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It had been a very long day for Tate and Parker.

She picked him up from Hillworth that morning, and as per usual, he was absolutely exhausted. The constant patrolling was really starting to take its toll. He looked like s**t, he could use a shower, and his grades were slipping substantially. He actually had to do extra credit just to pass his math class, and it was one of his best subjects. With the prospect of college a fuzzy blur of light in the distance, Parker didn't feel much inspiration to work hard in school. After all, he was working his a** off defending civilians every night. Too bad he couldn't get extra credit for that.

After spending the day painting their respective bedrooms, Parker and Tate had earned a little relaxation. He suggested video games. To his immense surprise, Tate said no. To video games.

THE WORLD IS ENDING.

Okay, so maybe not, but it was still surprising. Tate insisted that they go outside and drink in the approach of summer at the beach. If he had been more rested, Parker might have objected, but he was still paying dues for bringing a cat into the apartment without asking first.

So, with a deal of sighing and complaining, Parker hopped into Tate's car and rode out to the beach with her. It was 3:00 in the afternoon, and most of the beach-goers had gone for the day. A few brightly colored beach tolls spotted the beige sand, and Parker added his own to the mix, tossing it unceremoniously to the ground.

He turned to look at Tate. "It's hot," he said. "But the water is still too cold. This is a bad time for the beach." In Parker's eyes, swimming at the beach was always bad. He might not be ghostly pale, but Parker wasn't a swim suit model either. He peeled his converses off his feet (the boy did not own flip-flops) and tugged at the sleeve of his white t-shirt.

A t-shirt that he intended to keep on for the duration of the visit.

Ever since the battle with the youma monster, Parker had felt guilty around Tate. If he hadn't of tackled her, she wouldn't have gotten a concussion. Granted, if he hadn't of tackled her, something much worse could have happened. He was still new to the senshi business, and oftentimes, he ended up doing a little accidental damage to civilians. He'd gotten better about it, sure, but it didn't mean he never slipped.

It was just unfortunate that his most recent slip had been with his roommate.

They hadn't really talked about it, except for Parker to give her his side of the story once. It was all true. He just left out the part about him being the senshi who saved her life. It was very difficult for Parker to not tell Tate about his senshi identity. She was his roommate, for one, and it would only be more difficult to hide it when he officially graduated from Hillworth and moved in permanently. But he had no choice. This was for her protection and his.

Lost in his own thoughts, Parker didn't register what Tate asked him at first, only that her face had grown serious. He frowned, and then his ears caught up with his mind. "Nothing's wrong," he said, a reflex. In truth, it was clear that something was off. Parker looked absolutely haggard. If not for his relatively new clothes, he could be mistaken for a homeless teenager. His boss at GeekSquad had written him up for it, but Parker sold him a sob story about him being ill recently. It bought him sympathy.

Tate, however, would be a harder sell. Parker glanced down to the sand. "I don't know," he said, voice darkening. "I just feel like I have a lot on my plate. I'm tired all of the time, but I can't sleep at night." He shrugged. What else could he say? He ignored the senshi comment, the drug one too. Both were sore spots for him.

The water was cool, but not as cold as Parker expected. It washed over his toes in lapping waves. The no-sleep thing was true. Whenever he laid down at night, even on nights when he swore he wouldn't go out and fight, Parker could not bring himself to relax and pass out. He knew that part of that had to do with the nightmares he'd been having lately. In the latest set, he had to watch Tanzanite eat Dani with her youma arm over and over again. It was enough to scare away any peace.

Parker sighed. "Jaimie is fine. We live together fine." That was an understatement. Parker had been terrorized by all his previous roommates. Living with Jaimie had been a dream. "When I lay down, I can't make myself sleep. I just lay there and think about things. Everything. Our apartment and where I'm going to get my furniture. Dani and where we'll go on our next date. College and how I failed to get in anywhere..." These were all valid concerns. He just cut out all of the senshi ones like "am I going to die tonight" and "will I fail to save a friend."

His eyes strayed to Tate. "Something like that." A melancholy smirk crossed his lips. He was tired of the spotlight. "Well, and what about you? Ivan is calling a lot." This was technically bringing up the laundry room incident, but Parker thought it was still a better alternative to the present issue.

Dumping sand on Parker would not irritate him. It only made him smile a little. Sometimes he wondered if he would have greater power in a fight on the beach, but he dismissed the thought quickly. In theory, he could ask Derp, but he could hardly trust the guardian cat to walk straight, let alone answer questions in the direct way he preferred.

Parker scooped up a handful of sand and dumped it on Tate's feet. "I'm there most of the time." That wasn't true. If he was at the apartment, Dani was usually there too, which meant he wasn't giving Tate much attention. That would change when he actually made the apartment his primary home. Probably.

"You're a rulebreaker. Do you feel brave?" He quirked an eyebrow, slipping back into a familiar dynamic. "They're just careful. They're doctors. It's their job to tell you not to do things."

He shrugged again, dismissive. Parker grabbed another handful of sand and dumped it on her feet. It looked like she was wearing sandals made out of sand. This made him smirk, if only to himself. When she started on about shark attacks, Parker nodded. He was a fan of reading up on Darwin Awards and freak accidents. So what? What he didn't expect was for that to segue into a discussion of the Negaverse.

