Author's Notes:

Understand human emotions, me good, yes.

Red Planet Pizza was not a very long walk away and we made good time, especially now that Adagio wasn’t dragging her feet anymore. It nestled in amongst other restaurants of similar caliber down a street that went nowhere anyone would reasonably want to go.

Everywhere had a place like this, I reckoned. Must be fundamental, somehow.

We could have gone in and asked and that had been my initial plan but I’d jackknifed out at the last moment when a thought had occurred to me: what could they have told me? Yes, she worked for them? We kind of suspected that already. Would they know where she lived? Probably not, so what use would asking be?

Better, I felt, to hang around like a pair of ne’er do wells and just wait for her to appear then rush over. Assuming she would appear. Which I convinced myself she would.

Down on her luck, why wouldn’t she be working as much as she could? So ran my logic.

The place had barely opened by the time we got there so it was unlikely anyone was ordering yet. Lord knew who ordered from there anyway. Cheap it might have been but still, who’d take their life in their own hands like that?

There was a strip of mud and a bench opposite, and it was on this wthat we loitered. I assumed that the mdu had had grass, once, but it had died from shame. Or just from neglect. Either way.

“What are we doing?” Adagio asked, leaning in to whisper, apparently thinking that this would make it somehow less obvious that one person was leaning over to another on a bench in full view. I liked her attitude, though.

“We’re staking it out,” I said, leaning in and whispering as well.

“Why?”

I laid down my train of thought about not going in, only out loud this time. Adagio seemed mostly won over by my reasoning. Mostly.

“What if she isn’t working today?” She asked.

This was probably the biggest gap in my plan. It was the sort of thing going in and asking might actually solve, assuming they told us. Such a thing might be seen as a little weird. Especially coming from me, a guy.

“Then we’ll be sat around for nothing. But I reckon she will, like I say. You could always go in and ask, if you like?”

She looked at the place and silently reached the decision that my way was best, shuffling across the bench and a bit closer to me. For warmth, I suspected, given that the day was turning unexpectedly brisk as we moved into mid-afternoon.

“Chilly?” I asked and she nodded. I cast an eye to the bag she’d left my place with and which she’d been lugging around since meeting up with me earlier. There was probably something in there she could use, but getting it out would be a faff. Sighing, I raised my arm.

“Come on in,” I said, and after a moment of confused hesitation Adagio gave a tiny grin and did just that, snuggling for warmth. I sighed again, though not wholly unhappily I will admit.

Honestly, what was I doing with myself these days?

“Is Aria really spiky, like that guy said?” I asked after a few moments of silence.

“He probably meant more that she gives the suggestion of spikes,” she said.

Whatever the hell that meant.

Our stakeout continued in silence for a few minutes after this, the pizza place continuing to slowly set itself up and no-one in particular going up or down the road. Adagio made herself more comfortable and warm at my expense, but such was life. It was only this one last day, after all.

“So…what’s the deal with you and Sunset, anyway?” Adagio asked out of nowhere, walking her fingers across her legs and then onto mine, at least until I took gentle hold of her wrist and put her hand back onto her own damn leg. She just giggled about it. She was an odd girl sometimes.

“She’s my friend?”

This I thought should have been obvious, given that I had, you know, said as much. With words. More than once, too, I was pretty sure.

My response got another giggle out of Adagio. Nice sound, but unclear intention. I wasn’t sure what there was here to be giggling, or for that matter where this line of questioning had come from or could possibly go.

“Come on, you can tell me. No-one else would believe me anyway,” she said, giving me a nudge and a wink - a wink of all things!

“I really don’t know what to tell you, Dagi,” there it was again, slip of the tongue. “We’re friends. She’s my only friend, in fact. Unless you’re my friend, too, in which case she’s just my first friend. Are we friends?”

“We’re friends,” Adagio said, steadfastly, continuing to try and burrow inside me for warmth.

