"When he finally pulled his hands away from his flushed face, he passed his glasses over to her. 'Hold these.' 'Why?' 'I changed my mind about not wanting to be hit by a car. I'm going to go wander into traffic now, and it will quite likely work out better for me if I'm blind.' "

"You know," Shea said around a mouthful of extra-sloppy sloppy joe, "my older brother once tried to start a food fight with sloppy joe's in the school cafeteria."

"Why?"

"Eh." She shrugged. "He's an attention seeker. Probably got talked over once and decided to do something drastic."

Drew snorted. "Did he get in trouble?"

"Oh, yeah. He managed to hit one of the teachers. If it weren't for Heath and his goody-two-shoes act Merrick would've gotten suspended. Only benefit to having Heath as a brother really. Merrick and I could get away with pretty much anything."

"Oh?" Drew asked, leaning forward with a smirk. "And what kinds of things did you get away with, exactly?"

Ignoring his tone, she answered, "a lot. I knocked some kid off the swings when I was six, cause he was annoying me. The teachers decided I musta been standing up for some other kid that had been getting bullied, cause that's what Heath woulda done. Kevin got sent to the corner for the rest of recess and I got an extra pudding cup."

"Poor Kevin," he scoffed.

"Kevin deserved it."

"I'm sure."

"He did!" Shea insisted. "He used to chase the other girls around the playground trying to look up their skirts."

Drew wiped some dribbled sauce off of his face before joking, "and what? You were jealous or something?"

"Oh, please." She rolled her eyes. "Not hardly."

"Well, you're not six anymore. How long did getting away with things last?"

"Until this happened." Shea held up one glowing hand, then shrugged and stuffed the rest of her food into her mouth.

"What actually happened after that? Was it difficult to get a handle on your powers?"

"It was tough for all of us, I guess. Heath kept breaking things. I once locked Merrick in a desk drawer because he shrank and fell inside."

"So you locked him in?" Drew exclaimed.

"I didn't mean to! I didn't see him fall in!"

"Somehow I find it difficult to believe that."

"He shrinks down to barely visible sizes and you're gonna try and blame me for not seeing him?"

"I suppose that's fair."

"I suppose that's fair," Shea mimicked, earning herself a glare. She laughed and continued, "the twins were the most obvious. When they didn't get their way they would clone themselves until you could hardly breathe around the number of them in the room. But mine were the most volatile since I'm the only one who ever, you know, burst into flames." She held her hand up again, to emphasize her point.

"Did it hurt?"

"The flames?"

"The comet."

"No idea," Shea quickly shook her head. "We were legally dead for a day or so. My parents had started to plan our funerals." Well, it was technically true enough. She didn't really feel like going into the details of how she could feel everything that was happening to her body, even while being dead. She didn't know how to make sense of it herself, let alone for someone else.

"Oh," Drew murmured, a sharp contrast from the boisterous voice he'd spoken in just moments before. "That must have been difficult for them. To think all of their children were dead."

Shea crossed her arms, doing her best to will away the tears that threatened to form. She was really gonna do something awful if she kept getting this close to crying over things she'd made herself numb to years ago. "Yeah, well, it might've been better if we had been."

"You don't mean that." He started to reach a hand out towards her, hesitated, then let it drop back to the table. "Shea, you don't really mean that," he repeated.

"I know I don't really mean- It's just that- ugh!" She threw her arms up, then immediately crossed them back over her chest. Despite herself, she grumbled, voice thick around the lump in her throat, "if it was really so hard for them they would have still loved us when we woke up."

Glaring at the table, she immediately started to wish she could take back those words before Drew had the chance to respond. She didn't want his pity, and she didn't want him to try and comfort her or anything. If they were going to be friends she needed to know for sure that he wasn't her friend for any reason other than that he wanted to be. She also figured that to try and get him to ignore it would only make things worse. So, she waited wordlessly for him to say something.

She expected some over the top reaction about how her family would always love her, or some sympathetic 'oh you poor thing' nonsense that would drive her insane. What he said, instead, was, "I suppose that's true. Um… I'd wager a guess to say you don't want to talk about it, right?" She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. "If you ever change your mind… I'm. Well. I'm here. You know. Erm… Do you want to go see if the library's got that movie you wanted, now?"

Well, this was the kind of comforting she could handle. Point to Drew, she noted, for not pressing.

"Yeah, sure. They better have it, cause you have to prove you're not a wimp."

