Celebratory cups

Ari

Things have been happening lately, and the Silver Bough has not necessarily been in lockstep over them.  They have not always gone shoulder-to-shoulder into the night.  Arianna has been working through the particulars of securing a place of her own, through the appropriate shell entities, with the appropriately Hermetic levels of concern.  Houses cannot simply be purchased at Smart and Final and plunked down wherever there is space.  It requires a damnable amount of paperwork, all traceable by unsavory sorts, and therefore a requisite amount of patience and forethought.

Nick and Pen have been, you know, saving the universe.  Or some Disparate.  equally risky, and with variable rewards.  Which may be more straightforward than mortgages.

They have been missing each other for a few evenings, and it leaves a sort of hollowness to her heart.  Even though they are just recently re-united, Nicholas and Pen are the family of her heart, if not her flesh, and also of her mind, if not always being of-a-mind.

It is late afternoon, and the snow has been coming down for days, and Spring does not at all seem to have sprung -- not efficiently, not effectively -- but rather ushered in a sense of disbelieving restlessness, of thwarted becoming. It is in keeping with the mood she brought home from her encounter with the Mercurial Elite (Elitist).  It is something she has tried to actively put from her mind, so that now -- as she stands, darkening the doorway to Nick's study, with an unopened bottle of champagne in one hand (he should recognize it readily) and two plastic coupes (it was all she could find on short order [it is the only appropriate shape]), stems of which tangled in her fingers, leaning a shoulder into his doorjamb, all lazy and unimpatient and carefully unexpectant -- now she seems to be just Ari, as she always is, mouth quirked as if he caught her halfway through a smile, barefooted and watching him with a tangle of fondness and mischief and mirth wrapped into the green of her eyes.

Even idle, she is anything but idle. The stars, you see, they stand still for no one.

Nick

It's unusual, how diligent Nicholas has been in his magickal studies.  Ari would not have recalled him as such: frequently, even before he went overseas and returned heartsick and weary, even before he fired a graven bullet into their onetime cabalmate, he was more given to exploring, to trial and error, to it'll-come-to-me-when-it-comes.  These days, there are more books (borrowed, though) in his study related to things of a magickal nature than there used to be.  These days he is at once more somber and also beginning to unburden his heart, this seeming paradox.

So she'll find him, scion of Air and Darkness, in his study which is bounded on one side by falling snow.  The black of his hair is thrown against that backdrop, and maybe it'll strike anyone who looks why dark ebony and driven white are things paired together in fable.

There is a book in his lap and he is seated in a low-backed armchair, his legs crossed beneath him.  More circles, more collections of Umbral lore.  Maybe in some ways marrying and cabaling with Hermetics has been good for him.  That's the purpose of a multi-Tradition cabal when you think about it, isn't it?  The thing that Rob was getting at all those years ago?  (Was it?)

As Ari appears in his doorway, Nick looks up from his reading, his hazel eyes bleary from too long peering at hand-written ink.  Such books as they read: frequently haven't been reproduced by printing press (though that does happen sometimes.)  More often it's a collection of lore passed down by mouth and scribed here, going back and back and back to the first magi, whoever they were.  There is this delay in how his expression shifts (his thoughts are still trapped on the page, even if he has looked up) until he notices the champagne in her hand, and the two plastic goblets there tangled in her fingers.

"You saw my gift, I see," he says.  And then, "We don't have to drink it.  I had just imagined you might break it over the headboard of your bed."

Ari

"Hah!"

Something he has said, it pleases her. It teases something warmer than the wry and twisted smiles out of her.  There is an element of surprise to it, as she has been genuinely taken aback by some suggestion. The arm carrying the coupes crosses her middle, her ankles cross as she leans more into the doorjamb, as if she could become some languid grace against it, gild it in silver: stay.

"Oh, Nicholas," fondness here, and also amusement, and marks of a life lived long before theirs became entangled, all of it wrapped around the syllables of his name, all of it to make his name more resonant and shining.  "That maiden voyage came long ago for me, but I will drink with you in celebration all the same.  To revelry, of one sort or another."

She holds the neck of that bottle with practiced ease.  It is one of the many privileges about her; this comfortable acquaintance with insouciance; this certainty whilst seeming cavalier.  The bottle is in no sort of danger.

