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There's a particular wet, swampy sludge to the Floridian humidity that sets it apart from the oppressive steel-caged heat of New York or the briney Virginian air, one you never forget. It seeps into your skin, your bones, sucks you in and makes sure you never forget it even ten years later married and on your third kid. It reminds her of when Nico was fourteen and her parents took her to Disney World, because that was a marker of good American™ parenting, without really considering the fact that she was too old to enjoy the Magic and too young to find it anything less than uncool. It was crowded and unbearably hot and each overpriced meal goaded her parents into an increasingly terse argument, but for some reason memories resurface form that day, long since faded into obscurity. Specifically, she thinks of the end of their night, traipsing around EPCOT. It's all hazy now, but after one of those old rides, either the one with the purple dragon or Michael Jackson turning an alien hot through the power of song, they went and ate hot dogs at cheap cafeteria-style benches, in a room with dim lighting and eighties carpeting, watching people pour by through windows like portholes into the real world. Afterwards they drove back to their rented cabin and Nico sat out on their little enclosed porch while her parents watched TV inside, listening to the buzzing of cicadas and the croaking of frogs. If she closes her eyes, she's back there now with a few set changes, the chorus of fauna replaced with the drone of traffic, distant laughter and shrieks in place of her parents stilted tones, the inhale and exhale of the tide instead of the gentle hum of wetlands.
Nico leans back onto her palms and tilts her face skyward, letting the soft rain patter onto her face and down the tank top and shorts she's been forced to strip down to, pulling her hair free from her tiny, sad ponytail in frizzy tendrils. It's peaceful, quiet and melancholy and nice, so of course her godforsaken show has to show up and break it in the form of -
"Shouldn't you be melting by now?" Irritation sparks through her, and suddenly she's aware of the discomfort of her wet clothing, of the sand creeping up her shorts and the headache-inducing swirl of cigarette smoke. Nico refuses to open her eyes, refuses to turn around. If she's a feral cat then Blake's a stray dog, barking and snarling to hide how much she craves attention, and she refuses to reinforce bad habits.
"Are you calling me a witch or a vampire?" She asks idly, well-used to the jokes at this point, ever since she was thirteen and discovered black eyeliner and Pierce the Veil. Maybe if she never looks Blake will dematerialize; more likely she'll teleport like a fucking Weeping Angel and feed off her life force. She hears Blake laugh, scratchy and throaty and mean, several crunches of falling footsteps, and then with a whoosh of air Blake drops herself next to Nico, deliberately close enough to scrap her shoulder on the way down.
"Witch, it's close enough to what you actually are. Not that I'm disparaging bitches or anything." Blake always sounds so damn cheery when she's insulting her - maybe if Nico were more masochistic she'd take it as a compliment. As it is she finally opens her eyes so that she can roll them and promptly gets a face-full of cigarette smoke for her trouble. Her eyes water and sting, and she shoves Blake hard as she coughs. Blake, predictably, cackles and shoves her back, grinning like a madman. The smoke burns in her nostrils and she fucking hates the feeling of that shit, it's why she stuck with edibles over blunts, but maybe it's a metaphor for Blake. Too mainstream for her to avoid, acrid and bitter, fucking pretentious.
Mercifully, the next drag Blake takes she exhales away from Nico - not even her gleeful malice survives in weather like this for long, apparently. In side profile, face bare and hair swept out of her face with roughly twenty bobby pins, Nico realizes something that will haunt her until the end of her days; Blake is cute. Not in the hot kind of way, because she was already begrudgingly aware of that, but adorable, wide blue eyes and an upturned nose and a smattering of freckles over flushed cheeks usually painted over with sultry rockstar sheen. She'd bet anything parents cooed over how much of a little doll she was when she was a kid, and the further mental image her brain happily provides of Blake with pigtails and a pink frilly pinafore will haunt her for the rest of her days, she's sure of it. Nico shudders. As close as they somehow still are, her shoulder brushes Blake's.
