Well, this is the address Shiro gave me. It's not the worst piece of housing I've ever seen but it's really not the best either.

I take a breath and hit the buzzer.

I can hear a couple of thumps from inside. Like, much more dramatic ones than should apply to this situation.

And then there's two guys through the glass. I think I recognize them from school.

God.

I hope I'm in the right spot.

"I was right, this one's a weirdo!" one of them shouts, busting open the door. "Hunk, I was right!"

He more or less tackles me.

"Ya see, every time I pass you in the hallway, something pings on my radar and I'm like, 'Smells like a weirdo,' and Hunk's like, 'Lance, shut up,' and I'm just like, 'No, you KNOW I'm right,' and now it turns out I'm right, and now we get to be best freak buds forever! So what kind of weirdo ARE you?"

This is why I don't have friends.

"Would you… put me down?"

He swings me inside and plunks me emphatically on the floor.

"Come on in!"

"Sorry about that," Presumably Hunk says apologetically. "My friend's just a little excitable."

"YEAH, because there's a WEIRDO here!" the first kid flaps. "You know how hard those are to find?"

I do, actually. If I knew any, I might actually have friends by now.

Presumably Hunk basically pushes Lance to the side. Lance is kind of… writhing in happiness in a way I've never seen before. It's a little scary.

"You get used to him," Presumably Hunk assures me, putting out his hand. "So you must be Katie."

I never fuck up handshakes that someone ELSE initiates.

"Pidge is fine."

"I'm Hunk."

"I figured."

"OKAY GREAT so we're all friends now, are you gonna hang out with us?" Lance chirrups.

I give the hall a quick glance-over.

"Is Shiro here?"

"Aaaah, he's late, but we're gonna have fun anyway! There's cookies in the oven!"

"Any idea when he'll be back?"

"Pidgey, I'm feeling so rejected right now!" Lance thumps a hand over his heart with no lack of melodrama.

"Sorry but I really don't know you guys."

"Yeah, no, I totally get it," Hunk says, shooting a look at Lance. "Shiro should be here soon, though, sometimes he just gets kept late at work."

I didn't know door-to-door missionaries had such a demanding schedule. Or that they got paid.

Ultimately it's the smell of the cookies that convinces me to stay.

They show me down the hallway and into a small apartment.

"Do come in to our humble abode," Lance flourishes, opening the door. "Actually, we don't live here."

I'm not sure ANYBODY lives here.

The furnishing is sparse and the blinds are all drawn. I really hope I haven't just landed in creepsville.

But fuck do those cookies smell amazing.

Lance gestures grandiosely across the room.

"That's Keith, he's a bloodsucker."

I didn't realize anyone else was in here.

The form I now see on the other side stirs a bit, waves with like, a finger and a half, and makes no eye contact. I already like him more than Lance. He's staring down at a piece of paper but I get the sense that all his attention is on me.

"Bloodsucker?"

"You know, like Frankenstein!" Lance grins. "Smile for the lady, Frank!"

"That's Dracula," Hunk exhales.

"Whatever, I didn't read it. How's my essay coming, Keith? Feeling enlightened yet?"

Weirdo Number Three flips through the papers.

"Not really, and your grammar needs work."

"Can't now, I'm attending our new weird friend today!" Lance claps my shoulder and turns back to me. "What kind of weirdo did you say you were again?"

For some unfathomable reason I don't feel super comfortable proclaiming myself a changeling to a group of strangers.

"Uhhh…"

I'm saved by Hunk, handing Lance a bowl of chips and one of… something I can't see.

"Lance, go work on your essay and stop freaking her out," he says.

I like Hunk more than Lance, too.

"Don't worry, I don't like talking about it either," he says as Lance sulks his way out of the kitchen. "Shiro says you didn't know until just now?"

"Yeah," I say, relaxing a bit. "I guess it makes sense but it's kind of hard to believe."

"Of course it is," he opens the oven, prods at a cookie, and shuts it again. "Lance outed us both to my parents and they STILL didn't believe him."

Oh great.

"That was a long time ago, it won't happen again," Hunk adds quickly.

I'm still pretty fucking concerned.

"Why would he do that?"

Hunk shrugs.

"We were kids, kids are dumb that way."

