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Somehow, Dani and Jude had settled into a routine. She didn't share her morning jog with many people, considering it sacred and essential to her starting her day off on the right foot, but she really liked Jude. He was like the older brother she'd never had, and even though they hadn't known one another very long, she didn't want to let him slip away after a few encounters as senshi, never to be heard from again. Dani wasn't all that determined to keep in touch with too many people, and the fact that she wanted to stick around Jude said something. Naturally, since she'd made up her mind, he didn't have much choice in the matter.

She'd been delighted to learn that he enjoyed exercise as much as she did, and had declared him her running buddy from then on out. If she was going to try out for track (which she so was) it would be nice to have someone encourage her to constantly push her limits. Heck, Jude was a pretty in shape sort of guy; once she found out what else he did, she might have to pester him to pass on some wisdom to her.

She could always stand to learn how to fight better, after all, and she was much more inclined to ask Jude than anyone else. Certainly not any of those prissy-pants senshi she'd met prior to him, she thought with a scowl.

Breath puffing out evenly, forming mists in front of their faces as they rounded the corner, Dani asked suddenly, "So, have you like, apologized yet?"

He knew what she was talking about.

She was willing to bet that, being a man, he hadn't. Of course, being a man didn't have much to do with it, because Dani loathed having to admit she'd been wrong and apologize, but she thought the stereotype fit in this instance, and she was not above using it. Stereotypes were stereotypes for a reason, right?

Dani could only stand to hear so much about Hero before she felt like tying her pigtails around her head and blocking Jude's voice out of her head forever. By the time she'd gotten a word in edgewise, she felt like she was the one who had pursued, dated, loved, and broken up with Hero, not Jude. It was a little bit weird, considering she wasn't into chicks at all, but that was beside the point.

She understood the concept of heartbreak. Had never felt it, but imagined it must be like, the worst thing ever. She felt bad for Jude, she really did. She knew that if she was Hero and her boyfriend had broken up with her for her own good, she'd be well and truly pissed, and wouldn't have let it happen. But she wasn't Hero. She also hadn't dated Hero, which she sometimes had to remind herself of during the conversation.

Awkward, right? Right.

"I don't know, Jude." Puff, puff. She sounded mildly irritated. "You have time to jog with me."

Puff. Not that she was complaining.

"I think you're just not making time."

Dani could be harsh.

She was also tired of hearing about Hero.

If she ever started acting like this over a boy, she wanted someone to shoot her in the head. Just put her out of her misery, put everyone else out of their misery. She didn't have a lot of patience for what she was beginning to secretly refer to as "Hero, side B" of Jude's mental cassette tape, and she wasn't a girl who had a lot of patience to begin with unless she thought it was really worth it.

It was a testament to her affection for him that she'd waited as long as she had to scowl and sock him in the arm.

"Jude." There it was: that sassy lilt that only a teenage girl could manage to utter perfection. "Focus. Grayson is not Hero, we are talking about Grayson. Please stop detouring or I will push you into the lake."

It was frozen. That did not mean she wouldn't push him into it. She would just have to go all She Hulk on the ice and break it first, which did not bode well fro Jude.

"I'm sure no one is going to shoot you in Destiny City." She scowled, thought about it some more, lifted her shoulders. "Okay, that's not totally true. But I meant, like, Grayson's parents wouldn't shoot you. Not if you were there to apologize."

She thought about her own father, tried to imagine him shooting anyone out of anger. She just couldn't do it. He was much more likely to freeze them out, do something absolutely horrifying that couldn't be traced back to him, and let them live. Yeah, if her dad had ever decided to pursue a life of crime or whatever, she could see him being pretty calculating and cold blooded about it.

Good thing he was an accountant.

"So, all you're saying is, you just haven't had the chance?" She sounded skeptical, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "If you had time, you'd sit down with him and work things out, right?"

Dani aimed him another killing look, and this time, she raised her fist, but didn't connect. Hitting someone only solved the problem half the time, was her personal philosophy, and sometimes just the threat of a hit was enough to get the point across.

"You know, that's exactly why women have to get in on it. Men don't solve problems like women, which is the problem, duh." She rolled her eyes. "If they did, they wouldn't have these problems."

The logic was perfectly stellar to her. Of course it wouldn't be to a man, but what could she expect? He was a man, and therefore, genetically inferior. Or something like that.

"Okay, so, go." She stopped suddenly, pigtails whipping in front of her, and pointed. Sure enough, there was Grayson, sitting on a bench with one leg crossed over the other, his hands curled around a steaming cup of... something. With a candy cane sticking out.

