After we’d showered and dried, I took Darcy back to my room and gave him one of my shirts to wear. It was comically long on him and drooped sadly off one shoulder, but at least it covered him more than adequately.

“Do you want to get some hot chocolate and a snack or something from the cafeteria before we go back to bed?” I asked Darcy, looking at him. He looked back. He didn’t respond.

“Look,” I said after a few moments of staring each other down, “It would help a lot if you could just nod or shake your head when I ask you things. I know these things aren’t easy for you, and I don’t expect you to start chattering away, but… just nod or shake your head. Will you do that for me?”

Several long, awkward moments passed as we both just kept staring at each other. I’d almost given up when, slowly, he nodded his head.

I smiled. I smiled so wide my face fucking hurt. I wasn’t sure why it felt like such a huge victory that he nodded, but it did.

“Do you want to go to the cafeteria?” I asked.

For a moment I was scared that it had all been a tease – that he was just going to stare at me blankly like he always had in the past – but after a few seconds he nodded again and I beamed.

“Right, I guess I’d better get dressed, then.”

That kid was getting as many marshmallows in his hot chocolate as he wanted.

-

The cafeteria was mostly empty, so I spotted Wiley and Sal right away. They looked exhausted.

Wiley had his head placed in his hands and I gave him a light slap on the back. He made an ‘nngh’ sound, but didn’t bother looking up at me.

Sal welcomed me and Darcy, not questioning what we were doing there in the early hours of the morning or why Darcy was dressed in nothing but my shirt, his hair still slightly damp from the shower. I was grateful for that. I hadn’t particularly felt like explaining, both because it would have been awkward, and because it felt like a private thing between me and Darcy.

I got hot chocolate for me and Darcy while Darcy constructed a sandwich for himself, appearing to select its filling by no merit other than that they were green. Seriously – avocado, lettuce, cucumber, pesto. It was a little weird.

Wiley looked up sleepily when I sat down across the table. I was about to ask him how things were going figuring out the curse thing, but he started talking before I’d even had the chance to open my mouth. “We’ve been up all night working on it. When targeting a tennis ball, it almost always just gets thrown across the room. Once in fuck knows how many times, something else happens, which we can only assume is the cursing thing, but you know, tennis ball… hard to tell.”

Again, I was about to open my mouth to ask him something, and again he beat me to it with an answer.

“No, we don’t have any ideas on how to make this work yet. The curses probably only last a couple of weeks, and with the number of times Finn would likely have to get thrown around before he actually got cursed… well, it doesn’t seem worth it. Not to mention the fact that it’s incredibly risky – while he’d probably be willing to chance having another random curse put on him, getting a new one every two weeks would greatly increase the risk of eventually ending up with one that was seriously dangerous.”

“We’ve dealt with tougher things before,” Sal added, as reassurance.

Wiley hummed his agreement, laying his head on his folded arms. “In other news, we’re going to be doing some construction around here – pimp the place up a bit, add some hardcore security shit based off of some of the plans Delphi drew up. It’s going to become an official military base, with ‘stay the fucking hell away from here’ signs and all. Fun.”

He yawned and dragged his hair back out of his face. I got the impression this wasn’t the first late night he’d had recently. “The twins – the older ones, Kay and Isa – are starting school tomorrow. Yes, literal tomorrow, not ‘when the sun comes up’ tomorrow. We’re sending them to the same school as Mikey and Finn, so I’m sure that’ll be fab.”

I nodded my agreement. “Mikey will actually have school friends now. Three of them. Bet that’ll make him happy. If we’re not careful, all that happiness crammed into such a small frame may prove explosive.”

Beside me, Darcy was battling with his sandwich, trying to eat it without half the filling falling out. He was mostly failing. I snagged a bit of cucumber off his plate, giving him a mischievous smile as I ate it.

Wiley didn’t respond to my chitchat, seeming set on dispersing the important news and nothing else. “You and I have a job tomorrow which we’re either being bullshitted about or will be completely pointless. Again, literal tomorrow.”

He took a moment to rub at one eye, thinking about what he wanted to say next. “We’ll be playing security for an art show. Posh thing. Guy running it donates a lot of money to our organisation, so we do owe him. He says there’s no reason for them to think there’d be any trouble, but if there truly isn’t, then insisting some of us attend is a huge waste of our time.”

“So basically, we hate this guy either way?” I asked.

Wiley nodded as best he could without lifting his head. “You can never have enough hate. Good for the soul.”

I looked over at Darcy and found him with his head rested on his folded arms on the table, a smear of pesto on his cheek, fast asleep, and opened my mouth to ask if Wiley had anything else to tell me.

“No, get him to bed,” Wiley answered before the question made its way out of my brain.

