A/N: Screw it. I’m going to have some type of music dedicated to each chapter. This time? Cloud Cult. Gaah. So GOOD. Also: there’s a bit of a Kurt Vonnegut/Slaughter-House Five reference in here. If you can catch it, I’ll be completely blown out of the water by your amazing…ness. I’m going for kind of a choppy-almost-but-not-really-descriptive feel here. Let me know how I do.

A grin twitches the corner of his mouth as he reaches up a hand, nearly touching her. Not quite.

“I think I may know how to make you not sad.”

Mae watches him.

“How?”

Just before brushing his fingertips along the scar he created, a blur occurs and directly after it, in his other hand, he holds two black rubber boots.

Mae’s Wellingtons. The ones she discarded the last time she visited the Poppy Warriors.

“I will give these back to you for free.”

“What? How did you-“ she snorts. “Never mind,” she grumbles, snatching the footwear out of his grasp.

“Are you happy now?”

Mae watches him carefully.

“Yes, Azreal. I’m very happy.”

“Well, alright then.”

Even after he disappears, Mae has trouble sleeping that night.

XXX

Trotting into the kitchen the next morning, Wes is nowhere to be found. Mae frowns and scratches her head.

“Wes?”

“Down here!” comes a voice from down there.

“Why are you in the club?” she calls as she begins the descent down the stairs.

“Because nobody ever orders food down here, and it’s got kick-butt stoves.”

“So?”

“So, I’m making breakfast, dummy.”

“Oh.” She emerges onto a strange scene. There’s this thing about night clubs. Mostly, they’re meant to be seen at night. Which makes a night club lit by the sometimes-graceless light of the day a bit awkward.

Wes, in plaid pajama pants and a white shirt, is standing in front of an electric stove with a frying pan. Frying pans, incidentally, make very good weapons. In case you were curious, my friend.

“What time is it?” She yawns.

“Five in the morning.”

“What?!”

She nearly thwacks him on the arm, but instead hobbles over to a couch and falls onto it, face-first, one arm trailing on the floor.

“Don’t friggin’ wake me up until it’s at least six.”

“You’re just going to sleep on the couch?”

“Shut up!” She almost roars.

Wes raises a single eyebrow. “Well, eggs when you want ‘em.”

She raises her head. “Eggs?”

Wes’s scrambled eggs are Mae’s weakness. No, I mean she really, really likes the way he makes scrambled eggs, which is no way in particular. He just…fries them. That’s all.

It is probably because Mae tends to burn things when she cooks them herself.

Well, it’s not as if anyone ever taught her how to cook.

Personally, I make killer scrambled eggs (you can interpret that how you wish), but no one really asked me, did you?

Wes grins. “Eggs. As many as you want.”

“Mm…” she thinks about it. “Wake me up in…half an hour.”

“How?”

“What?”

“How should I wake you up?”

“Will I regret saying ‘I don’t care’?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Surprise me, then.”

XXX

Wes sighs. Half an hour seemed to pass excruciatingly quickly. Surprise me? What? What does that even…mean? Can he surprise her with a kiss? That would be surprising, to say the least, would it not?

Wes sighs. No, no. He is a good friend.

He has an epiphany.

Moments later, ‘Fairytale’ is being forcibly…well, forced out of the surround-sound speakers, giving Mae a rude awakening, but not quite so rude as some other possible options.

“Cloud Cult? This early in the morning?”

Wes shrugs. Where he is, behind the stage, his face is lit by the tiny fluorescent buttons. Mae thinks he is pretty. She thinks this a lot.

She sees a glass of water, left by a late-to-leave patron last night.

The water is dead. Little bubbles of air cling to the sides, trying to escape. So it goes.

She blinks to eliminate resident sleep in her eyes, sliding off the couch slowly. The grainy texture of the furniture grates on her back, serving to a degree to help wake her up.

“Here you go,” he says, sliding a plate in front of her before going back to washing dishes and glasses.

Mae takes a few large bites of her food and enjoys it immensely. As she eats, she watches her friend. A blotchy line of soap water marks where he presses up against the sink. His hair, still in little arrows around his head, is wet from taking a shower even earlier that morning.

When she finishes, she brings the dish up to the sink. She places it on the side, on top of the already existent stack, and comes up to Wes from his side. She wraps her arms around him and kisses his shoulder.

“Sorry about last night. I was…weird.”

“I expect nothing less from you, kitten.”

“Okay, that’s a nickname that needs to be culled.”

“Aw.” Wes smiles and wiggles his arm out of Mae’s grasp so that he can put it around her shoulders.

“If you want to use my bathroom for a shower before school, you should probably do it now.”

She moans. “I’m not going to school today.”

“What? Why not?”

She pauses. “Because…I’m sick.” To emphasize just how sick she is, she coughs.

“Come on. Off with ye. Education is important.” He shrugs her off his shoulder, still smiling. With the sleep-drunk steps of a zombie, she trudges up the stairs. Each step feels like she’s wading through shampoo.

XXX

“You’re sure you don’t mind giving me a ride?”

“It’s not like I have anything to do today besides inventory. And, frankly, I’d prefer to procrastinate for as long as possible for that.”

Mae laughs as she clips on her helmet and seats herself behind her friend.

On the motorcycle ride to the school, Wes will accidentally awaken three dogs and one six-month-old baby, all of which rather needed their sleep. Oh, well, nothing to be done about it.

XXX

Mae sighs. She is not looking forward to going to school today. She doesn’t feel prepared for the inevitable barrage of questions:

Is that guy your boyfriend?

No?

Is he seeing anyone?

Why did he call you Mae?

Why does he pay attention to you?

Since when did you have really hot friends of the opposite gender?

Since when did you have friends?

She is hoping against hope that she’ll be able to hide behind Atul for the remainder of the rumors’ circulation, though, inevitably, she will probably end up being choked by at least a couple of them.

“Mary?!”

“Yeah?”

“Oh God, you’re alright. I was so worried.”

Atul runs up to her, or rather, it is a long-legged stride like a loping giraffe. He looks immensely worried.

“I’m so sorry, Mary, I didn’t know he’d found a way out here until he was already out and then I didn’t know where he was going, I had no idea-“

“I’m fine.”

“But-“

She puts her hands on his shoulders, forcing him to look down at her. “Atul. I’m fine. Fine. Completely, utterly, and in all other ways-“ – inconceivable? – “fine.”

He is still breathing hard. His eyes dart all over her face. “Oh. Okay. Oh. Um.”

Mae laughs, and heads for her locker, a shell-shocked Atul dawdling numbly behind her. “I just got…worried.”

“That’s okay. I can see why you would be.”

“Did he ever find you?”

Mae considers his question. “Not…exactly. Not in the way that you’re talking about.”

“What, then?”

She runs her tongue over her teeth, a nervous habit. “It’s not important.”

Atul suspects she is lying.

Atul suspects right.

“Well, regardless. I, um…”

“What?” Mae turns around, her hair flipping behind her head, to meet his eyes.

“I need you to come over to my house today. To help you. There are some things that might be useful to know about-“ he pauses, watches one of the teenage girls walk by a bit too close for comfort, waits until she is out of earshot. “Them. You know.”

Mae bites her lip.

“Oh. Okay.”

A/N: I’m shameless. How am I shameless, you ask? Well, I’ll show you. I just got a FictionPress account (basically the same as FF but for original stuff), and, uhm, I’d like it if anyone were to check out the first chapter of the story I just posted? Please please? Those of you who haven’t already, cough. COUGH. You know who you are.