Lily woke up surprisingly early. Normally, Nickel was the earlier riser and would wake her up for the day, but not so on this occasion.

She guessed it was her turn to wake him up, she thought as she walked out of her bedroom and into the living room, where Nickel always slept.

Nickel was weird like that. The house they'd found had two bedrooms, and she could (and did) have the smaller one to herself, but he still didn't take the other one. He'd explained his decision by saying that if someone stayed over, they had a room that wasn't constantly being used by either of them.

Weirder than that was his decision not to sleep on the couch, especially since it was big enough for him to fit on it. The chair he had decided on was not. Maybe it was because he didn't want to mess up the couch either, but that was just Lily's theory.

Yet weirder still was his sleeping position. More than half of his body was hanging off the chair, apparently being supported by only his left knee, which was on the floor. Despite that, both feet and both hands were on the chair's cushions. His head was sideways, turned toward the seat back, partially underneath his pillow. His tail was hooked around his right leg as if to anchor him to the chair. He looked rather silly and it was no real surprise that his long fur was spectacularly frayed. How he could sleep like that, without falling down and ending up on the floor, Lily had no idea.

She copied his way of waking her up: she shook his shoulder and said, "Good morning, mister Nickel."

Way, way faster than she ever would, he opened the eye that wasn't firmly planted into the chair. He made a sound and flipped himself back up onto the chair, on his back, his gangly legs stretching out and over the armrest.

"You're up early," he commented.

She nodded. "Why were you sleeping like that?"

Nickel shrugged with his face. "Because I can, to be honest. I can sleep almost anywhere and any way I want. It's a power I have - well, besides this." He sat up, before lightly electrifying his finger and ghost-booping her, a spark flying from him to her nose; she felt the tiny jolt and jumped back a little, squeaking in surprise. "Sorry. I always wanted to do that."

Halfway through his last statement, his voice became a lot deeper - a change which he noticed, too. "Oh. My voice is doing this thing again."

"Again?" Lily asked, slightly bemused.

"Yeah. Sometimes, when I wake up, this happens. It goes away, though - when I wake up enough. Maybe you could call it another power of mine, who knows. Now I can sound like an edgelord." He paused. "I'm Shadow the Hedgehog, the Ultimate Lifeform. I am the most powerful person in the universe. Fear me."

Half of his impression of Shadow was nearly drowned out by Lily's guffawing. She had tried not to laugh at his "edgelord" comment, but the sentence that followed had made her corpse. "Mister Nickel!" she said through her laughs. "Mister Shadow doesn't sound like that!"

"Of course not, his voice isn't deep enough." She choked out another laugh at that, but the other source of her giggles overpowered it. "Come on," he continued. "Even if we're not going anywhere today, we should at least look half-decent." He looked himself over. "Probably slightly better than I do now."

.

Lily hadn't counted on the day being so hot.

Her mouth was hanging open ever so slightly, she could feel uncomfortable beads of sweat slip down her face; despite having a bright fur colour, she was being thoroughly fried like a fish by the noonday sunshine, and Nickel had said that it would get worse as the day wore on.

Speaking of the rust-coloured feline, he was sitting next to her outside - she'd asked to move outside to a nearby bench by the sidewalk just for some fresh air, and even that was unhelpful - looking mildly irked as a hot breeze blew against the two of them. He muttered something about his hair as he brushed it out of his face and turned his head away from her and toward the wind.

"Mister Nickel, aren't you hot?" Lily asked him.

"No, 'm not. At least, I don't feel hot," he replied without turning. "Are you?"

"Yes!" she half-shouted, before catching herself and repeating. "Yes, I am." She tugged on his hoodie's arm, and subsequently he looked at the hand she was pulling and then at her.

"Yes, Lily?"

She didn't answer, instead choosing to wonder silently how he could wear a hoodie on a sweltering day and not feel hot.

Nickel apparently sensed her musings, and he spoke up again. "Put your hand on m' neck."

Lily cocked her head to the side. It was a strange thing for him to say, but she raised her hand in compliance, turning it so that the back was what touched him (at his behest).

She pulled away after a short while, very surprised. She wasn't expecting much to be conveyed, especially through her gloves, but she could feel that he was positively burning up, as though he had a fever. She pulled her hand away, almost with urgency.

"I'm warm, amn't I?" he questioned. She nodded. "Yeah. That's kinda why I don't feel the heat all that much. I'm just a really warm person."

"You feel like you have a fever," she commented.

"I've heard that a couple times. There was a time, when I was a tiny little kitten..."

.

.

.

One thing that Lily had come to know about Nickel was his reaction to sudden touches. It was a bit of a long story, but to make it short, trying to tag him without him knowing was a surefire way to get him a little agitated.

What she didn't expect was for him to react in a similar manner to touches in general.

They were still sitting on that bench, the day now much cooler, when a woman approached them and touched Nickel on the right shoulder. He visibly flinched as he turned to face her. Lily followed suit.

"Oh. My apologies, I didn't mean to startle you. I was hoping you'd know where to find the train station."

Lily and Nickel pointed to their left, and Lily said, "It's that way."

"Thank you ever so much." She went on her way, and once she was far enough away Lily noticed Nickel doing something a little strange: he was rubbing the spot where he'd been touched, like there was something stuck to him there. She didn't question anything, until someone else came by. It was a Paris green bear, one with whom Nickel seemed familiar.

"Yo, Nickel!"

"Yo," Nickel answered. "Why're ya here, Barros?"

"I'm just checkin' up on ya. Can't never visit your friends too much, ya know?"

"Fairs." Nickel turned to Lily. "This is Lily. She's m' good friend."

"Hi!" she greeted jovially.

"Hey, nice to meet ya," Barros said in return. "Hope Nickel's not been washin' ya away with his jokes."

"I've told you plenty of jokes, and I don't see you lost in the ocean somewhere." Barros got a good laugh from that; Lily tried not to follow suit too loudly.

"Alright. See ya later, man," the bear said after his laughs, slapping Nickel on the arm before walking off. Nickel rubbed his arm in a similar manner to that in which he had his shoulder.

"Mister Nickel, why do you keep doing that?" Lily asked finally.

"Doing what?"

Lily gestured to his left hand, which was still on his other arm. "You keep rubbing the places where people touch you."

"Oh, that." Nickel shifted his left hand away from its position, but for some reason he put it back and continued to rub his right arm. "The thing is, I'm kinda uncomfortable with touches. Every time someone touches my arm, or whatever, it feels like there's a mark there that I need to get rid of.

"It's more okay if I know it's coming, but unexpected touches, especially very light touches, make me feel kinda..." He paused and fixed his sleeves. "Kinda awful, honestly. Like I say, it's like there's a mark I need to scrub off."

Lily did not know this about her big friend.

"Yeah. So that's why I always rub places people touch. It's also why I fix my sleeves all the time." Nickel looked away from her. "It's dumb, I know, and I look like a crazy person when I do it." Lily forced down a smile - now wasn't the time to dwell on a joke. "But it just is. You can touch me, but just know that I might do that."

Lily didn't know what to say to that. It was almost like he was afraid of being touched. "Okay, mister Nickel. I'll try to remember," she finally said.

"Thanks, Lily. For understanding." She got a head pat from him.

"You're welcome!" Well, she didn't mind being touched at all, and certainly not Nickel giving her head pats. She'd just have to remember that he wasn't so receptive.