A Smack of Jellyfish

Another day slipped by.

It pretended itself at being unimposing. Quiet. Normal. Perfectly innocent is what I am, it said, not a fault in sight. But Nicole saw the normalcy for what it was; a disguise. A deception. And all throughout the deceiving day, she jumped at every noise daring to be louder than it ought to be, whether it was the Revive's door closing with a snap, someone dropping something in the back, or the steamer feeling particularly… steamy.

She was, after all, still a dead person walking, surrounded by ghosts in more ways than one. Twice she bolted into the bathroom, locked the door, and cried. Lots. Why? Because she'd thought about Thor trying to convince her she'd forgot to feed him, which she honest to god had done, that rascal. And then her mind had gone and dragged Hellen in, reminded her of how she'd shown up at Nicole's doorstep with a smile and Infinity War on Blu-ray. And after that round of awful sobbing, she'd remembered that she hadn't ever found out what had happened after half of the Avenger's universe had been snapped out of existence.

So, no. The day hadn't been as innocent as it liked to make itself look. Which begged the question what it'd have in store for her once her shift was over. Nicole flicked a look up at the antique clock made to look like a vinyl record. Her throat tightened up, squeezed by how few minutes remained until she'd run out of an excuse to linger and sort cups. Even if the Winters didn't mind her sticking around like a leaf blown in from the outside that had got tangled in a corner, she always did have to go back to her not-home flat eventually. There, she'd wait for another unimposing day and for the nightmares that always— always —managed to find her. Stupid, stupid nightmares, all sticky and dark, and eating at her like root rot ate at a plant. Unseen, but ultimately fatal.

She'd been down that road before.

It'd not ended well.

Ding, the entrance bell said, but Nicole was too busy choking down another god awful need to cry to even bother looking. Let Felicia do that one, she thought and made to slip around the corner and stack boxes in the back. Would have, too, if Ghost hadn't got in her way. When he did, the music he'd had playing (something up-beat about someone running magical circles around someone's head) suddenly dimmed a wee bit.

"Pssst," he said, his eye jerking around her shoulder like a sort of nod indicating she ought to look.

Nicole did, and the need to cry was promptly replaced by the need to go up in a cloud of smoke (purple or not, did not matter) and get sucked out a vent somewhere to be scattered to the winds.

There, at five minutes to closing, was John. All in black again, she noticed. No armour, no weapons (that she could see), and his usual mop of attitude rich hair. He had company with him, but unlike him, she was all sturdy leathers, some shiny plates, and a helmet under her arm. Impossibly light— almost white —long hair framed a tan face and a matching impossibly bright smile was solidly fixed on John.

John held the door open as she came through — and then held on to it a little longer still until Darrow finally appeared. His eye gave the Revive a cursory sort of inspection. It lingered briefly on Felicia and one of her Fireteam — and when they came to zip over towards them, he suddenly went up in motes of light and vanished. John threw the empty spot where Darrow had been a brief look. A sort of look that Nicole couldn't reliably read, but might have— maybe, potentially —been a little sour? Dejected? It didn't last for long though, because then his eyes cut over to her, carrying a sort of Oh, hey, didn't expect to see you here kind of look before they refocused on his white-haired company. That companion had a lot to say. A lot a lot, really, to the point where she barely even paused when Felicia took her order.

None of what she was saying made a whole lot of sense to Nicole. Naturally. Nicole was, after all, woefully far behind on making sense of anything, and right now she didn't much have the energy to try and decipher any of it. Maybe she'd ask Ghost later what a Goblin was in that context, figuring it wasn't a critter worth 50XP at the end of an encounter. Ghost, who, bless his colourful shell, didn't push her to go and say hello. He did look between them though, especially when Nicole busied herself by getting back to work, fetching a tray of ice cubes from the freezer and carrying them to a blender. Well, coffee cubes, to be exact. Richly coloured and all that, though not like she was paying much attention. Her hands were on auto-pilot. And her mind sniffed about for additional reasons to feel like a compost heap.

So. John was here. What now? She looked down the coffee cubes, pinched one free, and stuffed it into her mouth. Brrr. Cold. Bitter, too. She made a face.

"Aren't you going to say hi?" Ghost whispered.

Nicole frowned and regretted having blessed him earlier. Of course he'd press her, what'd she expect?

"Maybe later," she said around the melting cube. "He looks busy." And he did. Him and company had sat down at the small corner table way on the left, the one tucked under some hanging ferns. Busy, smiling.

