Toad was just dozing off when the curtain to his room was pushed aside abruptly, causing him to jolt up right. He had just enough time to click the lantern on before Dahlia drop into bed beside him. Last he had looked at the clock it had been around midnight or so but he never fell asleep easily, memories plaguing him, so it must have been around one or two now.

He gawked her; unsure if he was really seeing what he was, thinking maybe he'd gone mad. What in the name of all things sane was she doing here? Dahlia sat looking fixedly at the curtain with ears pricked, grasping her knees and trembling slightly. She turned to look at him briefly, her lips parted to speak but nothing came out, pupils so dilated they almost took up her whole iris. He furrowed his eyebrows in a default show of irritation despite the twinge of worry that ran through him.

"S'wrong with you?"

Dahlia went to speak again but her eyes darted back to the curtains, listening to something he couldn't hear, setting him on edge. She scooted back and he flinched, every muscle in his body tensing up. Propped up on his elbow now, he studied the side of her face with heart pounding.

"…'Ey," He reached up to grasp her shoulder, but with striking reflects she caught his wrist with claw tipped fingers pressing against his pulse with pupils narrowed into dangerous slits. His breath caught in his lungs, about to act on impulse and pin her down when he watched her expression soften and her pupils expand unevenly into large, scared pools of black that trailed from his wrist to his face with a look of awe that she quickly snapped out of. She jerked her hand back to her chest in fear when she caught sight of the challenging look he cast at her.

"S-sorry you startled me," She spoke quietly, tail curling over her feet tightly, slightly puffed out.

"Really? I couldn't tell."

"…I thought I heard something…" She said quietly, ignoring his sarcasm. "And Jinx wasn't there so…" She looked down at her toes shyly, once again barefooted. He rubbed his wrist, glaring slightly, starting to wonder how helpless she really was. She could have had him bleeding out just now if she had really wanted too. He couldn't deny the sense of pride that flooded his ego however; she'd gotten frightened and gone to him. Looking down, he smirked slightly.

"Want me t'go 'ave look then?" He asked glancing back up to her, sounding probably a little happier than he should have.

"No don't go!" Dahlia said quickly, snapping her face around to stare at him with a childlike look of desperation.

He knew he really shouldn't have felt so pleased of the fact, but having a scared, lovely young woman run to HIS room in the middle of the night…could you blame him? She had been scared, and she came to him. Not Betsy, not Annalee, not Ape—him. His smirk started to grow into a smile that he quickly wiped off his face as he fiddled with his earring. Of course she'd gone to him. He was right down the train from her; it was only bloody natural that she did. He wondered what she would do now; was she just going to sit there all night?

He glanced at her again, watching her shift uncomfortably then, oddly, slowly begin to lean over till she fell over with her head hitting the pillow. He stared back in silence for a few moments; Cor'blimey, she was strange. She honestly did look like a terrified feline. After a few more moments passed he began to get the feeling she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon and he rubbed the back of his neck a bit awkwardly.

"Can I sleep here?" She asked quietly and he gaped at her once again.

"What was that?" He asked, thinking maybe he heard her wrong. She was speaking rather quietly after all.

"Can I sleep here tonight?" She repeated herself and he gaped at her some more.

He was scary. Creepy. He might murder her in her sleep for all she knew. He should scare her, it was what he did. Magneto didn't hire him for his damn knowledge alone; he was dark and intimidating, a murderer. She was too pretty, too normal not to cringe when he touched her or at his less than perky attitude. The thoughts fought in his mind and he felt a flicker of hope that maybe he had a chance with her but he quickly shot down the emotion before it had a chance to bloom and entangle him in its thorny clutches.

"…Al'ight then." He finally said after breaking out of his brooding thoughts. He noticed the goose bumps forming on her pale, exposed skin and yanked the blanket up to her shoulder.

He peered down at her for a few moments in the dim light of the lantern, playing with the idea of what it would feel like to tangle his fingers in her hair, and press her body against his. How easy it would be to just ravish her right there; to feel her skin and lips against his… But as he watched her eyes start to close he reached over to turn out the light and turned his back to her, scooting over to give her enough distance from him that she wouldn't feel uncomfortable.

He woke again a few hours later to feel her back pressed against his, the slow rise and fall of her breathing moving against him. Her shivering had stopped, and though an uncomfortable amount of heat had built under the covers, he found himself reluctant to move in case it drove her away. It was rare anyone ever willingly got so close him, much less trusted him so highly…Closing his eyes he took in the moment, a sense of calm draping itself over him as he listened to her slow, melodic breathing amplified by the silence.

