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The show sat in a kind of paused limbo as Quin and Will chatted about security and the perils of bad guys crashing through any of the walls of the apartment.

Were things still bad outside? Quin kind of rolled her head to the side to glance at the windows, she couldn’t really see anything, but hopefully they were… Hopefully things had settled and Michael was back at home with that wife and daughter they’d mentioned. Hopefully by tomorrow Quin could convince Will to take a cab or bus back to the coffee shop with her and they’d find Quin’s laptop buried under a pile of game boxes or an overturned table that had somehow saved it from damage and theft. Hopefully she’d wake up tomorrow and her ribs would be better.

Some of those things were not going to happen, Quin knew, but a girl could hope.

Will spoke and Quin rolled her head back to look at him. Had his ticket into Haven come with expectations of martial defense? Quin sat up a bit more and smiled, “I dunno, Michael seemed awfully impressed back there in the hospital tent, and Michael is not an easy person to impress.” Quin teased, she also suspected there hadn’t been a single string attached to the offer of a safe place for Will to hole up.

“Luckily for you though, they’d have to find you to make you fight.” she said with a slightly lopsided grin, “And with as big as this building is, it’d probably take a solid couple of hours.” she continued, then glanced at the TV, ”Besides, if you’re off being all heroic again, this show is going to stay paused all night and then what would I do?”

Finding a comfortable position on her own couch was far more difficult than it should have been, Quin thought as she did her best to get settled. Leaning to one side or the other was clearly not going to work and leaning forward too much was a no go as well.

Eventually Quin found a happy median where she wasn’t pushing or pulling on anything she shouldn’t have been and she could actually just stop thinking about being injured and just watch TV.

The show started, but Quin couldn’t help her mind from wandering in the relative quiet. Luckily it wasn’t wandering in the dark directions it tended to wander. Apparently it had done enough of that earlier to leave her attention free to focus itself on the fact that if anyone had told her even 12 hours ago that this was what she’d be doing right now she’d have called them a liar to their face.

Nothing about the whole scenario felt particularly weird. Quin thought that at this point she probably knew Will as well as she knew anyone she’d count on her list of acquaintances and friends. The absurdity of the day had forced a lot of the social pressures of getting to know someone out the window and their seemingly easy rapport had taken care of the rest.

Will let out a little snort and chuckle and Quin’s attention snapped back to the show that she hadn’t been paying any attention to. Dammit, what if he was laughing at something she should have been laughing at?

Will spoke though and Quin let out a little sigh of relief as he indicated that the day had been…the day it had been.

”I was actually thinking the exact same thing….” she said, ” But, you know…” she started to add, then jumped a little bit as her phone started going off.

Picking it up and answering, Quin said hello and then listened intently for a moment before a wide grin spread across her features. She listened for a few moments more and then hung up the phone.

“That.” she said, grin still plastered firmly on her face, “Was the NYU emergency alert system. All classes for tomorrow have been canceled.”

Was what Quin was working on more difficult than a young adult book report?

”You’d be shocked how similar most of what I do is to a young adult book report…” she said, mildly stunned at the similarities.

”What I was doing at the coffee shop was looking up the precedent on a case and trying to put together an argument on why a certain ruling was correct or incorrect.” she explained. It really wasn’t any different than what she’d done in multiple classes through high school and her undergrad work.

Thinking about that though made Quin panic just the slightest bit because she had lost her laptop and all of her books today. Surely they’d cancel classes tomorrow. Surely even if they didn’t, she’d get some kind of slack…

Oh well. It didn’t matter now, and there was nothing to be done about it.

Once she was as comfortable as she was gonna get and Will was asking her if she’d seen a certain show, Quin shook her head, ”If that’s the soccer one, I haven’t seen it. Keep hearing real good things though. ‘Sposed to be funny though so it sounds absolutely perfect for today.”

”And here I thought it was gonna be difficult.” Quin said, still smiling and shaking her head, ”Though, we’re going to run out of harrowing situations pretty quickly that way…and then what are we going to do?”

It had to be the day they’d had, but the conversation kept teetering back and forth between wildly serious and downright playful. Was that how things like this worked? God, it hadn’t even been twelve hours since she’d walked into the coffee shop.

Quin didn’t have much experience to draw on outside of zombie clowns and everything that had happened today, but this seemed…more normal than how things had played out after the clowns. If normal was a word that could even be applied here.

Will took her thanks with good grace and no small amount of what appeared to be discomfort and Quin resolved to not let the conversation get heavy again. They’d had plenty of awkward and heavy for the night…the month…a lifetime?

