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"Public relations sounds... better," he said tentatively, finishing his smoke and flicking the butt to the sidewalk far below, watching its descent with satisfaction. He hauled the window down with his skinny baby-fat arms straining. Not a fighter, indeed.

"I think," he said, in a moment of honesty, "that maybe he wanted you to do that but also to... make me feel... not weird. I feel weird. You know? Like I got drafted into an army I didn't know was there? I went to a military school and it sucked a**. So I guess he wants me to meet people who I like. I like you," he added sincerely, maybe because she was feeding him; maybe because he liked everyone. "So then he shows me that everyone on his side is cool and funny and has great taste in shoes and is devastatingly attractive, and I fall into step. Devious." He flopped onto the futon, making himself completely at home. "Didn't you feel weird? At first."

He didn't suppose in the bigger scheme of things many people would have envied him his life: a shitty job, a shitty apartment, friends who manipulated him as much as they cared for him, a thing which he knew, secretly, to be true, although he denied it. But it had been comfortable, and on the heels of his high school career, it had seemed positively blissful. Ever's arrival hadn't been a rescue. It had been a trainwreck.

"I guess," he said skeptically, chewing a thumbnail absently. "It was my birthday," he added in a small voice, but he didn't let himself linger on it: "Anyway. I can be useful. And I'm making friends. And getting free food, soon," he added cheerily, "and a free apartment, and... yeah. I guess I shouldn't b***h too hard. You can teach me how to punch things in a marginally less-pathetic way and I'm sure I'll... fit right in." Even if he didn't feel meant for it, like she had. "I don't have to salute anyone, anyway. Or haven't yet."

"I look forward to it. I'm sure it'll be just like Karate Kid," he chirped, obediently procuring drinks and flopping down on the floor, although he gave the beanbag chair a sideways and somewhat possessive look as he did so. "You can teach me how to catch flies in chopsticks. I got fast ******** fingers. Comes of all the texting. You should give me your number," he added. "So I can demonstrate, I mean. For science." Like he wasn't already inside her apartment, eating her food. Why bother with a number when you could knock on a door?

That had him scrambling for his phone, because Sawyer wasn't Rain Man, and needed the thing in front of him instantly if he was ever going to preserve it. And sure enough, he did move his thumbs over the screen like he'd been doing it since birth.

"Sent you a text," he informed her, re-pocketing it and reaching for his food again. He ate like a mouse, too: little bites, rapidfire, instead of huge mouthfuls. He talked around his food, though. The text, if checked now, said nothing but "you have cheese on your chin." Probably she did not actually have cheese on her chin. "And I do look forward to it. Maybe I'm a masochist. You don't know. I might be excited." He didn't look excited. He looked unhappy.

"It's really... big." By his standards, anyway. And new. And clean. And full of appliances, with buttons, and a shower that didn't feel like he was being drooled on by a large, lukewarm dog. Terrifying, in other words. It scared him. The fear manifested in the way he slowed down his eating, his worried, distracted eyes absently searching over the wall over her shoulder, looking at nothing.

"It's nice. I'm just not used to it yet. You know how it is after you move. Always a little bit homesick, I guess. But it's... nice. I have to go whip around and introduce myself to all my neighbors. You're the first one. I'll feel better when I know everyone and feel like I can go and knock on a random door and ask for a... cup of flour," he finished skeptically. The idea of Sawyer baking was laughable. The idea of him hesitating to ask a stranger for anything was equally laughable. "I don't know how they afford it? But I also am not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, neither. You are really ******** cute," he added as his eyes actually snapped to her face for a second, his words arriving around an uncouth mouthful of crust. He licked his thumb distractedly. But he dropped that sentence in like a mine in a field, and kept right on going on the previous topic.

"I figure they're holding it over us so we'll feel morally compelled to make ourselves useful. That's fine with me. Sometimes I need a little goading. I am incurably lazy. You have never met a lazier person in your life." He didn't seem lazy: the word seemed difficult to apply to someone full of so many fidgety little movements, so chattery. Even as he spoke he was jiggling his foot on his knee.

He didn't answer, not really. Instead he offered a defensive: "Well, you're not either, really," and polished off the last of the crumbs clinging to his fingers. This led, very naturally, into chewing his fingernails.

"Thanks for dinner," he said. Finally. Sawyer never said thank you until he was sure he'd gotten what he was supposed to be thankful for. "I should probably get out of your hair, since I don't think I'm up for having my a** kicked quite yet."

He didn't need to be asked twice. He was in the process of getting up, shaking out his blazer and straightening his shoelaces, but he instead flopped down on the futon, obligingly patting the spot next to him, like it was his house and his couch.

"Obviously this is an argument I cannot win," he said valiantly, as though she'd been blocking the door for the past half hour instead of making a single open-ended suggestion. "What movie?"

Her fears ended up being misplaced. The combination of food and a new friend and a good movie--because she shouldn't have been worried, because Fix existed almost entirely to absorb children's television and movies--and the half-dispelled fears of a new situation served to make him sleepy and affectionate, and not ten minutes into the movie he'd already managed to insinuate his head onto her lap, feet crossed on the arm of the futon and fingers laced over his belly when he wasn't distractedly chewing them.

He wouldn't remember the ending, later--by that time he was as comfortable as if they'd been friends since the cradle, and he drifted off peacefully with his head on her knee, his last passing thought that he hadn't actually ever told her his name.