Her body moved against him as she stirred slightly, turning over to face him in her sleep. Her fist gently pushed against his shoulder and goose bumps raised on his skin as he felt breath brushed the back of his neck. Her fingers stretched out slowly against bare skin, gently pulling back into a loose fist like a cat kneading a blanket, eventually coaxing him to sleep. And, in his last thoughts before being drawn to sleep, he found himself wondering if this is what it would feel like to not be alone.

Toad woke to find himself alone and he briefly wondered if he'd been dreaming. He tried to get an idea of how long he'd been sleeping but he hadn't been as lucky as Dahlia to have a clock where he slept.

He hesitated before he got out of bed to pull his shirt on; he hadn't the slightest idea of how he was going to face Dahlia. Would things be awkward? He had to remind himself she wasn't telepathic, she couldn't read the dirty things he thought about her (Or dreamt about her, for that matter.) What if he snored? He snorted; he couldn't believe that was one of the worries that hit him, that should be the least of his concerns. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, she only slept with him.

'Only slept with me,' He thought with a snort. 'You make that sound too simple, mate.'

He pushed the curtain back and headed where they kept all the food. It was a smaller room than most he had been in but he came to accept this as the 'kitchen' so to speak. Boxes of food lined one side of the wall but as long as he'd been there, there hadn't really been much in them. Dahlia was sorting through them with Betsy cutting open a can of green beans with her scaly, clawed hand.

They were just talking about Dahlia going out again to try to stock up on food. Betsy didn't want Dahlia to bring any unneeded attention to herself but she wanted Dahlia to steal if she needed. Dahlia made the comment that Annalee looked normal enough that she should go out sometime too but Betsy only scolded her, Annalee was too scared to do such a thing lately.

Dahlia didn't reply, falling silent when he entered the room. He could tell from the direction her ears pointed she her attention was pointed to him even though she hadn't looked up from sorting through the box. It made him uneasy, like he'd done something wrong and she didn't want to speak to him now.

"Toad,"

He flinched and his attention snapped to Betsy.

"How is your recovery?"

"Feelin' like new." He said plainly, his voice sounded strange to him. He walked over to the table Betsy stood at and took a seat on one of the nearly broken chairs. He looked away from the can of food feeling like it wasn't his place to eat their supplies but Betsy set the can down and pushed it to him anyway.

"Eat," She commanded.

He eyed her for a moment and she eyed him back as if daring him to question her, only breaking the contact when she turned to get another can. He tilted his head back and let the contents pour into his mouth. The silence of the room, mainly the silence of Dahlia, weighed on him heavily. She still hadn't spoken to him, he couldn't recall a time she had never not told him good morning.

Betsy glanced between the two suspiciously trying to figure out why the air felt so awkward. No matter, she would fix it.

"Toad, why don't you go out with Dahlia today and help her bring back some supplies? Considering your recovery is going so well."

Dahlia's ears pricked up at that and she turned a perplexed look at Betsy. Toad felt like he was giving her the same expression.

"He can leave?"

"I can leave?" He echoed.

"As long as you come back," Betsy said, stabbing some green beans with a clawed finger. "You still owe us, remember that." She turned to leave and he could have sworn he saw a smile on her face. Betsy figured after the events of yesterday, well, he was someone they could trust. Now he just owed them.

He looked to Dahlia who looked to him for the first time; whatever she'd been feeling to keep her distance was now replaced with a smile much to his relief. She was excited to take him out with her, to show him all the places she went as much as she was relieved she wouldn't have to go alone. Ape had never told her if he killed the man or what had happened simply because she hadn't seen him but for once since the other day. Not only that, what made her happiest was that they weren't going to try to kill him.

"Lift me higher," Dahlia said, trying to reach a bag of potatoes at the bottom of a stores dumpster. Toad held her up, zoned out slightly thinking about how easy it would be to just leave and not come back despite what Betsy said about him owing them. He couldn't seem to bring himself to leave though. Looking the other way he lifted her too high and she fell in with a thud. He snorted in an attempt to stifle his laughter but failed miserably.

"Watch iiitttt!" She pulled herself up over the edge of the dumpster clumsily with a pout that quickly turned into a grin when she heard his laugh. She thought that had to have been one of the first times she genuinely heard him laugh since he'd gotten there; every other time had been sarcastic or cocky in some shape or form. He took her arm to help her up to the edge with a grin.

"Sorry, love. Got distracted." He didn't understand why he wasn't the one getting the potatoes, god knew all he had to do was lean in with his height, a good 5'9". Though, there was just something about watching her continuously almost fall in that entertained him.

"What did you get distracted by? Nothing interesting happens in the back of here."