”I’ll make sure you’re on speed dial for my next existential crisis.” Quin said, but she was smiling and the words were light, ”And you’re going to bring the flash cards? This is a better deal than I thought…” She teased.

Quin couldn’t help but grin a bit smugly as Will teased her about her language. “Nobody has ever accused me of being proper,” she said, ”But some circumstances just demand colorful language.”

The ice actually felt good on her ribs and Quin sank back against the counter a bit with a soft sigh as the cold seeped through her shirt and into her skin.

She and Will had been going back and forth all day about who had done what, who had been more impressive, who had saved who, and a number of other things that might have been considered silly to a lot of people.

Will hadn’t seemed nearly as serious about all of that as he did right now though, and it didn’t seem like he was teasing.

The blush from before rushed back to her face as Will kept talking and Quin’s eyes dropped from looking at him down to the floor.

She didn’t argue back because at the moment she didn’t know what to say. Nobody had ever told her that what she was doing was impressive, or good, or the right thing to do.

Will couldn’t have possibly known what he was saying, but Quin had just managed to look back up when he said how much easier it would have been to avoid the law completely.

“I wanted to.” she whispered, “But everyone kept telling me how great I had been. What a difference I had made…”

Quin shook her head and looked away again, “I just….” she stopped and shrugged and shook her head, unable to find the right words, “Thanks.”

Quin nodded when Will said he might take some ibuprofen after all, for after whatever they’d given him at the hospital had worn off. She could get it for him in a minute. ”Probably a good idea.” she said. She needed to look up what she needed to do. Did you ice bruised ribs?

Will protested the idea that he might have a taste for heroics, and rather thought that medical grade glue would be handy for kitchen accidents or an emergency. ”Like a 5,000 year old sorceress hellbent on bringing ancient Gods into modern day New York?”

It sounded so ridiculous when Quin said it out loud that it made her want to laugh. Maybe a bit hysterically. She didn’t do that though because laughing was apparently one of the things she was going to be unable to do for the next little while without discomfort.

Will apparently didn’t mind being…lean though and she almost immediately broke her recent prohibition against laughing when he continued. Apparently altitudinous was an appropriate word for her though ”Because it’s overly complicated and too long?” she said, unable to help herself from giggling just a little.

She’d also apparently gotten under Will’s skin a bit with her sort-of-compliment and she really did want to laugh when he pointed out that he hadn’t had a choice with his current shirt. Instead she just shook her head and tried to think of things that were decidedly less funny or ridiculous than this whole thing.

Then Will asked about the text story, definitely to change the subject and Quin couldn’t help it any longer, she burst out laughing, wrapping her arms around her middle. Maybe everything had just caught up with her, but between laughs she managed to say, ”It’s a long distance romance thing…that started as a wrong number text…he’s a firefighter trainee and she’s an art history major…”

Finally managing to pull herself together Quin shook her head, ”I’m so sorry, I’m not laughing at you. This whole day is just so absurd.”

There weren’t any immediate suggestions from Will about what Quin should watch as her first anime. That was fine, at the moment Quin couldn’t remember the last time she’d even had her TV on. When she’d couldn’t sleep she did often find herself mindlessly scrolling through shows, trying to find something to watch. It could be nice to have something different.

Will had noticed the lack of dance videos too. Sure, things evolved, but Quin had always thought that the videos were unique. Quin wasn’t much of a dancer herself, but it had been cool to see people who were doing their thing so effortlessly and it so many different ways even when it was the same dance to the same song.

“The one I’ve been following isn’t even voiced…it started out as a wrong number text, and the girl who’s writing it is also working on making it a book…It’s super good.” she said, “I don’t think it’s one of those silly AI generated ones.”

Quin couldn’t help but notice that Will looked relieved when she compared his shows to campy B-Movies. Was it supposed to have been weirder that he was into Japanese camp? Everyone had their thing.

At her offer to take his plate, Will simply got up and gathered his things so Quin made her way to the kitchen. It wasn’t like the plates were all that dirty, and as she put them into the dishwasher Will spoke again.

It spoke volumes that Quin wasn’t quite sure which scar Will was talking about and she turned to lean against the counter, “Mine?” she said, subconsciously reaching up to touch her cheek, “Just a scratch, looked way worse than it actually was.” Quin’s ribs had definitely gotten the worst if everything.

She couldn’t see Will’s arm from where she was standing, ”What about yours? You did an awful lot of… activity after you got patched up.” she said, then grinned.

“Though, you’re gonna have to start wearing shorter sleeves if you want to show it off.”