It was rare to see Wiley so tired that he would give up his pretence of living in the present; of course I took advantage of this by thinking of the most personal question possible and readied myself to ask it.

Wiley looked up, briefly startled, and smirked. “Yes,” he said.

Sal looked bemused, and did not ask.

I scooped Darcy up in my arms and began carrying him back to the apartment. He stirred, opened his eyes and stared sleepily back at me, and then fell back asleep.

When we got back to the apartment, back to my room, I followed his example.

-

The next morning when I exited my bedroom in nothing but my boxers, with Darcy in tow, I had not expected to find so many people gathered in the living room. Alex, Max, Ion, Mikey and Finn. From Finn I received a look of sympathy for the awkwardness, from Ion a suggestive smirk and from Alex and Max no acknowledgement of my mostly naked state. Mikey grinned.

“Sleep well?” Mikey asked. “We made pancakes! But then we ate them all. Sorry.”

“We still have some batter, I’ll go make more,” Ion said, getting up and moving towards the kitchen. I briefly considered telling him I’d do it myself before deciding I was perfectly fine with him being my slave, if that was what he wanted.

I looked down at Max, who was lying in front of the sofa gnawing on something. Something that was my shoe. “You let him ruin my shoes?”

“Those are yours?” Alex asked. “I am so sorry. You see, I assumed they actually paid you money, which could be exchanged for goods and services. Such as shoes. New ones, that are nice.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. It was far too early, and I was far too naked, for this. “You’re lucky I have other shoes. Better ones.”

“I have neat shoes.” Alex lifted a foot, showing off the army green boots he had very obviously taken from the armoury. “Oh, and this!” Alex lifted his shirt to reveal another shirt made of that miniature chainmail stuff we’d worn on my first field mission.”

I stared at him for several seconds. “Why?”

“Well, you know, always be prepared.” He shifted his eyes, stroking the tight material that covered his chest. “And I like the way it feels against my skin.”

I raised an eyebrow for a moment before shaking my head, turning and walking towards the bathroom. “The only reason I am not going to speculate about your sexuality out loud is because it would be very un-PC. Darcy, stay with the freaks and weirdos.”

After a long shower and some pancakes, courtesy of Ion, I found myself with very little to do. It was, technically, my day off, but as I was now living at the base more or less full time and all of my friends were also presently there, it ended up being like any working day, only more boring.

I went and watched Wiley and Sal work on the curse problem with Todd, but watching him fling tennis balls across the room and occasionally, if we were lucky, hit them with a mostly ineffectual ball of light, grew quite boring quite quickly. I felt like I should appreciate the novelty of the ‘magic’ a little more, but to be quite frank, Sal’s healing power was way cooler, not to mention the fact that it actually benefitted me. If I wanted to see a tennis ball bounce around the room, I’d throw one myself. I may have been a little jealous that some dude with ugly hair had a way better power than me.

I turned to the doorway, and saw Finn standing there. It felt like an insult to my alertness as I realised I had no idea how long he’d been standing there. The expression on his face was unreadable, carefully so, but it wasn’t hard to figure out how he must be feeling.

“This is boring,” I murmured as I approached him, bumping shoulders with him in some odd sign of support as I pushed passed him out the door. “Where’s Mikey?”

Mikey was still in the apartment, sitting cross legged on the coffee table with Isa sitting on the sofa and Kay sitting on the floor in front of him, a notepad and pen in her hands.

“Food comes to the cafeteria via some kind of magic,” Mikey said, his voice steady and serious. “Possibly pixies, but nobody knows. Be careful, though, because whatever they are, not all the food they deliver is good food. Maybe even it’s poisoned.”

I walked behind them and noticed that Kay, who had appeared to be taking notes, was actually doodling a picture of a camel… or something.

“Sometimes, the winds get rough in the hallways, so you gotta be careful,” Mikey continued in the same lecturing tone. “Stick to the walls, put your head down, and press onwards, soldiers! Heed my advice, and you shall not only survive high school, but you shall conquer it like the Vikings you are!”

I left what felt like Mikey’s personal court to check in with Wiley about our job tomorrow.

-

-

-

Author’s comments: Well, I finally have something to post. Sorry, my brain has been kind of broken recently, but I’m feeling a bit better. I’ve got the next scene totally planned out, anyway, so it should be pretty simple for a while. It is probably a long scene. I get to do many things I love doing in it, also good.

Um, what else. I made my characters on The Sims, and posted of their adventures on LJ. The first post is up on Abandoned Rooms, and the second on my personal journal. Sims do the darndest things. Also I wrote some porn that isn’t really that good and isn’t related to this story at all, which is on my LJ. I do not expect much care for any of these things.