"Aw, you cold?" Blake coos, leaning in. In the setting sunlight the flame under her eye almost seems to flicker. "Want my jacket?" All she's got on, of course, is an old grey wifebeater with the neckline stretched to hell and black jean shorts so short they barely reach a quarter down her thighs, which Nico definitely doesn't notice, just like she doesn't notice the twin moles peeking out from shreds of denim. She's pretty sure noticing Gina's sidelong glances would be better than noticing Blake like that; hero-worship, a parasocial crush, the thrill of seducing a superior, that's all understandable, human nature. There's no benefit at all to sparking- something with the human equivalent of iron wool, no good reason for Nico to shrug and tug lightly at the hem of Blake's shirt anyways, feeling ridges worn soft beneath her fingers.
"If you're offering," she returns, jerking Blake's laugh into a soft exhale of surprise when her knuckles press against warm skin just a little too long. The sounds of the beach fade out, and Nico suddenly becomes hyper aware of the way her thin tank top clings to her, how Blake's grows increasingly and dangerously transparent, the sand beneath her bare thighs layering her like a second skin. Somewhere by a field of pale skin, a cigarette is held unsheltered and limp, fizzling out between calloused fingers. She doesn't pull her hand away, and tilts her gaze up through dark lashes. The way Blake looks at her in return, you'd think she was a snake slithering up her side, eyes dark and flinty, mouth a hard line at odds with the surprisingly gentle, if firm hand she wraps around Nico's wrist.
"Medina," it's all but a step above a whisper, really, maybe closer to a rasp. Blake meets her gaze headlong, and for once there's no disdain, no mirth, just a steady, appraising stare, like for once she's seeing Nico as Nico, and not the ghosts that superimpose her in Blake's piercing eyes. "You're in over your head."
"Because I've never been with a girl before?" Nico rolls her eyes. Blake does one fucking Google search and thinks she knows everything there is to know about her. "Just because my most famous ex was a guy doesn't mean they all are, I like everyone."
Blake leans in, her breath acrid and hot, dying sunlight dappling her pale skin in gold and orange hues. Even as the rain dries up, inky tendrils stubbornly trickle down her face, bobby pins marooned sadly halfway down their lengths. Her eyes are half-slitted, and for a interminable, terrifying moment, Nico thinks Blake's going to kiss her.
"I can see that, Nicola, " she murmurs breathily, mouth curving up at the corners. "I guess there's worse ways to benefit from your win."
And just like that, Nico instantly and totally forgets everything she ever found possibly attractive about Blake Winter. The smugness, the arrogance, the delusion, it's all there in her smirk, and the only explanation for why she missed it before is heatstroke. She pulls away, irritably batting away the hand sneaking up the hem of her shorts, and flops onto her side facing away from Blake.
"Wha-" she actually has the nerve to sound offended. "I was fucking joking, Jesus." That's fucking Blake alright, everything's a joke unless it's her own precious ego, so convinced everyone's out to get her, just like someone else Nico used to know. Nico's not half as narcissistic - she knows people do shit for all sorts of reasons, self-interest, genuine emotion, just because they feel like it that day. As far as she can tell Blake does things purely to entertain herself, and Nico's not in the mood to play jester.
"Do you always make a dumb joke when you're going to kiss someone, or are you just too self-conscious to follow anything through?" It's meaner than she meant, and also fucking hypocritical as shit, but too late to take it back now. Nico won't apologize to someone who does nothing but shit on her. There's a long, drawn out silence, punctuated only by Blake's forceful exhale, the sound of her lighter flickering again. She's so uncharacteristically quiet that Nico almost forgets she's there. Her mind drifts back up north, to Orlando and dusty cabins and katydids, to the little dragon pendant her parents caved and bought her and hearing that fucking phone operator over and over on that time travel ride she got stuck on until she could have strangled someone, and realizes the emotion connecting it all with how she felt now was loneliness. Loneliness in a crowd, loneliness with a warm body beside her, loneliness in beautiful weather while the world had fun all around her. Fundamentally, Nico thinks, she's a very lonely person.
A hand shakes her shoulder, forcing her onto her back. Blake peers down at her through her mass of dark hair, irritably shoving a handful behind her ear. She takes one last drag of her now very sad-looking cigarette and stubs it out above Nico's head.
"Just for the record," she begins, biting her lip for the slightest of seconds before self-correcting her show of hesitance and smirking. "Blake Winter always follows through."
And then she leans down and kisses Nico, hot and full and bitter, angling her mouth to swallow her down. Nico bites her by accident in her surprise, but Blake only laughs, and licks further into her mouth. She tastes like smoke and blood and ash - she tastes alive and bright and burning.