He reached down for a puppy as he spoke. “Friends first. For a year and a half at least. Then we revisit the topic, or we let what happens happen, after that.”

She nodded. “I’m a natural tease, you know.”

“I know. But we could draw the line at doing what you’d do with Cassie.”

“How bold. You do know we cuddle naked?”

She could feel the short circuit run through his body.

“Kidding, kidding,” she said, smiling. She was. “This will be fun.”

“This will be interesting. But I’ll be glad to have someone along to help me make sense of Roman…”

He stepped away from the fence, and, her heart light, she stepped back as well. As they walked back toward the truck, she beckoned Cassie.

Cassie knew her well enough that she could read her mind. Approaching at a run, Chastity’s best friend practically tackled her with a hug.

She could feel the excitement, feel the new comfort, with less walls up, despite the new boundaries and rules dictating this friendship-prelude.

The rest of the winter wouldn’t be easy, but it would be warm.

Last 20.e3

“There’s so few of us, now, and still so many humans,” Jacob said. He walked to the rooftop’s edge, leaning over until it looked like he would teeter forward. Not that he would.

Blood ran down from his nose to his upper lip, flowing freely, and droplets broke free to sail toward the street below. A ghost town.

“You should stop the bleeding.”

“Should, would, could. Too many people try to tell you what to do or how.”

“I think I’m used to it,” Kurt said. He walked over to the edge of the rooftop, the corrugated metal banging with every footstep. There wasn’t a lip at the end, so it was a fairly steep drop.

He was used to it. He could watch the blood fall from the lip of a mouth stretched in a grin, and with his eyes wide, taking in the movement of clouds high above, the shift of clothes in the wind, mapping buildings and dust, he could calculate the trajectory. He could map out fluid mechanics, and see where the smaller droplets would fall. All before the blood was halfway to the ground.

“Even if you get powers, there’s always someone better, huh?” Jacob asked. There was an anger in his eyes as he looked at Kurt, and that anger could be measured out in changes in skin tone that suggested shifting blood volume, in creases measured in nanometers, around eyes and eyebrows.

“That’s something you have to make peace with,” Kurt told his friend.

Friend. This friendship with Jacob, technically the longest friendship Kurt had ever had, was like being friends with a rabid dog. Any periods of convalescence or calm were a prelude to a lashing out.

The blood still ran freely from Jacob’s nose.