"I'm trying to be nice, here!" Drew protested, making a face at her. "What do you have to go and be so… so mean for?"

"I'm not mean, I'm a pest. Remember?"

"Nygh- gah- Shea! Just because you're a pest doesn't mean you have to be cruel!"

"Sorry," She said, unapologetically. "Can we go now?"

"After we get the dishes put away."

She stood, practically yanking his plate out of his hands as she grabbed it. "I got this. You go get your shoes on or whatever. I'm not letting you stall anymore than you already have."

If Drew said something in response, which she was pretty sure he did, he said it too quietly for her to hear. She almost- almost!- chucked a plasma ball at his back, before deciding against it. It wasn't worth the waste of energy unless she was entirely certain that he'd said something snarky.

"You have seen this movie before, right?" He called from his bedroom, as she placed their dishes in the dishwasher.

"No, but it's supposed to be really good."

"Wait! How do you know it's not all… gory then?" He asked, joining her in the kitchen.

"The reviews didn't say anything about-"

"I told you already that I don't like blood."

"I know that! I don't think it's…" she paused as she took in just how nervous he actually looked. He kept lacing his fingers together, then pulling them apart again. His bottom lip looked about ready to start bleeding he was biting it so hard. "How about this? If it is gory- which it isn't meant to be- you don't have to watch all of it with me."

"Why can't we just choose something else? Something we know for sure isn't awful?"

"I really want to see The Exorciser though! I already said you don't have to keep watching if it's too scary for you."

"I'm not scared I-"

"Just don't like blood," Shea finished in unison with him."Yeah, I know. Can we go now? Please?"

"If this is awful, I'm picking the next movie," he grumbled, stalking past her and out the front door. Shea slammed the dishwasher shut and rushed out after him, pulling her own sneakers on as they walked towards the staircase.

"Does that mean if it's great I get to pick the next movie too?"

"No, it means if it's awful, I'm going to be sure to pick something you'll hate. How does Mighty Martian Mind Mania: The Mighty Martian Movie sound to you?"

"You wouldn't!"

"Oh, but I would," Drew said in a mocking sing-song voice, leaning down so his face was just a few inches away from hers as he held the door to the building open for her.

She brushed past him, trying to ignore the part of her mind that kept pointing out how close his face had been."You are such a geek!"

"It is actually a good movie, you know."

"Maybe to a geek."

"They put Arckzeenum under mind control! And with him helpless to fight for the earth himself Xaelon and Zilao actually come close to total planetary domination." He started bouncing with excitement as he talked.

"You look like a puppy, bouncing like that," Shea informed him, trying not to smile when he grinned at her. He really did look like a puppy, and she hated that she couldn't deny that it made him look cute. "But isn't the whole point that they're- whatever they're called, the martians- trying to take control of the earth? What's the point of watching season after season of a show when you know the ending of every episode is going to be the same? They fail! Every time! Even in the movie. It's always the same. I don't get why anyone bothers to keep watching."

"Well-I-but-gah! It's just fun to see what ideas Xaelon will come up with to take over the earth, alright? And it's fun to see how he and Zilao will get stopped."

If she rolled her eyes any further back in her head her mother would have appeared to lecture her about how they'd get stuck. Or well, she would have before. "No matter what ideas they come up with they get stopped. Why would they even keep trying after so much time?"

"They get close, sometimes. Xaelon actually managed to take over several other planets before, so it is possible that he could take over the earth."

"But he doesn't!"

"But he could! If it weren't for Nikolai accidentally disrupting the mind control in the movie they never would have been stopped."

"Ugh." Shea shuddered. "Mind control."

"What? Is mind control too geeky for Miss Cool?"

"Miss Cool?" Shea scoffed, looking up at Drew.

He shrugged. "I never claimed to be good with words."

"You can say that again."

"Zip it."

"And, yeah, for one thing, it is super geeky. But it's also just really creepy."

"Oh?" Drew nudged her shoulder with his, and she tried to ignore the way her whole arm started to tingle. "And what? It scares you?"

"Yeah, right. I don't scare," she said, shaking her head. "But I mean, have you ever really thought about the implications of mind control? It would be completely changing the reality of the person. You could do literally anything to them, make them do all sorts of horrible things, and they'd be less than helpless to stop it! At least wh- if someone tried to do something horrible to me I'd have the chance to fight, whether or not I could win." Saying 'if' was a bit of a lie, but then, she knew there was no real way to explain some of the things that had happened to her without telling him the whole truth. The bruises that The Hunter left on her thigh throbbed.