She is, also, well acquainted with the peculiar struggles of studying from no-longer primary documents, but ones whose serifs and ligatures have evaded the execution of more automated means.  The things that sit in the place-between -- not resonant with history, not modern in their ease.  She is trained to read them as easily as he might mark the flow of water.  So this regard, careful and not entirely intrusive, this little look from across the room brings a sort of sotto frown to her brown and a bowing of her lips and --

"My library will be here soon. Once I am certain that my home will be secure.  I do not know that it touches upon your interests, but you will be welcome to it." Her voice is kept low at this, as if secrets pass between them; as if it is a thing she will not announce loudly or loft to the trees that steeple above, or shout into the snowfall.  Her Library will be here, at least a corner of it.  It will be open to him.  It will also be, at least, more beautifully lettered, more reliably scribed.

Nick

"Ari," shock in the syllables of how her name is pronounced, here, as though he is disbelieving, when she tells him that the maiden voyage came long ago.  Of course he is not; Ari is slightly older than he is, and for all that he might sometimes be mistaken for one Nick is no Chorister and certainly no monk, nor does he expect it of others.

Of course, he had not known for certain why she'd been absent, though he'd suspected: thus, the champagne.  Ari's response here though confirms what up until now had been his suspicions.  "I meant to assume less a maiden voyage than new beginnings.  'Childhood friend,' huh?"

And here he shuts the book and beckons her forward into his study.  Much of the furniture that was Nicholas's alone before he became part of the unit Mars and Hyde has an air of salvage, of old ruins that were beautiful once reclaimed and put to new purpose.  One of the bookshelves in his corner is an old canoe, sawed off at the bottom and carefully hollowed in places for shelves to rest; his desk is an old pitted solid thing that he has been meaning to sand down and restain forever but has not.  A carpet, whorled with black and grey and green, covers the floor (and the burnt circle beneath.)  Photos are placed in a collage of color and form on the walls; some are framed and some are not.

"A lot of things touch upon my interests," he says, because there is still a bit of the Disparate in Nick.  He never forsook the more shamanic understanding he carries of magic when he was initiated into his Tradition, and he still borrows now where it makes sense.  "I've been...well, I've been interested in exploring True Names, lately.  Pen talks about them so often."

Ari

'Childhood friend,' huh?

"There may be a bit more to that story..."  She seems more comfortable with it now than she had at wing night, this intersection of her past and present, of Nick and Pen and this childhood friend.  His reaction deepens her amusement, it creases at the corners of her eyes and keeps a lightness to her step when he bids her enter.  She has a way of seeming very much at home wherever she is bound by books, or symbols, or languages and Nick's study, with its unorthodox shelves and rescued things, is no exception.

"Names are important," she agrees, and in agreeing with him on this, she is also of a mind with with Pen.  Here, this echo could bring forward a note of frustration from the week before: it doesn't, but that experience does guide her toward caution.  "Even in lore beyond our own, in faery stories, among the deepest things that man has known, they are important."

Ari finds a place to settle, and nestles the bottle in against her hip. Canted just so, caught between the arm of some chair and the sweep of her skirt.  The coupes still dangle, in mock danger, from her fingers. 

"What do you think about them?  How does Naming fit into your estimate of things?"

Nick

"I like stories."  Nick leans over to carefully, carefully tip the book onto his desk with a meaty, weighty thunk.  The pages, brittle and no longer bone white but yellowed now, rustle as they settle.  His hands find his ankles, crossed beneath him, and tuck them in farther.  It is unintentional but there is something youthful about it, something of a child sitting at the feet of a grandmother or wise school librarian.

Ari has found another armchair to settle in, or perhaps Nick's desk chair, this massive wheeled thing of cracked red leather, probably a castoff from the office of some New England executive to whom it had outlived its usefulness.  It is still sturdy, and there is still a faint fragrance that arises from it when touched.

"I believe a Name is the essence of that thing," Nick says.  "And that knowing the essence or nature of a thing gives you power over it.  There's power in the Naming."

Ari

"And what sort of story would you like today?" she asks, finding some flat and certain place to set the coupes, glancing only halfly over at him because she is busy with her task -- because she is busy being clever, and not yet ready to give the whole of a thing away.  (Not yet ready to Name it, Ari?)

