Hey spider woman!

Who: Nate and Nic
Where: NMHS, parking lot
When: Lunch

Nic hated seeing the snow, even in the small amounts that were coming down. Unless they caught an unusual break in the weather? She could probably just put her skateboard away for the year. That was a shame, she'd hoped for one more chance to really kick her own ass before the season ended, but she couldn't fight the weather. And skating in snow and ice (when it came) was just asking for trouble. At least she didn't need to change her wardrobe, only really needing to add another shirt under the sweatshirts she usually wore. She'd started that morning, tugging on a thermal before donning her customary black as she got ready for school.

And that little clothing change was a marker, but the more important one was that today? Nic had actually spent some time on her makeup. In a sense. The scabs on her cheek were fading and healing, and she wanted a chance to flaunt them before they were gone completely. So she'd spent a little time with some eyeliner, applying the hidden talent for art that usually ended up as graffiti and surrounding the scabs with a nice black heart outline. And of course, people had stared here and there, which was making her laugh her ass off internally.

But she couldn't laugh with her mouth full, which was what Nic was dealing with as she cut across the parking lot back towards the school, a pizza roll in each hand with one of them busily being devoured.

Nate was lounging in his car with his lunch - enjoying a cigarette before actually eating since he'd been having mild withdrawals in the last class, pining for a little nicotine and downtime. He wasn't really expecting anyone out there but when he spotted Nic he instantly honked the horn and rolled down his window. "Hey spider woman!" He yelled out, waving at her with a grin. "Got time for the resident pot head?" He just hoped he'd gotten her tag right, going back out there to hunt down tags wasn't on his list of things to do, his leg still felt sore from where he'd slipped and hit the ground not too gracefully and a repeat performance was nothing he cared to do.

The horn was startling, to say the least. Nic jumped in surprise at the short blaring sound, looking towards Nate's car with a glare that could melt steel. The glare faded into confusion when he called her 'spider woman' for an instant, before she laughed in understanding. So he'd figured it out? Not bad. "One sec," Nic called back his way, abruptly whipping around towards an onlooker with her half-eaten food raised like she was going to pitch it at them. Nic laughed again when they flinched, turning back to Nate's car and heading over. "There, all set," she told him as she came to the window, leaning a hand on the roof of the car. "And dude? When it's me telling you to be subtle, you need to listen. I'm subtle like a tank, but yelling about being a pot head? Yeah, that'll get your locker searched," she advised with a teasing smirk aimed at Nate.

"Just quoting on the rumors," Nate chuckled with an innocent shrug. "Besides, not dumb enough to bring my stuff to school," he added a little more discreetly, gesturing at the seat next to him. "Want to get in? You're letting the cold into my car right now and I'm not a fan. Your company however brings out the fanboy in me so if you're not busy?" He grinned at her and tapped the ashes off his cigarette into the tray in front of him.

"The fanboy?" Nic echoed, standing up and nodding at his offer, "More like the brain tumor, weird-ass." What the hell was that? How did she suddenly seem to have TWO guys who wanted to hang out with her? "Must be a sign of the apocalypse," Nic muttered to herself, rounding the front of Nate's car and climbing in as she wolfed down the rest of her pizza roll, pocketing the other for later. "So you cracked the case, hey Poirot? How long did it take?"

Nate had moved his backpack to the backseat to make room for her and stubbed out his cigarette when she got in before quickly closing the window. "Ask not how long, I didn't time it," he chuckled. "I did however brave snow in the dusk and fell on my ass a bit so I think I've definitely earned at least a bite of one of those rolls." He pouted as the remaining disappeared and gave her a puppydog look before laughing. "The tag was kickass by the way, glad that one was yours and I didn't get it wrong."

She laughed around a mouthful, wadding up the empty foil and lightly tossing it at Nate, then dropping the other roll in his lap. "A winner is you," Nic teased, rolling her window down a touch as she fished out her own cigarettes. "Help yourself, I normally eat the second one while I'm walking home." She lit up with a skeptical look aimed at him as Nate tried to praise her grafitti. "I dunno about 'kickass', but I'm definitely better than the retards who were doing it before I got to town. All 'so and so's a homo', what the hell's that? A waste of paint, that's what that is. My bullshit aside, what's up with you?"

