Chapter Text
Nico de Varona had packed light. This was not his usual practice, but today he loved the feeling of it – the lightness and the mobility. Loved it even more when he arrived at the elevator-less building of his third story apartment. Only upon entering the shabby student housing unit with nothing but a small suitcase did the possibility occur to him that he may not have packed light so much as forgotten something important.
He rolled his belongings into the bedroom. “Max!” he called to his roommate, still lugging his massive luggage up the stairs. “Come here!”
“What the hell do you think I’m trying to do?” came the irritated reply from a floor down. Nico did not move to help. He was studying the boy.
“There’s a boy here.” he said to Max when he finally huffed his way into the apartment.
“Our third roomie?” Max asked.
“He’s asleep.” Nico said.
“Jesus, if he can sleep through my noise just now this is gonna go great.”
“I can’t wake him up.” Nico said. It was true. Upon finding the sleeping figure on the bottom bunk of the first bedroom he came across, he whispered a brief “sorry to disturb you” and “didn’t realize you were here” to no response. Figuring he had to unpack and it would be unsettling to wake up to a stranger fully moved in, he determined to wake him gently, giving the wiry frame a quick nudge. That, combined with the noise of his and Max yelling back and forth up the stairs should have woken anyone, but just to be sure, Nico had spent the remaining time it took Max to get to the apartment making every bit of noise he possibly could to no avail.
“Is he dead?” Max offered, helpfully.
“He’s breathing,” Nico said, and moved to check for a pulse. On the boy’s wrist he felt a light flutter that certainly implied a beating heart.
“Weird,” Max said. “I’m hungry. Do you want to check out that pizza place downstairs before we unpack?”
“I think I’m gonna wait.” Nico said.
“Wait?”
“Yeah, for him to wake up. Save me a slice?”
“Sure.” Max said, and ambled back down the stairs while Nico pulled the desk chair over to the bedside of the sleeping boy.
Nico was terrible at waiting. He lasted nearly 30 seconds staring and fidgeting, watching the slow rise and fall of the stranger’s chest. After that small eternity, he started his exercises to entertain himself. Recently his exercise had been this: He would bounce a small ball, then at its apex he would stop the ball's motion for a moment. Then he would reverse the previous motion of the ball, sending it back through its trajectory into Nico’s hand. This was not difficult, in fact, Nico could do this from the time he was four years old. What he was practicing, then, was not the magic itself, which was quite literally childsplay, but his attention. He was trying to not think about the trajectory of the ball, the small magic being performed on it. The goal was to splinter off the smallest sliver of his mind possible to leave to the task, fracturing his awareness so that the magic became second nature and he was free to concern himself with other things. If he mastered this, Nico thought, these small alterations could become background noise to him and he could do many of them at once, all while keeping his focus on a more strenuous task. It would be very impressive. In practice, it actually looked quite silly – a boy playing alone with a small ball, trying very hard to seem like he wasn’t paying attention to it, as though he were giving the toy the silent treatment.
It was in the middle of one of the cycles, ball hovering midair, that the boy woke up. What was interesting to Nico -- so interesting that it would be nearly all he could think of for the following few days – was how the boy woke up. He did not stretch or yawn, rubbing his eyes, or blink blearily at the afternoon sun, or even startle awake as if from a stressful dream. He was simply not conscious one moment and fully conscious the next moment, eyes opening naturally and with full awareness as if from a mere blink. He did not wake up so much as arrive .
His expression animated immediately, and it too puzzled Nico. A furrow formed between his brows, as if in frustration. The rest of his face, placid just a moment ago, now seemed strained, causing Nico to note for the first time the bags under the boy’s eyes and the worry lines creasing his young face. The boy, as far as Nico could tell, woke up completely exhausted.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” said the boy when he noticed Nico. “I thought I was alone.”
“You’re not,” Nico said with a smile. He offered his hand. “I’m Nico.”