"Jus' thinkin', been a while since I did this, rummagin' in dumpsters." He thought back to when he first left the orphanage, this is where it'd started: picking through trash, eventually picking pockets, then robbing convenience stores and gas stations, a few homes.

"Ah," She said, going from perching on the edge of the dumpster she let her legs down and sat. "You did so often?"

"Of course, I was'a step 'way from bein' a toadcicle with what 'ittle meat I 'ad on my bones."

"Well, it doesn't look like you lack meat on your bones now," She bobbed her head, cheerily kicking her feet. She paused with a reddening face, realizing that could be taken a flurry of many wrong ways. He tried to stifle his laughter again and reached into the dumpster to pull out the bag. It took all he had to hold himself back from picking at her.

"Thanks, love." He slung the bag over his shoulder with a cocky tone in his voice, "With some 'ope soon 'nough, y'won't be a stick figure eithe'."

"I am NOT a stick figure," She stood up on the edge of the dumpster on the balls of her feet, balancing expertly on it she walked to the other end and hopped down effortlessly. "If I gain too much weight I might not be able to do that."

"Yeh, if y'gain too much weight, might not be able to toss ye' ove' my shoulder," He said playfully looking back without much thought.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dahlia followed after him with a grin, the tone in his voice sending her mind in a dirty direction.

He glanced back at her with a devious, cocky smirk before looking back to where he walked. Dahlia grinned, watching him from behind, was he flirting with her? Toad cocked his head in afterthought; did he just flirt with her?

The day went by quickly and they ended up with twice as much food as they normally did, partly because Toad had 'found' some money and she'd been able to go into a store and buy some goods. Though Dahlia was suspicious, she'd 'found' five dollars before, never fifty.

As they trudged through the thick snow in the park, headed towards home and he noticed she'd become increasingly quiet. He bumped into her, trying to get her to smile but she fell into the snow with a squeak. He laughed at her and offered her a hand to help her up, that didn't go exactly as planned. She re-positioned the bag on her back and bumped him back with a smile.

"Ass," She stuck her tongue out at him,

"I stand by my word, you're a twig." He told her, though she didn't seem to hear him. She looked up at the night sky as the snow started to fall. Toad followed her gaze up, his breath making a cloud of fog in front of him.

"I used to live around here," She thought aloud with a vague sadness in her voice that he couldn't place, he didn't know that he really cared either. Dahlia rubbed her hands together and she blew into them, her thoughts trailing over the falling snow. The night she'd left home it'd been snowing; she remembered the icy sting of cold on her skin as she ran from her apartment building, blood frozen to her fingers. "It's been a while since I've seen it snow."

She looked up quickly though with a smile, any trace of whatever sadness she felt, gone. She gave him a weak push, meaning to push him into the snow but when he didn't budge she squealed at her failure and ran away.

"You've gone mad," He shook his head watching her trip and fall into the snow again. She pushed herself out of the snow and dusted the snow from her worn, oversized coat with a smile and followed after him as they exited the park.

He thought about what she'd said though, she used to live around here? He looked around at the buildings that surrounded the park. He grimaced; she'd obviously been very well off, or at least by his standard. She'd made it sound like they couldn't afford much of anything from what she'd said before. He felt like it was just another thing that added distance between them.

Toad dropped the bag of food onto the table in the tiny room. He pulled things out, glancing up at Dahlia in silence. She bobbed her head to seemingly nothing till Leech walked in with a pair of head phones blasting music into his ears. He grabbed an apple off the table quickly and ran out.

"You 'eard that?"

"Heard what?" She looked up,

He jerked his head towards the direction Leech left. "Music,"

"Oh," she blinked, "I guess I did. I don't always notice what I hear." She said and turned her gaze back to the contents of food. She scooped some cans up in her arms and stacked them in the corner of the room. Toad watched her as she bent over, eyes trailing to her backside.

Betsy walked in and cocked an eyebrow at him. He quickly became very interested in the nutritional facts on the box of crackers Dahlia had bought.

"Enjoying yourself, Mr. Mortimer?" She asked and he struggled to find his voice. She smiled mock politely, "In the city, that is."

"It was al'ight," He said shortly when he finally managed to find his voice, he eyed her suspiciously. Judging by the way she worded that he knew what she meant.

"Glad to hear it, be careful not to enjoy yourself too much, though." She cast him a warning look and went help Dahlia with stocking.

Toad glanced back to Dahlia's figure, he flipped open a pocket knife to cut some cans of coke free from their casing. He glanced up often, jerking his hand back with a yelp of pain when he cut his finger in distraction. He stuck it in his mouth for a moment before looking at it, it bled but wasn't terribly bad. Wouldn't need stitches or nothin'.