"What if it was for the better though?" He asked throwing his hands out in front of him, palms up, like that would somehow make his point for him. "Xaelon would be a pretty decent leader. It isn't like he wants to kill everyone—in fact, he actually wants to improve things a great deal. But mostly he just wants the recognition of the other martians and the best way to get that is to take over the earth. It's not like he hurt Arckzeenum by putting him under mind control, he just stopped him from getting in the way."

"Listen I don't even know who arck- whatever his name is- is. I don't care if he's the evilest, most vile creature in the universe. You have to be beyond evil to literally take away someone else's free will, no matter how good your intentions are."

As invested as she'd been in their conversation, she hadn't even realized that they'd reached the library. "Does that mean I don't have to watch the movie?" he asked, as they walked inside. "You wouldn't want to take away my free will, now would you?"

Shea smirked. "Who said I wasn't evil?"

"Oh, please. You're a brat, but I really don't think you're evil."

"You're watching the movie. And if you keep trying to get out of it, I'll make you watch the whole thing even if it's the goriest movie I've ever seen."

She stalked off towards the movie section before he could respond, though his indignant "hey!" echoed throughout the library. She turned around just in time to watch his face turn bright red as three separate voices shushed him. She stifled a giggle and kept walking.

He caught up to her a moment later grumbling, "pest," under his breath. She glanced at him, to see him standing a half-step behind her with his arms crossed, glaring at the rows of VHS tapes as if they had personally offended him.

"Quit pouting," she laughed. He grunted then wandered off down the row, though she wasn't sure if he was helping her look or if he was just trying to get away from her.

"Maybe it's not here," Drew suggested, shuffling behind her again some fifteen minutes later.

Unwilling to admit defeat, especially because she'd just been thinking the same thing herself, she said, "or maybe you hid it!"

He held his hands up and backed away as she turned to him. "I didn't," he protested. "Honest."

"Swear it?"
"Sure, sure, I swear."

"Yeah, alright maybe it's not…" her voice trailed off as she spied a tape that had fallen between the bookshelves. She didn't much believe in luck but if anything was lucky, this was it. At least she didn't have to admit that he was right. "Here!" She finished, prying out a somewhat battered copy of The Exorciser.

"Damn," he muttered. "I really thought we would have to choose something else. I still have homework to do, so let's just get that and go."

The same blonde girl as the day before was sitting at the desk. "Back again, Drew?" She asked. Her voice, high pitched to the point of being squeaky, instantly grated on Shea's nerves, just as it had the last time. "I didn't have you pegged as a horror kind of guy." Shea rolled her eyes as the girl practically threw herself over the table, blinking in what she guessed was meant to be an attempt at fluttering her eyelashes or something. Ah yeah, that's why she didn't like the way she was looking at him last time. Her flirting was embarrassing even to Shea. "I've got a few that I've been too scared to watch on my own. Maybe you could watch them with me?"

For his part, Drew's only real reaction was to blush and laugh awkwardly as he took a small, subtle step away. "I'm really not into horror, usually," he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Um. Are you ready to go?" He turned around, holding the tape out to her.

After a moment, in which she realized he was either very unused to being flirted with (not that she could claim any experience at all) or he really did not like this girl, she shrugged and grabbed the movie from him. "Yeah, sure. You said you've still got work to do, and I want to watch this tonight, so let's go." He shot her a quick grateful smile, politely waved to the girl, then wrapped a hand around her arm and hurried her outside.

"Thank you," he sighed, letting go as soon as the doors closed behind them.

"Yeah, okay, no problem I guess. What was that about?"

He shook his head. "Nothing."

"You know, I think I saw another movie that we should watch tonight too," she mused, pretending to start back towards the library doors.

"No! Shea!" He grabbed her arm again. "Nngh- fine, just… Please."

She laughed, and followed him down the steps, overly aware of the rough calluses on his fingers as they touched the bare skin of her arm. "Spill." He stammered for a moment, then fell silent without ever saying anything. "What? Are you afraid of a little flirting?"

"She's not flirting with me," he muttered. Unthinkingly, Shea snatched the glasses off his face. "Wha- give those back!" He let go of her arm, trying to grab them from her hands.