“Gideon.” the boy said, and shook his hand. “I take it you’re my new roommate?”
“One of them,” Nico replied. “Max went to go get pizza.”
“Nice.”
“You moved in early?” Nico asked. There were scant belongings in the apartment but the groceries implied someone had been living there.
“Yeah,” said Gideon. “They let me stay since orientation, been here a few weeks.” Nico had met Max at orientation – they had been roommates then and decided to make the arrangement permanent. They were informed that their student housing unit came with a third roommate which Max found annoying and Nico found exciting.
“There’s the bunks in here,” Gideon explained, “And then another bedroom down the hall, but to be honest I think they just stuck a cot in a closet. I was resting here but I can move to the other room if you guys would rather bunk together?”
“Makes no difference to me.” Nico said, and threw his suitcase on the top bunk. He had never shared a room before, he realized then, and rather than feeling any apprehension at the arrangement, he found himself feeling the old small thrill of childhood sleepovers.
Max returned empty handed, which was no surprise to Nico who wasn’t that hungry anyway. Gideon was, though, and got up to “make lunch.” Nico didn’t bother observing that it was 6pm.
“I’m a physicist,” Nico said proudly, and then, gesturing to Max, “And Max here is a shifter.”
“What do you shift into?” Gideon asked.
“A large dog,” Max said, and Nico took a moment to be grateful he didn’t shift right then as an example.
“I didn’t know this place allowed pets.” Gideon remarked. At that, Nico and Max turned to each other as if this thought had not occurred to either of them until this precise moment.
“I’m not paying an extra fee,” Max complained. “If they require that. I’m already paying rent.”
“Then try not to scuff up the floors?” Nico suggested. Although the apartment was not quite in pristine condition to begin with, and Nico had a feeling of pre-cognizance that the three of them would certainly leave the place in worse condition than they found it. Nico sighed, resigned to this fact, and watched Gideon construct a sandwich of peanut butter and honey.
“Yikes,” Max said. “Struggle meal.”
“Struggle meal” Nico concurred. “Do you cook?” he asked Gideon.
Gideon shook his head. “I’m not allowed.” he said through a mouthful of sandwich.
“Not allowed?” Max asked.
“Yeah,” Gideon confirmed, swallowing. “I have, like, narcolepsy, pretty bad, so I shouldn’t use stoves or ovens and stuff.”
“Got it. We’ll keep you away from heavy machinery.” Max said. “Nico told me he cooks, so you can clean, and I’ll do laundry.” Nico had not known Max for very long, but already he doubted very sincerely that he would come to do any laundry.
“You guys want to play a game?” Nico asked. “I can set up the console.”
“Hell yes,” Max said pulling over one of the few folding chairs they currently had for living room furniture to the television.
“I’ll just watch, if that’s okay.” Gideon said. “I don’t know how to play much,”
Max grinned. “Perfect, Nico loves an audience.” Nico didn’t deny it, and got to work untangling wires from controllers.
He thought over Gideon's disclaimer about the narcolepsy. It would certainly explain his unconscious state when Nico arrived. The problem was that it was bullshit. Nico had heard his fair share of bullshitting in his life (okay, he had done his fair share of bullshitting in his life) and could sniff it out easily. There were different flavors of bullshit: outright lies, like when he was trying to skirt a romantic confrontation he’d rather avoid, or charm and distraction when he was in trouble and wished to talk his way out of it. Gideon’s explanation was the most gentle kind of bullshit, meant not to deceive but as a mercy: euphemism. Whatever condition Gideon Drake suffered, Nico suspected it was much worse than chronic narcolepsy.
Nico had been born with many blessings – his looks, charm, and talent among his favorites– and a few curses. His first curse was that he was exceedingly curious (in the killed-the-cat sort of way). His second was that he was incredibly competitive, most of all with himself. Once he set out to do something, he rarely allowed himself to leave it unfinished. Third, he was careless, sometimes with the feelings of others, certainly with his worldly possessions, but most often with his own life. All of this meant one thing – he could not resist the puzzle that his new roommate presented. He was immediately and irrevocably determined to solve the mystery that was Gideon Drake, or die trying.
