Illyana couldn’t decipher between a memory and a dream when her eyes gingerly blinked open. The sunlight had been hitting the outside of her eyelids and they were warm enough from the heat to rouse her. She felt like her head was a watermelon–heavy, and over-sized. Her bladder seemed like it was going to explode. She made a small moan of discomforted annoyance and arched her back, managing to pull herself up and overcome the gravity. She had to rub sleep out of her eyes before she realized that nothing around her was recognizable.

Where the plumbobs was she?

The room had brick walls, covered in different art canvases. Paintings, she realized at seeing an easel against the wall with a canvas half complete with a similar style as the completed ones. Was this a dream? She shivered a bit and realized a breeze was blowing on her through an open window. When she looked down at herself she let out a gasp. Where were her clothes?

She put her hand to her foggy head as a small pang of panic pricked her in the gut. She didn’t remember any detail of how she got here. Wherever this was, it was not a dream. She began to feel anxious and closed her eyes.

One breath.

Two breaths.

Three.

She felt a bit calmer but no less concerned at her predicament.

The bed was a queen, the blankets looked like they were a dude’s. She spied hair ties on the night stand and reconsidered her former thought.

She quietly slipped out of the bed and tip-toed on the wooden floor, over to the dresser to further investigate. The top drawer was a mix of unmatched socks and boxer briefs. Okay, so it was a dude’s room? Who’s? That blond guy from the frat? She remembered some intense flirting from him, what was his name? It started with an ‘M’. Her last clear memory was that Alarie and her went to visit Rafael but then after that, details started to blur.

She pulled open a middle drawer and found a collared shirt one might wear to a party. It was long enough anyway to cover her decently, made for a tall man’s torso and ended at her upper-thigh. She threw it on and buttoned it up, feeling a bit better about investigating the strange domain all the while racking her brain for clues or memories to where she was.

Alarie had kept insisting that a rebound would bring Illyana out of her post-breakup moping but if she couldn’t remember any of it what was the point? She really hoped she hadn’t randomly hooked up with a stranger. She closed the window and decided she needed to find a bathroom.

There were two doors in the room. She cracked the left one open and found the toilet and sighed in relief. After using it, washing her hands and bit more of sleep out of her eyes she continued on her quest to find her clothes.

She searched around the room and got a bit distracted by the paintings. They were very good. Colorful, fantastical, enchanting even. They looked like something in a dream. That reminded her that presently, this wasn’t a dream, and she still needed to find her clothes.


After looking everywhere, she concluded that her clothes were not in the bedroom.

She found herself outside the second door, in a hallway with a stairwell and the first thing that hit her senses was the smell of something delicious. Pancakes?

The stairs creaked as she descended into a main room. She saw a drum kit and a stand up bass, also a computer desk. To the left was a living room and the right was the dining room, and beyond that she assumed a kitchen. She had the feeling it was not the frat she had visited with Alarie.

She stopped and tensed with utmost apprehension–someone was there in the kitchen, she could hear them shuffling around!

“Hello?” She asked with a hint of nervousness, feeling a lot like Goldilocks inside a stranger’s house and not knowing what she was about to run into.

“Good morniiiiiing Sunshine,” she heard the drawl of a vaguely familiar male voice and then he stepped out from the kitchen to reveal himself.

So many things did not make sense to Illyana in that moment.


Nicholas Hart, someone she knew for a fact wanted nothing to do with her, was standing there and smiling. He looked like some kind of model, wearing nothing but bright green pajama pants, with his very long hair loose and hanging around his shoulders. He was holding a plate of pancakes.

Maybe it was a dream after all.


Or a nightmare.

Had she drunkenly hooked up with him of all people!? Her cheeks flared red in horrified mortification as she imagined what had transpired between them.

“I bet you’re hungry,” he said and placed a plate of food on the table, gesturing her over to eat. She was in fact, ravenous, but made no move to join him. Her mind was still jumbled.

“Wha…what’s happening?” she finally asked, trying to remain calm.

He cut into his stack of pancakes with a smirk, “Breakfast.”

She frowned; that was not the answer she was looking for and he knew it! She wanted to know why she was there, why she had woken up in a state of undress, and why she couldn’t remember anything. She knew he could fill in the blanks. She stood stiffly with the smell of pancakes beckoning her to eat.

His smirk melted and he took on a more serious air, “Come here and eat. I’ll explain everything.”

That was acceptable.

She dug into her stack of pancakes and listened intently as he made it clear, to her relief, that they had not slept together. Then he began to recount the night that had slipped through her memory.

It was hard to keep her eyes off him because Nick looked so different with such long hair. He’d always let it grow to shaggy proportions when they were younger but nothing this drastic. It wasn’t a bad look on him though, it was actually rather attractive but it was inappropriate for her to be checking him out while eating breakfast. Yet, she found that her stare kept wandering back to him as he told her about Marshall Cosgrove and the Torporia, her following disorientation, and her alarming need to undress herself.

“So you saw me in my underwear then?” She asked with a startled tone, her heightened anger flaring, losing focus on his features and interrupted his story.

“Well, yeah but it’s not a big deal,” Nick shrugged. She scowled, her cheeks turning red again.

“I mean, I saw you in your underwear all the time when we went swimming in my pool,” he cocked his head to the side and widened his eyes innocently.

“Yeah, but I was like eight, didn’t have a real swimsuit and I didn’t want to get all my clothes wet!” She protested, recalling those summers, years ago when they were kids. She was already livid that someone like Marshall Cosgrove thought he could drug her and get away with it and also couldn’t help but feel discouraged that she had such awful luck in picking men.

