Screaming down below, both from Drake and from Orc, stomping, the house shaking – there were times when Howard just couldn't handle it anymore. When he had to just go outside, maybe a few blocks away so that he could hear if it got quiet but didn't have to hear the specifics. Drake had quite a mouth on him. Quite a mouth that he didn't really want to hear all of the time.

So he was lying on the grass, a knife lying at his fingertips just in case, when he was tripped over.

He sat up, leaning forward to rub his shin, and scowled. Whoever had tripped over him rolled over and said something in Spanish, and at that Howard flopped back onto the grass. He knew who it was now.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked, and Edilio sat up as well. There was minimal light at night – just enough to see the shadow of him. If he hadn't said anything, Howard wouldn't have known who it was. And that could have gone badly.

"What are you doing out here?" Edilio asked, and Howard sighed.

"Quiet, Deely-O, and listen."

It was silent for a few moments, and then Edilio sighed. "Oh," he said. "Look, I don't want to tell you how to live your life-"

"Then don't."

"But you shouldn't sleep outside."

Howard snorted. "I wasn't sleeping. I don't really 'sleep' anymore, man, it's more like I pass out at some point and wake up a few hours later."

"I get it," Edilio said. He sighed and, to Howard's surprise, pulled his knees up to his chest and stayed where he was. Howard hadn't had any non-homicidal-or-suicidal company in months.

He wasn't going to complain. Edilio… wasn't bad. He spent too much time staring at Sam Temple for Howard to really like him, but there were a few things in Edilio that reminded Howard of himself. Namely, a lack of attraction to girls and, honestly, pre-FAYZ Edilio had been a better-behaved post-FAYZ Howard. Sort of an outcast, though Edilio's outcast status had more to do with border-jumping and less to do with switching sides every time there was a new man on top. So Edilio was alright. Better company than a drunk rock, these days.

That was funny, so he laughed. He never could have imagined that he'd want Edilio around more than Orc. Edilio looked at him though, and Howard could imagine the look on his face, so he shut up. Edilio shifted closer, probably because it was kind of cold out here at night. There was no wind, sure, but Howard was just in a ragged t-shirt, and Edilio probably was too. Body heat.

"You don't talk as much when there aren't a ton of people around," Edilio said, shocking Howard out of his silence. Howard laughed again, but this was more of a derisive snort than any kind of really amused laugh.

"Yeah, nothing to talk about right now, is there? Or am I supposed to spill my guts, since there's nobody around? Throw out secrets, that I'm 'really not a bad guy, just misunderstood' – you can't see, it's dark, that was sarcasm, I did air quotes-"

"I know what sarcasm sounds like," Edilio said. He shook his head. "I didn't mean that. I meant there were less insults."

"Oh," Howard said. "Do you want me to pull some out? Gotta say, it's getting harder to insult you the longer we're in here, but I can still think of something. Okay. Let's see."

He rubbed his hands together like he was trying to start a fire, but all he could come up with was Edilio's pretty apparent crush on Sam. He didn't want to touch that, because for all he knew Edilio would throw Orc back in his face and then where would he be?

"Alright, let's pull out the freak-normal thing. A normal, trying to fit in with the freaks? What, do you think their powers will rub off on you and you can be as useful as Sammy Boy? You've gotta be stupider than I thought to think that'll happen."

It was quiet for a few seconds.

"Yeah, I liked it better when you weren't insulting me."

"Well, no Orc here," Howard said drily. "Feel free to take a swing at me. You might not have any sort of power, but I'm also lacking a power and height, or muscle, or speed. You're Edilio. I'm a double – triple – well, something – traitor. If you're looking at it like Sam versus Caine, nothing else involved. Not even a guy who's just trying to stay alive."

"You went a little above and beyond that," Edilio said. His voice was hard. Howard wished that he hadn't brought it up. "You could've killed Sam. You could've killed a lot of people."

"Yeah, but we came back when it counted, didn't it? Orc took care of Drake, man."

