[sub][h3][center]Nicholas[/center][/h3][/sub][hr]
Nic had just poured his heart out like it was a glass of rotten milk. In a rather ballsy move, he had explained that he literally couldn’t turn away from her when she was in danger, that it wasn’t even a question. Destroying the ambiguity of his devotion seemed like a great first step in the journey toward their happy ending. Even if he hadn’t made the best first/second impression in the world, at least he hadn’t blown the whole thing by being [I]too[/I] honest. They’d have obstacles for sure. No doubt. But he’d fight a thousand were-crocodile reptile people to the death before giving up. [I]Not that he had anything against Archie.[/I].

He indulged himself for a moment. [I]Elizabeth Adair had a nice ring to it.[/I]

[color=E5D0FF]"Nicholas, give me your number,”[/Color] she told him. [I]Making demands?[/I] That must mean that she had understood implicitly what he was trying to get across. It meant that she was just as intent on crossing paths again. In retrospect, it felt like Nic had disappointed a lot of people--[I]a lot of people[/I]--but there was no way that this maiden would find her way into their fellowship.

And she handed him her phone. Jackpot. It was already on the new contact page so he didn’t quite have the chance to scope out her wallpaper or anything, but it felt good in his hand. She trusted him. “Nicholas”, it said. He took the liberty of adding Adair to the name section, along with filling out his address, resisting the urge to insert hearts between his first and last names, feeling that doing so would probably be ever so slightly too forward. He’d have more opportunities. That was for certain. And if they didn’t come about on their own, he’d just have to make some.

[color=E5D0FF]“Maybe sometime we can all get together and explain what happened at the bonfire. We're gonna have to go soon, but it was nice to run into you."[/color] As she said the words and turned away, he could already feel the opportunities to make an impression disappearing, like ghosts in the snow. No, that analogy was a bit too morose. He corrected himself, he could feel his opportunities slipping away, going to heaven with his angel.

Then fate intervened in the form of a lizard man. The timing felt downright providential, like Archie was an agent of the divine, like he was Nic’s personal spirit guide on his quest to help an angel with a broken wing! 

He charged over to them with the sort of finesse you’d expect from a tyrannosaurus playing double dutch. When he stopped, the way he tripped and wobbled, it wouldn’t have been surprising if he were wearing bean bags on his feet rather than shoes. So this is [I]the real Archie[/I], he thought.

If he had to rank Archie’s various stylings, he’d say Homecoming Hero Archie & Snakeskin Psychopath Archie were both aesthetically superior to Nauseous Normie Archie. That said, his superhuman levels of discomfort went a long way toward making Nic feel marginally normal. Sure, he had antennae but there was a strong possibility that Archie was literally uncomfortable in his own skin.

He had only talked to him for a second at the party but Anderson seemed like a stand up kind of guy. He was at least quicker to respond to whatever-the-fuck was developing in the woods that evening. They went through that, saw a man nearly bleed to death and he looked at Nic with a long, stiff stare. It’s like his eyes were experiencing the sensation of having its tongue frozen to a flagpole.

Nic regarded him with a generic, vending-machine variety smile. Then he heard the [I][B]POP[/B][/I]. What followed vaguely looked like his spine was getting a boner. He watched Archie's innards bobble around within a couple millimeters without moving a muscle. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. His muscles were moving, just not in a way that made sense within the usual range of human anatomy. He thought it looked like his insides were shuffling themselves like a deck of cards. It’s not like he was a surgeon or anything but he was familiar enough with the act of breaking bones and disabling muscle-functionality that he could tell that [I]bodies aren’t supposed to do that [B]to themselves[/B][/I].

[I]“Hey, kiddo,”[/I] Nic heard his dear old dad pipe up, [I]“y’know that thing we do? Where we keep dangerous people from being dangerous to people. This kid’s a prime example of that. It’s not his fault but it’s an inconvenient truth. Archie Anderson should either be kept on sedatives or kept in a cage. You know as well as I do that if you don’t take action people are going to get hurt. And not the kind of people who should get hurt.”[/I]

“I uh,” Archie started, with the cadence of a man holding in the kind of fart that could stop everyone in the room from ever being able to respect him again. "Hi. It's... on the way. Where we're going and-", Archie paused to pinch the bridge of his nose, probably harder than he was pinching his sphincter. "God, sorry. I'm Archie," Anderson said, extending his hand.

“I know,” Nic said, decisively taking Archie’s hand into his own. “Nicholas Adair. We met at the party. Before that thing,” he dribbled his eyebrows, “with the person at the place.”

As Nic loosened his grip on Archie’s hand and attempted to disregard his father’s voice in his head, he saw another girl approach. How could he not. As soon as she looked back at him, her hair flared a fluorescent orange. He really wanted to be flattered but he couldn’t help but wonder if her hair changed color expressively the same way that his antennae might stand up or fold themselves when he was excited or disappointed.

[I]She looks great in orange,[/I] but he couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or if it was another chimpanzee smile, brightly colored the same way that poisonous fish and reptiles are. He took a breath. It didn’t really matter. His heart was spoken for.

The new girl was obviously totally enthralled by him and she tried to play it off, changing the subject, unsuccessfully, to a girl named Keaton. Nic still couldn’t keep them all straight. But after her mouth had settled into a regular pattern of speech, she returned to the subject that was really on her mind. "I - is that like a religious thing?"

Nic wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. So he told a certain portion of the truth, “Nah. It’s a gym thing. I like to do a lot of gymnastic routines. I just got so sick of sitting around my place [s]and hadn’t done my laundry in so long[/s] that I just figured I’d say [I]Y’know, fuck it[/I] and went out for a run, [s]patrolling the ship for hours, using my Orwellian surveillance powers to find Eli so that we can make the most of what remains of our alarmingly short human lives,[/s] no biggie.”

“You look good,” he said, completely devoid of particularly emotional force behind it to attempt to prevent sending the wrong signal. “I was really worried about you. I actually had my first aid kit on me at the time but I got nabbed by security before I could get over to you.”

Nic looked over to Archie, still seeming to grow by the second. He got the creeping feeling that this wasn’t going to end well, but he bit down the part of him that kept reciting his father’s [I]T.H.R.E.A.T.[/I] analysis acronym*. It swarmed in his mind over and over. Anderson’s toughness was pretty close to an all time low, at this very second. He seemed to be in decent health, not particularly out of shape. Though Lizarchie could close distance, he was pretty sure he could take pause his blood flow suddenly enough to prevent a panic. He assumed that regular Archie had no reason to be able to defend himself through regular means. He was a goof, seemingly infinitely more concerned with his social standing than his physical well-being. And they were on a sidewalk in town. Not particularly challenging.

[I]Archie would probably prefer that I help him control himself than enabling him to go on a massacre. After all, friends don’t let friends murder friends. Right?”[/I] he asked himself. It wasn’t a question of ability. Just a matter of ethics. But then Eli piped up.

[color=E5D0FF]"Well, should we go sit? I think we... have a lot to talk about."[/color]

The urgency of his decision engorged itself. But he felt better, comforted by her calm demeanor. [I]Maybe this happened all the time[/I], he thought, ultimately resigning to just play this one by ear.

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