"Waste of paint and space," Nate agreed. And oxygen. "Other than being sore and scratched from my grand Indiana Jones'esque adventure for you? Not much. You were greatly missed at the bonfire but I spent most of the night pretty out of it so I wasn't much of a company I think. Did you do anything fun?" He grabbed a bite of the pizzaroll but then handed it back, not wanting to deprive her of her walk-home-munchies. He had a sandwich after all,

"Greatly missed, yeah right," Nic contested, smirking as she rewrapped her food and tapped ash out the window, "Just by you, I'm betting. And if you mean 'fun' like I kicked my own ass? Then yeah, I had some fun." She turned to show Nate her cheek, twisting a palm up to display the scratches there as well as the nail she'd torn off, then looked back and winked. "The pavement and my skateboard conspired to try and kill me, but I escaped," Nic told him with a rough chuckle.

"Injuries all around," Nate laughed, leaning in to peer at the scab on her cheek. "Was wondering what the war-paint was about. A heart didn't really seem like your style. Unless there was a wound inside it... Which saying it outloud makes it sound really emo. There something you want to tell me?" He laughed quietly and reached back for his bag, digging around for his lunch. "Gotta wounded heart, just not on your sleeve or whatever. On your cheek - not sure what that would mean."

Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the realization, and Nic was quick to lean across her seat and nearly into Nate's lap as she studied her cheek in his rearview mirror. "Oh god you're right," she gasped, "It sounds really fucking emo." So much for that. Licking one of her fingers, Nic reached up to smear at a line and hesitated. "It's more like I love hurting myself doing stupid shit?" she told him, regarding herself critically, "But I also figured people might ask what happened, think I'm dating an abuser or something. So calling more attention to it would just fuck with their heads even more." She withdrew her hand, twisting away from the mirror to wink at Nate before leaning back into her own seat. "After all, head-fucking is what gets me through everything after lunch."

Nate just laughed, leaning back in his seat while she glared at her reflection. "You might be overthinking it, let's just call it warpaint. At least it's original?" He chowed down on his sandwich, watching her with an amused twinkle in his eye. "So what will the word be? Masochistic emo skateboard warrior spider woman? And speaking of, that tag... That a sort of signature thing? The winged creature?"

"I like calling it warpaint. The more reason people have to step light around me, the better," she told him, thinking over his other questions and glancing at the schoolyard, as well as the faint trickle of people moving off towards the flagpole. "Hopefully the word'll be... 'Nic is off her meds. Run'. Something like that?" Nic suggested, crushing her cigarette in the ashtray and stretching out to longue in the passenger's seat. "But no, that thing was just... spur of the moment. I ran into someone while I was out, so I was painting and talking, and it sorta came out all on its' own."

"Nic the warrior princess?" Nate replied with a smirk. "I should be terrified of you, huh?" Not that he got easily scared of people in the first place, there were so many worse things out there that people had somewhat faded into a completely non-scary category no matter how bad they were. And for all her tough talk, she didn't go anywhere near being bad. "But that's cool, about the tag. Kinda like ghost writing or channeling. Inspiration is a pretty neat thing, wish I had any talent for drawing like that."

She scoffed at that, shaking her head in denial and working a braid free from behind her ear. "Talent? Seriously Nate, it's not tough. if I can do it, you can do it just as well."Nic reached up to toy with her braid absently, smirking at Nate knowingly, like she thought he was conning her into saying what she was about to. "Hell, if you don't mind running from the cops if they find us, I'll take you out some night to practice. I'll even provide the paint."

"I'll make wicked stickmen," Nate laughed and then had the craziest idea yet. "Man, it'd be so cool if you'd tag the walls at home," he said, more thinking out loud than actually suggesting it. "They need to be painted anyway and fucking hell we need something on them. I don't know, tagging inside just seems like... more appealing for the thin blooded guy." He grinned and shrugged, knowing it was probably a bad idea - especially with how he wasn't all that thrilled about people coming to the house. "If I'm still here next summer though, I might take you up on that."

"I'd tag your house!" Nic agreed quickly, laughing with a shine in her eyes. "There was this condemned house back home? A bunch of dudes were squatting there, you should've seen the walls. It was like Diego Rivera lived there, but Rivera if he only listened to Anthrax all day. It was awesome." Her smile faded a touch at the 'next summer' part, and Nic shook her head at Nate. "You'd better be here next summer," she insisted, "You already factored into blowing my world, after all. Every person in this town who doesn't suck metric tons of ass has to stay, or I'll go on a killing spree."

