[sub][h3][center]Nicholas[/center][/h3][/sub][hr]

"Wow, you look great tonight."

"Oh, you're too much. Besides, you don't look so bad yourself."

"Man, it's so nice that these last few years have been building up to the satisfying emotional climax that tonight presents."

"I know. There's nothing worse in this world than being alone," Nic said to himself in the mirror. With his black sport coat on over his red t-shirt, it occurred to him that he looked like he'd stepped out of a nineties rom-com. He wished he had. "It's high time for my meet-cute. I wonder what everybody's up to."

It had been an unusually lonely couple weeks. Not anyone else's fault. His solitude was basically entirely self imposed. It's just hard to imagine that he's out here with all these parahumans. His dad would have had a heyday. Out of habit, his first inclination was to study everybody but, although it felt right, it felt very wrong. So he mostly walked around, smiling almost ditsily, avoiding eye contact. Even the act of getting to know people, the act of making friends, out of earnest curiosity, felt like a personal betrayal.

He'd literally spent the last forty-five minutes looking at himself in the mirror, thinking. Thinking far too clearly for his own liking. His muscles were wound far too tight. His mind even tighter. Everything felt so crisp. So dry. He felt kinda thirsty. Nope. That's not happening. Not dumping the last 593 days of progress down the drain or, perhaps more accurately, down his throat.

"Y'know what? Fuck it. Tonight I'm gonna dance with somebody and we're gonna fall in love. And they're gonna know all about me implicitly, inferring things. Making unreasonable jumps in logic. And understand and respect me for who I am... Like that means anything. The fuck do I expect? No!" His fists clap down against his bathroom sink. "I just gotta get out of this bedroom before I go stir crazy."

And so, after standing in front of a mirror for almost an hour, he still hadn't done his hair. But he took a few brave steps out into the common area, seeing almost no one dancing, unless their eyes darting back and forth with obvious intent counts as a dance.

And so he did a dance of his own. He did the wallflower, walking in a tight little circle every time the song changed. He saw a girl he wanted to talk to. She looked at him. He thought she wanted to talk. He smiled at her. She smiled at him. Reasoning it would be better not to talk without any idea of what to talk about, he stepped out of the room for a moment. But then he kept going, thinking he'd probably have a better idea by the time he came back if he walked further away.

Soon enough, he found himself stumbling out into the nearby woods. It was dark. Too dark to see. And that was just how he liked it. He couldn't see anything. Not with his eyes nor anyone else's.

But he could hear a helluva lotta noise nearby. So he mosied on over, making his way into a forest party. So he put on a smile and prepared for [s]combat[/s] conversation.