________
The first thing Nico de Varona ever told Gideon Drake was that he wasn’t alone. This, Gideon had found in a greater sense, to be categorically false. It wasn’t that Gideon was often physically alone. Privacy was hard to come by in his foster home and his mother certainly never had any respect for boundaries. In a more complete sense, however, Gideon was always apart. In a world of humans, Gideon alone was categorically not human; and in the realms beyond this one, Gideon alone was bound to a mortal body, its needs and limitations. Gideon was unique, and he had learned very quickly that unique was often very much the same as alone.
“I’m sorry, I thought I was alone.” Gideon said, upon returning to his body and finding himself looking into the large brown eyes of a boy with a rubber ball frozen midair next to him.
“You’re not.” the boy had said. “I’m Nico.” He had offered his hand and only when Gideon shook it did the ball finally fall. And that was that.
Nico was a physicist, he was eager to share with Gideon, and their third roommate was a shifter. Gideon, incidentally, had not offered his specialty, but the others hadn’t noticed.
“I’m biased, and feel mine is the best specialty.” Nico had remarked on another day when they were reviewing class schedules. “But I’m sure everyone feels that way a bit. Shifting, I can respect. Max is very good, and at least he’s not an illusionist. You’re not an illusionist, are you?”
“I’m certainly not,” Gideon confirmed.
“Good.” Nico continued, with the absolute uncomplicated convictions of a college freshman. “Because it’s all party tricks, you know? Someone can make a room look like it’s covered in balloons but it won’t actually be covered in balloons. When Max shifts, he changes something. Physicists, as a rule, change reality. We actually change something.”
“What can you change?” Gideon asked, thinking this conversation to be actually very deep. Nico smiled and the Earth shook beneath Gideon’s feet.
“Anything.” Nico said.
Reality certainly did change around Nico. Rules that Gideon had come to expect as constants, at least in this realm, bent to his will. Gravity, for instance. But more so, everything in the world seemed to bend towards Nico. It was quickly apparent that teachers and administrators loved him, no matter what trouble he caused. Girls were by and large instantly charmed. It was that he was talented, sure, and he clearly had money, that always helped, but there was also an intangible quality to the way Nico moved through the world that made him largely irresistible. Maybe it was the joy he took in it all. The world loved Nico de Verona, and he loved the world right back.
Gideon was no exception, and he would not find one until, of course, the day he met Libby Rhodes.
Gideon was waiting outside Nico’s class. He had left his own halfway through to go to the bathroom, and never returned, distracted by something or other – the warm morning light streaming through a hallway’s glass windows or maybe a familiar song he heard playing in the distance. This happened to him from time to time, but it didn’t really matter. The implications of his scholarship, Gideon understood, was that his schooling was less so about studying and much more about, well, being studied. His feet had carried him to the hall outside Nico’s class where they usually met up. The door opened before the class was done and a girl walked brusquely out, huffing. Totally unaware of her surroundings, she stumbled directly over Gideon who was sitting next to the door, playing a word game on his phone.
“Sorry!” they both said, neither being truly at fault.
“No I’m very sorry, '' the girl said, “I didn’t see you there.”
“That’s okay,” Gideon said. “There was probably a better place for me to sit.”
“Did you need something?” she asked, gesturing to the classroom behind her. She was helpful by habit, Gideon realized, which felt incongruent when he also observed that moments before tripping on him she must have been furious nearly to the point of tears.
“No, I’m just waiting for my friend.” Gideon said. “Are you alright?”
“Fine, not hurt,'' she said.” Then, anxiously realizing that her whole demeanor was radiating Definitely Not Fine, she mumbled, “Just having… a hard day of classes. Needed some fresh air before the hallways filled.”