"Wouldn't want to be responsible for that," Nate exclaimed with a growing smile. That was definitely a compliment, an odd one perhaps but definitely a compliment. "You should take pictures of your tags and houses like that by the way, you can be the Banksy of North Michigan. Put up a site and shit. Just seems like a shame to always have your stuff painted over." He could never do that job, paint over people's art. It was one thing to paint over stupid scribbles but art? Depressing.

If he'd said it was art? Nic would've laughed in his face. As it was, she just shrugged, watching a few more people head over towards the flagpole. "I don't mind when it gets painted over," she told Nate with a smirk. "If I saw it again? I'd criticize it like crazy. And this way I always get to start fresh. But I wouldn't want to do a website or anything. I think you're one of two people who likes my shit, and I'm not the other one," she joked, nudging him with an elbow and lighting up another smoke.

"People rarely like their own shit," Nate muttered and since they were both done eating and she was already smoking he lit up another cigarette as well. "I get the wanting to start fresh though, I just do it way too often so I'm starting to feel this need to cling to stuff? I don't know if that makes sense. But that's the beauty of digital, it doesn't take up any real life space so you don't have to carry it around with you."

"Well, first I'd need a cell phone, then I'd need to know how to make a website," Nic argued with a grin, determined to downplay his suggestions that it was worth sharing. "You move around a lot?" she asked, guessing as much from his comment about starting fresh. Maybe he was an army brat. "I could get clinging to things, I'm pretty possessive about my own stuff." And friends, few though they were.

"Dude, blogs and free file hosting," Nate told her with an amused grin. "No skills required to be online. You could always sweet talk someone else into taking the pictures, since you're so good at sweet talking in the first place." He laughed at that and shrugged, having put off answering her question while going off on a tangent visualizing her internet fame. "Yeah we move around way too much, though Frank's sort of promised we'll stay here for a while. Don't know what that means in Frank-terms though."

Frank? That made Nic chuckle in amusement; her mom was just 'mom' to her, regardless of her real name. Obviously Nate and his dad had a more relaxed relationship. "Well, if it's long enough for you to hit eighteen, you should stick around anyway. Hell, I'll let you run my website if you ask nice enough. Or hook a girl up with some cheap grass." She winked his way, reaching out to slug Nate in the arm. "And knock off that sweet-talking shit. I could spit sugar and it'd come out foul," Nic insisted, puffing up with a little bit of pride.

"Well, already hit eighteen," Nate replied with a shrug. "So I might just do that, you never know." Eighteen and a year better but he suddenly felt self conscious about that fact, loser still in junior year and all that jazz so he didn't say as much, just laughed at her sugary foulness. "You're a regular fire-breathing dragon, yeah. Fire and brimstone and sulfur, that's you, Nic. Poisonous spider and all that. Happy now? I'm trying to tell you in your terms that you're pretty cool, don't know how well that's working though."

"You're doing better," she confirmed, fist back to slug him again. It was a reflex that perked up any time Nic felt a blush start in her cheeks, which was usually just when guys complimented her. "And thanks, you're alright too. Even if you're more of a spider's-prey sort. You can call, y'know, if you feel like watching a movie or getting drunk and disorderly. Second one's more likely with me," she warned him, smirking widely and forcing an exhale of smoke down her nostrils.

"Okay, you just told me I'm more the prey sort and then you invite me over to watch movies?" Nate laughed, flicking ash off his cigarette. "Why do I get the feeling that would involve watching the movie while paralyzed and dying?" And would there at least be sex first he thought but that was a joke that was probably wildly inappropriate and he really didn't want to alienate her or make her uncomfortable. Even if the whole getting eaten by a spider thing invited the words.

"Well, at least it'd be a good movie," she promised with a wink, shrugging. "And you're the one who calls me spider woman. Hell, most spiders can't even puncture skin, so you're safe in any case." Yeah, he was cute in a goofy way. Nic could see the two of them hanging out, so long as he liked a bloody movie or two. "And does this mean I shouldn't try to hang out with you? Are you scared?"

"Shaking in my boots," he drawled lazily around his cigarette. "Fortunately I have courage to deal with my intense terror so we can hang out. Plus I like spiders so you're in luck." He grinned at her again and wondered why their lunch break was so damn short. Just when the car had gotten properly warm it seemed to be almost time to kill the engine and leave again. So not fair. "What the hell is going on over there anyway?" He asked then, nodding in the direction of the flagpole where a good group of people was already gathered.