“There you go then. Friends. I am fond of her and she puts up with me, much as with us two. Friends. Why do you ask?”

I felt another shrug out of her. I should start a running tally at this point.

“You said that if you let me stay with you again she’d be upset, was just wondering why you’d think that.”

My turn to shrug.

“An impression I got. She seemed fairly pleased to hear you’d run off in the middle of the night. I have a sneaking suspicion her and her friends don’t think too highly of you, you know. Probably just didn’t want you hanging around me. Supernatural troublemaker that you are.”

She went quiet for a few moments and I thought that maybe I’d succeeded in putting this strange tangent to bed. No such luck.

“Does she know I slept in your bed?” Adagio asked. I blinked.

“Pretty sure I told her that, yeah. Why?”

“No reason.”

If Adagio was trying to get at something I had no idea what it could be. Where else was I meant to let a guest sleep? The sofa? That wouldn’t be good hosting given it was only a day or so. And why would Sunset care if Adagio had slept in my bed?

I had the impression I was missing something glaringly obvious, but so obvious I had no chance whatsoever of grasping it. Frustrating.

Thankfully, a scooter pulled up at this point and the girl riding it removed her helmet. She looked cross. Cross at the scooter, cross at having to take her helmet off, cross at the world in general.

Could kind of see now the whole ‘suggestion of spikes’ thing. Not that it made the concept any less weird.

“Hey, is that her?” I asked, pointing. Adagio followed the line of my arm and my trusty pointin’ finger and I felt her stiffen against me momentarily before she leapt to her feet.

“Aria!” She cried out, and the girl from the scooter stiffened too before slowly - ever-so-slowly - turning to look towards us. Her eyes locked onto Adagio, widened, and then promptly snapped her head back round again and started striding towards Red Planet Pizza.

“Aria! Get back here!” Adagio shouted, jumping up and jogging over. Aria did not slow and did not look back and when Adagio did catch up and catch hold of her and spin her around Aria did not look best pleased, whipping a hand up to point a finger just under Adagio’s nose.

“You left us! You abandoned us!” She all-but screamed, and even I could tell she was balanced atop an emotional powder-keg.

“I failed you! I wasn’t thinking!” Adagio all-but screamed back, sounding about as het up.

“And then you ran away!”

“I’m sorry!”

“That doesn’t help!”

“I want to help!”

“Helping now is too late!”

It got worse from there and I kind of lost track, if I’m honest. Felt like it wasn’t my business enough to pay too-close attention anyway.

Some collateral damage was unavoidable, though.

There was a lot of yelling, some crying, lots of gesticulation. A back and forth over who’d had it worse since what had happened had happened, a lot from Adagio about how sorry she was and a lot from Aria about how that wasn’t good enough, etcetera.

Some people came to see what the fuss was about then went away once they saw the source. Wise. They had the good fortune not to be involved, unlike me.

I kept my distance and waited for all the emotion to die down. Not really my wheelhouse, and I’d probably just get in the way. If Adagio needed me I was sure she’d say so.

Their argument devolved eventually into a sobbing, wailing hug and petered out from there by degrees. I twiddled my thumbs and rocked on my heels and tried to be inconspicuous.

At length the hug broke apart, and while both of them were very teary and a little on the snotty side they at least looked happier. An improvement? I thought so.

“Who’s this?” Aria then asked pointing at me but not looking at me, finally noticing I was there or at least finally deciding I was worthy of being remarked upon.

“He’s nice, he helped me,” Adagio said, sniffling. Glowing reference, that. Aria plainly wasn’t convinced and leant in to whisper something to Adagio, whose eyes widened in affronted shock. The worst kind of shock!

“No! I did not! How could I?” Adagio hissed back, loud enough for me to hear.

“Thought maybe you’d, I don’t know, got something back,” Aria said, sparing me a glance. I stood like a lemon, superfluous to requirements, wondering what it was the whispering had been about and being sure it probably hadn’t been anything good.

