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The room number that Al had given him didn't actually have a door. Or a proper wall. It had a tarp. Noah really wasn't sure what to do. How did you knock on a tarp? He couldn't just go in without being invited. Was this even the right place? He fidgeted in the hallway for a moment, then called out uncertainly. "Al? Are you there?"

"Um ... okay ... " Noah ducked around the side of the tarp. Then he stopped, taking in the total lack of amenities in the room and the bed-chair-rug-pallet-something that Al was lounging on. "Whoa. That's ... really different from my room," he said, trying to be tactful, because clearly Al liked his room and his unusual bed.

Noah preferred his setup, but for once, he had the sense not to say so. "Cool room," he said instead, and let himself be hauled over to the furs to sit down. "Whoa, really? Real fur?" He ran his fingers through the fur on the top, impressed. "Where'd you get that?"

Noah sparkled a little himself. "That sounds really cool. Is he, like, training you? Or is he just really nice?" This unknown person sounded like an awesome guy.

"Yeah, thank you!" Noah ran his fingers through the fur one more time, then got up to take the shirt. "I don't think I can get more than one more day out of the one I have on. I'll wash this and bring it back as soon as I can," he promised.

"Dude, awesome." Noah held the shirt up and sparkled a little more. "I like bugs. Scorpions aren't insects, you know? They're arachnids, like spiders. The pinchers count as legs, see, eight legs instead of six." A thought occurred to him as he remembered suddenly that Al was rather shorter than him. "Um, should I check if it fits? I mean, I don't want to, like, waste your time if it's the wrong size."

"You could mount them on pins, like, the traditional shadowbox thing," Noah said, his voice briefly muffled as he pulled his shirt off. "That's like a hobby, right? Ooh hey, we go all over the world, right? I bet you could catch some really awesome bugs when you have off time. Or is that wrong?" He pulled the scorpion shirt on and tugged it down. "Are there lots of different bases with other hunters? No, you're Scottish and there's a Russian guy here, so if there were different bases for different areas I bet you'd be somewhere in Europe, that'd make sense."

He paused to assess the fit of the t-shirt. It wasn't quite either short or tight on him, though if his shoulders had been any broader it wouldn't have been a good fit. "What do you think? It's okay, right?"

"Awesome. It's a cool shirt." Noah pulled it back off to change back into his own shirt; he also preferred a looser cut, but he wasn't about to complain when Al was being generous, and anyway the scorpion was cool enough to make up for it.

Once he'd gotten his own shirt back on again, he folded the scorpion shirt and looked over at Al. "Well, I guess there's a lot of other things you need to do with leave, but, um, if you go bug catching, I'd go with you. If that was okay," he added, looking suddenly worried. Maybe inviting himself was too rude. They hadn't been friends long.