"Or maybe just HE was."

Hunk laughs.

"HUNK, I can hear you, you're not supposed to laugh at jokes like that!" Lance calls across the apartment.

It wasn't really a joke, but okay.

Hunk checks a timer. His eyes are so bright.

"This batch is almost done, go get comfy! And don't take Lance too seriously."

It might already be too late for that.

I'm sure Lance is a decent guy, but he reminds me a lot of people like Dylan. People who think they have the okay to touch me because they had it for a boy named Matt. And of course shoving them off makes you a "problem child." Not that I'm bitter.

I step into the other room.

The vampire boy steals a glance at me as I enter, then pretends he's not looking.

Lance has a textbook open and is popping a chip into his mouth. Suddenly I realize that the other dish is full of raw meat chunks and that Keith is sucking on them like they're ice cubes.

He catches me staring. When he speaks, I can see he's got some pretty intense canines.

"Uh… want any?"

I do not.

"Get comfy" means "join these guys on the couch," right? I really don't want to get that wrong, I feel awkward enough here.

"Pidgey-doodles, come sit with us!" Lance waves. "We only bite SOMETIMES!"

I bet.

So. Would I rather sit next to Lance, or the bowl of raw meat?

I hope Keith doesn't mind reaching over me.

Lance is watching him like he's waiting for something to happen. I can only imagine what, but I'm glad the pressure is off ME to interact with them. If I'd known this was a homework-friendly gathering, I'd have brought some more.

"Wait…" Keith stops reading.

Lance grins. "Oh shit, he found it!"

"You better hope your TEACHER doesn't," Keith scoffs, throwing the papers in Lance's direction.

"I'm not THAT stupid, I was gonna take it out before I handed it in!" Lance starts picking them up.

"Too bad you didn't LAST time," Hunk chortles from across the way.

"HUNK, that was our secret!"

Keith's shaking his head but I think he laughed just a bit.

I'm peeking across Keith to this essay that's finally off the floor. All the sentences are normal until "In 1812, General Eisenhower takes Quebec and Keith wins the Motorboating a Chimpanzee Award."

"Eisenhower was born in 1890," I say. I can't knowingly allow such an error to make it to a final draft.

Lance cracks a smile.

"SEE Keith, PIDGE is actually GOOD at editing papers! You know, Pidge, that's true about the motorboat thing."

"No, it's not," Keith says in utter bafflement.

"Yep, he motorboated a chimpanzee and got knighted by Princess Jane Goodall herself."

"Lance… can you not?" Keith mutters.

"Lance is on a mission to make a vampire blush," Hunk says somewhere across the way. Then he laughs. "Specifically this one because we don't know any others."

"He's just lucky," Lance finger-guns him. "They don't all deserve this kind of attention."

Keith shrinks down in a way that normally WOULD suggest someone who was blushing.

"So… if vampires don't have any blood flow…" I ponder.

"Keith, be a gent and let the lady feel your pulse!"

Keith sighs and offers me his arm. I suspect this has happened before.

It's cold. And it lacks a certain… give to it. If you weren't looking, you'd never know you were touching a human body.

"Man, Pidge, no need to look so disgusted, the poor man's ego is fragile enough!"

"Lance, this was YOUR idea…" Keith grumbles.

I'm squeezing so tight I must be hurting him by now. But I can't find a pulse anywhere.

"You're going to have a hard time making him blush," I diagnose.

This time it's Lance who blushes.

"Oh HO!" Hunk cheers. "You just got SASSED!"

That wasn't sass, that's just how I talk. I get misread a lot.

There's a bit of clattering coming from the kitchen.

"Lance, would you get the milk out of the fridge for me?"

"Not now, Hunk, I'm busy!"

I think Lance is only pretending to do homework right now.

"I just don't want to see a cow heart right now, okay?"

"Oh come on, there's totally not a cow heart in there. Those are sheep hearts."

"Lance, I swear to god…" Hunk grumbles. More clattering.

Not so sure I actually want milk for these cookies. And maybe I SHOULDN'T have sat next to a fucking vampire.

"So you're not gonna… eat me, right?" I sort of half-joke in Keith's direction.

He doesn't look up and he doesn't smile.