It is this desk chair she has alit upon, calling up the scent of worn leather and passing time; it is a fitting thing to have heavy in the air around her when they speak of Names and also of Silas.  It pleases her.  So much of the circumstance around her conversations with Nick pleases Ari; perhaps this is what Rob had been aiming at, all those years ago, on the shore, in the moonlight, drinking rum and, hah!, also in his short clothes.

Ari has a certain effect on people.  Some times they end up sitting in the sand in their underpants.  Stranger things had surely happened. Out of context, it is an amusing thought.

"Can Names be bestowed on things?  On even things that are not in keeping with the Name itself?" she asks.  It is a thing she has considered, and come back to, within her own studies. What controls the truth of a thing, essence, intent, Name, Will?  Murky waters.  These questions are sent off into the stillness of his study (hallowed ground), whilst her quick and nimble fingers begin to unravel the foil obscuring the cage and cork.

Nick

The surface Ari finds upon which to set the coupes appears to have once been a sewing table, probably from some factory; the bottom is heavy, iron-wrought and dark as sin.  Wood panels have been set into the top to provide a more appropriate living surface than the original would have.  His study does not necessarily follow a theme in terms of design or color, and to the casual eye it would appear hodgepodge.

Nick has tilted himself just slightly to face her where she has perched upon his desk chair.  Nick's frame, which is slim but not necessarily spare, appears slight when he seats himself in it, as though he were a young prince who'd just climbed into a throne as yet too large.  Ari, the chair dwarfs.  "Tell me a story about separation and reunion," he says, because: this is the place where all stories begin, back at the beginning.

She speaks of murky waters, and his eyes drift to the side somewhat; he will revisit these concepts she puts before him soon, perhaps in his own mind or perhaps in books he acquires.

"I think they can be bestowed on things," he says.  "We have new concepts emerging all the time.  How else would we find words for them?  As for things not in keeping with the Name...I guess part of the essence of a thing is in how it dresses itself and presents itself, around its core.  So why not."

Ari

He answers and the words give her pause, as they often do, as they have so many times before. There is a small and thoughtful sound that perches, just so, hung on some decisive place within the staves, like a bird on a wire, though not quite like a crow on a limb -- this sound and then, with a twist of her hands, a pop!  So practiced: just like that the cork comes away in one hand, the gas curling away from the mouth of the bottle she holds in the other, all in an instant without struggle or calamity.

And to think, some people are anxious about popping champagne corks.  Some people manage to put out their eyes.  Not Ari.  She pours the first coupe and hands it to him, with steady hands, surface prickling with bubbles, all lively, active in its revelry. Once he takes it, she pours another for herself and encourages the bottle to rest somewhere between them, where he might be able to take it up as his basin shallows and he becomes in danger of running aground on the empty shores of his celebratory cup.

"Then let us Name this 'A Happy Tale', in hopes that it grows toward that more than any other essence.  And I will tell you of a separation and also of a reunion.  And you can say whether the essence and the art of it are in alignment..."

While he decides upon his answer, though this is Nicholas, whose soul is polished and made brighter by the consumption of stories, who is less the Morrigu at times than a voracious reader of lives and knower of secrets -- or, perhas, that is precisely what the Morrigu demands -- while he gathers up his answer she arranges herself in the vast country of the over-large chair, legs drawn up and tucked in beside her so that she is canted over one arm, leaned into the wing-back of his edge.  She looks impossibly comfortable in it; the red calls out the green in her eyes.  It is like Nick and the snow, the contrast of it; the lack of contrast between Ari and the warmth of rich colors and rich textures is equally striking. She belongs.

Nick

This pop of the champagne cork, and there is a reflexive twitch from the Chakravanti. It's true that Ari makes popping the cork look easy, tugs it away from the bottlemouth without shattering one of his windows or giving him a black eye.  Had Nick pulled the cork it would not have been so gracefully done, and both of them may in fact have been in mortal peril.

He takes the glass from her, waits until she has poured for herself, and then holds his glass out toward her.  There is this air of devilry there, amusement as he waits for her to tip her glass against his before he drinks.

"So tell me a happy tale, then," he says, and settles back into his chair.  Perhaps at times secrets are what is demanded; Old Gods, after all, are shadowy things, with so much of what they were lost to time.  It leaves the mage to chisel him or herself out some space within it, to retain what makes them who they are: and if it pleases his Avatar too, so much the better.

