Growth, Chapter 4

Dave poked his blonde-mopped head into the apartment, looking around. “You here, Chase? You decent?”

“Never,” the young man whose long black hair draped over the back of the couch shot back.

“Um. He’s decent, don’t listen,” Dave said behind him, then opened the door fully and ushered Sarah into what seemed like an awfully stereotypical bachelor pad, complete with clutter. “Sorry about the… state. Chase forgets that the recycling bin exists.”

“These are your cans; I’m a teetotaler,” Chase replied, groping for his beer.

“It’s all right! Uh, hi there.” Sarah wrinkled her nose for a moment as she stepped around a stack of empty pizza boxes waiting to be taken out. The apartment smelled like… well, it smelled like Boy, she supposed. “Nice to meet you, Chase, I’m Sarah.”

“Charmed. So, Dave hasn’t chased you away yet?”

“Man, shut up,” Dave chastised.

“Is he always this charming?” Sarah murmured, rolling her eyes as she shrugged her coat off and looked for somewhere to hang it.

“No, he’s clearly turning on the charm for you.” He held out his hand for Sarah to take. “We’re going to my room, Chase.”

“No, don’t, I’m using it,” Chase replied, taking a sip of beer.

“What?”

“I’m fucking with you. Go fuck.”

“Haha, yeah, that’s, uh.” Sarah finally gave up and draped her coat over one arm, taking Dave’s hand and letting him lead her through the living room.

He ushered her in. His room did, at least, seem to be less messy than the outer room. There was even a bookshelf on it, stocked with books about social movements and activist history. The pizza boxes and beer cans were mercifully absent here.

It still smelled a bit Boy, though.

“So, your roommate is… something else, huh?” Sarah joked as she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

“Sorry about him,” Dave huffed, scratching his scalp vigorously. “He gets weird around people he doesn’t know.”

“Haha, it’s fine, really! I mean I’m not here to see him, so?” Sarah chuckled nervously. “Hey, where should I, um…” She held her coat out with a look of entreaty.

“Oh, just throw it on my desk chair.” He pointed to a rolling chair next to a desk festooned with widescreen monitors, then dropped onto his bed. “So.”

“So!” Sarah eyed the desk setup with curiosity for a moment before draping her coat over the back of the chair. She glanced around the room for a moment, then finally sat down on the foot of his bed, just far enough away to not be touching, and she smiled only a little uncertainly. “Dinner was really nice! I’ve never had sushi before.”

“Wait, really?” He laughed. “You’ve never had it? Wow, that’s so weird!”

“Is it?” Sarah laughed, a little more nervous than she had been a moment before. “I mean, there weren’t any sushi places where I—where I lived before this, so I didn’t have the chance? I mean, that’s not that weird, right?”

“No, I mean sure, that’s cool though that I got to introduce you to it! You liked it?” He flashed that smile that had imprinted so firmly on her brain and she giggled, scooting a little closer.

“I did! I liked even better that it was with you.”

“Aw, geez, same,” he said, scooting a bit closer. “What do you wanna do now?”

“Um. Do those monitors, y’know, turn towards the bed? We could put on a movie or something,” she suggested hopefully.

“Oh, yeah, I totally do that all the time.” Hopping off the bed, Dave moved to adjust the monitor array so it faced the bed. He woke his computer, showing off a desktop background that was a high-quality press still of the Damselfly in a skimpy but technically worksafe outfit. “What kind of thing do you wanna watch?”

“Surprise me? We went to see something I wanted to see last time, what kind of movies do you like?” she hedged. That was okay, right? Leaving it up to the other person was totally a thing people did on dates.

“Oh, uh,” Dave stammered, visibly a bit nervous. “I mean, well. On Golden Wings is available for streaming now that it’s not in theatres. Did you see it?”

Sarah shook her head. “That’s, uh, the one about the Oathkeeper, right? With that one actress? ...Actor? Actri… um. Vance Redfield, right?”

“Yeah, Avant Guard. Sie does a really, really good job with the role, and the direction tells the story very well. I hear that the film gets most of the facts right, too.”

“Okay, well, uh, yeah, let’s watch it!” She didn’t mention that the movie theater in her conservative hometown had refused to show it. It wasn’t really relevant, right? “Have you seen it already?”

“Yeah, but not in months!” he exclaimed, opening up a web browser on the monitor still facing him and navigating to a media site. “I’m happy to watch it again. Hell, I may as well just buy the license for it, I know I’m gonna watch it again. This movie was a real big deal for a lot of my friends and it reminds me of watching General McGowan’s coming out speech.”

