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The answer was immediate, and did not come with any sudden panicked clamor. Instead, there was a pause to all those little movements from the other room, save that of Petitcru trotting out and immediately bestowing on Myth that sort of cringing, nervous welcome to which she was inclined. While she didn't seem especially alarmed, perhaps, given her constant state of existential despair, this indicated nothing.

A second later someone leaned around the edge of Elaine’s bedroom door, and looked at her. This required lifting his eyes from their initial level, and then lifting them some more.

Now, the arrangement was that he was only to use the spare key for dog sitting and for emergencies. And to be fair, he'd obediently taken the dog out before doing anything else. And to him, not having any hot water at his apartment complex for two days definitely counted as an emergency, even if he was sure Elaine would have told him to suck it up and take a cold shower. So he had thought it better to ask forgiveness than permission, and had initially planned on vacating the premises before she could get back, only to find himself, ten minutes into an indulgently long shower (why was her shower so much nicer than his?), considering whether he could wheedle her into feeding him if he stuck around. He had been still considering this, standing at her vanity and absently reading the labels of her perfume while he brushed his teeth, when the abrupt intrusion of a strange voice had nearly made him bite down on his toothbrush in alarm.

Given what Myth knew of Elaine and her habits, maybe it was not so strange for a random Man to be in her house. But it was strange for one to be there without her supervision, and stranger still for it to be this Man, who certainly flew in the face of all her usual types, being neither reedy and academic, nor rugged, not bearish, nor snakey and goth.

He paused in the act of brushing his teeth - a delicate and still-painful exercise - and offered up the best thing he had to a winning smile with a toothbrush in his mouth, at the same moment instinctively reaching up to push his wet hair off his brow and into a more flattering shape. He was wearing Elaine’s fluffy baby blue robe, but at least - and thank God for it - had a pair of pants coming out the bottom.

The smile was boyish, comfortable - the smile of someone who smiled very often - and he gave her a once-over as he offered it up.

He could clear this up immediately. It would be more fun if he didn't.

“She barely even bothers to hide that key. Maybe she likes me so much she'll forgive me the liberty,” he said in an indulgent tone, meandering back through her bedroom towards the bathroom to spit, although he lifted his voice to continue speaking as he went. “What about you? She mentioned some gorgeous six-foot-something friend of hers, but she was pretty clear she was a blonde.”

He had been going to change his clothes, but the notion of being arrested in a bathrobe striking him as entertaining, he opted instead - after leisurely availing himself of Elaine’s mouthwash - to saunter back out as he was.

“You say it like I would feel my masculinity was threatened by having a mugshot in a fluffy bathrobe,” he said, with affected gravity. “My clearly very fragile masculinity.” He said this with a hand pressed to his chest, which was not only manicured but had some kind of teeny tiny nail art rendered on each finger. “But worrying about her wrath is another story. Avert your eyes,” he finished with another relentlessly cheerful smile, shedding the robe to hang it on the back of one of the barstools before reaching down and scooping up Petitcru on his way to flop down on the sofa. He was not overly fond of dogs, but he and Petitcru had an Understanding, fostered during the Time of Pain Medication. He was pretty sure she looked upon him as a big warm immobile pillow.

Odfly, being shirtless did not make him look even scrawnier, and in fact seemed to suggest that he merely broadcast an aura of scrawniness as some sort of passive effect. Not because he'd been concealing some sort of sleeper build, but because his body occupied that strange place that some almost-skinny men's bodies do, wherein they are simultaneously flabby and ribby, with lean arms but a collarbone a little too soft.

“Maybe she was talking about you after all. She mentioned a disciplinarian type. But like attracts like, and all that.” He glanced up to give her another scrutinizing look from where he was arranging himself on the couch with Petitcru in his arms. “Are you Princess? Also, that smells ******** amazing,” he added, gesturing with his elbow at the food. “Did you make whatever that is?”

“No disappointment here. Never did go in for the punishment angle myself, which is probably why she doesn't like me much,” he said, settling back at his leisure in the corner of the sofa with his knees drawn up. This comment, at least, seemed to confirm that he was no longer trying to convey that he was here for any of the reasons a man might normally be here. “Then again,” he lied, mildly in tone if not in scale, “I've never been a bad boy a day in my life, either.”

Having settled the dog - which he was perhaps treating as a bit of a shield - he was able to gesture at the other end of the couch as if inviting her to sit, although the barstools were right there too. “Well. She's been giving me her leftovers, so I look forward to enjoying whatever she can't get to. Thank you in advance, I'm sure it's great. What is it?” He added, nosy. “She's got a lot of friends who bring her food.”

