"...you might be uncomfortable. I was lying when I said I was nearly as comfortable as a bed," he says, pulling his jacket off and then lowering the neck of his shirt to show a metal plate that seems to be embedded into the flesh between his shoulder and his neck.

"Not as uncomfortable as I am right now. I gave Morgan one of my blankets to wrap her stupid laser gun up because dust is bad for electronics. Get your ass in here if you're gonna."

"Yes, ma'am." They can snuggle up, and without his fluffy jacket—which he's draped over them as an extra blanket, though he himself is pretty warm already—she can definitely feel that there are multiple of those metal plates elsewhere on his body, as well as parts whose texture feels wrong somehow, under the fabric of his shirt.

And from up close, without his shades on, she can see that his eyes are a striking kind of blue that doesn't really occur in humans. It's the same colour as the glow of plants.

They're really very pretty.

But most importantly, he is warm, which is what she ultimately wanted from this. She nestles right up to him and hides from the HORRIBLE AWFUL COLD in her CAR THAT DOESN'T HAVE ANY KIND OF CLIMATE CONTROL because fucking VERNON said people would kill for it and fucking HELL does she believe that NOW. DAMN HIM for being right, she misses him, why is he dead, he shouldn't be, it's not fair.

Regardless, this is in fact the most comfortable she's been since Jeneora, which had buildings to keep temperatures a bit more regulated.

He can get the overall flavour of her feelings, and through their little bond he sends a wave of reassurance and shared grief. He misses Vernon, too.

Yeah.

He must have so many of these scars of grief. People she doesn’t and won’t ever get to know. She’ll… no, she’s not thinking or feeling that at him, it’s not fair. She’s here now, nestled in his arms, and she hopes that’s enough.

Eventually, she will drift off to sleep.

He'll fall asleep after she does, and he'll wake up before she does. He knows he leaks, when he sleeps, and while she's unconscious he's not too worried about it but there really are some things he does not want her to consciously perceive about his feelings.

...and he hopes he doesn't have any nightmares. He doesn't know what it'd feel like, to sleep next to him when he has one of those, but he can't imagine it'd be pleasant.

Elsewhere, someone sits watch, in the dark. Invisible to all the world besides the little faint glow of a lit cigarette, to an ordinary pair of eyes.

Not all pairs of eyes are ordinary, though, and not everyone perceives the world using just their eyes. Worms, for instance, also use radio frequencies, sounds, and smells to communicate and to interact with the world. Their eyesight is, comparatively, much worse than that of humans. Their overall senses are, at least at an individual level, much worse than those of humans.

But they don't need to be limited to the individual level.

A single worm of the flying variety lands nearby. And then a second one. And then a third. And a fourth. And soon there is a mass of them, assembling itself into roughly the shape of a person. Many of them stop glowing, as they stack together, so they don't stand out as much as one would think.

And after a while, the bugs disperse—but not all of them. Much fewer of them than the number of them that arrived. And standing there where they'd been is a person, humanoid but not human.

"You performed your role to perfection, hmm?"

She takes a long drag on her cigarette, and lets out a large breath of smoke.

“Only thing boss man cares about is results, so… no, not really, not yet. Didn’t need your help, though. You kinda almost fucked me there, with the murders.”

They grin, walking over to Morgan and leaning forward, childlike mannerisms making the whole visual all the creepier. "You don't care, though, do you? About human lives, not at all."

“Doesn’t matter. They do.” She waves vaguely towards the car with its sleeping occupants.

"And it made you so much more sympathetic," they say, and grin. "You're welcome!"

“Oh, spare me, you’re not getting a thank you. You’re just poking us to see what we do. What was that with the,” she waves vaguely, “attempted snatching of the nerd, huh? How was that supposed to help anything but your curiosity?”

"We never claimed to do anything but that!" they say, straightening back up. "Knives is fun. You're fun. Zash is fun. The human is fun. And it's a very human thing, isn't it, to take sides like that? We just do what we want to. You, too."

“I sure do. But you hate that you can’t see into people’s heads like the plants do, hm? Can’t just cheat and know, gotta go poking. Good luck with that. Poke elsewhere, I’ve got a job to do.”

"Ooh, ouch. Guess you see right through us, too, don't you? Alright, alright, we'll stop buggin' ya." They grin even more widely. "Get it? Bugging? Anyway! Nice seein' ya."

And they dissolve into a mass of worms that flies off again.

“Hilarious.”

Her cigarette is almost a nub. She tosses it aside and steps on its cinders to put it out properly. Back to a very boring night.