"So we're clear about the plan?" Lance asked again. To an outsider, they would have looked like any old teenagers sitting cross-legged on top of Zil's bed. Or at least, what had been Zil's bed and what was now part of what Zil liked to think of as the Human Crew headquarters. "Graffiti don't scare them enough, so we're gonna add a little pizzazz to our methods. Can you say fire?" He grinned. Zil grinned back. He had come up with the idea but when Lance said it it just sounded so much better.

"Definitely. This is gonna be fuckin' A. The moofs aren't gonna know what hit them." Then, without really thinking: "You're the best, Lance."

Lance smirked. "I know I am, babe." He ruffled Zil's hair and left the room. The moment he left, Zil toppled over backwards from his sitting position like a Jenga block and hit his head on the backboard of the bed. Romance novels tended to describe blushing as a cute and pleasant sensation, but the heat in Zil's face made him feel vaguely feverish.

Babe. Lance had called him babe. Zil himself only used that word when he was trying to look cool for Lisa. Did that mean Lance was trying to look cool for him? Lance, the absolute master of cool, trying to look cool for Zil Sperry?!

"Zil!" There was a knock on the door and a girlish, playfully seductive voice called him. It did not take much to pretend he wasn't there, he suddenly feel incapable of moving. Babe.

"Zil, it's Lisa. I know you're in there, baby."

Zil finally sat up. He opened the door. Lisa practically fell into his arms. In about a second they were violently making out. She could not have come at a worse time.

Making out with Lisa did absolutely nothing for Zil's problem. Her always tasted llike a combination of weed and chapstick. Zil had hoped that his first kiss with a girl would be sexy and electric, but no, this was what he got. Weed and chapstick. And first kisses were always so much less fun when they turned into third kisses or sixth kisses or twentieth kisses.

Lisa took his shirt off and pushed his hands around to try to get them to take off hers. They made out some more. Then after a little while she seemed to decide she was finished and just pulled away and took out her bong. It was the least sexy experience Zil had ever had. He kept thinking about the word 'babe.' And Lance with his shirt off. Lance with his chiseled face and high cheekbones and probably rock hard abs.

"You had a hard-on," Lisa said nonchalantly as she put her shirt back on. "Must've been good." Zil reddened, but not for the reasons Lisa thought. She sat in his room and did her weed thing, which Zil had never understood. They did not speak to each other at all.

The Human Crew didn't exactly have dinner parties. But that night someone had found a bottle of soy sauce in one of the cupboards underneath Zil's family's counter and the joy was so great that the whole group gathered at Zil's house. There was nothing to put it on, so instead of eating they passed the sauce around and drank from it.

Lance sat next to Zil and didn't bring up anything about 'babe.' He was his normal witty, gorgeous self. Zil watched with a dazed fascination the way his mouth closed around the bottle as he slurped from it. He had to be shoved in the shoulder to realize it was his turn to drink. As it turned out, soy sauce tasted like a combination pitch and dog piss when you drank it. But the Human Crew had found it and it was something the likes of Edilio and Sam probably didn't have while they struggled to feed starving moof kids, so the taste of satisfaction was sweet.

Zil went to bed early that night. Lisa followed him upstairs, faithful as a puppy dog. She always slept in his bed. He had never been so aware that his house had become some kind of public lodging ground. Lance in his parents' room, Turk on a couch downstairs. People rooting around in his kitchen. But at least they were all normal people. No moofs or queers or anything. Not since they'd gotten rid of Hunter. Except of course for him. Zil the secret fag. He almost laughed. He'd never thought of it that way. His attraction to Lance didn't feel like it was the kind that the lavender loverboys he'd made fun of back in school seemed to have. He didn't wear makeup or pink clothes anything. He just wanted to bone a guy. And the worst part was that Lance seemed to be into it too.

He laid awake next to Lisa, who snored even when she wasn't fully asleep, and wondered how the hell he had gotten into this. He rolled over off the bed and stood up. Lisa brushed a hand across his back and murmured something that might have been asking where he was going. "Gotta piss," he said.

When he flicked on the light in the bathroom he was met with the sight of some Human Crew member asleep in the bathtub. His lip curled back in disgust. God, he just wanted somewhere to be alone and figure shit out. Was that too much to ask?

But he was the Leader. He was generous and kind to his crew and a nightmare to the moofs. They had to respect him. They couldn't think he was a queer. He stepped out of the bathroom and shut the door as softly as he could.

"Going for a late night stroll?"

Shit.

"Hey, Lance," he said weakly. "No. Just taking a shit. Can't sleep."

"Who ever said we had to sleep at night if we're not tired? No adults, remember?" Lance smiled. "You looked pissed off at me. Come on into my room. I kept the soy sauce so some little shit wouldn't run off with something that's like, legally yours. Want any?"

"It kind of tasted like shit if I'm being honest." But Zil followed Lance into his room. Or the room that had once belonged to Zil's parents. Zil had hid all the pictures of them under the bed because they sort of creeped him out. Except for the fact that there were no parents in it now it looked just as it had when they'd been there.

"You looked pissed off at me," Lance said, opening the soy sauce bottle. "What'd I do to rile up the Leader?"

Zil wished he had some booze to justify his behavior. "Why'd you call me babe this morning?"

Lance didn't freeze and suddenly look shocked. He just chugged some soy sauce and then put the bottle down and smirked at Zil. "Oh. You noticed. Because that bitch Lisa clearly isn't keeping you up, if you know what I mean. But it isn't all about that. You're the Leader. You're a good guy. I like you."

Zil thought he was going to go into cardiac arrest.

"But we're...I...uh..." Zil stammered. Then he and Lance were kissing. Lance did it real slowly and deliberately. There was no weed or chapstick on Lance's mouth. Pretty soon he ended up kind of on top of Lance. He didn't know how it had happened but he certainly wasn't objecting.

He looked down at Lance, at the sweat building up on his forehead and the flush on his cheeks. "Tonight we screw," he announced in his leader voice. "Then tomorrow we kill some freaks."

"A good plan," Lance said, and kissed him again.

God, the Human Crew are such awful awful people. They're kind of fun to write about.