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"Stealth really isn't your strong suit," Charlie marvelled. He hadn't ever been a student at Hillworth, trying to break out, of course, but Simon was a senshi. They both were senshi. Surely it was doable.

They were silent for a few minutes. Charlie studied Simon's eyes, sometimes -- huge, Emerald City green ones, that darted away any time they both happened to be looking at each other at the same time. That was awkward, too -- which Charlie hated -- so he mostly looked down at the table and shook his empty coffee cup to see if it had become miraculously not-empty since he had last checked. It never did.

Charlie had asked the meeting so they could exchange information -- who Sailor Thuban knew, who Sailor Atlas knew, who they'd each fought, what they each knew about what was going on. (Thanks to Miriam Jacobs, this was quite a bit more for Charlie than it used to be.)

Finally, staring away at the salt and pepper shakers, he opted to speak. "You can't go on like you're doing now, with the cats," he said quietly. "I know you think you can, but you can't. When you're powered up, you can't just run errands. You remember why they wanted to kill you in the park? Before. The first time we met."

"That's dodging the truth," Charlie answered. "That's kind of a half-truth, that's a -- a turtle-waxed truth. They were willing to kill you all, and it had nothing to do with you -- just to get me to walk into a trap. Which I did, because I didn't have any other choice. They knew that. The point is, Simon." He paused for a moment. Using Simon's first name felt strange, halted him a bit. But this was important. "The point is, they're trying to get to us, to kill us. Right now they can't do much, because we're just costumes, we show up out of nowhere, so they're limited to public places to try and draw us out, places where we'd see them. But when your picture's in the paper because you're making costumed dropoffs at an animal shelter, that's an invitation for them to torture the photographer who took the photo, to -- to murder the people who work there just to try and find out who you are. You can't -- " But Charlie found he couldn't just say 'you can't,' so he said instead, "You'll have to figure something else out."

This was deeply awkward.

There were good times and bad times to admit things to oneself. For example, if you are driving in a car, and you see a sign for a rest stop, and the sign says "Next Rest Stop: 54 Miles," then that is a good time to admit to yourself that you are hopelessly lost and should ask for directions. Or, if a madman is chasing you down the beach and you dive off a pier into the water to evade capture or harm, then that is an absolutely terrible time to admit to yourself that you do not know how to swim.

Having just accused Simon of causing a woman's death in the process of being charitable to stray animals in winter, furthering the point that Simon should begin turning a blind eye to stray animals in winter lest this precipitate more death, it was in all ways beyond obvious that this -- this very moment -- was an astoundingly bad time for Charlie to admit to himself that he was attracted to Simon Ferris.

But no one could unring a bell -- not even Sailor Thuban, for whom time occasionally crept just a little, tiny bit backward. So there it was, and there was no denying that now. Stage One, Denial of Fact: Complete. Stage Two, Avoidance of Fact: Initiated. It was definitely not the first time he'd ever been attracted to a boy, or the first time he'd taken that knowledge and stuffed it down a garbage disposal and left it there to be puréed out of existence. It was something you did, especially if you wanted to survive high school. It was just -- really inconvenient. Awkward and inconvenient.

"How about if you start dropping your strays off outside the police station from now on? The cops can take care of themselves." Charlie hadn't meant to say this. He hadn't even given this consideration before their conversation had started; what he'd meant was 'how about if you forget about Atlas's Kitten Delivery Service and fight some actual crime?' This whole business was inconvenient. He wished someone else would deal with it.

The silence dragged on awhile, until Charlie was pretty sure he couldn't continue to stand it. He looked at his coffee cup -- empty, still -- he checked his watch, he dragged a hand through his hair -- but this just shook it into wispy disarray in his own face, so he had to reach up and then tuck the long strands behind his ears again. Charlie watched Simon's beer-bottle-green irises flickering around in their sockets like insects trapped in a glass jar, not trying to see several things at the same time but apparently trying to avoid several things at the same time.

"I can take you to meet Sailor Nerissa, Sailor Magellan, and Kunzite," he finally opted to change topics, "but Magellan and Kunzite are both injured right now. It's hazardous work, so that's not surprising." Charlie tugged reflexively on the cuff of his sweatshirt sleeve, under which was an ace bandage, under which was a stab wound from his last outing with Sailor Atlas. He'd been lucky.

Kunzite took some explaining, so Charlie made his best attempt -- at one point, Simon's eyes seemed to be glazing over with possible information overload, but then, at another, they went wide: Kunzite killed a corrupted senshi named Sailor Nova. Charlie went on to cover how this had landed Miriam in the hospital, how long it might take her to recover, how well she was doing. Charlie hoped Miriam and Simon would get along.

He wondered who Simon knew, what he got up to in his spare time other than when Charlie dragged him out to a coffeeshop. He'd spent some time as a senshi, Charlie had gathered that much -- but how much, he didn't know. "Tell me about the people you've met. We can pool together the things we know."

"Alright, well," Charlie answered, mentally trying to store these names and their related aliases away for later, "alright. So we'll exchange information and -- or, well, no, I guess we already did that -- " (Charlie tried to ignore how stupid he was sounding.) " -- so I'll talk to my, to the people I know, and arrange some times for meetups, and I'll call you. And you do the same and call me, that'll work." He checked his watch like he had to go, though the truth was, he didn't have any particular plans. He just wanted an escape plan, something that wouldn't feel so awkward. "Was there anything else you're not telling me?"