“Oh yeah?” Sarah looked at him with interest. “It wasn’t really a big deal where I was. Were a lot of your friends, y’know, gay?”

“Yeah, a bunch came out right after the speech as gay, trans, poly… it was exciting.” He smiled warmly over at her and her heart skipped a beat again. “I’m really happy for them.”

“That sounds like it was really wonderful for them,” Sarah said softly, smiling back at him as she began to relax. “I’d love to watch it with you.”

“Great!”

He started the movie and fullscreened it, blanking out the monitors aside from the largest. He rushed to the torchiere and bedside lamp and turned both off, then flopped on the bed next to where Sarah was sitting. “C’mon, get comfortable!”

“R-right!” Sarah kicked her shoes off and dithered for a few seconds, finally stretching out on the bed and propping herself up on her elbows. After a moment’s hesitation, she scooted herself a little closer to Dave.

The strains of an electric guitar seeped through the wall.

“Chase! Chase!” Dave shouted, suddenly shockingly loud. Sarah winced. “Man, we’re watching a movie!”

“E-mail me the tabs and I’ll play along with the soundtrack,” Chase yelled through the wall.

“Ugh,” Dave grumbled, settling back down onto the bed. The guitar sounds resumed, but at a lower volume.

“How’d you two meet, anyway?” Sarah asked quietly. “You two seem kinda, uh…” She waggled her hand noncommittally.

“We were introduced by a common friend when we were both looking for a place… so I didn’t really know him when we signed the lease.” Dave grimaced. “Yeah, I’m kind of just waiting to find another place, honestly.”

Sarah nodded understanding. “I lucked out with my roommate, honestly,” she said, then snorted. “Though I’m not sure I quite realized by how much. You’ll like Zoë when you meet her, though.”

“Yeah? How come?”

Sarah shrugged. “I mean, she’s nice. She’s fun to hang out with. Oh, and she’s hilarious when we get drunk together. And besides, she already likes you, so.”

“Huh!” Dave blinked. “She already likes me? How’s that?”

“I mean, y’know, provisionally, at least!” Sarah said with a laugh, bumping her shoulder against his. “I may have sung your praises when I came home from Look Who’s Flying Now.”

“Aw, geez, you’re making me blush,” he said, truthfully. “I didn’t realize you liked the date that much!”

“Well, you made a good impression,” Sarah said happily, turning her head to give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Wow,” he said, giggling. “I’ll have to remember what I did! Oh, the dialogue’s starting!”

Truth be told, Sarah was only mostly paying attention to the movie. She was on a date, and she was with a Boy, and she was in his room, and there were just way too many things to think about, only one of which was what was happening on the screen. It did seem like a good movie, though, even though there were some embarrassing moments like when the Oathkeeper found herself in, of all places, a strip club. It got played for laughs, but even so, it was still—

“Wait a minute,” Sarah murmured, confused, “isn’t that the Damselfly?”

“Well, it’s an actor playing the Damselfly, but she is a dead ringer, isn’t she?”

“No I mean, why is the Damselfly in a, a strip club? Did they explain that part?”

He turned to her, puzzled. “Because the Damselfly is a stripper?”

She snorted, shooting him a sidelong glance. “Okay, but no really, why?”

Dave laughed. “Because… because the Damselfly is a stripper and the Oathkeeper went to recruit em at eir strip club. That’s what actually happened in real life.”

Sarah turned and stared at him for a moment, then looked back to the screen, her cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment. “I… didn’t actually know that the Damselfly used to be a stripper, haha.”

“Then maybe I shouldn’t tell you that ey still is one. Ey never quit working at the Faerie Glen.”

She turned back to him, shocked. She searched his face for any sign he was joking, but finding none, she burst out, “Seriously!? How can sh—ey be in the Infinity Legion, then?”

“Well,” he said with a grin, “why can’t ey be?”

“Because—I mean—ey—it’s a public image thing?” she spluttered.

“The Legion’s public image is changing,” Dave said proudly, as if he had somehow been responsible for said change. “It’s evolving.”

“R-right. Evolving. That makes… sense.” Sarah's thoughts whirled. The Damselfly, a Legionnaire and a stripper? How did that even work? Wait, was that why, Dave's desktop background photo? She cut that thought short. She'd come out to New England to get away from the conservative attitudes of her hometown, after all.

They watched silently for a bit, until they came across a scene where The Oathkeeper was brutally injured by an enemy. Dave's arm tightened around her waist as he pulled her closer, and Sarah stiffened in surprise, though only for a moment before she relaxed, tucking herself in against his side.

Well, mostly relaxed, though there was a part of her brain that wasn't paying any attention to the movie anymore and was instead running around in circles over the fact that she was cuddling with a Boy and it was very distracting.