Ari

For the truly impressive and celebratory opening of bottles, there is sabreing.  Ari's is more expediant, and less wasteful, but it gives up a lot of panache.  Someday, maybe, someone would open a bottle of champagne with a sword at Ari's wedding -- maybe the impressive and terrifying Paolo Giametti himself -- but that is getting ahead of the story she wishes to tell. Or has found herself telling, despite her better judgement.

"I've told you a bit about this childhood friend before," she says, it is a way of introduction. There is a careful way that she does not speak his name, or give away his features -- this friend is almost anonymous, even in the intimate retellings or allusions she has shared with Nick. Perhaps it is a thing that sticks in his craw, to worry at, to get into the meat of later.  Perhaps it isn't.  But he remains diffuse and unclear all the same.  "His family, like mine, is infamous in certain circles.  His mother and my father are of a House and therefore occupation and so we were often cast together, at school, at conclave.  He was a steady, if not a permanent, fixture in my childhood."

So this, this is how a happy story begins: familiarity, common ground. The details remain diffuse; she does not fill in the margins for him.  Neither does she watch Nick's expression as she shares.  Ari's attention is for the tiny bubbles streaming toward the plane of the liquid in her glass.  As if she could scry the past in it; as if it would make it simpler to speak of.

"When he came to conclave, we spent our time together.  I was a better student then, but still not overly fond of long hot afternoons in classrooms.  We had adventures, and snuck out late in the evening -- we did the sort of things troubling Apprentices do, with all the privilege of being heirs to ancient names.  But when the War came, he went to stay with his Aunt and Uncle.  My mother and I went to another Chantry, where it would be safer. 

"I remember looking after them as they left, his mother like a Fury, the aegis of her Will around them, my father's wrapped tightly around me as we broke off in another direction.  I was not awake, but I was aware enough to mark it.  I didn't think we'd see each other again. 

"This was the first separation, and it was terrible."

She pauses, takes a small sip of her champagne, and glances over to Nick.  In case he has questions, or promptings.  She is not quite sure how offerings to his Old Gods go.

Nick

Ari's eyes are for the little bubbles that stream up from the bottom of the coupe, effervescent.  Nick's eyes are for her.  It's not intense, this way in which he watches her; his eyes are not seeking hers out to grab and root them the moment she glances in his direction.  Instead he notices the sweep of her hair, the way she stares into her own glass, the cast of her features and the lines of her hand and arm and the ease of which she sits in his office chair.  It's careful attention, casually intimate.

He sips from his glass and listens, and if Ari were to look over at him at any point (which it has been stated she's not) she'd find him expressionless save for this reflective look.  The diffuseness here he does not mind; Nick is never so interested in the details as in the root of what is being said and shared.  These are the things that have meaning.

"So the War caused your paths to diverge the first time.  When did you meet again?"

Ari

Arianna is used to being watched.  Nick is different, though.  She is unused to being seen.  It had surprised her about Kestrel, even after all the years that they had known each other.  She wonders, quietly, if Nick knows that this is part of how he won her over on the whole multi-Traditional cabal thing.  Which hadn't worked out as anyone had foreseen.  So there is a mild sort of pricking to the sense of being watched so completely, even if it is in apparent abstraction. 

"In our late teens.  He had Awakened and I had not, so we were reunited but only in part.  Our studies were separate and he had," there is a small sound; even after all these years the thought provokes a sort of mild irritation in her, "Garnered the attention of many followers."

She twists the stem of the glass in her fingers, it swirls the liquid, the bubbles continue to rise. 

"I was a foolish girl," she tells him. With a little roll of her eyes for her past-Self.  "So were close again, very much so, and it was good for awhile.  But he was foolish, and I am quick to anger, and that does not bode well.  It went as it had to go." This last phrase is roughly translated from another tongue. She says it first in German, then struggles a bit with the English sentiment. It resolves the story the same either way:  "So we were separated again; and it was bitter."

Nick

Here's a thing about Nicholas: he is perhaps too modest to ever imagine that he, personally, in any way shape or form had any influence on whether Ari joined their multi-Traditional cabal.  This is not low self esteem, precisely; it is simply that when Nick thinks back on that time, he has a hard time imagining that then or now other people give him much thought at all.  If they do, it is frequently in the context of what he can do for them.  He, too, is not entirely used to being seen.

There is understanding there for the things Ari says: many followers, she was a foolish girl, they were close again.  He's good at piecing together the unsaid parts of the story, and yet at the same time he wants to hear her say them.

