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Tallulah got out of the shower and wrapped herself in the robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. She frowned at her street clothes before folding them - she didn’t have a change, and she’d been wearing them for a whole day even before going out on patrol. She felt bad to be overtaxing Kaatje’s hospitality already, but at this rate she might have to ask her to go pick up some clothes from the house. It just seemed weird to ask Jaimie to do anything that might remotely involve handling her underwear - after all, they hadn’t spoken in three years before she asked him to go check on her parents.

Tallulah combed her hair and brushed her teeth with the toiletries she’d gotten from the front desk, and rejoined Kaatje in the bedroom. “Thank you for all this,” she sighed, flopping onto the bed. There was only one, because Kaatje had put on a show for the receptionist about being drunk and giggly and overly-affectionate, and Tallulah was too dead-tired at this point to have any kind of protest. It reminded her of slumber parties back in high school, anyway, and that she didn’t mind at all.

“Everything’s just kind of escalated way too quickly,” Tallulah said, debating whether or not to get under the covers. s**t, she thought. Her boyfriend was Spinel. Paul was the same person who’d, once upon a time, made an attempt on Erika’s starseed. She didn’t know what to think about this information, so she just didn’t.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Tallulah. If Kaatje wanted to be basically naked, then Kaatje could be basically naked. She was paying for the hotel room, after all. “I swam competitively for like six years. The night before state champs would be, like, this times five.” And if Kaatje wanted to accidentally grab her chest, well, that was an accident. Tallulah had spent so long in the hospital that she was frankly desensitized to being handled.

“I do have a debilitating illness,” she continued, flicking her wrist to summon her senshi phone. She stared at it for a moment and then set it aside, deciding she’d rather wait to text Jaimie an update for as long as possible. Maybe after she’d had a beer. “Weird outer-space wasting thing, remember?” she asked, reaching for a beer. A week would cover how long Spinel and Babylon would be in space for, but this hotel was decently nice, and owing Kaatje that much money made her anxious.

Not that she had any other options.

“Thanks,” said Tallulah, opening the beer. She took a sip and debated what she should say next - she wanted to talk. She wanted to work though her thoughts. But she was afraid that if she hemmed and hawed, all she’d manage to do was annoy Kaatje. “I’ll make this up to you somehow, I swear.” Not that she knew how she’d ever even come close. “I guess I really should stay for a week.”

She stared at her phone.

“I should text Regulus,” she said morosely. “Find out if my dad gave him that beer.”

Tallulah nodded. Kaatje had put on quite a believable show for the lobby staff, even if the act had been dropped as soon as they got into the elevator. “Superhero movie logic to the rescue,” she said happily, and took Kaatje’s advice about the phone, sending it back into the ether with a flick of her wrist. Once upon a time, she’d wanted to find a way to store more than just phones and henshin pens in that pocket dimension - maybe she’d had time coming up to rededicate to that project. It would make medical supplies more convenient, at the very least. “I’ll feel it in my soul if it rings,” she said. “I think it was Astraea who said that. Back when she first handed them out.”

“He’s subletting,” she supplied, sipping her beer. “I get the feeling he wants a place that feels more like home. I’ve met Vanya, but I think she doesn’t really like me.” Which was weird, but not in a way that was hugely worrying. Her life did not depend on whether or not Vanya Morganstern thought she was cool. Whatever. She’d heard Babylon’s theories about purification in enough detail to rehash them in a hugely casual way. “Anyway, this is like, hugely ancient history, but a few years ago, he was friends with this knight, Lina? She’d been a Negaverse general, and I guess she never really made friends in Order or whatever and she went back to the dark side because they have cookies. And he was friends with Avalon, who, you know, is now evil and wants to kill me, because I’m apparently the last person on the planet to know what my boyfriend does with his spare time. But, like, the connecting factor here is that these are two people who didn’t have very good support systems and corrupted because chaos was offering them something they didn’t have in order. So if you can promise people who don’t really have a support system in chaos that order has what they’re looking for, I guess the theory is you’ll get converts, and if you actually deliver on that support system, then they stay.”

But, like, apartment hunting was totally a thing she’d done. “People really care about bathrooms and kitchens and whether they’re clean and up-to-date,” Tallulah said. “Carpet is gross. Tile, laminate, or wood are more expensive to install, I guess, but they last a lot longer and stay a lot cleaner. Not being able to hear your neighbors’ every move is a big thing, too.” She paused, reached over, and messed with the bottle cap from her beer. “Are you thinking of getting into Real Estate, Kaatje?” she asked.

Not that Tallulah was about to discourage her, but she’d never heard Gunn give any credence to purification before. All of her help tonight had been surprising, but her cooperation with Babylon’s plan was the most surprising thing yet by far.

