Luca is coming down from the year twelve rooms when Nicholas comes sprinting up the stairs and tries to stifle a smile.

"Luca, let's go to breakfast!" Nicholas cheers in that manic kind of way that lets Luca know Nicholas hasn't slept yet.

Luca is willingly led out of the common room – and the wrong way compared to how they generally get to the dining hall. Nicholas slaps his left foot up against a portrait of footsteps, nearly overbalances, and a few large stones of the wall to the left of the portrait opens.

"Oops, wrong one," Nicholas laughs and switches feet to use his right.

The wall to the right opens up and the two end up jumping down a slide, climbing out of the pedestal of a bust that complains at them, and casually stroll to the dining hall.

Rafael and Stavros are eating happily but there's barely anyone here even though breakfast is almost over. Handfuls of groups who made it down are now whispering and flicking glances over as Luca and Nicholas join the other two.

"What did you do?" Luca asks, impressed at just how holistic this was – there aren't even teachers here, although maybe they're busy dealing with the fallout.

"We filled the stairs -all of them- with clutch vines," Stavros says with a smirk.

People generally know how to combat clutch vines but Luca is certain the three found a way to restrict light spells.

Nicholas snickers and leans in, whispering, "But that's just the distraction." He winks. "They're too busy dealing with the vines to realise we've barricaded the Pull dorm shut."

Luca looks over his shoulder across the nearly empty dining hall and realises there's not a single Pull The Void student.

Nicholas' smirk is positively wicked.

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The sudden infestation of clutch vines almost entirely detracts attention from the front page of the newspaper declaring how High Mage Haochen slaughtered his way through a well-known mage’s forces and left her body hanging from a rope in front of the Czech Confederacy branch, found with a polite but curtly worded letter requesting to meet a liaison at your earliest convenience.

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Luca says he was a part of the vine distraction just so he can go to detention with the others because he doesn't know this herbology teacher and he's not risking the man torturing Nicholas. (Luca is only paranoid because they are out to get him.)

Nicholas winks at a pair of RitCast girls walking past the herbology garden, standing heroically on a giant cabbage with a shovel braced over his shoulder.

They giggle and wave.

Rafael rolls his eyes, on his knees digging out weeds like they're supposed to be doing. Luca is down by the other side of the garden, wondering how to make it a game because Nicholas is clearly bored. Is this what raising a dad is like?

"Nicky," Stavros says and holds out a hand, one foot braced on the giant cabbage. When Nicholas helps him up, Stavros goes with the motion and ducks in for a kiss on the cheek. "Don't flirt in front of me, babe, I know you just want to get me jealous."

Nicholas immediately turns back to the girls. "I'm not gay."

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One of the girls is cracking up. "Yeah, sure! You do you, right?"

"You know how Stavros is!" Nicholas tries, shoving Stavros off the cabbage. "You know how he's like, it's a joke! I'm not gay with him!"

"What about with Rafael?" the other girl calls over her shoulder.

They burst into even louder giggles and quickly disappear over a hill.

"Don't spread this around!" Nicholas yells and yet has no expectation that they'll listen. He groans and turns on Stavros, swinging around his shovel in annoyance. "Every time?!"

"You're the one who started it!" Stavros laughs, grabbing the other end of the shovel and yanking.

Nicholas comes stumbling off the cabbage but refuses to let go so they both circle around yanking at the shovel until Stavros almost steps on Rafael.

"Guys, stop," Rafael tries and then just sticks out a leg to trip Stavros, who takes down Nicholas as well.

Nicholas pushes himself up with a huff and turns big eyes on Luca. "Tell your uncle Ross he's so mean."

"You started it!" Stavros cries again. "Okay, Luca, so last year Adam was sitting with a girl in the library and he was not getting a girlfriend before Nicholas, so your dad goes up-"

"Don't tell him that!" Nicholas complains, grabbing an uprooted weed from Rafael’s pile and throwing it at Stavros.

Stavros catches it. "-sits on Adam's lap, and it just escalates. He did it to Rafael too, still does it to me."

"I do it to you because you do it to me!" Nicholas argues. "Luca, every time we catch each other within the vague vicinity of a female, we sabotage each other. It's horrible. The only reason he helped with Mariana is because of you."

Luca, with a unique perspective of someone who knows these people but also has an outsider's view, hums noncommittally.

Rafael has no such compunction and scoffs, loudly.

Nicholas turns on Rafael, except instead of saying anything he throws back his head and howls. Stavros follows suit without even missing a beat.

"Do not!" Rafael snaps. "I swear to fucking-"

Luca watches, incredulous, as Nicholas and Stavros sync up in a harmonious, almost haunting howl and Rafael gets triggered mid-sentence into calling back with what is definitely not human vocal chords.

Nicholas and Stavros fall over each other laughing and Rafael shakes himself out of it to throw a handful of dirt at them. "You both suck. I hate it when you do that."

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While they wait for everyone to gather for Loops practice, Rafael is sitting cross-legged on the grass with Nicholas flopped belly down over his lap, Rafael’s book propped up on his back.

Stavros and Luca are also lying on their stomachs, heads together with Nicholas as they play card games on this lovely sunny afternoon. Above them, the Loops rings spin slowly.

It took a lot of convincing for Luca to coax Nicholas into playing cards because Stavros always wins their games and it sucks losing that hard.

They started with poker and then moved to go fish before trying cucumber and now Luca is trying to explain how to play a fancy future card game. They keep having to switch games because Stavros is constantly winning and Nicholas gets huffy.

Stavros can actually see the cards in Nicholas’ hand through the reflection off the glasses, and he's been doing this to Nicholas since year seven. On Stavros' deathbed, he'll tell Nicholas and it'll be hilarious.

Eventually enough people gather, still earlier than the usual meeting, and Nicholas rolls himself up to start try-outs. The usual players are here but more have gathered to try and get on the team this year, so Nicholas directs his speech to them.

"I'm Nicholas, your captain," he begins with a wink. "You know me. This is Stavros, the flanker, and Luca is our new striker," Nicholas introduces.

"Just like that?" another year twelve says, her eyebrows drawing together. "What, you're not going to even pretend to hold a try-out? What about the rest of us?"

Nicholas raises an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, are you the captain?"

Luca nudges Nicholas with an elbow. "I should do proper try-outs. I've never done it before and I want to see how it is."

Nicholas coos at Luca. "Aww, okay. We'll do striker first then."

In the free for all with eleven strikers and two balls, Luca scores seventy out of a hundred and ten points, and admittedly was distracted because Nicholas was doing a little cheer dance and Luca stopped a few times to grin brightly at him.

"Any further complaints?" Nicholas asks, arm around Luca's shoulders and looking smug enough that someone would think he's the one who just scored seventy points in under half an hour.

There are no further complaints and try-outs continue with Nicholas running them into the ground doing drills to weed out the weak.