Nick cracked a smile at the sound of his friend’s greeting, weary and sardonic, and narrowed his eyes at the sun. He’d still not got accustomed to the too-sharp glare of it, like reflection glancing off metal, like emerging from pitch dark into the too-bright sneer of buzzing overhead tubes. Even with the ring that ensured he wouldn’t go up in flames, it felt blistered against exposed skin, not warm and comforting, as it had mere months ago. Instead, it was as if the sun still knew that Nick was its natural enemy and, resenting its impotence, chose to scald him as much as it could in lieu of setting him aflame. A trickle of sweat rolled down his neck. He popped the collar of his jacket against it.
“Oh, absolutely the crackhead neighbors. You know how I love a little local color,” drawled Nick in kind, glancing towards the porches of the still-unconscious neighbors in question with a flashing eye. He almost laughed. He remembered the first time he’d come here and the strange looks he’d gotten, his polished posture, page six mien, and expensive clothes conjuring suspicious glances from everyone he ran into. They knew that the poor little rich boy was on the run, and they knew that he could just as easily run back. What they didn’t know is that he’d rather die. And, then, at length, he had.
Nick’s smile didn’t reach his eyes, but he was shaking it off, trying to resume the casual way he’d used to come and go. Eventually, the looks had glazed over: Nick’s face nearly as common a sight here as Nate’s. Now...now, things were different, but only he and Nate knew it.
“But I admit I’m kind of fond of the whirring space heaters, too. It’s comforting -- even if you’re freezing cold, you don’t have to wonder if they’re trying. You know it just from the sound: the lounder it is, the colder you’re going to be. Still, it beats sleeping under a bridge like a troll,” he added, smirking as if his recent disappearance were something to laugh about.
“Hey, your cooking beats mine any day.” But Nick had always had a taste for undercooked food. Maybe he should have known from start that there was no avoiding his vampiric heritage, whatever the fuck he did. “Remember the time I tried to make pasta?”
Rather than the tasty delight he’d expected, he’d somehow ended up with the noodles’ ends sticking up on end out of the water...and catching fire due to the heat of the stove. It had then fallen to the two boys to try to put out the fire -- without getting boiled, a story in itself. To be fair, they’d just been kids when this had happened and Nick’s cooking (such as it was) had gotten much better since, but a disaster was a disaster and that story was just a little too golden to let go entirely.
“Or are you still trying to forget? Pretty sure my dad still thinks you befriended me just so you could burn his house down. And I gotta say, if so, you play the long game. You kind of deserve to burn it down at this point, even if people way better than me and my family lived there.”
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