"I don't know," Ghost threw in, his voice dropping to a point where he had to stay glued to her ear so she could hear him. "Look."

Nicole blinked and… well… looked. She'd been looking for a while already, which really now was called staring and that was rude. "What?"

"See how she's leaning forward like that? Elbows apart, big smiles. Very forward smiles and a lot of eyebrow action. Always watch the eyebrows, they tell a lot."

She nodded, the coffee melting in her mouth. Someone else was staring, too, it seemed. Arguably a lot closer than her. "Eyebrows. Got it."

"But all that attention is one-sided. Now, look at him." Ghost rolled to her other ear. Click, whirr, his shell said. "He is sitting up straight. He's facing her, yes, but that one arm folded over the other is just a step from crossing his arms. That attentiveness she thinks she has only goes so far too, enough so he finds his cues. Nod here. Smile there. But when — see, right there — when she doesn't look at him it's like he's suddenly a couple of lightyears away. Then, zap, the moment she looks at him again he's back so he can pass inspection."

At first, Nicole didn't know what to think. Naturally, Ghost took that moment to pick her thoughts from her mind and think for her.

"No, he's not being an arse," he said. "He's polite. I don't think he meant to run into her and I think he looks tired."

She leaned her head to the side a little. Yeah. He did. That whole spacing out Ghost had mentioned? Shame on her for not having recognized it sooner, what with how it was a look she saw in her own mirror every day.

"But rather than blowing her off, he's making an effort," Ghost finished. Right before he added, "So I think you should go and—"

Nicole huffed and cut him off by noisily tipping all the ice cubes she'd been holding in their tray right into the still waiting blender. "I'm not a Hey, how you doing? kind of lass, Ghost." Next, she added almond milk. And syrup. Lots of syrup. Then some more syrup. And when she turned the blender on and it went to shredding the ice like her brain shredded her hopes and dreams, the noise good as made her jump out of her skin.

It got the whole damn shop to look. Felicia. Her fireteam. John (and his lady friend). Everyone had to lift their eyes or eye and landed them all on her.

Someone end me, she thought, her cheeks and neck horribly hot and a stare fixed on the blender doing its noisy thing. When it finally finished, her cheeks were still on fire — and the noise had managed to draw even more attention.

Great.

Ariel stuck her head out from the back. Nicole, embarrassed beyond belief, busied herself by yanking the jug off the blender and blindly started groping for a tall glass. So engrossed in her fumbling she was, she almost missed the look Ariel gave John and his lady friend (the latter who'd gone back to regaling John with whatever it was Guardians regaled other Guardians with) and how Ariel's look then slid right over to her. For such a short woman, Ariel sure was good at making other people feel... well... smaller. The look lingered long enough to make Nicole almost blurt out a distressed What?

But before that had any chance to squeeze its way up her throat, Ariel clapped her hands together. Surprising no one, Nicole jumped again.

"We're closed!" the fierce woman barked, her voice impossibly, uh, imposing. "Can't you Guardians read clocks?" She pointed at the vinyl knock-off clock, its long arm just having jumped over the hour mark.

Nicole watched (in abject terror, for some reason), how John and the lady friend looked up again. John wore an odd look right then, one she couldn't read. Neither was she going to try, because she was too busy stirring the slushie together and adding cream.

Pfffpffffpffff, the cream dispenser went. Scrape-scrape, said a chair. Thump-thump, replied the boots, and then it was all Good seeing you again, from the lady-friend and something-something Nicole couldn't make out. She snuck a peak. Lady-friend was headed for the door. And when John made to stand, Ariel's voice smacked him right back down.

"Not you, young man."

Flabbergasted, Nicole watched as Ariel walked briskly over to the door, flipped the OPEN signed to CLOSED and then marched right into the back again, her fingers snapping twice. Felicia and her fireteam didn't hesitate. They hurried right after, leaving the quiet front of the shop deserted safe for— well—

Nicole cleared her throat, grabbed the slushie with both hands, gathered up all her courage, and turned around to place it on the counter.

One second, he had been sitting there at the table and listening. And listening. And not offering much comment. All he had offered now and then was an unfelt smile and a nod. Somewhere in the back of his head, he almost felt Darrow peering at him and sending him some kind of silent waves of 'what the hell are you even doing?'

