#nicky.

❝I am.❞

Always, unequivocally, that Andy will.

Then they have done their job well, even if that’s not at all what Nicky’s dripping spatula is for.

Perhaps too well; Nile’s cut it out jerks her hand counterclockwise to her head-shaking. When Connor’s face scrunches in the middle and his mouth goes loose, Nicky sticks it in. It’s very like bamboozling a baby.

He winks at a grinning-back Nile.

❝Hm?❞

Poor Americans. Nicky is only one man. He can’t feasibly teach them about degustation one by one. This sauce doesn’t have that sort of lifespan.

And therefore unavoidably objective, many have said, of which the overperforming demographic were all nihilists who sometimes didn’t know they were nihilists.

❝To us.❞

He’s comfortable enough to say so. His guest is... clean. Different than boring, certainly. Nicky feels matched in an unspeakable way. Not like with Joe. And with Joe, it isn’t like this. Maybe it couldn’t be.

He has no intention to bristle at it, but he can’t promise anything if he’s goaded well.

❝I see how that must sound vain. I agree.❞

So if fear of slip-ups is a rope, the hands would forever be arrested. And that is a load of nonsense he couldn’t get behind, even considering how much practice Booker’s very existence has thrust on him.

His turn. 

Castiel. What a very interesting name. Oddly biblical, some might say.

❝When were you born?❞

Nicky angles over and into his host role. For the French press—the irony of which isn’t lost on his inward as if—so he can hover it over Castiel’s cup.

Coffee?

Andy’s decrying broadens his hoarding magpie arm sweep; the bills and coins roll to him in a melody sweet enough he lets it do the talking. It takes a conversion—ancient-language-contemporary-language—but Nicky remembers.

And laments,  ❝Had he been able sooner to believe.❞