Of course it’s fucking raining, Kaine thinks as his body sails through the air. Not enough to be blown up, just have to be soggy when it happens.
His back slams into concrete, and everything goes black.
AN HOUR EARLIER.
Kaine jogs up the small flight of stairs leading to her apartment. They squeal with every bounce of his step. He knows that he should pressure her to live somewhere nicer. Hell, he’s taken more from his stopped robberies in the last week than could provide for himself. Maria would never take any of it, though. She’s stubborn, same as he is. Moving out of the Avenger’s Mansion wasn’t enough for her. She had to go and make her own salary and pay her own way.
Look, he’s not complaining. Her tenacity and strength are what he likes about her. Maria’s not afraid of anything, least of all him. While he scowls and drags his knuckles behind her, she just holds on to him and yanks him forward. Kaine is more with her without even trying. She doesn’t want to change or manipulate him. Shit, he doesn’t really know why she has anything to do with him at all. But sometimes, he makes her smile. And that seems to be enough for both of them.
He pulls awkwardly at his flannel before knocking on her door. Once Parker had heard about his relationship with Maria, the idiot had forced him to go shopping. Kaine prefers tank tops and t-shirts that come in ten-packs, but what was right for the Houston sun doesn’t fit with New York’s fall. Parker’s got him in at least one layer at all times. He passed on the skinny jeans, though. He’s not a fucking hipster.
Kaine knocks. And as his knuckles rap sharply on the cheap wood, he remembers the bodega flowers he left on his hotel room table. Their from the guy who loves her down the block. The two of them always garble away in Spanish like he has no idea. Whatever, as long as he keeps those weird daisies she likes in stock Kaine doesn’t care.
So he stops to get them before changing at his place–didn’t really think she’d like him reeking of debris and dilapidated building–and even has Jose write her a little note, and leaves them on the fucking nightstand. Jesus.
There’s nothing he can do about it now. Kaine just stands. The door lock retracts. He’s swallowing hard and then barreling his way in when she removes the chain.
“Hey.”
Silverclaw registers the explosion as it happens, a subtle vibration along the asphalt. Born of fire and brimstone, she’s vaguely aware of the centered point of heat like a STAR just before it goes supernova.
And when she opens her mouth to scream, her cries are drowned out by the deafening SOUND that comes next.
AN HOUR EARLIER.
Maria hears him well before she sees him. Dios, she hears him halfway down the block. She’s memorized the slight scuff of his gait against the pock-marked sidewalk. Surly and hunch-shouldered, probably with a scowl a mile wide. She smiles at the image, tucked into the couch with her knees up near her chest, positively SWIMMING in a hooded sweatshirt that belongs to him. It’s never enough, not for her, even if he doesn’t quite get it. Maria’s happy enough to drag him along by the hand through life. Occasionally he’ll let slip a glimmer of happiness ( or some BARE clue that he’s mildly enjoying himself ) and that makes it worth it.
Plus, he needs to get out now and again. TASTE life and all it has to offer. She’s afraid that he’s gotten the wrong impression, that he’s going to have to fight his way through each and every moment of his existence. It doesn’t have to be that way, and she spends each and every moment with him trying to show him that.
The flickering light of the television alternatively illuminates and shades her features, bluish hue reminiscent of the SILVER that lays dormant beneath her skin. A telenovela, rapid fire Spanish and highkey dramatics that make her laugh out loud or simultaneously burst into tears– but she knows he hates this, and she switches it out for Friends when his feet hit the stairs. The remote tumbles to the cushion when she rises, the fabric of his sweatshirt DRIPPING off of her like melted wax as she pads to the door. The chain is being slid free even as he knocks and an arm catches him around the waist as he barges in.
Laughter, clear and melodic, she moves inward with him like it’s a DANCE, one leg elongating and toeing the door closed behind them as they whirl inside before retracting. “Mi amor!” She’s happy to see him, flowers or no flowers.
Her other arm snakes it’s way around his neck, fingers threading into his hair. Maria presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth and then recoils a fraction of an inch, still draped over him like a boa.
She just keeps walking, and Kaine miserably follows behind her. Fuck this. He can’t even come close to a fucking classroom and he gets some puta on his case. Moving to Mexico and skipping college altogether seems, more and more, like a viable option.
Though Parker would be so disappointed in him. Fuck him and his lectures on responsibilities. Kaine speaks Spanish close enough to fluent and has enough spider strength to work in construction. He doesn’t need to wrestle with some two-bit gangsters over in Harlem; only to drag his sorry ass to fucking class at nine in the morning.
He slumps in a seat behind the girl, leaning so far forward that his breath messes with her curls.
He’s RIGHT behind her. Like, she can feel his breath in her hair and smell what he had for breakfast (this is normal, her sense of smell is impeccable- still, that doesn’t mean she likes to know exactly HOW much tabasco you put on your eggs in the morning). A scowl and she leans over, forced to hunch over her still-blank notepad while HE got to sleep.
“If you’d rather take a nap, why show up to class at all?” she murmurs in low Spanish, barely audible beneath the sound of the lecturer’s drone.
Maria sighs loudly, slumps over onto one elbow, legs stretching out in front of her. She’s jotting notes but barely, the silvery rings on her fingers glinting beneath the fluorescents.
His knuckles tighten as he struggles to keep his temper calm.
“Chinga tu, tambien.” He calls back, almost under his breath but certainly loud enough to be heard. Kaine doesn’t want to be here and he’s already getting shit on the first day.
A hitch in her step at the familiar foreign lilt– she had’t expected that. But she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of looking over her shoulder, instead settling herself into a desk and ducking her head into her bag, suddenly intent on finding her notebook and pens.
As if the shapeshifter would actually take notes. She’d been out the night before, laying the smack down on a couple of thugs in Alphabet City, and she could already feel the sleep beginning to creep over her
Jesus. What the hell was wrong with people these days?
Aí. She shrugs and slips by him, into the classroom they’d been loitering outside.
“Que chingados, vete a la verga culero– We’re in the same class, genius,” Maria tosses over one shoulder, the Spanish delivered carelessly before slithering into English.
Riddles, along with jumbles, word puzzles, word searches, the crossword and anything else involving an extensive knowledge of language- namely English- are not a part of our girl’s repertoire.
But don’t make the mistake of faulting her for this- you try solving puzzles utilizing plays on words that you’ve known for less than half your life. English isn’t her first language, it’s not even her second. She’s not una pendeja. The shapeshifter has her moments of cleverness.
At first, the superstition with which she was born made her think they were spells, curses, maldiciones, left by brujas in an effort to turn the world back over to it’s original evil. Would solving them bring about her demise, or would leaving them without a definitive end be the more dangerous option? They haunt her, the ones she can’t solve (and that’s most if not all of them).
Coño, even a cryptically-worded fortune cookie can set her off for two, three weeks at a time.