He didn't really know what the hell he was doing. Doing what he always did: put up with it. Smile and nod. Try to get along.

Nobody needed a grouchy social recluse for a Young Wolf who was supposed to be some kind of inspiration to the entire City.

Then an… intervention happened. An intervention involving Ariel, a whole lot of noise, and he suddenly found himself directly addressed and sitting completely alone at his table, wanting quite a bit to sink through the floor. He wasn't entirely sure if he wanted it more or less than he had earlier when his company had been present, the person who had wanted to come hit on the famous Young Wolf, get to hang out, ogle him a lot, and then go brag to her friends about it.

John was an optimist, sure, but he was also occasionally realistic. On the inside, anyway. Not so much the outside, because then he'd be branded a pessimist.

Optimism occasionally paid off, though, like deciding to come here – after a whole lot of nudging on Darrow's part.

Except for the way it suddenly turned into some kind of arranged thing and he felt sure Darrow somehow knew how much he wished he could just phase away and leave a flower on the table and a note saying 'we're cool, right?'

Instead, Nicole set something down on the counter. Was that a… coffee slushie?

Trying to play it cool regardless of everything, John's eyebrows scooted on up his face a bit as he gave the glass a look and then back to Nicole. All she did was look at him half a second, then stick a straw in the slushie.

Slowly, John bit his lip and considered his options - which were nonexistent - and then scooted off his seat to stalk over to the counter where the slushie sat in offering.

The smile he put on now was genuine. "For me?" he said coyly.

Nicole just kind of gave him half a look before her eyes flicked somewhere else. And a rather cold leaden weight of guilt about avoiding her settled heavily into his stomach.

A little voice in his head, or maybe it was a gut feeling – or both, reminded him she hadn't adapted lame countermeasures to being socially anxious yet… not like he had. So maybe he should tone it down. The voice in his head that did the reminding sounded a whole lot like Darrow, and that guilt in his stomach was undoubtedly Darrow's fault, too.

So all he did next was lean forward and take a long enough pull of slushie from the straw that he almost gave himself brain freeze.

Finally, Nicole spoke. "So you're not. Uh. Very… I mean, you don't like the attention?"

John paused drinking to lick his lips and process a good way to answer that, his eyes wandering over the table below him as he did.

"I've never been much for attention," he answered at length, mostly in an awkward rasp. He hadn't intended it to be awkward, but it sure as hell came out that way. He finally flicked his eyes over to meet hers again. "Matter of fact, I don't actually consider myself all that great at… actually talking to people." He pulled in a short breath and tried to add lightly, "At all."

Or talking about feelings, he thought. Why did he think that?

He paused. Then he forced a small smile and added in a more familiar casual drawl, "Luckily, I have this coffee now so I don't actually have to talk. So thank you. It's delicious."

And he resumed drinking.

"Oh. Oh okay," she said quietly and began to rub her thumb over a spot on the counter, staring at it as if it was the most interesting thing between here and the edge of Sol. So John ended up staring at it, too, and wondering vaguely why he was.

Ghost shimmied forward, placed himself between her and the mysterious and fascinating spot, and let his top fin fall forward over his eye in a squint.

Nicole frowned at him, before finally looking back to John.

"I'm sorry," she blurted. "For, you know... punching you. And for not being proper grateful after you brought us to the city, because I don't know where I'd be if you hadn't. Still in Scotland, probably."

"Hey," Ghost complained. "I'd have gotten us out—"

"Shush." She huffed. "I'm trying to be grateful here and that's hard, what with how I got the social graces of a jellyfish. A stranded jellyfish."

John managed a sheepish little smile. "Yeah," he rasped, "guess I do too."

She flailed her fingers before her briefly as if in show of being said jellyfish, and John's eyebrows scooted up at the display. It also made something around his heart kind of try to tickle him, which was weird.

Then she abruptly looked sad, her hands dropping onto the counter again. Well, sadder than she usually did, anyway.

And she said, "I really didn't mean to punch you."

He offered a halfhearted shrug. "It's alright," he said, though he avoided her gaze. Not because it wasn't alright, but because he still felt like he was stepping on some kind of boundaries even being here, after the things she'd said.

So he tried to change the subject, meeting her eyes again. "Get any more training done?" he said.

She deflated a bit more, if that was possible. "No," she said almost too quietly. "Nothing practical, anyway. Ikora gave me some meditation exercises and a few books to read about the different… Light… things, but she thinks it's safest for me if we both understand what happened better before I try again."