“I, I think I remember hearing something about this,” she murmured, in an effort to keep focused on the movie more than anything else. “Wasn't this staged or something, though? Like, she didn't actually go to the hospital.”

“What?” This seemed to puzzle Dave more than it surprised him. “People said that, really? But it’s so easy to verify. They had to hire a surgery team from all around the world, so the paperwork is all public.”

“Oh, it, it is, huh?” Sarah’s cheeks flushed hotly. “R-right. Of course they did. I guess I must have… misunderstood, or something.”

“It um.” Dave chose his next words carefully. “It seems like you got some... information about the Legion that might not be true.”

“No! I was just, I mean, I, um.” She glanced to the side, peering up at him from under her lashes, chagrined. “Is it that obvious?”

“I mean, not at first, but that last question was…” He paused. “I’d only ever heard it from Legion Truthers. The people who said that the Ireland disaster was a setup, and that the Legion started the Cult of Midnight.”

“I… I didn't actually believe any of that?” Sarah replied in a small voice.

“I’m!” Dave tensed, realizing his misstep. “I’m not saying that you do! But I just hadn’t… run into anyone who thought General McGowan’s injury was… fake.”

“It's not that I thought it was fake, really? I just thought maybe it was part of a, y'know.” She hesitated. “Storyline?”

As the look of horror returned to his face, Dave asked in a near-whisper, “what do you mean, ‘storyline’?”

Sarah's heart quailed. “Well, I mean, sometimes, the Legion does stuff that's, y'know, planned, right?” she replied meekly, desperately searching his eyes. “Not always, but, like, sometimes? Right?”

“N… no…” Dave said, his eyes widening, “that’d… that’d be illegal. They literally can’t do that.”

“I… didn't know that…” Sarah whispered miserably.

Dave paused the movie and turned to face Sarah. “You… know that Heroes and Villains are real… right?”

“Y-yes, of course I know that!” she assured him hastily. “I mean it's not like they're actors or anything!”

“Okay, that’s good.” He nodded, looking relieved. “I wasn’t looking forward to having to break the news by telling you about that ACC student who turned out to be a Villain and attacked a bunch of people.”

“Yeah, um, I heard about that. It was just before I moved here, but there were interviews on the news.”

“We live in a weird world. I guess I’m a bit sheltered for assuming you’d have the same frame of reference as me.”

Sarah imagined she could hear the carefully-unspoken disdain in his words, and her heart sank. “No, it's… you didn't…” She sighed. “Do you wanna keep watching the movie?”

“Do you? Like, are you okay?” To his credit, he sounded genuinely concerned. 

She met his eyes. “I just… wanted to have a nice time. I know there's stuff I…” She shook her head and didn't finish the thought. “I didn't wanna get into it.”

He was quiet for a few seconds. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm… still really happy that you came over. Even if I chose the movie poorly. “

“You didn't, I… I'm sorry I made such a mess of it,” Sarah mumbled. “I still want to finish it, if you want, I mean we haven't even gotten to the speech and that's your favorite part, right?”

“Yeah, it's… it's really okay. Let's keep watching.”

As he unpaused the movie, Dave sidled in close once again, a bit more carefully this time. Sarah barely even noticed, her brain whirling with thoughts of self-recrimination. He was gonna think she was provincial, that she wasn't worth his time… if he hadn't written her off already.

But he was still next to her on the bed, his shoulder and hip touching hers. Slowly, carefully, she shifted and lowered her head until it was resting on his shoulder, pulling her ponytail over to her other side to keep it out of the way.

He shifted and turned, seeming just as careful as she'd been, and planted a small kiss on her forehead. She glanced up in surprise, away from the movie, and when she met his eyes she blushed. Suddenly there was no movie anymore, no room, no thoughts of her hometown or the people she grew up with. There was no anything except the sudden and overriding realization that a Cute Boy's face was inches from hers.

“Hey,” he murmured. “You're really pretty.” 

She swallowed, heart pounding. “Th-thanks,” she breathed.

His face was closer now. His breath tickled her upper lip. His eyes drifted closed. Hesitantly, nervously, she leaned forward, just enough to touch her lips, briefly and lightly, to his. She held her breath.

He leaned forward, pressing his lips firmly against hers, arm tightening around her waist. Sarah gasped, freezing a moment, but then she made a small noise and relaxed against him, letting her own eyes drift shut. She shivered.

She was kissing a Boy and it was so much different from reading about it online!

---

“Sorry we didn’t really see much of the second half of the movie,” the Actual Boy who was Kinda Sorta On Top of Her said.

