Wind tunnels fly by his hands. They lift him up in the air, ruffle his silver hair. Nothing clears his mind better than a nice fly out in the sun. He lets the wind carry him for hours and hours, until it's exhausted and he's tired just as much as the wind is, so he sits down and thinks for a longer while.

Right now he's waiting, but at the same time, not – the doesn't know if it's for himself or for Zero. But when five o'clock rolls around, Jack knows he should be outside the dorm. So he sits and waits, on the windowsill, so as to not invade Zero's personal space.

He knows exactly when Zero walks into the room, even when he makes no sound. There's an aura – something fierce, a little piece of hell that he brings everywhere he goes. Jack loves it. And knows he's being watched. He can't help but let the mischievous grin break over his face.

"Like what you see, pretty boy?" Jack jokes, good-naturedly. Zero isn't the least amused. His face spells out hell for him, so Jack quickly pulls himself up into a presentable sitting position, halfway inside the window. "Woah, woah. Slow down. I was just teasing, 'right? Here, I was thinking –" he breaks off to scratch his neck and pull at the drawstrings on his hoodie for a couple of seconds. For the first time in a long, long time, he suddenly feels hot.

Jack shakes his head and doesn't look up at Zero's face, who's still not saying anything. "Okay, so this whole thing has been a bit … crazy. But I was thinking, maybe we could just, you know … throw that all out the window?" He gives a sheepish smile to his lap and makes a tossing motion with his hand. "And be friends? Just plain, regular, friends?"

He's usually confident. Too confident, Bunny would say. But he's not with his friends now, and this is questionable territory. It doesn't help that Zero isn't responding, either. Nor does Zero respond the next five years, it feels like. Jack clears his throat and is about to awkwardly, and silenty inch out of the window before Zero finally pipes up.

"Alright."

Success.

Jack's suddenly this much happier, this much more outgoing, so he falls straight into the room with a grin. "Great! So, usually –" he stops when he sees Zero's expression. He looks like he's trapped in a jail cell with a lunatic.

Oh.

He agreed, though, right?

It was better than Jack asked for, anyway. So, decidedly, he was going to ignore that. "Usually, well, in my little group of friends, at least, we start by doing this thing. It's just … we ask each other interesting questions! Whoopee!" He punctuates the sentence with a swing of his staff, and tries to seem as sane as possible at the same time. "So, I'll go first, uh – what's your favourite food?"

By now, Zero definitely thinks he's a complete joke. But Zero replies, and with "cauliflower."

Jack narrows his eyes. Something's not right.

"No, no way, there is no way your favourite food is cauliflower."

Zero looks taken aback, for a second. Which is a very, very good development, because up to now he's been teetering on the edge between robot and very, very perturbed. "Well, it is. Listen –"

Jack doesn't want to hear Zero finish that sentence. He speaks over Zero. "Well, I think that's really stupid, you know! Broccoli is way better!"

Zero narrows his eyes. "No, it's not."

Bingo.

"Yes, it is."

"They taste the same, anyway!"

Jack almost makes a sound of disgust. "No, they don't! They're completely different! Cauliflowers are like wannabe brussel sprouts!"

"How do brussel sprouts have any relation to cauliflowers?"

"They're similar!"

"No, they're not!"

They argue for the next millennium or so. Jack doesn't keep track. He finds out one of Zero's personality traits, though, and that he has a really terrible taste in vegetables. And throughout it all, he's, simply put, happy. More than he has been in a while. Maybe, this thing will work.