Nick, he'd kicked a few habits waking up in a bed in a hospital. He smoked, once. Smoked a lot because the smell of cigarette smoke was familiar even when he went from group home to the foster family who smelled like their shit didn't stink. Took it up early and ditched it in between jobs but he'd given up the way he'd given in on the caffeine habit and drinking anything with an alcohol percentage during his time in the rehab center. Picked the caffeine right back up and the liquor in moderation, but he didn't smoke now. The smell she carried in on her clothes wasn't cigarette smoke exactly. Heavier and sweeter.
Nick didn't do perk all that frequent. He watched her face now, watched the brother's turtle flit on over it. She was a good kid and he figured adopting a turtle didn't hurt a kid. He woulda fought it, if his kid brother dragged something home that needed feeding or watering or some kinda care that Nick had to deal out because the kid was too young for it, woulda given him shit for trying. He didn't believe Destiny had given nobody shit.
"Cherry coke," sweetly acid and it fizzed up along the side of the glass as he poured. Glass was cold and he knocked it along the surface toward her and Nick grinned, because she wore uncertainty the same way she wore everything else, up top. Nick's grin had gotten more practice the months he'd been in town to the year before. Worn, maybe but it was real.
"Yeah, I think you want something. Besides the club sandwich and the coke. You telling me you came through that door just for me and my sandwich?" Technically Caesar's sandwich. But Nick didn't count that, grand scheme of things. "You ain't been back in since your friend," lingered on the word friend, like it was a bad taste at the back of the mouth and it wasn't a euphemism Nick liked all that much, but john? "Made acquaintances."