Before he learned he was a senshi, Parker had talked to Tate about the terrorists, but never in too specific terms. She might have known he was in the hospital, or that he'd been injured, but Parker never told her who put him there. At the same time, he had to be careful not to be too polarized against them. The regular Parker was a pretty apathetic guy, and prior to his role as Taranis, he had declared both sides morally bankrupt and problematic.

That perspective had changed.

Parker stopped dumping sand on Tate. He stared at his bare toes. "The Negaverse kill people. The Negaverse are, for lack of a better word, evil." It was hard to look at her, but Parker forced himself to do it. "I never told you this, Tate, but back in October when I was in the hospital, I was not attacked by a monster. I was attacked by Negaverse agents. They tried to kill me, and senshi saved me." Well, the senshi had indirectly saved him, but he wasn't going to split hairs. "I don't think the senshi are all good. It's impossible to be all good, but I know that they save people while the Negaverse kills. I could've died. They wanted to kill me." He held her gaze, then relaxed it back to his feet.

"What do you think about them?"

Parker frowned when she slapped him with wet sand. He brushed it away, but the frown stayed. Why didn't she sound more convinced? Was it... was it possible that Tate was... on the other side?

Jesus.

He had never considered the possibility that his future roommate was anything other than a civilian. If she was a senshi, then she would have fought the youma off on her own. And if she was a Negaverse agent, then it would not have attacked her in the first place. So what was this, just idle curiosity? Or was she being recruited to the Negaverse?

A shadow crossed Parker's eyes. Tate was hanging out with a Negaverse agent. Tate was friends with a Negaverse agent. How was that even possible? "Tate, it isn't like that. If they kill people, then they're bad. That's it. It's like being a Nazi soldier during WWII. You might not have wanted to be there, but once you were, you had to follow orders." Was he being too open? Too passionate? Parker was an apathetic person, but it was clear that he was not comfortable with Tate hanging around the Negaverse. They had tried to kill him, granted. That was enough of a reason, senshi allegiance aside.

He raked a hand through his hair and sighed. "It's dangerous out there. I mean, I've been attacked. You've been attacked. People die all the time. And you are, what -- getting buddy-buddy with a person who is on the side known to kill people?" A bubble of anger rose in his throat, but he swallowed it down. He could get to passionate. He could risk her seeing beneath it. He had to play a role.

"I mean, no one is truly innocent. No one is truly evil. No one is truly good. But Negaverse kill. That is a fact." Parker shrugged. He wanted to say so much more, but he was afraid of treading into dangerous water. Cerulean eyes fixed her with a stern look. "Wolfram. He's a friend? How'd you meet him?" Parker highly doubted it had been a casual encounter.

Parker had many things he wanted to say to Tate, too many things. It was odd to dance between wanted to tell her everything and wanting to say nothing. Both were dangerous, but for different reasons.

So he didn't speak. Not at first. His hand twisted in the sand between them, creating a small mound between them. He pictured the sand bending into a ball and spinning in the palm of his hand. It wasn't a hard image to create.

A long sigh spilled from Parker's lips. He dropped his hands in his lap. "Morality is contraband in war," he said with a shrug. It was a Ghandi quote. Parker didn't expound on it. This was his defense mechanism; he was uncomfortable.

Parker started to play with the sand again. "You can't trust him, Tate," he said, quietly. "If one wants to kill you, then they all do. Don't you see that? It's not me being your dad. It's me being a friend." His eyes searched her face for something, though he wasn't sure what.

"It wasn't Wolfram who saved you in the laundromat. It was a senshi." Parker looked out over the ocean. "Remember that."

What part of this was a war? All of it. Everything. The senshi were fighting with the Negaverse over the most precious natural resource the Earth had to offer: starseeds. Every night Parker practically got his a** handed to him all so that the terrible, thankless, hapless, and flawed could live to breathe another day. He saved people he would have avoided like the plague in his civilian life. He saved regardless of race, age, nationality, or orientation. As Sailor Taranis, Parker was the ******** United Nations, okay?

It was a damn shame he couldn't say a word of this to Tate.

Parker frowned. Frowns suited him. "It feels like war to me, and we're caught in the middle." He looked at her. "You and me." It bothered Parker to no end that Tate had befriended a Negaverse agent, and not just out of fear for her well-being. If this was someone she was bringing around his apartment, then it put him at great risk too. What if this Wolfram ever saw Taranis slip into Parker's bedroom and never come out? What then? He might be sparing Tate for god knows what reason, but there was not a Negaverser alive that would be allowed to spare a senshi and live. This was what Parker had been told at least.

The ocean was calm that day, serene. The waves lapped in sighs, and the wind whirled cool air through Parker's hair. It reminded him he needed a hair cut. Soon. "I won't talk about the laundromat. Or that other stuff. You just do me one favor?" His voice was hard, but not angry. It was almost sad. "Ask him how many civilians have died at his hands. Just ask him that and then tell me he's a good person."

Parker got to his feet, brushing the sand off of his hands. "It's getting late," he said. It wasn't. They had barely been there twenty minutes. "We should get back." This conversation had drained whatever stamina was left in Parker. He had to talk to Dani about this immediately.