"Don't worry. Your blood smells DISGUSTING."

Well THAT'S comforting.

"It's… probably not iron-based."

Lance clicks a pen for attention.

"I'm gonna pretend I know what you're talking about, Pidge. But since you're sounding all smart and stuff, can you help me with this math problem?"

He gets between me and the meat cubes and hands me a paper. I would say these errors he's made are obvious, but maybe I'm not a normal litmus to base that against.

"That's cosecant, not cosine," I point to the first one I see. He picks it up and marks it.

"You hear that, Hunk? You just got REPLACED!"

Hunk comes in with the cookies, sans milk.

"What's that, Lance? You didn't actually WANT any of these?"

"I never said that, you goatface! Where are you going?"

Hunk offers me the first cookie.

"Careful, they're still cooling."

I am, of course, a pretty fearless cookie-eater.

"I've been burned worse than that."

It's a damn good cookie. Wouldn't mind a bit of milk, but you can't have everything.

Keith doesn't take a cookie, but he does look a little dejectedly at the meat bowl that is now two people away. The couch doesn't look like it's designed for four, so when Hunk joins us the chumminess goes up by a factor of ten.

Lance says something through a mouthful of cookie.

"So, you think *I* suck at school, Keith's been playing hooky for like, a year!"

"Seriously?"

Keith shifts a bit.

"Eh… I haven't been in a while…" he mumbles.

"Yep, his entire education is now thanks to Auntie Lance! And Hunk."

"And Shiro," Keith says.

"Oh, come on, I don't need THAT kind of competition," Lance pouts.

"Sounds like you already have it, if Pidge is replacing ME," Hunk snorts.

"No! Pidge is MY personal tutor and I'm not sharing her!" Lance says, bear-hugging me.

I push him off gently. And, surprisingly, there's a tiny laugh in me. I've never been the first pick for ANYTHING.

"So, Pidgey-pie," Lance reaches for two more cookies and hands me one, "On a scale of one to Keith, how dangerous are you?"

"I… don't actually think I'm dangerous," I say.

"Yeah, me either, I'm like a two," Lance says.

Hunk scoffs.

"Lance, you are more than a two."

"No way, I'm a solid 'one' for twenty-nine out of thirty days. It's called 'taking an average.'"

Hunk rolls his eyes.

"What about Shiro?" I ask.

Three answers come at the same time.

"Zero."

"Eleven."

"It depends."

There's a sound at the door and everyone looks up. They've all got this look about them, like a bunch of dogs waiting for somebody important.

The door opens and Shiro steps through.

"Sorry I'm late, got tied up at work." He gives me a nod. "Pidge, I'm glad you could make it. Sorry to keep you waiting."

"It's fine, the cookies are great."

Everyone else looks a little grimmer than I do.

"Bad accident?" Hunk asks Shiro.

"Pretty bad."

"Did you bring anything for this guy?" Lance thumbs at Keith.

"Lance…" Shiro warns. Out of the corner of my eye I see Hunk gagging and running off.

Finally someone notices how confused I am.

"Shiro's a paramedic," Lance says. "He's also great at forging documents."

Somehow I'm not surprised. I like paramedics, they're good people. Wonder if we've met before.

"It's not fair," Lance goes on, "He'll draw himself up any identity or certification, but he STILL won't write my essays for me."

"Lance, you are more than capable of writing your own essays," Shiro says.

"See, that's Shiro's fatal flaw, he believes in people too much," Lance whispers loudly to me.

"Or maybe just you," Keith jabs.

"Hey! Shut up, goatface!"

"I see none of you can cool it for our new friend," Shiro says. He doesn't say it nastily but everyone looks guilty all of a sudden.

"I mean, do we really want to falsely advertise ourselves?" Lance peeps.

"No, it's okay," I jump in. "I kind of like it here."

Did I really just say that?

But I guess it was a good thing to say because everyone looks pleased by it. Well. Hunk's still not back yet. But, it's a strange feeling, making all these people happy in this piece of shit apartment on this piece of shit couch. They keep calling me their friend…

The only friends I've ever had have been Matt's, reassigned to me. And I don't talk to any of them anymore. Maybe it's time I pick up a couple of my own.

Lance gives me a side-hug and another cookie.