And there she stopped, with an exceptionally long face, and she looked at Ghost instead. That prompted John to look at Ghost, too.

"From what we gathered," Ghost said, right on cue, "her Arc Light is aimless and, ah, tied to lighter emotion. Like, you know, joy."

Oh.

John ducked his head low and wondered what the hell to say to that. His stomach felt like it shriveled.

With a nod, Nicole added morosely, "The kind of, 'Yay, look at me, I did this amazing space-wizard magic!'" Yeah, she sounded crushed. "And I don't fancy dying again, because even if everyone keeps saying I was only out for a minute, that's not what it's like for me. I feel like I'm trapped in that Nothing for weeks."

John just licked his lips and nodded. And, of course, wondered about whether the giant black green-eyed wolf chased her around through the Nothing and ate her or whatever.

"So," she finished, doing a very poor job of trying to sound casual about it, "no space-wizard magic for me."

That didn't work for him, though. He finished off his slushie so fast he almost got brain freeze and sat up straight again.

"Well," he said, "if you can't have… 'space-wizard magic,' how about…"

He waited until she looked him in the face again. Even after that, he gave a second, just for effect, and smiled.

"Firearms."

She blinked at him as if he had just called those Hive worms cuddly, even though they were strangely cuddly.

"Look, you have to defend yourself somehow, and if no magic, then…" he shrugged, "firearms. C'mon, I'll train you myself. I'd love to."

He almost choked then, before half a second later, he cleared his throat and remembered how to use his voice.

"And sparring," he added quickly. "We can spar, too. Fists and sticks. I love me a good stick-fight. I'll teach you everything I know."

She just blinked at him again and made an odd sound.

Ghost, however, spun in a full circle in place and practically squeaked, "Yes! Yes." His eye turned to Nicole again. "You want to do this. Train with the Young Wolf? Yes."

John had to try not to smile too obviously. Looked like Ghost had abandoned any weird protective squints, at least for now. At least somebody was excited about… well, something.

"Okay," Nicole said meekly after a full two or three seconds.

Then John let himself smile more. "Great. I'll swing by your place… tomorrow morning?"

"We won't be busy," Ghost chimed in before Nicole could, but John gave him a quick smile - and looked at Nicole instead.

She hesitated, but she nodded and replied, "Okay."

Another 'okay.' It worked, at least.

He nodded again and took a few steps back to leave. "And thank you," he added, "for the coffee. Slushie. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bye," she said meekly.

With that, he turned and left. Once he was out of the building, he pulled in a deep breath of the crisp night air - and exhaled it all in a massive sigh.

"Coming on a little strong back there, weren't you, Shephard?" Darrow quipped as he reappeared, seemingly from nowhere.

"Why, you get jealous?" John drawled back instantly, and he resumed walking off into the night. Darrow offered a mechanical scoff and floated along after him.

"You like her, don't you?"

Something in John squirmed, but he brushed it off with a shrug. "Figure that out on your own?"

He fished around in his pockets, but a flash in front of his face foretold the appearance of a tiny lollipop, which he snatched out of the air once it finished materializing. Pulling off the wrapper, he flashed Darrow a quick little smile and stuck it in his mouth.

Talking around the sucker, he said, "I like a lotta people, Darrow."

That didn't work on him at all.

"Oh… oh no," Darrow moaned. "You do like her. Next you'll be telling her things. Everything. Do you even begin to grasp how awkward you are when you actually admit things?"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy," John said, taking his sucker out long enough to briefly raise it in cheers.

"And now you're training her with guns and… what was it you said? Sticks? Why do you so enjoy those sticks? Have you considered how dangerous she'll be with a gun or even with just a stick?"

"Poor Darrow, always so worried about my safety."

"I worry about the condition of your head. Not just how hard she'll be bashing it in, but its contents and how well they function. Or if they function at all. Maybe I should live in your empty skull instead of—"

If he didn't do something, he'd go on forever. John took his little lollipop out again and waved it around as he said, "It's really sweet of you to worry about me so much, but I got this."

"You like her," Darrow said flatly, as a prompt. "You really like her."

Unfortunately for him, it worked. Because John couldn't help but smile. And that sent Darrow right into another rambling spiral, talking a million miles an hour, all the way to the walk back to the little place they called home.

Taffer Notes: I am so invested in those two socially awkward disasters.