“Th-that's okay!” she squeaked. Her hair tie had come out at some point, her long brown hair splayed around her head, and she was still breathing heavier than she would have expected for what really wasn't a lot of exertion, when it came down to it? But tell that to her cheeks, which were as rosy as they had been after her hurried move-in to the apartment with Zoë. “We could… watch it again some other time?”

He gave her that adorable smile again. “We… we could try!”

---

“I'm home!” Sarah caroled giddily as she eased the front door shut behind her. “Zoë, you still awake?”

There was no answer, and at first Sarah assumed that her roommate must be asleep in bed. Then, as her eyes adjusted, her heart skipped a beat as she realized that the pile of clothes near the window wasn’t a pile of clothes. Zoë lay prone on the floor next to their overturned ficus tree, her limp hands next to the pot and covered in the spilled soil; Sarah could only assume that she had clutched at the pot on the way down, knocking the tree over as she lost consciousness.

“Zoë!” Sarah shrieked, her coat and keys both falling forgotten to the floor as she dashed over to her fallen roommate, kneeling by her side and giving her shoulder a shake. “Zo! Zo, wake up, what's wrong! Zoë!”

“Wha…” Zoe stirred, blinking awake slowly, and wiped her splotchy face with the back of one hand. She looked over at the fallen tree and frowned. “My… oh no, I knocked over Fike Wazowski…”

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief, abandoning her efforts to pull her phone out of her jeans pocket. “Oh, thank the Lord you're okay,” she murmured. “What happened, Zo? How'd you fall? Does it hurt anywhere?”

“I… I dunno what happened,” Zoë murmured, “but… I just felt worse and worse all day, and I tried everything. I drank a lot of water and that helped a little but not much, so I ate a big meal and that didn’t help at all, and I tried to nap but I couldn’t sleep, and I took a walk but it was really cold and I came in and just… I think I was looking out the window, and I just got really weak and faint.”

After a thoughtful pause, she frowned and said, “but… I feel better now. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe your body just needed the rest,” Sarah said uncertainly. “Come on, lemme help you up, okay? Let's get you cleaned up and then I'm putting you to bed. And don't worry about Fike, I'll stand him back up.”

“O-okay.” Zoë got to her feet carefully, wiping the dirt from her hands. She fixed her deep green eyes on Sarah and murmured, “I really do feel a lot better now, though.”

“I'm glad, but you're still going to bed,” Sarah said firmly, supporting her with an arm around the shoulders, “and tomorrow I'm taking you in to see Dr. Arams.”

She peered at Zoë’s face with concern, reaching up to rub at one of the greyish-brown splotches there with a thumb. “Bathroom first, though, this isn't coming off without water.”

“Ss!” Zoë winced. “It’s a little tender…”

“Really?” Sarah asked, worried again. “Lemme get a better look at it, then.”

Zoë allowed herself to be led to the bathroom, and blinked under the sudden light as Sarah sat her down on the toilet.

“Okay, tilt your head up and lemme—” Sarah began, then stopped short. She stared at Zoë in confusion for a moment, then murmured, “Hang on, Zo, look at me. Were your eyes always that color?”

“What, brown? Yeah.”

Sarah shook her head, her eyes widening in shock. “They're not brown, Zoë,” she whispered, turning her roommate to face the mirror so she could meet her own deep green gaze. “Zo, what's going on?”

“I…” Zoë’s eyes widened as she saw her eyes, then the splotches on her skin. “What’s happening to me? What even does something like this?”

Sarah swallowed. “Zoë, I…” she began nervously. She bit her lip, then continued, “I never told you, but, the night you bumped your head? I… used my powers to keep that bottle from hitting you. What if I did this to you?”

“Is that a thing? I thought… I thought paranormal abilities were inherited by family, not… contagious. Do you think you made me paranormal…?”

“I don't know!” Sarah cried. “They always told me not to use them cause they were dangerous but I didn't believe them, and what if I got you sick?”

“I, I, I don’t know!” Zoë exclaimed, her breathing getting faster. The blotches under her skin seemed to deepen and spread in response to her stress. “I never heard of anything like this happening!”

“Oh my god it's getting worse,” Sarah whispered. “We, we need to get you to a hospital, Zoë, I need to tell them what I did. I'm calling an ambulance.” She scrabbled in her pocket with shaking fingers.

“No!” Zoë grabbed her arm. “I don’t want you to get in trouble! If this stuff is communicable we… we can say that I was near someone else using powers. Okay?”

Sarah swallowed and nodded. “Okay, Zo,” she said, covering the other girl's hand with her own and giving it a squeeze. “You win. Let's go get you some help, please, okay?”

“O… okay.”