“Well I haven’t!” Adagio said, emphatically, also glancing at me and smiling nervously. I smiled back. Seemed like the thing to do.

Aria looked like she still wasn’t convinced, but also looked unwilling to press it any further. The two of them disentangled from one another and Aria stalked up to me, looking me over. I saw what the guy from the taco place meant about spikes, and about the anger. Even after what had looked be a a thoroughly draining crying session and hug she looked about ready to throw down.

“What’s his name?” She asked Adagio, again not really looking beyond what she needed to to get the measure of me.

At this point I figured it’d be a good idea to interject rather than just loom there being something to be talked about. I told her my name. She didn’t seem especially impressed. There wasn’t a lot I could do about that.

“And what’s he doing here?” She asked, again, not to me.

What am I, chopped liver?

“Ask him, he’s standing right there!” Adagio chided, smacking Aria over the back of the head and earning himself a venomous glare but nothing further. See that ringleader stuff was coming back to her, though dope-slapping your underlings is perhaps not the nicest thing to be doing.

“What are you doing here?” Aria asked me through gritted teeth, rubbing her head.

“I’m just here with Dagi- Adagio, helping her out. She was looking for you guys and I helped her find you, and that’s why I’m here,” I said, gesturing towards Adagio and only very nearly slipping up with the nickname thing again. I bit my tongue.

It was one of those things where you think about not doing it so much that it’s just swimming around your brain, you know? Didn’t help that I thought it sounded kind of cute.

“Right,” Aria said before turning back to Adagio, plainly having finished with me. “I need to work, but this is where we’re staying.”

She jotted down the address in a notepad she pulled out of a jacket pocket, tore it out and passed it straight to Adagio, eyeing me suspiciously as he did so. She then went in for another hug, surprising Adagio who returned it after only a moment.

“We were worried. Me and Sonata. Angry - oh, real angry, I’m going to get into that later with you - but worried, too,” Aria said. Adagio looked appropriately sheepish.

“I was worried. It was only after that I realised I’d made a mistake in running and by then you two were gone and I had nowhere to go and everyone turned on me and…”

She trailed off, assuming that Aria had experienced much the same and didn’t need it spelled out. The pair of them shared a tired smile, the kind one could only really manage after screaming at someone you cared about for a few minutes.

This was all very sweet. Looked to be working out better than I might have hoped! And before the day was even over, no less!

Maybe I’d missed my calling in life. Should become a private investigator. Though from what I understand that mainly involves stalking those suspected of adultery. And that doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time.

Maybe I hadn’t missed my calling in life.

The girls then hugged - again! - and then stepped back from one another.

“I need to do this. If you go to the address I’ll be there later,” Aria said. With that done she - sparing me one final, suspicious glare - went into Red Planet Pizza, leaving me and Adagio outside.

Why Aria had bothered being secretive with her note was anyone’s guess, given that the first thing Adagio did with the address once Aria had gone was hand it to me and ask where it was. But that’s trust issues for you. I suppose I can understand.

Either way, I did know where it was, so it was more walking for us. I carried Adagio’s bag, just because, and off we went.

“Can’t we take a bus?” Adagio whined, plainly having less patience for walking than I did.

“It’s not far,” I said. This was true. By my standards.

She whined more as we went, but I was getting used to it and, honestly, she had quite a nice voice to listen to, even if half the things she was saying then were complaints about how her feet hurt.

At one point about three-quarters of the way there I did offer to carry her - as a joke I hasten to add - and for one or two horrible seconds she actually looked to be considering it before deciding that the embarrassment wasn’t worth it. Did put a stop to her complaints though.

The rate today was going I reckoned I might even make good enough time to get home for dinner before it got dark. And I’d maybe even get to see the sort of girl who could put away enough tacos to scar the psyches of people who work in the service industry.

Not for the first time I reflected that today was a pretty good day off.