“You’re better at metaphors,” Marlo grouses. “Gimme somethin’ colorful for this god damn heat.”
“It’s hot,” Ness supplies, helpfully.
“Fuck you,” Marlo bats back, a half-step ahead of the beat. “Gimme a king if you’re gonna be an asshole about it.”
Ness flicks his eyes from his hand to Marlo to the stock stacked on the patio table they lean on, opting not to move a muscle and therefore generate unnecessary sweat. “Go fish.”
Marlo mutters to themself, but obliges. Otaku Journalism’s patio light flickers under the wings of half a dozen moths and paints them both in dim, pale light and heavy shadows. Across from him, behind Marlo and nestled in the damp grass of his lawn, the resonant drone of cicadas fills the empty space in Ness’ head and drowns out whatever sluggish thoughts the heat may’ve allowed him.
Marlo wipes the condensation off their face with the back of their hand, bare skin paled and shimmering with sweat; the vestigial chromatophores inlaid in it dilate and shrink again in a faint, hypnotic rhythm. Ness pulls, self-consciously, at the loose collar of his black tank, and stares at his cards without processing them.
“Your turn,” Marlo reminds him, so lethargically it’s almost a drawl.
“Um,” he thinks aloud. “Got any threes?”
No answer. He doesn’t glance up until he hears Marlo’s chair scrape—thick and metallic, eugh—across the concrete patio. They lever themself up on the table, heading toward him, toward the screen door left ajar behind him and back inside…
“Where are you—?” he starts, until they crouch down beside him, face entirely neutral in that dead serious way of theirs.
“What—” and then it clicks.
It must’ve registered on his face, because Marlo immediately cracks an impish grin and crumples into laughter. For his part, he gives up in the spectacular fashion of tilting his head over back of the chair and huffing out a sigh, despite the smile in it.
“Okay,” he says. “Heat’s rotted your brain.”
“I don’t have a clue what’choure talkin’ about,” Marlo says back, except it’s punctuated by a series of very self-satisfied chuckles. They place a hand on the arm of his chair to push themself back up, offering no apology except the lilt in their voice and an obligatory, “Go fish, love.”
“If I were not a holy man—” He draws a card with a flourish of the wrist and sinks back in his worn wicker seat. Seven of clubs. Unfortunate. (Chances are Marlo’s got one of those, though.)
“Yeah, yeah.” Marlo drops themself back into their seat with a grunt and leans back, crossing their legs at the knee. “Getting ahead of yourself. Let’s make sure you can beat me at the card game before you get caught up in the rest of me.”
Ness watches himself unstick a card from his palm, listening for the pseudosilence of the summer night and letting it settle, heavy and dull, back in. He makes a low noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t count your chickens. You’ll make yourself predictable.”
Marlo hums their perfunctory acknowledgement, and again drags their hand over back of their head, drawing momentary trails through the faint steam rising off their tentacles. Already, sweat gathers at their temples again, where they’ve tied their tentacles back; Ness’ fins fan out a little in sympathy. He finds he doesn’t mind them so much like this—their absentminded tapping of a claw against their cards—or at least not the moments where they’ve got enough courtesy for that so-called sense of humor.
He still won’t thank them for coming down, but he doesn’t have to.
“Alright. How ‘bout a seven?”