The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(17)

Well, whatever life became, Nico supposed, when you had nowhere to go and a serious case of something a less-informed person might call chronic narcolepsy.

“Ropa vieja?” Nico suggested, saying nothing of what he was thinking.

“Yes.” Max smashed a fist into the side of Gideon’s arm, heading into the bathroom. He was, as he always was when he shifted, completely nude. Nico rolled his eyes and Max winked, not bothering to cover himself as he strode past.

“Libby texted me,” Gideon remarked to Nico in Max’s absence. “Says you were your usual dickish self.”

“Is that all she said?” Nico prompted, hoping it was.

Ah, but of course not. “Said you guys got some sort of mysterious job offer.”

“Mysterious?” Damn it.

“In that she wouldn’t tell me what it was, yes.”

They had been warned not to, but still.

“I can’t believe she told you already,” Nico grumbled, disgusted anew. “Seriously, how?”

“Messaged me just before you got here. I like that she keeps me informed.” Gideon reached up, scratching the back of his neck. “How long would it have taken you to tell us if she hadn’t?”

That sneaky little monstress. This was Nico’s punishment, then. Forced communication with people who mattered to him, which she knew he loathed, all for implying that her boyfriend was precisely what he was.

“Ropa vieja takes a while,” Nico demurred, retreating hastily to the kitchen. “Has to braise.”

“Not a good answer, Nico,” Gideon called after him, and regrettably Nico stopped, sighing.

“I,” he began, and pivoted back to Gideon. “I… can’t tell you what it is. Not yet.”

With a pleading glance Nico enacted the faultless trust built on their four years of shared history, and after a moment, Gideon shrugged.

“Okay,” he conceded. “But you still have to tell us things, you know. You’ve been on eggshells with me lately, it’s weird.” He paused. “You know, maybe you shouldn’t come this time.”

“Why not?” Nico demanded.

“Because you’re babying him,” came Max’s drawl as he emerged from his room, clipping Nico’s shoulder with his. He had deigned to put on an incongruous mix of sweatpants and a cashmere sweater, which was at least an improvement on the apartment’s state of sanitation. “You’re fussing, Nicky. Nobody likes a fusser.”

“I’m not,” Nico began, but at Gideon’s look of skepticism, he sighed. “Fine, I am. But in my defense, I make it look very appealing.”

“When did you even have time to grow maternal instincts?” Max asked him, sniffing the air as Nico began sifting through food in the kitchen.

“Probably during some class you didn’t attend,” Gideon told Max before turning back to Nico. “Hey,” he cautioned in a low voice, nudging him. “I’m serious. If you’re going somewhere, I’d like to know about it.”

“You won’t even notice I’m gone,” Nico said with a sidelong glance.

“Why, because you expect me to come visit?”

Nico reached over, backhanding Gideon to remove him from the path to the fridge. “Yes,” he said, pretending not to see that his answer had left Gideon with some relief. “In fact you could come, actually. Could put you in a nice drawer somewhere, you know? Stand you upright in my closet.”

“No, thanks.” Gideon sank to the ground to lean against the cabinets, yawning. “Do you have more of that—”

“Yes.” Nico dug through one of the kitchen drawers, tossing Gideon a vial that was caught with one hand. “But you’re not using it,” Nico warned with a spatula, “unless I’m allowed to come tonight.”

“I can’t decide if that’s a reflection on your concern for me or just your massive fear that something exciting will happen without you present,” Gideon muttered, draining the contents of the vial. “But yeah, sure, fine.”

“Hey, you need me. That stuff doesn’t come easily,” Nico reminded him, though in truth he would never tell Gideon just how easily it didn’t come. He’d had to do a lot of things he didn’t want to say aloud just to make sure the third year alchemical had left her mind blank enough for him to steal the formula. That he’d even managed that skill—which had taken nearly the entire four years at NYUMA to learn and had depleted him so thoroughly that for four days Libby Rhodes thought he was either dying or trying to trick her into hoping he was dying—was already more than he’d do for anyone else.

The trouble with having Gideon for a friend was the constant possibility of losing him. People like Gideon, who was not technically a person, were not, by most laws of nature, supposed to exist. Gideon’s parents, an irresponsible finfolk and an even more irresponsible equidae (a mermaid and satyr respectively, by colloquial terms), had always possessed the 25% chance their offspring would look perfectly human, which Gideon did. They, of course, had not cared that their human-looking child would not be technically anything at all that could be registered, and that while he would have medeian abilities, he would not be afforded the class of species to which all medeians were required by law to belong. Gideon wasn’t entitled to any social services, couldn’t be legally employed, and unfortunately couldn’t spin straw into gold without considerable effort. That Gideon had been educated at all was mostly an accident, along with an instance of wide scale institutional fraud.