And she, also, brought a lot of her friends food, even if it was more usually in styrofoam takeout clamshells and little paper bakery boxes than in any kind of home cooking container. Or maybe she was bringing them leftovers, if this obnoxiously amiable a*****e counted as a friend.

“Oh, I'm terribly twee and I do think it's funny. Not like slapping your knee funny, but mildly entertaining. Somewhere right below sensible chuckle funny.”

He began absently running his fingers through his hair, pushing it back and arranging it without the benefit of a mirror into something that would be less than a mop when it dried. “I could make the argument that she might be just as likely to be pissed that you interrogated a house guest who's also her dogsitter,” he continued cheerfully, “except I know she always takes a woman's side.” As if she needed more proof that he knew Elaine. “She told me I could use the key if I needed it. My landlord is dragging his feet on fixing the hot water and while I'm sure she has Thoughts about it, look me in the eye and tell me she'd be willing to suck it up and take cold showers in the same situation. She says she hates a hypocrite. I'm doing her conscience a favor.”

He said something, then, by way of explanation, which had a significance for Myth that he could not possibly have fathomed. “I'm another one of her stray dogs,” he said.

Like Petitcru. Like Nail, as she had once described him. In a way, like the whole of Destiny City had become to her, when she was Joy. Some hapless and helpless burden thrust on her, which she was protecting - and maybe growing fond of - against her will.

He more or less ignored her instructions, being a man whose reaction to Bossy People was generally to indulge them with his patient silence and let them get all their directorial urges out without his input - at least unless that person was Elaine reminding him how much money he owed her. His initial thought of using "can't move, dog on me" as an excuse passed, however, in favor of speeding up the process of eating something that wasn't microwaved cup noodle.

He instead meandered back into Elaine's bedroom as she talked, re-emerging in the act of putting on a sweater (Ralph Lauren, vintage; not the sort of thing typically being worn by someone who was unable to get hot water to his shitty apartment, but worn to a soft and evident age) and taking his sweet time pulling out dishes, mainly because he made a stop by the fridge to see if she had any drinks worth stealing. She did not.

"You really are a disciplinarian. It's cute how you think you can negotiate with a slum lord," he said amiably, settling into the other seat and picking up a fork. It always was, when people thought this was something you could simply sail into with a list of legal codes in hand and get results. "I'd rather talk about food than the landholding classes. What kind of praise are you after?" he asked, with a show of mock obedience as he negotiated a bite, still habitually forgetting that he no longer had to treat one side of his mouth like a pain minefield. "So I can be sure and hit all the highlights."

He let the talk of slumlords go, engaged instead in navigating the first real food he'd had in quite a while that wasn't lukewarm from a packet or blended into a cup or both. He closed his eyes, and was willing to let this pass as an expression of indulgent enjoyment rather than the attempt - which it was - to wall off a bit of her presence for a second. Kay liked just about everyone who didn't give him a reason not to - and he was already going to like Myth anyway, for feeding him - but Elaine was a powerful enough presence on her own before introducing another brisk disciplinarian into the mix. It was a heady concoction to get two swigs of back to back, and he was anticipating a third when Elaine herself showed up at any moment. He wondered, not for the first time, exactly how Mel fit into this little social circle - whether she knew Myth as well - and whether she found it more pleasant than he did to be benevolently bossed around.

"Haven't eaten anything hot that didn't come out of a microwave in like a week," he said at last, taking a second bite without opening his eyes, "so I'm in the worst possible position to be a critic."

He was feeling a bit emotional. Mel's cake seemed like a long time ago, all of a sudden. He'd rationed those orange slices for days. She'd probably appreciate knowing that the sugar had been a constant source of pain every time he indulged hard enough to forget to chew on only one side of his mouth.

"Needs some lime," he suggested amiably. "But what doesn't?"

Not catching the drift of her question, he wrinkled his forehead expressively between bites.

"Better off asking Elaine, surely," he demurred, "since she's the one getting dibs. Usually," he corrected himself, aware that he was, in fact, getting dibs even as they spoke. "But if you're asking what I like so that I can get more pleasure from her leftovers..."

He paused, considering the question around another slowly indulgent mouthful. "I know what they say about beggars and choosing," he said at last, "but do you know what I want that you can't just go pick up at a restaurant unless you're happy with it being watery and s**t? I want," he said, with that sort of expansive gesture that indicated that he was indulging in something akin to an unrealistic fantasy, "a big ******** pot of chili, with all the stuff you put on top. And a cinnamon roll," he added for good measure.