“I get that,” Gideon said.
“I’m not going to – I’m still in control” she stumbled to reassure him, as though that had been a going concern. She fidgeted with the ends of her hair, took a few deep breaths, and though it could have been his imagination, Gideon could have sworn the late summer heat in the hall receded a bit. It blazed again, a minute later, when the class door opened and students started streaming out.
“Gideon!” called Nico, seeing him as the crowd cleared. He approached and then stopped short seeing the girl.
“Nico!” Gideon said, waving his hand.
“Varona” the girl hissed. She literally hissed.
“You know Nico?” Gideon tried, starting to feel he should be treading more carefully. “He’s my roommate. I’m Gideon.”
“Libby.” The girl offered in a monotone, still staring down Nico.
“Rhodes.” Nico said, staring Libby down with equal intensity. Then, as though he had called her the worst insult he could think of, she abruptly stormed away from them.
“What on Earth did you do to her?” Gideon asked, the hall eerily clear.
“Nothing!” Nico shouted, bursting with frustration. “She hates me! And honestly, she’s the rudest person I’ve ever met. Did you know she tried to set me on fire? I would steer clear of that one. Her roommate's cute though.”
Gideon laughed. “She seemed nice,” he said. “Maybe she was just having a bad day?”
Nico was unconvinced. From that day forward, Gideon would get no further explanation for the mutual enmity between Nico and Libby. There was no telling who started it or whose specific insults fueled its continuation, it seemed simply that from the moment they met, their shared talents worked together one single impossible time to create a new law of the universe: They would hate each other, unceasingly and increasingly for as long as they shared this campus.
Gideon and Libby got on fine though, and realized they shared some classes. Max liked her as well, when they met, and it was hard not to note the unspoken joy Libby felt at winning over Nico’s roommates, and Nico’s unspoken despair at the same situation.
“Varona!” Libby called, strutting into the apartment with annoyance. “They gave me your assignment by mistake. I need mine back so I can study it.”
“How is that my fault, and how did you know where I live and HOW are you in my apartment?” Nico asked, immediately exasperated.
“Gideon told me. Hi, Gideon.” Libby said, suddenly cordial. Nico looked at him with betrayal.
“Hi, Libby. We’re playing video games. Do you want to join?”
“I really shouldn’t, I just need my-”
“Here.” Nico said, producing a paper from his bag and trading it unceremoniously for the one in Libby’s hands. “Now you can go.”
“Actually, I think I will stay. Never played this game before, looks interesting.” Libby said, and with a glare at Nico, brushed Max’s dirty clothes off the corner of the couch and sat. “I think I’ll just watch now though, since I don’t know how to play,” she said apprehensively to Gideon.
“That’s ok, I preferred to watch first too.” Gideon said with a smile. “This one’s easy.” With a groan, Nico started explaining the mechanics of the game.
Libby was terrible at it, until she wasn’t, and by the end of the evening she and Nico were banned from playing against each other and Gideon and Max resolved to play something open-world next time Libby came by.
And there was a next time, and more times after that, and over those first few months Gideon’s world filled with these people, and he liked them, and was present with them. When he got lost or went missing, in the city or in his own head, they brought him back and didn’t ask questions he couldn’t answer, not yet anyway. Gideon had a life, not just an existence, constructed through criminally little effort of his own.
If physicists, based on Gideon's rudimentary understanding, reshaped the physical elements around them, then he concluded that Nico de Varona was the most talented physicist Gideon had ever encountered. Fundamental truths of the world reversed for him, altered to fit his vision. It was work, and it cost him. Through a million small shifts, little efforts and tiny gestures - video games taught and played, meals cooked and shared. Late night conversations when sleep was nowhere to be found, blankets found draped over him upon waking, Nico has started to reshape the reality Gideon had always known to be true. Gideon was not alone – not anymore.