"Why? Clearly, you're just as blind with them as you are without them."

"Very funny, but I'd rather not be hit by a car if you don't mind," he spat, as she handed them over. "And she isn't flirting with me. Not really, at least."

"Yeah, okay, Sir Dork, she's not flirting with you. Why's that?"

"She was in one of my classes this past spring."

"So?"

"So," he continued pointedly, "we worked together on a project, and I…"

"Spit it out or I turn around."

"You know, I can still lock you out of the apartment."

"No, you can't! I have a key now, remember?" Just to prove her point she reached into her pocket and dangled the key off her fingertip, twirling out of his reach when he tried to grab at it. "Tell me or I'll turn around and invite her to watch the movie with us. Something tells me she'd just love that."

He rattled off the rest of the story so quickly she almost missed it. "We worked on a project together and one night I invited her back to my dorm room cause I thought she really was flirting with me, but when we got there she was just trying to get to my grade book to change her older brothers grades, because they're on a joint scholarship and he's not doing so well, and when I caught her she freaked out and-." He cut himself off, pulling in a breath and glancing at her as if only just remembering who he was speaking to. "Offered to… um… well, to make up for it."

"You do realize that I didn't lie about my age, right?"

The tips of his ears turned pink, and he scuffed his shoe against the ground. "You're still just a kid. A fairly sheltered one at that, from my understanding."

In a way, she supposed what he said was true enough that she couldn't correct him, although she wasn't sure sheltered was exactly the right word for it. She didn't imagine most sheltered kids were forcibly woken up at four in the morning to go stop some crazy bird guy across town. Then again, she couldn't really say she wasn't sheltered when the last time she'd spoken to someone her own age was when she was fourteen and yelling at a group of high school students to run before they got hit during a huge fight between Team Go and a band of villains- Shea still didn't understand how they had met. Still, she wasn't some innocent little goody-two-shoes kid who was too pure to have ever thought about sex. Just cause she was kind of a freak didn't mean she wasn't a- well, mostly- normal teenager. And even if she hadn't really thought about sex, because truth be told she'd deemed it unimportant for her lifestyle and never really invested much time in the concept, it wasn't as if she'd never even heard of it before.

"So, did you have sex with her or not?" She willed away any sense of embarrassment she'd normally feel at those words, instead taking a fair bit of pride in how quickly his entire face turned so red that it bordered on purple.

"I-ye-n-well-but. Stop that!"

"Use your words, Drew."

"I said stop that!"

"Didn't answer my question though."

"It's none of your business, I'll have you know!"

"Jeez, okay. Go, Drew. Did you at least change her brothers' grade after that?"

"I didn't have sex with her," he blurted before his eyes went wide. He promptly buried his face in his hands, mumbling, "that's why she's still trying to flirt with me. Her brother's failing my summer course now, too." When he finally pulled his hands away from his flushed face, he passed his glasses over to her. "Hold these."

"Why?"

"I changed my mind about not wanting to be hit by a car. I'm going to go wander into traffic now, and it will quite likely work out better for me if I'm blind."

"Oh for- put these back on, you big baby." She tried to push his glasses back into his hands, and when he didn't take them she impulsively grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him down so she could place them back on his stupid cute face herself. Not that his face was cute. Stupid, sure, but not cute. She was so not going to allow herself to be the girl who had a crush on the first guy who was nice to her. No way. She was meant to be tough, not some heart-doodling, baby-naming, lovesick schoolgirl.

There was an awkward moment, once his glasses were back on, in which they awkwardly blinked at each other, his face pulled even closer to hers than it had been when he'd teased her about Mighty Martian when they had first left the building.

She gave him a shove, rough enough to send him stumbling back a step, and forced a laugh, "I'm the kid, but you're the one about to walk into traffic over talking about sex."

"Just- you-stop it! You are a kid! You shouldn't be asking- you shouldn't even be thinking- and I- ugh!" Drew threw his arms in the air and rushed inside the apartment building as his face began to flush once more. He held the door for her, impatiently tapping his foot as she sauntered in after him.

"How old do I have to be then, Drew? To start… thinking?" She placed a hand on his chest (deliberately ignoring the flutters that caused in her own) and tried to put as much of a sultry tone, the one she'd heard women use on idiotic men for information in some spy films, into her voice as she could. She figured it sounded kind of dumb, unpracticed at the very least, but Drew's beady eyes went wide behind his glasses, and he jerked away from her. She could see how tense every muscle in his back was as he marched up the stairs in front of her. Part of her was glad she hadn't, but she began to wish she had winked at him too. Just to see his reaction, of course. Actually, could she even wink? She wasn't sure. Either way, it was probably for the best that she hadn't. He didn't speak the whole way up, and she figured she had annoyed him enough.