He has tucked his feet up and under him on the chair; they are bare and his toes are visible, pink and bare, where they poke out from under him.  He takes another swallow from his glass.  "What foolish thing did he do that angered you, back then?"

Ari

Nick asks, and Ari takes a moment before she answers.  Her gaze catches on the silver band around her finger, but only momentarily.  He asks so easily and she endeavours to answer equally easily, as if these things were distantly in the past.  They are; but hurt has a way of shallowing up the depths so quickly.

"I found him kissing another girl in the hallway between classes."  It sounds so pedestrian. So normal for teenagers and high school. "It wasn't more than a few days after we had..."  She didn't finish the sentence with words, but rather looked over to the champagne bottle, then to Nick, with a mirthless sort of wry quirk to her mouth and an uncharacteristic flatness in her eyes.  He was bright; he could easily finish that thought.

"I responded as you might imagine.  He claimed innocence in one manner or another. I did not believe him, neither would back down.  We spent years angry at or avoiding one another --" No. Ari's expression walks that back a little. "I spent years angry or avoidant.  He found calmer waters in which to set sail."

Nick

It sounds pedestrian and normal for teenagers, and yet Nick well remembers that time.  That he spent much of late middle school skipping classes and devouring attention from whoever would give it to him, that often as not those people were older than he was because that is so often how these things go.  Ari is unlikely to know these specifics, but enough to realize that he perhaps understands on some level.  Mundane and part of the teenage years: those things can still hurt, and they don't always stay distant.

"It sounds like you're blaming yourself a little for the outcome," Nick says, with a sip from his glass.  It's an observation that is perhaps not welcome, and could potentially derail her story.  Nonetheless, it's not within Nick to let such an observation go unspoken.

Ari

"That's because I am," she tells him evenly. Even with a bit of self-deprecating smirk to it. Which is not an expression Ari wears very often amongst her closest of friends.  "He tried to apologize many times over, but I continued to hold it against him.  I think, at some point, the initial insult is overcome by years of ingracious treatment.  Wouldn't you agree?"

But she shrugs a little at this, too, as if it is of little consequence in the greater whole. Which is patently untrue; but convenient short-hand.  

"I am a terribly jealous woman, as it turns out," said easily, and not quite with the appropriate aire of self-awareness.  "There is a reason there have been no others.  Love is neither gentle nor kind to me.  I cannot open myself time and time again to that; there cannot be many who hold such tyranny over my heart."

It is, perhaps, the first time in a very very long time Ari has used the word Love in such a serious context.  To mean something different than the love she has for Nick and Pen, for Rob even, and Thane.  Different than filial love.  Not a stand in for lust or physical attraction.  It may be something of a revelation to Nick how apt his gift was, how momentous this reunion may truly be.

Nick

"I think when we feel betrayed we feel betrayed," Nick says.  There is thoughtfulness here, for both what Ari says now and for what she says after, for how she describes the hold this unknown man has over her.  Nick has not met Silas; he has not seen Silas and Ari together, and all he does is accept what Ari says for what it is.

"Ari, I know you very well.  I think that you don't trust very easily, and you don't allow people close to you very easily.  And trust is a difficult thing even for people who do it often.  I think it - well, it makes sense to me that you would expect the same loyalty of others that you give to them."

He, too, now, is watching the bubbles as they filter up from the bottom of his glass.  "Which isn't to say that I'm not glad you've reunited with this person, because I am.  But I'm asking you as your friend to be gentle with yourself."

Ari

"To be gentle, or to be cautious?" she asks him, and it is clear from her tone that one is nearly as impossible to her as the other.  It is also clear that his sentiment is unusual, unfamiliar.  This isn't a matter of language, how impossible his request seems to be for her to parse; it is deeper, almost cultural in its foreign nature.

Nick

There are times - ah, yes.  Nick is talking to a Hermetic, and at times he forgets this, forgets how deeply ingrained it is in them to be unforgiving of themselves, even the people they were in the past.  Of course, it isn't just Hermetics: many people are like this, and it is something Nick is good at noticing.

So he only smiles, and gives a little swirl of his glass to send the bubbles cascading up and around into a light foam.  "I choose my words carefully too," he tells her.  "You should think on it."

But here, that could have some sting if he left it, so he moves past.  "So that was the last time you saw your friend, and now you just ran into him again."  Prompting, here, for where the story left off.