"What happened?" Dahlia asked immediately and was taking hold of his hand before he could say anything. She furrowed her eyebrows in concern.

"It's nothin'." He said, pulling his hand back, eyeing her in confusion at her concern.

"I have some Band-Aids in my room," Dahlia grabbed his sleeve this time and pulled him out the room before he could protest.

"It's nothin', just a cut." He insisted. Dahlia pulled him past Jinx in one of the tunnels as she was counting come cash and stuffing it back into her purse. He looked back at her and they held eye contact for a moment before Dahlia pulled him into the subway room.

"Just a cut? It's bleeding!" Dahlia protested and pulled some Band-Aids and Neosporin out of a bag she had hanging off the armrest of the set of chairs her. "Sit! It might get infected."

He sat on Jinx's bed with a roll of his eyes, 'women,' he thought, but couldn't deny the pleasure he felt at having her fret over him. He'd never had a mum to fret over him, and no one had ever taken up her job. Dahlia took a seat beside him and he watched her with a soft expression as she squeezed the Neosporin onto the Band-Aid and carefully positioned it over his cut.

"Y'really didn't 'ave to," he told her. "Just'a cut."

"Oh well, I wanted to." She stuck her tongue out at him and he flicked her in the forehead with his.

"Heeyyy!" She laughed and wiped her forehead with fake disgust (okay, maybe a bit of real disgust too.)

"Told y'not to play that game wit' me, I'll win." He said with a playful grin.

She got up with stifled laugh and a hand on his shoulder. "You're so weird," She clucked her tongue at him.

The way she said it didn't make him feel insecure or self-conscious the way others had told him before. No, she'd meant it in a different way, a good way. She didn't cringe back from him like the others did and he desperately wanted to believe she could be something to him, that she didn't have some secret agenda to use him, but the thought was intrusive and he didn't think that was ever possible. A frown tried to pull the small off his face.

She stopped just as she pulled back the curtain.

"Mortimer?" She asked turning to face him.

"Yeah, what is it?" He asked, the way she said his name warmed him, she insisted on calling him by his real name instead of Toad despite his protests. "Not gonna wrap me up in band-aids now, are you?"

"No…Thank you…for last night. I was really freaked out,"

He hesitated for a moment, searching her face for a hidden meaning, her voice for sarcasm, anything to suggest she didn't mean it but he couldn't find anything. He wasn't used to this, to being thanked, he hated what it was doing to him. He hated what she was doing to him.

"Not'a probl'm, love." He smiled weakly and she smiled shyly back.

Another week went by uneventfully; the snow built up thicker and thicker in the city above ground and made it difficult to keep warm in the tunnels. The increasingly cold weather had resulted in Jinx staying home and much to Toad's dismay, Dahlia staying in her room.

The more time Jinx spent around Toad the less he liked her, she was sarcastic and rude both to strangers and people she knew. She was a lot like himself in that way, only, he hated himself so that didn't work out well in his favor. Despite her bizarre appearance she was conceited, though he'd be lying if he said she didn't have some strange sort of sexual appeal to her, he'd caught his eyes scanning over her more than once.

The weird thing is she seemed to always 'know', she would get this devious look on her face and her white eyes would meet his in contempt, she was always the first one to look away and he hated himself for it. He couldn't quite wrap his mind around what it was that drew him to her.

Dahlia had never noticed though; maybe she just didn't care, maybe she was just too dense, he didn't know either way. The others were more accepting towards him since he had saved Dahlia and in result he had started to feel at home as much as he could in the underground tunnels. He spent a lot of his time around Dahlia, attributing it to the fact that she was the one who had brought him here. It was just a given now, if you were looking for Dahlia you could find her with Toad or if you were looking for Toad you could find him with Dahlia.

He hated to admit it but once he got past her overly cheery nature, talkative tongue and occasionally annoying, childish attitude, he really enjoyed her company. He knew he didn't have the grandest personality either. He liked to believe she found him easy to talk to and viewed him as someone who would protect her, though he knew that it was probably more the case she found it easy to talk to anyone and looked to near 'bout everyone for protection. Not to mention she would probably rattle off to a wall if she felt compelled enough to speak about something.

He'd taken to fixing things around the tunnels, mainly in the abandoned subway station. He'd gotten several sockets to put out electricity by re-wiring them and leeching off the city's electricity. Every now and then his body had random aches like the ones he had originally woken up with; sometimes his muscles would even lock up or would twitch unexpectedly. It was embarrassing and sometimes he had trouble walking because of it but Dahlia was always patient with him, they all were.