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“Just to warn you,” said Finn as he tapped the DVD player shut, “I hate this movie and I hope you will hate it with me.” Which didn’t really explain why he owned a DVD copy of (500) Days of Summer - a legal one, even! “It’s disgustingly twee and the protagonist’s an a*****e,” he explained, settling onto the couch beside Elke. Back when he’d been living with Vanya, he’d felt too odd about invading her space to have friends over, but now that he had his own apartment at Florence Court, he was back into entertaining.

“Anyway,” he said, leaning forward to pour two glasses of wine. It was cheap stuff, but not the cheapest - he thought it was pretty decent, if you were someone who judged your wine on really basic tastes and not bourgie s**t like mouth feel and bouquet. Which, what did he know, maybe Elke was trained to judge wine that way, seeing as she was French. Finn offered her a glass.

“You’ll never guess what I saw last time I went to Babylon,” he said excitedly, as the studio logos rolled. “But you should guess anyway, and then I’ll tell you.”

“No and no,” said Finn, although it hadn’t actually been snowing on his last visit. Clearly, his discovery was completely beyond her realm of possibility - although it wasn’t beyond his, not after seeing Mistral’s impossible garden. “The lights stay on longer, but they’ve still got to be lit.” He was pretty sure that was the case, even for Menachem, who seemed like he had more power in his prime than Finn could ever imagine having.

Or maybe he just knew more. Most days, Finn felt like he was just fumbling his way through, and that was his biggest stumbling block. If he knew more about the legacy he was meant to uphold, maybe then…

But, he was distracting himself. “The trees,” he said. “There are leaves on the trees in the Virgon quarter. And flowers, too. Little yellow and purple buds. I bet by the time I go back next, they’ll be blooming.” Eagerly, he looked to her and waited for her reaction. This was great news - wasn’t it?

Elke, Finn knew, could probably, usually hold her alcohol better than this, despite being eighteen and therefore underage and he was totally a horrible person for giving her wine except he was 100% sure her parents had been letting her drink for years. (Again, French.) So, the fact that she was currently inviting herself into his lap was a bit odd, but he didn’t really know what to do about it beside let her do it.

“Next week?” he said, blinking at her. “I’m planning to go camping with a bunch of other knights, but we can go the day before, if you want. Or after. Whenever’s convenient for you, we can go.” If there were a way for him to give Elke free access to his city, the way his passport gave him free access to the Surrounding, he would do it in a heartbeat. Sometimes he felt like it was as much hers as it was his, a place she had just as much right to call home as he did. Maybe more right.

Although that didn’t really solve the question of her alcohol tolerance and it occurred to him that he was drinking on an empty stomach and she probably was, as well. “Hey,” he said. “I’ve got a pizza in the freezer with our names on it.” As delicately as he could, he tried to unwrap her arms from around his neck. “Come on, friends don’t let friends drink on an empty stomach. It’s just bad form. You’re underage and I can’t be responsible for your hangover. I won’t do it.”

Finn got up, turned the oven on, and continued talking to her while he unwrapped a frozen pizza. “One slice?” he suggested. “It’s mostly veggies.” It wasn’t his responsibility to police whether Elke was or wasn’t eating enough, but he was still worried for her. She was looking a little better than she had two weeks ago, so maybe she’d just been having a bad few days, but-

Finn put the pizza in the oven and set a timer. It really wasn’t his place to say anything. “Ten minutes,” he said, rejoining Elke on the couch. “I’ll send you a text when I’m planning on going, and we can go check everything out.” He leaned forward and hit play again. “So, here we are introduced to this movie’s truly awful narrative convention,” he said, of the title card on the screen, indicating the anachronistic order of events to follow. “It never becomes any less obnoxious.”

“And that,” said Finn, hitting pause as he got up to get the pizza, “is why we’re friends.” Well, no. They were friends for a lot of reasons, including some truly weird ones like you’re a reincarnation of my great-to-the-somethingth-degree grandmother. As he sliced the pizza into quarters, he said, “Did I tell you I met Mistral page?”

Quarters, he decided, were probably too big. He cut the pizza into eighths and pulled out plates. “She’s, uh, she’s sort of really distantly my cousin?” Which was code for, she’s your descendant, too.

“Anyway,” Finn said, coming back to the couch. “We could turn this off and watch Mean Girls,” he suggested, handing Elke a plate with a slice of pizza. “There’s more on the counter if you decide you want it.”

(He sort of hoped she decided she wanted it, which he realized meant he was slowly turning into his mother.)

"Anabel is Asimov," said Finn, trying not to watch Elke eat. True to her word, she finished a whole slice, and he felt strangely relieved. Anyway, she'd asked not to talk about the past anymore, and he could get behind that. Not being sad was an honorable pursuit.

He switched out the DVDs, trading (500) Days of Summer for Mean Girls, which would at least be entertaining background noise. "It's nice living here," he said, flopping back onto the couch. "It's pretty quiet right now. We only do construction during daylight hours and I'm usually the one doing it, so I never have to worry about being woken up by people work on the floors. I mean, I know it'll be louder once the other units fill in."

"It is nice to know who all your neighbors are," he said, putting an arm loosely across the back of the couch. "But we're not really convenient to DCU, if you're thinking about moving." Would living across the hall from Elke be great? Sure. But he wasn't sure that the captain of the Zodiacs was who Kaatje had in mind with their mission statement.

"Do you want another slice?" He asked casually. "There's plenty."

“Hmm,” said Finn thoughtfully. From what he knew of Elke, she’d been in boarding schools since practically forever - maybe it would do her good to live with her mother for a change? not that it was his place to make any sort of judgement call. “That might not be a bad thing?” he said, and couched the statement in, “I mean, it’s almost summer break. The dorms must get lonely with everyone on vacation.”

He was glad she’d taken a second slice.

“Well, yeah, I do like living here,” he said. “I like having my own space again.” Nothing would ever compare to the apartment he’d shared with Tate - maybe he was getting overly nostalgic.

Finn nodded. “No, I understand,” he said. It was why he’d moved in with Vanya upon his return from Alaska, instead of back in with his parents (well, that and his bedroom was now a home office and guest room, and painted taupe.) “I know you do okay on your own,” he assured her. “Maybe tell her that living in a college dorm is a vital experience. I lived in a dorm in Alaska.”

Communal bathrooms. He fought back a shudder.

It wasn’t that thought Aysel didn’t have valid reasons for worrying about Elke, but it was a tricky line to walk. Elke, Finn knew, was tough. She was competent. And she was, more than probably anything else, hard on herself. He didn’t want to give her more reasons to beat herself up. If Elke didn’t want to move in with her mother, then he wasn’t going to push her. “You’re old enough that it’s not really her call where you live, anyway,” he said. Well, legally speaking, anyway. Economically, he had no idea.

“Anyway,” he said, turning his attention back to the television and Lindsay Lohan pre-meltdown. “Have you seen this movie before? It was kind of a formative influence on me.” Or just the first place he’d ever encountered the concept of homosexuality. Six of one, a half dozen of the other. “It’s also a comedic masterpiece,” he added.