Tallulah shrugged. She didn’t think that Babylon was above average as far as corrupted acquaintances. She and Kaatje had both lost friends with the founding of the Dark Mirror Court, and she’d lost more since. “If you do the math, Babylon’s not really friends with any more people who corrupt than anyone else. He just talks about it more often.” Or he had shitty taste in friends. Which, as Finn’s friend, was probably a character judgement against herself.

“I used to know a lot more ridiculously wealthy people than I do now,” she said. Scylla in particular came to mind - but Tallulah hadn’t seen her in years and years. “But I’m sure I know people who would put in the man hours, if you found a place.” She was sure that she could twist arms in all the right places - anyone who was always talking huge game about purification was pretty much obligated to actually show up and be helpful when someone actually had a plan. Otherwise it was open season for calling people hypocrites.

“I’ve been out of town for a long time,” she confessed. “My connections aren’t as good as they used to be. But I think I can still get people to the table.” Making them play ball might be another issue, but they’d deal with that when they got there. “If I’m going to be here all week with only my phone for company, then I’d might as well make myself useful and start trying to call in favors.” If she had any favors left to call in. Which was, of course, entirely in question.

Tallulah’s eyes widened at Kaatje for a moment - did she really not know? “Knightlight,” she said. “Knightlight is Babylon. I thought we were just calling him Knightlight because it was funny and we’re pissed at him. I mean, that’s why I was calling him Knightlight.” Somewhere along the line, it occurred to her, an introduction had been skipped.

“I don’t eat fish,” she said, sipping her beer again. “Vegetarian.” It had started as what seemed like the moral high ground in early childhood, but her illness had damaged her kidneys, and now it was something of a medical necessity. “But I’ll eat vegetable rolls. Or edamame. Or I could really go for miso soup - it’s open this late?”

She was just resigned to going to sleep at dawn and spending most of the day in bed. And what was this - who had said anything about ******** corrupted senshi? Flushing bright red, Tallulah buried her face in her hands. She was not drunk enough by half to have this conversation, but it looked like they were going to, anyway. “I have not ******** a corrupted senshi,” she said insistently. “I have had sex with a man who turns into a corrupted senshi. I have never ******** a corrupted senshi.”

“Yes you have.”

Tallulah gave Kaatje a deadpan look. “Okay. Fine. Fine! You win. What do you even want to know? It’s like having sex with any other dude. I assume.” It was not like she had a large sample size to compare Paul to.

Tallulah killed the rest of her beer as she regarded the takeout menu. “Veggie tempura and a cucumber roll,” she decided, tossing the phone back to Kaatje. Something greasy and fried followed by the plainest, least-offensive sushi imaginable sounded like a seriously good idea right now.

“I don’t want to go get laid,” she said plaintively, reaching for another beer. Any other night would have called for moderation, but it was seriously so late it was early, and logic dictated that enough alcohol would eventually make tonight stop sucking. “I’m not - what would that even be, Kaatje? Rebound sex?” It was not rebound sex, she thought stubbornly. They were not broken up. Being an evil serial killer was totally not an insurmountable obstacle - like, he was purifying, right? So what did it even matter. That was like changing religions for someone you were dating - it meant things were serious.

Which was, all things considered, probably the alcohol talking. Tallulah took a first sip of her second beer. “Seriously, we don’t do anything weird.” Although she still wasn’t sure what Kaatje’s definition of weird might intersect with her own. “Like, what do you want me to tell you, that his favorite position’s cowgirl and we did it for the first time in the DCU library with all our clothes on? Because, like, I’m the one who started that. So it’s not weird.”

Okay. Maybe it was a little weird. But it was Tallulah’s weirdness. Not Paul’s.

She leaned back against the padded headboard and chugged about half her Bud Lite. “I am not going to go have rebound sex,” she repeated, “because I am not in a rebound. I am just-” she hiccupped- “Processing that my super-sweet super-gorgeous boyfriend is incidentally on the run from his evil gang of soul-stealers, and how much it ******** sucks to be me right now, okay?”

She hiccupped again. It sounded dangerously close to a sob.

Tallulah settled in under the covers, feeling a little bit numb at the prospect of not getting her Japanese take-out fix. Then again, any sane person would have gone to bed hours ago, so that was a point in favor of not eating anything and going the ******** to sleep. At least Kaatje was letting the topic of her sex life drop, she thought with a relieved sigh, and rolled towards the other girl, scrunching up under the blankets.

“You’re the best,” she said, smiling tiredly and reaching up to pat Kaatje’s cheek. Affection from Kaatje was rare and hard-won, but she felt better about herself to have somehow been found deserving. It was nice to be reassured that despite the crazy mess she’d managed to get them into, they were still friends. “I won’t tell anyone that you’re secretly a giant softy.”