked in the middle of the word, making it sound even more high-pitched than it would have come out anyway. How in Hades did she know—

"That stuff about the Persephone myth you were talking about in class a few days ago," Tessa continued. "You had to have read about it somewhere. Did you read Ovid?"

Oh. That.

"We did a unit on mythology at my old school," Nico said. There, that was believable. "Each of us had to research a different god. I had Hades."

Which should cover up any other mistakes he made.

"Oh," Tessa said. Nico heard a note of disappointment in her voice.

"You thought I was some big anti-stereotype."

"Well, yeah." She shrugged. "Whatever. It was a long-shot anyway. I barely know you."

"So let's change that."

"What?"

"Are you busy this Saturday?" he said it without thinking, kicking himself mentally as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Of course she's busy. She's a freaking cheerleader; she probably has a half-dozen football players lined up to ask her out.

"No," she smiled.

Oh. Well then.

"Can we hang out? I want to show you something."

"Are you asking me out?"

He spun her question around. "Do you want me to be?"

She ducked her head, letting her hair fall down over her face so he couldn't read her expression. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I think I do."

Nico smiled, but then Percy's words from the day before started ratcheting around his mind: if you were to actually have a relationship with this girl, how are you going to keep half your life a secret from her?

A/N: And scene.

Hee. Gotta love the fluff.

Today's quote – Touchstone, the apparently philosophical jester, of As You Like It. (Actually, in most Shakespeare plays, the fool/jester/drunk character is usually the one with the deepest and most important comments of the play [think the drunken porter in "Hamlet", or Feste in "Twelfth Night"]).

Also, we've got another last name – Valerie Earnshaw. And now that you've all seen where some of the other names come from, it shouldn't be hard to figure this one out.

And apologies to any cheerleaders out there: no offense intended; you really aren't bad at all (well, except the few of you who think you live in a movie. But the rest of you are normal, nice, decent human beings).

The passages Tessa is referring to are some of my favorite Shakespeare quotes of all time. But more on that later. If you were wondering, though, they can be found in "The Tempest" in 4.1.165-180 and the epilogue, lines 1-20. I actually wrote an essay on them once upon a time, so I could prattle on endlessly about them, but I won't put you through that :)

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