Marcus pokes his arm. And blinks.

"That's a rush. Yeah, there's definitely- something. If drugs feel like this I know why people take them, wow." He ceases to maintain arm contact.

"It seems like we should do something systematized to check everyone for superpowers but if they're all- weird and individual, like touch-of-steroid and sprint-of-celerity- I don't see how we could."

(Sanders is mostly successful in suppressing his reaction to someone else touching his boyfriend outside of an emergency. Mostly.)

"We haven't seen anything mental yet, but someone could have that...Cora's power sounds like the kind of thing she would get. It fits her personality."

"I hope it's not based on that. Imagine what Jackson would end up with."

"You wound me. Okay, let's do this. Caden is useless unless someone is touching him, which means Sanders is staying on top of that. Cora is good for short bursts. Marcus, do you have any overriding personality traits or hobbies?"

".. you know what, I bet your power'd be the kind of x-ray vision that gives people cancer, you're very good at mental undressing people's boyfriends and then acting crabby," he says brightly.

Sanders sets a comforting hand on Caden's leg; this serves the dual purpose of exploiting his vodka-caffeine-steroid properties with plausible deniability. Kill two birds with one stone, and all that.

"Marcus is so fucking boring I'm amazed he doesn't start snoring whenever he looks in the mirror, I bet he can put people to sleep."

"Oh, yeah, I'm so dull I don't have any character traits or hobbies. None at all. I'm a regular anti-solipsist- everyone else is real and I'm just a figment of their imaginations.

I do sculptures and donate money and don't really do anything in my evenings aside from homework and reading, do those count."

"Any undressing stopped when I found out he was taken. I'm not that kind of guy."

"Of course not. You prefer guys who can stroke your ego, instead of their boyfriends."

"That counts," Danny says, ignoring everyone who isn't Marcus. Marcus seems like a reasonable human being.

"Charitable, artistic, polite but not dull- I'd guess something more subtle, like invisibility or even mental stuff like better processing speed."

"Caden, you're not doing anything when your boyfriend takes a hit, are you? It's all passive?"

(Caden kind of regrets what he said, it wasn't really kind or necessary or even true, it was just mean. He should try to be less tetchy.)

"Sorry for the insinuation, then. And none of it seems to involve me doing anything, no, he just- heals up. And vise versa."

Marcus is moderately flattered by those adjectives. It shows.

"I'm not sure how I'd try to turn any of that on. Maybe I'll suddenly turn telepathic when I next pet a cat, or something. What do you do for your hobbies?"

"Hacking. He was arrested when he was thirteen."

"I don't really do much of that, lately, and when I do it's strictly white hat. I might be able to do something with electronics, but general math stuff is just as applicable."

"Mine happens when I think about how much I like running. I don't think they'll all be that obvious, if Caden can't figure out how he's doing it."

"If mine was running while I was unconscious I really don't have the faintest idea of what could be going on there. Maybe I'm a very ebullient fainter. Sandy, have you noticed any changes-"

"No."

"Drat.

I wouldn't have expected you to be a hacker, Danny, but it suits you somehow, the mix of roguishness and intelligence- and goodness, we're talking about monochrome hats already, life really has turned into a sci-fi novel, next thing you know we'll be wearing capes and using codenames."

"Hard pass on the capes. I can pull off plenty of things, but not a cape."

"Is this a government conspiracy? I don't think we should plan like we're superheroes and not guinea pigs."

"I want a cape now, and how the fuck do we plan on being guinea pigs. Do we run away to Canada and hope that the FBI's doing jack shit to monitor us or what. Do we kill ourselves in the dead of night before they can get to us. Do we supplement our diet with hay. "

"Sanders' house is large and empty-ish."