It felt weird to not be doing anything.

They'd been on the move so much lately– packing up to leave, Gill running around and yelling about Maya stealing his toothpaste, countered by her yelling back "Why the fuck would I want your yucky old toothpaste" and Aiden nursing a cup of coffee with the volume of a bottle of wine and Lukas quietly and neatly packing stuff into his bag like he was playing Tetris, and Mevia throwing something at Gill when he passed by the room (it tended to be an axe more often than not) yelling that he was being too noisy, and Harper coming out looking like she hadn't slept all night due to tinkering, while Isa glided in and helped Radar with the itinerary and Jack and Nurm talked to each other exclusively in nods and half-formed signs–

In short, they'd been almost constantly on the move so much lately, it was weird to just be sitting without the October Children or one of the lords and just with a man they barely knew with a blanket wrapped around them burrito-style and sniffling and sneezing constantly.

Jesse looked over at Hadrian.

He hadn't seemed... pleased about having to babysit Jesse, but he'd at least accepted it without complaining vocally about it. Though he'd seemed to want to.

Though according to Mevia, he'd griped about it for a few hours until Harper had, a little surprisingly, told him to "shut the fuck up and go"... do something.

(Jesse didn't know the details; Mevia had paused there and then finished with "do something not super nice", and since there was a very large spectrum of actions that fell into that category, and Jesse was too polite to ask, they would never know.)

They sniffled, wiping at their dripping nose with their sleeve.

Colds always sucked.

It wasn't so much their throat hurt, or their eyes watering, or the fact they felt like their head was imploding.

It was just the fact that simply sitting there caused their nose to both be so stuffy that breathing through their nose literally took effort, and also drip like a leaky faucet, except of course they were dripping snot and that was considerably worse than just dripping water.

At least water was... clean, for the most part. And way less germy.

The next thing Jesse knew, they were having a yellow handkerchief thrusted at them with a good amount of force. Actually, if he'd been aiming at their face, they would probably have ended up knocked over and holding their nose in a considerable amount of pain.

"God sakes, blow your nose," Hadrian growled. "You're noisier than Romeo is and that's saying something."

Jesse quietly took the handkerchief with a tiny 'thank you' and blew their nose as quietly as possible into it.

Unfortunately, the cold meant they were stuffed up, as aforementioned, so they actually blew their nose out and ended up making the handkerchief practically drip with snot.

Yes, they were the epitome of health.

Jesse looked down at the (now very snotty) handkerchief and looked up at Hadrian with big, apologetic eyes. "I can wash this..."

"Just keep the damn thing," he muttered, after giving the snotty handkerchief a quick look.

Jesse murmured an 'okay' and blew their nose again. He was staring off into the distance; probably wanting to do something but either put off by Jesse's presence (their stomach twisted with guilt) or just too angry to do so.

Reuben whined and nuzzled Jesse, the human patting the little pig. Hadrian made a slightly disgusted sound and glared out the window, though Jesse couldn't tell if he was disgusted by Reuben (maybe he didn't like animals) or the fact that their nose had started dripping again.

Jesse peeked out. Fortrylle and the land surrounding it was beautiful, when not... uh, being raged at by a storm that could probably be compared to a hurricane.

The most impressive part was that Fortrylle was literally at the eastmost part of Cosmos– it dropped off into a chasm if you went too much farther east, with Fortrylle having a branch that went over the chasm.

It was evidently very popular to live there, since most demons were perpetually nervous about the 'branch' it was on breaking and sending them all tumbling into void and so the rich demons just took up residence there, as it was quieter from the 'riffraff' (Ivor had rolled his eyes at that, which had made Jesse giggle).

Jesse had peeked at it for a few minutes; if they stared for too long they swore they could see stars and stardust floating near the bottom and the answers to anything and everything hiding in there.

Hadrian sighed after a minute and regarded them, with the look of someone regarding a worm or a beetle or something gross. "So. You're basically a kid, huh, slugger?"

They had the faint urge to correct him, since technically they were a teenager, but the look on his face did not encourage that urge to do so, so they nodded slightly and blew their nose again, secretly very grateful for the handkerchief.

It at least made them feel like they were getting the gross stuff out of their body, rather than snorting it back in and being really gross.

"Yeah..."

"Of course they left me to..." Hadrian grumbled something incoherent (or, at least, Jesse couldn't understand it), before leveling a look at Jesse.

It was not necessarily a bad look, or a rude one– just the look of someone considering something, with his arms crossed and his brow creased and his mouth twisted the tiniest bit to one side thoughtfully.

Jesse blinked up at him with big green eyes.

After a minute, he crossed his arms and leaned back, tilting his head to one side as a small smile (or was it a smirk? They couldn't tell) crossed his face.

"How about a deal, sport?"


A/N: Uh...

Well, he puts up with them, at least. xD

Here are my three hints!

1) It DOES have something to do with pigs, and it's not just a normal animal.

2) Did anything about the description of the dead nurse strike you?

3) Does anyone know what an acrostic is?

If anyone gets it right, I'll write a oneshot of any topic for them.

RQTC: Has anyone watched the anime Laid-Back Camp?

It's really fun, surprisingly. Plus the humor is kind of on point sometimes xD

Responses to reviews!

Happygoluckymegami: Well... hellhounds are dogs, and Reuben is a pig, so no... xD / Oh, absolutely.

Northern Goshawk: Oh, definitely. / Eh, no. Not a boar. It's like... a mythical creature? / It would be difficult for them to– they don't know what boundaries they might cross, plus they still don't know Jesse that well. / Ahh, thank you. xD

idontwritetoomuch: Lol, glad you think so. / Yep, good for Reuben! / Oof, yeah.

Syra Nyth: I'm really glad you enjoyed the chapter so much; poor adults though, having to deal with the bloody blankets and throw them out before Jesse woke up xD / I'm glad you liked that! / hnnn thank you so much; I really appreciate that.

Saran: Jesse is super cute xD / Yeah, it's not really ideal for Jesse... or for Harper, since it can bother her even with perfectly normal people. / Ahh, yes. Except with Jesse it's more of a matter of being put in the corner and them fighting their way out when there's no other option; more of a matter of survival. Reuben would also rather get help than fight, but if he has to... well xD / I see a little bit of myself in a lot of characters; mostly in the way they talk but sometimes in personality. It mostly depends on my mood xD / That would be funny, but we've already met it. Plus a dragon is a lizard and not a pig xD / Don't worry about the ramblings lol.

That's all for now! See ya, so long, and enjoy!

x.X. A.L. X.x


Jesse was sitting on the sidelines cupping a little cup of tea while the sound people began getting into position. They looked up and waved at the camera slightly.

"The pavilion got messed up."

The camera panned to show that the roof of the 'pavilion' had a hole in it.

"Sorry. I decided to try climbing it and it turned out to not have the most stable roof," and the camera panned to show Gill sheepishly smiling at the camera.

Petra sighed. "Well, at least we got to take a longer break."

"Yep. I got to have some noodles," Maya said, slurping some ramen out of a cup.

Aiden gave a long-suffering sigh. "... I want ramen too."