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Finn was ready with the kreteks when Sunny got into his car. "Have you been smoking these faster or something lately?" he asked. "I thought you had like four different people keeping you in cancer sticks."

Not that cancer was very high on Sunny's list of concerns, he thought, easing the car back into gear. "Please buckle up," he reminded her as he merged back into traffic. "I would hate to have to explain why you, like, bounced across the asphalt in the event of a crash."

Or whatever it was Sunny would do, since he was decently sure she was some kind of immortal. He had a lot of things to ask her, but he was going to ease into it. Get her buttered up.

"So, like," said Finn, once they were on the county road towards Salem. "Since when do you eat?"

They pulled up to a stoplight, and Finn leaned across Sunny and started to roll down the window - and then stopped when he realized that his car didn't currently have a roof on it, and this was dumb.

"It's just... a change," he said, putting his hand back on the wheel. "I was curious. So does it, like, come with any extras?"

Werewolf, huh?

"Do you feel the need to howl at the moon?" he asked. "Have a taste for rare meat?"

The light turned green. Finn put his foot on the gas.

Finn wasn't about to argue with that. It was, after all, impossible to be speciesist against Humans, and he was not in a position to judge what was and was not under the umbrella otherwise.

"Sorry, sorry," he said. "Bad attempt at a joke."

Was she really offended? He didn't want to try to figure it out. Sunny was capricious in her best moods.

"So like," he said, "I've gotta ask. Where do werewolves fit into this whole grand magical scheme? Are they, like, a recent development? Or were they always around?"

What did it mean, if magic didn't work how he'd always thought it did?

Finn didn't glare at her, but only because his eyes were on the road. Sunny might have agreed to never lie to him, but she certainly didn't give up the truth easily. His questions always had to be carefully constructed - and right now, he couldn't think of the right way to word a response.

"Point taken," he said, "fine."

Could they even be called friends right now? He'd come out to have a good time, and he was honestly feeling, like, so attacked right now.

"So how's food?" he asked, changing the subject. Playing 20 questions held no interest to him right now, even though he did want Sunny to set things straight. "What's been your favorite thing so far?"

Maybe it had been fry bread. Maybe that was why they were driving all the way to Salem to get some, instead of to Target for cheap leggings in an assortment of patterns and styles.

"I've been kind of busy," said Finn, putting it mildly. It wasn't like he didn't want to spend time shooting the s**t with Sunny like he'd used to, but everything was... accelerating now! He only had so many hours in a day and days in a week and a very specific amount of bandwidth for magical bullshit.

But Sunny was right in that she didn't have to be strictly a magical bullshit kind of person.

He sighed, sounding only slightly put-out and mostly ashamed of himself.

"Aleksy's been in the hospital," he sighed. "He's out now, but he keeps sneaking off to the shop. He's supposed to still be on bed rest. They're not even going to let him start physical therapy for like a month. I mean. That's how it's supposed to work for surgery like that. But still. I wish he'd stop trying to ******** work. He's going to permanently damage something."

"Yeah, that guy..." said Finn, trailing off. He always felt varying degrees of awkward around Aleksy's found family, like they were judging him and finding him wanting. If anyone could convince Aleksy to take his medicine, it would be Liam...

But actually calling the guy just made him uncomfortable.

"I'll tell him you said that," Finn said, keeping an eye out for their exit. "I mean, I get that he hates feeling helpless, but he's gonna hate it even more if he damages himself for life." An Aleksy who couldn't paint?

He didn't even want to imagine that. It sounded like hell to deal with.

Finn wheeled around, performing a U-Turn that was almost certainly illegal, and when the turn came up again he didn't miss it. "I'll call him," Finn assured her, gunning it away from the intersection like doing so could absolve him of guilt. Sunny had an aversion to Liam that he wasn't going to probe into.

"Anyway," he said, "We're almost there. Should we eat first, arcade second? Arcade first, food second? Get food and carry it around the arcade? Though that could be messy, I am officially not into that."

"Skeeball, though," he added. "We're definitely doing that. And I'll get you your dang elephant ear."

"Oho - tickets?" Finn asked, eyebrows waggling. For an immortal being of unmeasurable power (or so he guessed), Sunny was awfully interested in useless junk. He paused to trade a crisp $20 for tokens, and then followed her off to the skeeball lanes.

"Don't get out much?" he asked, buying them a game. "It's gonna sound dumb, but - for a while I assumed you couldn't leave. But that's stupid, yeah?"

He stepped aside, gesturing for her to take the first ball.

"What's it like? Being out?" he asked. "I know what it's like for me, but - what about you?"