“See? Not a big deal,” Nick nodded like his point was made and popped another forkful of pancake into his mouth. “Anyway, I called the police and told them what I saw him do.”

“Did you mention my name?”

“No, I didn’t think you wanted to be dragged into an investigation; you’ve been through enough.”

“How do you do it?” She asked, frustrated and still amazed, setting down her own fork with a little too much force on the table-top.

“What?” He raised an inquisitive brow.

“Sit there and speak to me like we’re still friends,” she finally looked away and crossed her arms. What he had done for her last night–it was something a friend would do. Or at least, what someone who cared about her would have done. She couldn’t figure him out anymore. The summer before their senior year of high school, they had begun to mend their friendship and then it was all destroyed within a night, and she never understood why. He didn’t speak to her after that. He hadn’t cared anymore, and to be honest, it hurt her immensely. “You told me we aren’t.”


“I was also really stupid back then,” Nick said in an obvious tone. She snapped her gaze to him and her hard, scrutinizing expression demanded more of an explanation so he continued, “The reason my set sounded so bad during Battle of the Bands was because someone sabotaged my amp settings and I assumed you had gotten a little too competitive and messed them up.”

Illyana’s eyes widened in shock, her mouth opened to protest but Nick already knew it wasn’t her fault and held out his fork to shush her before she began.

“I realized later that you didn’t do it but I also realized I was a bad friend anyway for jumping to conclusions and blaming you and that’s why I stopped talking to you. I figured you didn’t need someone so immature and selfish in your life.”


She winced, remembering those were the words she had once said to his face to summarize his character. He really must have taken her critique to heart for him to have such consideration for her well-being. Last night was proof he wasn’t so self-centered after all; here he was making her pancakes even. He had changed. He did care. “I guess I owe you a solid then, for seeing me out safely.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Nick insisted. He stood and picked up his empty plate. She had eaten her share minutes ago so he stacked his on top and took it too. She gave him a smile, the first he’d seen in years and it was breathtaking. Seeing this girl he’d known all his life, who at one time he knew like the back of his hand, and now he knew so little about, beaming up at him like that while wearing nothing but one of his shirts. It was enough to make him take a chance to try and know her again. He put on his smirk, "Though, if you feel so inclined, you can still let me take you out on that date.“

Illyana mirrored his smirk, thinking back to how he assumed his band would win the Battle of the Bands and he would never suffer the consequences of that bet. If he were to win, she had to let him take her on a date.

“You lost that bet."

He knew it. So did the whole school who had seen him streak as a consequence of losing it. That was her brilliant idea. She remembered sitting in study hall that day when suddenly Alarie shrieked and pointed out the window and they all looked up from their homework to see Nick sprint past in all his glory.


She had honestly forgotten about their bet by the time school has started and was impressed he still went through with it even though he had stopped talking to her at that point. Nick was always good for a laugh, he rarely took anything seriously and was an unapologetic flirt.

Nick dumped the dishes into the sink and turned around to face her, all hint of that signature smirk wiped away, "Really though, I’d love to take you out sometime and catch up."

The laughter fell out of her lively eyes; she stood from her seat abruptly and blurted, "What? That’s dumb. Are you really being serious?”

He paused before holding his arm and sheepishly asking, ”Why is it dumb?“


It more of a knee-jerk response to any of his ideas that she didn’t agree with, but it was dumb because he could pick any other person to ask out on a date. Not someone who was so fundamentally and mentally unfit to be involved in anything romantic at the moment.

"I’m…I have a lot of issues I need to work through. I’m not really…I…don’t…” She stumbled over her words feeling her cheeks start to get warm again.

“I’m not your type?” He tried to make her rejection of him easier, and she could detect a note of disappointment in his words despite the smirk that reappeared on his face.

His type–that long hair, pale, freckled, bluish-green-eyed jock was something she could find herself attracted to, but it was still Nick. He of all people knew how to stoke the fires of her temper, sometimes even unintentionally. Their chemistry could be quite volatile.

Even more importantly, she was rejecting him because she was still trying to mend from her breakup and she didn’t need any new romantic complications. She felt like she couldn’t just sit down and tell him all of this now and pour her issues onto him, she didn’t even know him that well anymore. So she mumbled, “I just can’t.”


He didn’t call her out for her vague reason, and she appreciated it.

“You can’t blame me for trying though,” he teased and pointed toward the living room, “By the way, your clothes are in there. I also found your phone in your back pocket, it kept buzzing me awake this morning and you have about a hundred texts from Alarie.”

He pulled open a kitchen junk drawer and found a spare hair tie which he used to gather up his hair to it’s usual style so it wouldn’t get in his face as he washed dishes.

Illyana considered going to fetch her clothes and phone but she didn’t want to leave that awkwardness of rejection hanging between them. She watched him scrub the plates clean with his back turned on her, noticing his shoulders were slumped but his back muscles subtly rippled as his arms moved. She didn’t know why the view caused a little shiver to run down her own arms, but she did know that she was greatly appreciative for all he had done for her last night. She couldn’t imagine that she was the easiest person to deal with in such a state.

“Nick?” she said his name and stepped a little bit closer. He wiped his hands on his pajama pants and turned around only to make a surprised grunt as she suddenly grabbed him into a hug.

“Thank you,” she said quietly; the words muffled into the skin of his shoulder.

After a moment of stunned silence, he wrapped his arms around her and returned the embrace, “Hey, what are friends for?”