"...uh-huh. Very nice of her."

"Given the givens. There's a lot of maneater demons out there. Plus she makes really good dulce de leche."

"That's just sweetened condensed milk in the microwave," says Brian.

"Not the way she does it!"

He feels the bloodflow trickle to a stop and carefully removes the sodden paper towel from his nose. "Is there somewhere I can burn this? Or- does your magic not have nasty things people can do to you if they have your blood?"

"...pretty sure it doesn't have that," Jackson says.

"Fair enough." He locates an appropriate trash receptacle and disposes of the paper towel.

Fortunately the workings of trash receptacles in this alternate universe are neither unfamiliar nor arcane. "People would go through your trash looking for blood?" asks Jackson.

"Not necessarily, but it's best not to tempt fate. And I'm not banking on never making any magic-using enemies, so I want to be in the habit."

"...weird," says Jackson. "I guess a mage or maybe even a psion could come up with a power that needed somebody's blood to work, I just don't know why they'd bother instead of doing something else."

"Blood makes things easier. It's got a connection to the person it came from, and you can use that to get to them, no matter what they've put up in the way." He waves a hand. "Again, this is my magic. Yours sounds very tidy, no blood required at all."

"No blood," agrees Jackson. "I'm on a government contract to do virtualities."

"What's a virtuality?"

"It's where new mages and psions go till they can control their magic."

"Oh. Nice."

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. "Is there... um. Is there somewhere I can sit down? The magic high is wearing off and I'm kinda dizzy."

"Oh, yeah, this way," Jackson says, waving him into the adjacent living room.

"Need a hand?" Brian says, offering one.

"No, no, it's-" Xan stumbles a little. "-okay, yeah. Thanks."

He follows them into the living room and sits down carefully on the floor, hugging his legs in front of him.

"You can sit on the couch if you want," Brian says. Jackson is on the floor too, kneeling at Brian's knee.

Xan shrugs. "I like the floor. You guys are a cute couple," he adds.

"Thanks," says Brian, patting Jackson on the head.

"You look like a dom," says Jackson. "It's weird for doms to sit on the floor. Unless they're from Japan or something."

"What, that's sub-coded? Ugh, roles."

Xan considers whether the comfort of sitting on the floor is worth the irritation of looking less dominant. Reluctantly, he unfolds himself to sit on the couch.

"If there weren't enough space it wouldn't mean much," says Brian.

Xan shrugs.

"How'd you guys meet?" he asks.

"I was taking a walk and Brian was gardening," Jackson says, "back when I was still dating my awful ex, but I stopped anyway to look at the flowers..."

"And we got to chatting and he'd come by sometimes and I found out how awful his ex was and told him to break up with him," says Brian.

"And I said I didn't know how to do that, like, partly because I was messed up but partly because my ex was awful," says Jackson.

"So I got my sister to pick the locks - she can do that, she's a nurse, they have to get things off people sometimes," says Brian. "And mail stuff back to the awful ex, so Jackson wouldn't have to talk to him again."

"And then - sorry, you asked how we met, not how we got together," says Jackson.

"Aw, that's nice though," Xan says. "Sounds like you work with each other."

Jackson giggles. "He was - he was trying not to date because he was like, 'well, it's not reasonable to ask subs I meet for all this stuff I want, that went terribly last time' - and then I was like, no, that's all awesome, collar me yesterday, and he was like, but my therapist says I should work through all this stuff, and I was like, okay, you can do that too, but meanwhile here I am and I will totally do all that stuff. And now he has a different less dumb therapist."