Nic glanced over again, scowling and shrugging. "No clue. Probably a prayer circle or something gay. Who knows? People just herd up like that for no reason." Though even knowing that it was going on made Nic want to take a peek. "Hell, maybe it's a fight. Probably not, though. I mean, I'm all the way over here," she said with a grin, sighing at the idea of returning to classes.

"Then it's definitely not a fight," Nate snorted. "They wouldn't dare have one without you. Saluting the flag or something, maybe there's yet another holiday crap going on that we don't know about." It was hard to keep track when he felt like every time he showed up for a new school there was a new special memorial day of some sort. "Fuck I don't want to go to class," he groaned. "I just want to go home and sleep."

"Tell me about it," she agreed, reaching over to muss Nate's hair and popping her cigarette out the window. "That's what I'm doing tomorrow. Fuck this school and almost everyone in it," Nic informed him with a smirk, "Gonna have my mom call me in, turn on something with bad gore and worse acting, and stay in my PJs all day." She stretched languidly, reaching for the handle of her door and nodding for Nate to come with. "C'mon, we might as well take a look before we get back to the indoctrination."

He got out as well, locking the car after grabbing his bag from the back and strolling after her toward the flagpole. "You seriously make that sound like the best idea ever, which it probably is and now I want to go home even more." He frowned at her but it didn't really take before he was smiling again. Still, the thought of soft covers, comfortable sofa and bad horror movies was ever so tempting. Maybe he'd copy her act, especially if it got any colder out. By the time they reached the flagpole he was shivering again, huddling in his coat. There didn't seem to be anything going on at all, Breezy pacing back and forth and people waiting and talking among themselves.

"Lame," Nic observed with a disappointed scowl, shaking her head and ignoring the cold as best she could. "This is what happens if someone's like 'let's fight at so-and-so!', you can't plan that shit. Gotta just pop a bitch in the mouth and see if they run or swing back." Seriously, who planned a fight? It was so much more satisfying to just start one. "I almost want to get in there, so no one's disappointed. But whatever, that chick'd need to talk some smack first."

"Fuck this," Nate wheezed through clenched teeth. "Much as I'd love to watch you add more hearts to your face, I'm going inside. Tired and cold are two shitty conditions I don't like mixing up." He started toward the doors, yawning and hugging his coat tighter around his body, his nose tingling uncomfortably from the cold air.

She laughed richly at that, throwing a middle finger over one shoulder at a few people in the crowd as Nic moved to follow Nate back inside. "I think I'm a one heart sort of girl," she told him as she caught up. "Besides, I'm just not feeling it today. Think I'd rather be a pain in your ass until class hits." Or until they got through the doors, when Nic'd have to put a little space between Nate and herself. She was trouble to be seen with, and didn't want Nate to get bogged down just because the guy liked talking with her.

He was oblivious to that fact of course and just laughed at what she said, closing the distance between them. "I'm generally not a fan of the pain in the ass kind of people but I'll gladly make an exception for you," he told her jovially, nudging her lightly in the side. If he had known she was trouble to be seen with it probably wouldn't have changed anything, he'd stopped caring about what people thought, had spent too much time fighting it and being mad all the time when he was a kid and now he just let it slide. The pot probably helped, he'd mellowed out a lot.

"Hey, I double as a bodyguard," she teased, squirming away from his nudge to punch Nate in the arm with a wink, "And don't damage the merchandise. If people see us being all buddy-buddy, I'll have to shut someone's head in a locker to get my street cred back. Maybe yours." The threat was plainly hollow, but it was just fun to bluff up the tough-girl persona, especially when she was known for not bluffing.

"Not much of a bodyguard if you attack your ward yourself," Nate protested. "If anyone asks me if we're friends I'll tell them you scared me into hanging out with you, deal?" She was hilarious and while he didn't really buy into the violent talk - the tough chick attitude was definitely not just a front.

"Deal," Nic agreed as they crested the doors and returned to the familiar bustle of the hallways. "But make sure to make me sound really menacing. I want to hear rumors about this," she said, trailing off as they hit the hallways proper and nudging Nate, then stepping back from him. "...when you call," she added, winking at him on the sly and following it with another middle finger. They were, after all, endless. "Now go learn something useless, Cheech," Nic teased in a louder voice as she seperated from him to go find her own locker.

Yeah, she amused him endlessly and he chuckled as he headed toward his classroom, adjusting the strap on his backpack as he walked. It was refreshing to talk to her, took his mind off other things and made him laugh. He turned as he walked, grinning back at her before shaking his head and moving on. Now, how to start a rumor on Nic being scary? He'd have to think of something, for the laughs.