"Sure," Edilio said. "But if you didn't think we were going to win, would Orc have been taking care of Drake?"

"Look, if I didn't think you were going to win – if I still did that, then I'd be dead along with- I mean, I'm not going to make a difference on the battlefield, I carry this knife around but I doubt it'd make a difference against someone older than eight. Three, if the kid has powers."

"Orc makes a difference, though," Edilio said. Howard wondered if Edilio was a decent kisser – or, if he wouldn't run off if Howard were to try it out. Howard and kissing people hadn't exactly been a common thing, but he wasn't completely sucky at it. He thought. Probably. Either way, talking about how traitorous he was probably wasn't setting the right mood.

"Let's not talk about this," Howard said. Mood to make someone want to kiss, mood to make someone want to kiss… all that was coming to mind were bad pick-up lines, and he didn't want to pull those out. "So, man, tell me more about you. I need ammunition."

Edilio snorted.

"Seriously. I don't know anything about you, except you're not Mexican and don't like me."

"You don't care, though," Edilio said. "You care about you."

"Yeah," Howard said, giving a sort-of half-shrug. "I'm just sayin', all Orc ever talks about is how he didn't mean to kill Bette, he's still hung up over that, and then there's Drake screaming things I don't wanna hear from the basement, or Brittany and she's not very much fun either. So tell me something. Anything. A story, if you want. Just something that's not self-deprecating or me-deprecating. You can only hear so many graphic death threats before you start to want something nicer. You're a nice guy, I guess. So tell me something nice."

Edilio was quiet, the only sound the toe of his sneaker dragging across the sidewalk. Howard waited, resting his chin on his knees. Now that his eyes had adjusted more to the limited light, he could almost make out the expression on Edilio's face. He kept his hair short, which was kind of absurd to Howard, who didn't want his to be in the way but didn't have the energy to do proper cornrows and had ended up with something weird and almost dread-like. Maybe he'd ask Dekka to do something, she had control of her hair.

Or maybe he would take a page from Edilio's book and buzz it.

"It's hard to think of nice things right now," Edilio said, his voice low and even. Howard shifted, wondered if he should start talking again, but Edilio kept going. "Every once in a while someone will make a joke, or say something that's funny. That's nice. Sometimes there's a little moment of peace, before everything goes crazy, and that's nice. Sometimes there's time to just talk to people you care about, and that's nice. Sometimes you forget that all of this is happening before you wake up and the feeling before you realize what's going on… that's nice. And even the disappointment after that is kind of nice, because you have to be hopeful to be disappointed. Hope is nice.

"Sam is nice. I know you probably don't want to hear this, but he is. He makes his decisions and he's insecure about them but he's not a bad guy. Dekka, she's not bad. She's solid. Sometimes people like Brianna can get on your nerves, because she just won't stop bouncing around, but her energy is nice…"

He must have drowsed off, listening to Edilio's voice, because the next thing he knew there was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, surprised to see sunlight.

"'d I fall asleep?" he asked. His voice was rough. He cleared his throat, spat in the grass. Edilio, who was crouching beside him, nodded. "You coulda woken me up, man."

"You looked like you needed it," Edilio said. Now Howard could see him, could see his face, and that little desire to kiss him from last night was sort of back. What had they been talking about? Nice things? God, that gave him such an opening.

"You were talking about nice things," Howard said. He sat up completely, rubbing the side of his head. It didn't hurt as much as he'd thought it would have, sleeping on the concrete.

"Yeah, until I heard you thump on the concrete," Edilio said, and Howard grimaced.

"Shut up, I'm trying to do something," he said. Edilio was only a few inches away from him, close in his concern, and that made it easy. That made it easy to grab him by the back of the neck and kiss him, pushing himself up off of the ground a little so that their mouths could mesh right. He broke away after a bit and stood up, shaking the stiffness out of his limbs. "That's a nice thing, too."

With that, he left with a little wave and (hopefully) enough resolve to deal with constant shouting.

Aurora's still posting random Howdilio oneshot's who could've guessed I mean really.