He looked like he'd been there for a while, but hadn't noticed them. His hair was tucked under a knit cap, and he had a big scarf wound around his neck, one that looked like it had seen a lot of years of love. Despite the hat and scarf, it looked like he'd forgotten gloves; it was no wonder he was holding a hot drink, likely attempting to keep his hands warm.

Dani expelled a long breath, looking triumphant. "Go get him, tiger."

Did Jude really want to go there?

Did he really want to ask Dani how she knew it was Grayson?

She gave him a look that expressed all of this and more, wondering if he had forgotten just who he was talking to. This was Dani, loud-mouthed and bossy, pushy and opinionated, but good-hearted at the core of it. She was also mostly shameless, and didn't hesitate when she had an idea that she thought was a good one.

So, she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "GRAYSON!"

His head snapped up, looking around quickly, before his eyes fell on the pair of them. He shifted, uncrossing his legs and placing both feet flat against the ground, then seemed to feel uncomfortable and crossed them again. After a moment, he rolled the cup into one hand, lifted the other in a wave.

Smirking, Dani turned, hands on her hips. "Pretty sure it's Grayson."

It was a very distressing time in Grayson's life when he couldn't sleep.

Ever since his conversation (conversation? in what universe?) with Jude, Grayson had been plagued with fitful sleep. He couldn't blame it on his injuries, because they weren't even really injuries anymore. On his shoulder and sides, there was the pinkish evidence that he had been wounded, but otherwise, he was fine. Soon enough, he wouldn't even be able to tell where the youma had touched him. So, that wasn't the problem.

It was also not, remarkably, his fight with Jude. That had plagued him while awake, while he'd run through the words over and over and mentally kicked himself for how poorly it had been handled. He felt he'd lost something with Jude, and the worst part was, it was his fault. He knew it was his fault, because he'd lost his temper, something he tried so hard to never do, and he'd reacted like a child.

Still, it wasn't his fight with Jude or the youma that was giving him trouble sleeping. It was the dreams he'd mentioned, fleetingly, while talking to Jude. The dreams that felt a little more like memories than they had before, that were still just as confusing as they had ever been, but were now more intense, more vivid. He'd woken at least twice last night, first feeling as though he'd just run a hundred miles, and the second time, around four in the morning, so terribly sad that he'd almost cried for no real reason that he could discover.

He wondered what was going on with him, but he couldn't remember the dreams well enough to decipher it. Arguably, he couldn't do anything about them if he didn't even know their content, so he'd done his best to forget about them. He hadn't been able to go back to sleep, though.

It showed, a little in his face. His eyes had the beginnings of shadows under them, and there was a general tiredness to his expression that no amount of coffee would help. He told himself that was why he wasn't drinking coffee, but the real truth was, he liked cocoa better.

But none of that had to do with the fact that he was sitting on a bench, staring mutely up at Jude Lawson, one hand slowly turning the peppermint stick in circles in his cocoa.

Jude.

He'd thought about how to handle this, but hadn't expected the moment would come quite so soon. He was ashamed of himself, that was certain, and had already decided to apologize for losing his temper and provoking Jude, but with the opportunity before him, he didn't quite know how to begin.

So, he stared a few moments longer, then lifted his own shoulders. A shrug, a helpless motion? It was difficult to tell.

"Hey." He licked his lips, mentally cursing himself for forgetting chapstick. The winter always dried them out.

He uncrossed his legs again, patted the bench next to him. It was a big bench. "Do you want to sit?"

Grayson hadn't really expected him to sit, so he didn't really react to it. He was also pretty tired from not getting nearly enough sleep, so he didn't have the energy for all the deep emotional wounds and righteous anger he'd entertained while they fought. He simply nodded, hands going back to turning the cocoa cup around in slow circles, the peppermint stick rolling about the inside casually.

He did have the energy for a slightly undignified grunt when Jude punched him. The motion was an old one, one that he wouldn't have blinked twice at any other time, but it felt a little... almost nostalgic, then. Simpler times, he told himself, were what he was being reminded of. The times when Jude would punch him in the arm and tell him to man up, and he'd only be vaguely irritated at the punch, still mostly liking the man.

Not having all of this excess swirling around. The admiration and debt he felt for Jude, the annoyance and resentment that nearly equaled it at times. The odd, deep sort of caring that was sneaking up on him all the time, that seemed so obvious now that he thought back on all the times he'd ever been around Jude, but had been hidden from him then.

The added baggage didn't many a conversation like this any easier.

"It's all right." He looked down at his hands, knuckles white from the cold, and brought the cocoa to his lips.

He lowered it to his lap again and looked back up, the ghost of a smile on the edges of his mouth. "I'm sorry for hitting you before."