"I need to go do my homework," he declared. He tossed his keys onto the counter haphazardly, not bothering to turn around when they slid off and onto the floor with a jingle and a clatter. A second later she heard his door click shut.

With an annoyed huff, Shea collapsed onto the chair. This whole thing wasn't going to work out well if he was going to get this frustrated every time she teased him a little bit. She grabbed her book, realizing he didn't plan on sitting with her to do his homework as music began to quietly play from his room. Gah! He was such a baby. Whatever, if he wanted to get embarrassed and angry, that was his own problem, she decided. She wasn't just going to stop acting like herself for him. She'd had enough of pretending to be someone she wasn't for one lifetime. And if he didn't like it, well, she supposed he could technically kick her out. She wasn't upsetting him that much though… was she?

With a slightly queasy feeling in her stomach that she hadn't felt in nearly a decade, and now had felt twice in one day, Shea forced herself to stop thinking and read her book. As much as she liked it, it was a bit difficult to focus through her worried thoughts. She'd managed only three chapters when Drew finally reemerged from his room, dropping a stack of papers unceremoniously onto the coffee table.

"Read this for me, would you?" he asked, nudging the top paper in her direction. She felt her nervousness wash away as he spoke. He sounded calm, and when she looked at him she saw him reclining on the couch, his glasses resting on his chest as his head lolled backward. So, she definitely hadn't annoyed him to the point of kicking her out. Not that she'd really thought he would, of course.

"You spelled your name wrong," she said.

His eyes snapped open and he jolted upright. "Plea- Wait, my name isn't even on that!" He groaned as she laughed, and flopped back down onto the couch. "You are such a pest, Shea."

"It's what you keep me around for."

"I keep you around to catch real mistakes."

"There is just no way that dextrorotatory is a real world."

"It is. It means-"

She quickly cut him off. "Just get me your textbook or something so I can actually make sure you spelled it right."

"Pest," he grumbled again, though he immediately stood to do as she asked. Shea couldn't help but smile when he turned away from her, not that she let him see her doing so when he passed the oversized book over. Okay, so, he was kind of cute. In a super dorky kind of way. That didn't have to mean anything, she decided. It wasn't like she was going to start doodling 'Shea Lipsky' everywhere or start naming their future children. He was cute, and that was that. She didn't have a crush on him because of it. She just wasn't blind.

"I'm impressed. You actually managed to spell it right."

"You do realize I am in graduate school right? I'm only a few years away from receiving my doctorate. I'm dyslexic, not stupid."

"Sor-ry, Doc. I forgot you were older than me on account of the fact that you're a wimp."

Drew crossed his arms, glaring at her. "Do you even know how to speak without sass?"

"Oh look, you spelled 'spectroscopy' wrong."

"Well, I'm sure you find that just delightful."

"Course I do." She shrugged. "I'd be out of a job if you could spell."

"Yes, well. At least I know what dextrorotatory means."

"Yeah, okay, Drew. Tell me one time I'm ever going to need to know that."

Sighing, he uncrossed his arms. "Fair enough, I suppose. Do you like popcorn?"

"Sure. You making some?"

"Not now, but I figured we could forego dinner if we're going to be watching… that."

"Well isn't that brave of you!"

"Could you just be nice?" He demanded.

"Sorry." She rewrote another misspelled word, then dropped the pen and held up a flaming hand. "All my nice blood burned away."

"Brat!"

She glanced up at him as he glared at her. Oh yes, she decided, making him watch The Exorciser was going to be one of the best decisions she'd made since running away. She smirked and passed his homework back to him.

"I'll make another deal with you."

He blinked wearily at her, inching further away on the couch. "What?"

"If you can make it the entire movie without screaming, crying or trying to get out of watching it, I will be the nicest person you've ever met, for a whole day."

"And if I don't?"

"Then nothing. I get to keep being me, and you get to know that you're a crybaby."

Drew glanced between her and the tv, gulped and stuck out his hand. "Deal," he squeaked. Shea grinned and smacked her hand into his. This? This was going to be fun.