Ari

A point to the Chakravanti. Ari lifts her glass a little in recognition of it, and the smile she offers spreads a little more completely into her eyes.

"Ah, no.  Were that the last time, we would likely not be celebrating with champagne and stories."  This, then, finally brings some sort of mischief and laughter back to her. "The last time we saw each other was..."

A quick counting on fingers: six... seven... eight. No, her brow creases, then recants.

"About eight years ago.  We were still young, but not as young as all of that.  I was recently Awakened, so we were nearer one another in standing again.  I was Indifferent and he was Charming, of which I naturally did not approve.  But then he was unexpectedly candid and apologetic, and I was uncharacteristically willing to listen -- and we worked a few things out."

This, then, is where her gaze lingers a little too long on that ring.  Where it is now on her ring finger and not encircling the middle one.  It is more significant now than it has been for the bulk of her friendship with Nick. 

"We decided then that when we were together, corporeally in time and space, then we would be monogamous with one another.  And when we were separated by circumstance or distance, that we would lay no claim to one another.  So here we are, both in Denver, and time does not seem to have dulled our oaths to one another."

Surely this is the sort of agreement that only Hermetics could concoct.

"And that is your story of separations and reunions, and it is happy in the ending. Is it not?"

Nick

It is perhaps not the sort of ending that Nick had expected to the story, though it explains Arianna's ring.  Truth be told, Nick had never thought much of the ring or its significance to her, or where she wore it; he has never been the sort of man who placed a heavy amount of significance on weddings or rings, and indeed until he married Pen had expected that he would never marry at all himself.

Ari offers her explanation of the agreement, and Nick seems to accept this in stride.  Is it the sort of agreement he would have concocted himself?  Perhaps and perhaps not.  They have never had much of a discussion around Nick's view on relationships or...well, anything in that arena.  For as long as she has known him he has been with Pen, and happily so, and like many married couples whoever they were before does not come up in conversation.

"It is," he says, "and I would call any ending in which you're happy a happy ending.  It does sound like you're happy to have reunited with him."

Ari

Nobody has given overmuch thought to Arianna's ring.  It is perfect in that way. Hermetics have rings; it is a very Hermetic thing to do.  They stand in for constellations and planets, hold gems of magical properties, stand in for string tied around fingers as reminders.  No one thinks twice about Hermetics and their rings, though the plainness of the thin, silver-hued band is probably what is most striking about it.  It is her string-around-finger reminder; it is echoed in Silas's own.  His might feel more heavy than hers when they are parted; hers is surely more weighty when they are together.

"I am happy.  Unsure of how this agreement of ours fits for longer than a week or a two at a time, but happy nonetheless."  She shifts a little in the chair; the weight of story-telling is passed. And she has not fallen into wistful things like telling him how they spoke to one another in poetry-- no, verily, and she can quoth the stanzas still if he required proof--or other sacchrine, ridiculous things.  Ari is quite pleased with herself about that as it is one thing to Name oneself foolish and quite another to prove it so handily.

Ari shallows out her coupe and sets it somewhere on a flat near to her. Some place where it is not endangered.  Some place safe from the capriciousness of her moods and movements.

"Have I earned a story in return?" she asks, and it is a dangerous question to answer unqualified.  Nick knows; he is raven-haired and quick-witted and watchful.  She might ask him for anything; she might ask him for nothing; and either way, Ari would find something priceless and rare in the reply.

Nick

Nick swallows the remainder of the champagne in his own glass, and this he also sets aside on the wrought iron-and-wood table next to his chair.  His own movements are not so capricious, but it is easier to do this than to keep an empty glass in hand, and one glass of champagne is precisely the amount of champagne that he wants.  For now, at least.

Ari voices uncertainty, and to this Nick nods; the understanding he reflects back here is a different thing, less personal identification with what she is saying and closer to a sort of practiced empathy: this is also how I would feel if, regardless of whether he would.  "I'm glad," he says, and means it.  "It sounds like you've both talked things through and worked things out before, and I think you'll do it here."

Her question doesn't catch him off guard, precisely, but there is this shift in his expression as she asks after a story of his own, a half-lashed look that suggests that it is a thing most people don't ask after when he offers a listening ear.  She might ask him for anything, and Nick is quick-witted and watchful.  "Of course you have," he says.  "We're friends.  You can ask for any story you'd like."