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'Normal' was as close as Khaldun could get to describing the way his life had finally become. It was relative, of course. Magical bleeding head injuries weren't normal, neither was forgetting one's entire life a second time around. Living with a senshi was also not a thing he would have ever done in his right mind, but... yeah, he had nothing. Alkaid's kindness had weakened his resolve, but the others spiked his paranoia to an irrational degree still, ever since he'd encountered and helped to convert Tisiphone well over a year ago. Even the ones like Vivianite, who had never been fighting against them before being awakened, weren't the sort of people he'd trust his life to. It was the principle of the thing. Senshi were the enemy.

In their defense though, he had a hard time trusting most anyone with anything, ever, so they weren't winning his little conspiracy theory race by that wide a margin.

Time had become a rather meaningless measurement to him now. There was no civilian identity he needed to keep up any longer. No calendars or appointments, no deadlines or dates. Usually he slept through the day and worked at night, and Kaia would always kick him off the couch if she needed his help any earlier than sundown. Just because he'd regained his senses didn't mean his memory returned to him like before he'd gone complaining to Tanzanite. If anything, it was worse now, noticeably worse, with whole swaths of time simply missing and timelines disjointed. He'd accomplished nothing in that gamble except to wreck his memory further and plague himself with untreatable headaches. He had no way of even comprehending how long it had been since he'd last dropped by Delphine's place. Weeks, in his mind, but in reality it had been almost half a year or more.

All he wanted was a short escape from the monotony of things, without the heavy risk factor of playing magic Russian roulette again and blowing the rest of his brains out. Delphine was the only friend Khal had who wasn't a Negaverser, the only person he had ever gotten to know on his own terms and not those of the organization that had overtaken his life.

"Sorry I'm late." The last time they were supposed to meet, he'd bailed. Stuff had come up. Flicking the butt of the cigarette he'd been smoking out toward the street, Khal gave her a tired grin. "Yeah, yeah, hello to you too."

"Months? s**t. You're kidding." Delphine was just ******** with him, he hoped. This was just some girl guilt trip thing where they generously rounded up six days for every one he actually hadn't called. "Isn't it like... it's probably ******** September or something now. That's not months..."

There was a little bit of a logic failure as Khaldun couldn't seem to assure himself of what had been happening in the last few months, or which months they actually were. Out of the range of basic human abilities he was capable of, it was one that was worrying if only because he did know he used to have a grasp on linear time. So he got defensive. "I couldn't give less of a s**t when it is right now anyway. Doesn't matter any more. I'm a free man, I don't need calendars. I mean, I finally dropped out first chance I got and I'm never ******** going back to that shithole prison of a school."

"Hey. Hey. This is how I show my appreciation for you, Delph. I don't call you. Trust me, it's all stupid and you don't want to get dragged into it. I'm alive, you're alive, everything's fine, right? Are we cool?" The explanations and imploring trailed along as he followed her into the kitchen. He had no issue with opening her fridge and grabbing a soda. It was probably one of Damon's, too. Even better. "Got any pizza?"

"I dunno, that I was fine? I didn't know you thought about this stuff." Disinterest crossed his face. He didn't look happy to be reminded of all the constant danger they were in. Like he didn't get enough of that at every Negaverse meeting he had to go to. "So much s**t isn't going to stop happening. We just need to live in the moment or whatever. Like right now's pretty okay. No complaints."

"Uh. Not the whole time..." Khaldun hopped up onto the counter of Delphine's kitchen island. Now was a good time to put a little distance between them. "I'm crashing on a friend's couch now."

I think it's your turn now." He gestured vaguely at her with the soda can in an attempt to change the subject. At least he could count on Delphine offering him food, even if it came with a guilt trip this time. Kaia always made him work for it. "So what have you been doing, besides... I dunno, dodging explosions and stuff? Whatever it is us movie extras do in this 'reality according to Michael Bay'."

"Maybe," he grinned back

While Delphine started texting, Khal tore into the pizza. His table manners (counter manners?) hadn't improved in the time he'd vanished. Expecting his attention to be entirely off of her was a mistake, though. He watched, and waited, until she had the cell phone just loosely and openly enough that it was easily swiped from her hands. "Huh, I guess I'm just in time to fix that--"

Khal frequently stole Delphine's phone to text-harass whoever she was trying to have a normal conversation with till she either knocked it out of his hands (being six feet tall had its advantages) or stomped on his foot hard enough to force him to give it back. Since he didn't seem to read her outgoing messages most of the time, his hijacked conversations with Delphine's friends were not just brief but completely nonsensical.

"Is this your boyfriend?" he teased, shielding himself from her to look at the phone. The other hundred times he'd skimmed her screen he just saw conversations about girl stuff, or homework, or she was already bothering Damon all by herself. Innocuous. Not worth scrolling back to get the details. There was something a little more ominous about a texting window completely empty save for one cryptic outgoing message: 'ur bros at my place'. Did she know... what he was? Who he was? He'd been so ******** careful! But it might just have been his paranoia. He had a lot of that. It sort of came standard with the 'magical soldier secret identity' package, but he took it a good deal further. Unless Damon came waltzing out of the hallway with some friend of his own over, this 'bro' codeword business was not boding well.

"Who the ******** is this?" he asked Delphine with a laugh that couldn't help but turn nervous at the end. His fingers hovered on the buttons. Giving this mysterious number s**t did not feel like a good idea all of a sudden. But it had to just be some other friend of Delphine's. She'd just tell him it was some kid with a sibling who Damon hung out with. Like some false scare in a horror movie. This s**t was never as big of a conspiracy as it looked at first glance.

"So, some dude..." Like the open book he was, it was pretty easy to read his uneasiness. He was never very good at internalizing his emotions. But he bought Delphine's explanation, allowing himself to be sidetracked. Anything was better than the paranoid explanation.

"He what?" There seemed to be a pattern of the girls in his life getting beat up when he wasn't around to do anything about it. Civilian stuff was a much easier fix than anything involving senshi - he could make this guy wish he'd never so much as looked at Delphine. He reached out toward her expectantly. "You know what, give me the phone back, I'll ******** this guy up for you. He punched you? Seriously?"

When it was clear that Delphine was not giving him back her phone, he hopped off the counter, taking the soda can with him. "Yeah, I'll heat it up in a minute. I want to know where you get that much pizza. That's not a box of pizza, that just a bag full of pizza."

"So uh, I thought maybe we could just hang out. Play some video games or finish watching that movie from a few... months... whenever." Okay, this was starting to be a little much. He had come here to get away from the crazy dangers of every single other day and now he was starting to see them in ******** everything. Smoking seemed like a great choice right about now, if the rest of the day was going to keep being like this. Nonchalantly he dropped the code he usually used with Delphine for 'I really need to have a smoke and you'd eviscerate me if I did it inside your parents' house', his fingers slipping into his pocket to reassure himself he had the pack of cigarettes. "I just need to go outside for a minute, you can decide whatever you want to do first."

Moving around the island so that he never actually walked past Delphine, he then made a beeline for the front door. He'd just be out on the porch for a few minutes till he could calm himself the ******** down.