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“Finn, you could have been really hurt. Good thing you saved that nice nurse. What did she put in your pocket?” Nix asks as he fishes out the hard drive with Grayson’s images on it out of Gideon’s sweatshirt pocket.

“Maybe you should finish your part of the story, Grayson, then I’ll get to mine. Distract me.”

“Okay. So I was doing magic. It was…”

“Weird?” Finn asks.

“Constipating?”

“Gideon,” Nix says. “Why are you being a grumpy asshole today?”

“No, it was amazing. Felt amazing…like freedom.”

Gideon pauses in his press, pull, pinch, swab rhythm, and Finn has to look at Grayson, too.

There’s not much that puts that tone of voice in Grayson’s words exceptNix, painting, and now his babies. But this is pure awe.

“Anyway, dreams, magic, and then…there was a jolt… like… shit. You know how they talk about pinging towers for signals?”

Finn does.

“Well, it was like that, a strong ping, so the wolf…well, he pinged back. Maybe twice? Then BOOM.” Grayson shrugs.

“The machine was obviously broken.”

No.The machine was not fucking broken before Grayson Pearce got into it.

Gideon wipes the last of the antiseptic across the last cut and runs a hand over the tiny wounds to feel for any more glass. It hurts, but wisely Finn stays silent lest Gideon enjoy it a little too much and get ideas.

“Thank you. They’ll heal up. Now for a shirt.”

“Take mine,” Nix offers, and pulls off one of the ten sweaters they dressed him in before they’d left. He giggles at the silliness of the whole thing. “Good thing I’m a walking closet today.”

“Okay. Let’s get outside, and then I’ll tell you what happened in the booth. Come on, before Hemi-Roid finds us.”

“Who?” Grayson asks, with a pinched face of disgust that Finn thinks looks exactly like Gideon’s.

They thank Nurse Goldberg, who stares after them on the way out, and it’s a short walk across the parking lot to a set of picnic benches on a grassy knoll nearby.

Removing his shoes and socks, Grayson digs his toes into the grass with a sigh.

“Maybe I should add my part before you tell your part, Finn?” Nix asks. “Gideon was being romanti–”

“Ya! Enough of that. Get to the other part, Kitten, or you’ll get that spanking, and this time you won’t like it.”

“Promises, promises. So we were talking and then I felt the bond with Grayson get really bright, and then dim, and then really bright. Sort of like what you were describing before. And then there was a giantcrack, and then it blinked out, and then it popped back. It’s sobright right now.”

“Brighter than normal, Nix?” Grayson asks, realizing he’s still wearing the lead apron around his neck like a bib.

“For fuck’s sake.”

He rips it off, throwing it on the ground like it’s personally offended him.

“Yeah. Like, times a hundred. All the bonds are bright, actually, and I feel like we could rule the world.”

Gideon’s eyes go wide at the word choice, but he uses picking up the lead apron as an opportunity to mask his thoughts.

“Okay, now you, Finn.”