I got low. I didn't see an end so I put a bullet in my mouth.

It had been...quite a while since the Other Guy's return, and they still hadn't talked about it.

Bruce felt incredibly fortunate. While it was awkward, it didn't actually change anything. They still had dinner at his place every single night, he cooked five nights out of seven, and the other two, sometimes three, Kenzi still brought take out. She still let herself in if he was late at the lab, and he still had no idea how she'd gotten a key when he'd never given her one.

The only difference was that he walked her home every night now. She'd ask to leave, just early enough that it wasn't inconvenient rather than sleep on his couch because she stayed too late. When she'd help him in the kitchen, even if helping consisted of no more than sitting on the counter and eating the vegetables he was chopping to cook, there were...moments.

His hand might brush her knee, and he'd remember the way her legs felt wrapped around him. She might be pushing dishes away, and a glimpse at her ass or the way her breasts strained just a little against her latest corset would bring back the alcohol-touched memory of the way her skin tasted. He hated himself not because he kept thinking about the night they spent together, but because he enjoyed thinking about that night when he still didn't know if it even meant anything.

And it was okay if it didn't. He'd have it to treasure...one night when he felt connected to another person again, where he could feel the touch of another human being without fear, where he could let himself feel without turning it into a clinical exercise.

If nothing else, he'd come to realize one thing: while he'd never asked for this, never really opened the door for her to walk in, Kenzi wasn't just his pet thief or his problem child. Kenzi was his friend, she mattered...when he thought about her, no control, no focus on his physiological responses, it brought the same hot, tight swell of emotion that came when he thought about Tony, the only other person in his life who didn't care that he was a walking nuclear explosion and didn't judge him for being afraid.

It was Friday, and Kenzi had texted him in advance that she was bringing the food that night. By the grace of God, she wasn't trying to force him to try that Thai place she'd come to love (their noodles were awful), and at seven thirty on the dot they were sprawled out on the sofa watching a DVD she'd rented on the way to his place with food from a Chinese place a block from his house that made Egg Foo Yung just the way Bruce liked it.

He was halfway through his dinner when he finally got sick of stealing looks at her across the couch and sick to death of trying to read into her occasional explosion of commentary on the lack of realism in the zombies that were part of the movie they were watching. Taking his feet off the coffee table, he sat forward to set his styrofoam container down and grabbed the remote, pausing the DVD. Turning to face Kenzi, he raked a hand back through his hair and finally flashed her a small, almost sad smile.

"Kenzi?...babe, I'm sorry, but we've got to talk about it."

He shouldn't have been this nervous. He shouldn't have been this anxious.

Bruce was both anxious and nervous.

It hadn't even been two days yet, but Bruce was trying to get settled. He had an apartment, money, everything he could possibly need to live his life...except for the fact that he hadn't had a life to live in five years, give or take. Walking the streets, getting his mail, buying groceries...none of it was anything he knew how to do anymore.

When he saw a cop car, he still reflexively stopped in his tracks and turned away to keep his face from being seen. When a voice called out too sharply, he still felt his heart rate jump. Hearing his own name was just plain miserable, as was evidenced from a bad encounter that morning with a neighbor he'd just met, a bright-eyed seventeen year old named Allison.

Bruce had been on the run so long, he didn't know what it was to stop.

He was trying to focus on that now, given that there was nothing in the apartment to eat, and he didn't want to live on takeout. It was an experiment, a trial to see if he could establish a routine. Routine was a good way to keep control, and exposure to the aggravations of a semi-normal daily life would be a solid means of maintaining homeostasis: remaining functional without an incident involving the Other Guy.

Step one in his experiment: grocery shopping.

All in all, it was a successful venture. He still needed to see about getting new glasses, but his eyes didn't bother him overly much as he squinted at a few labels, and shot a few dirty looks at the local boy who seemed to be dead set on blocking the juice aisle for as long as he possibly could. He got jostled, held up, complimented on his shirt (something about it resembling one that a guy named Todd Chad wore), and nearly shortchanged at the register. He left the grocery store with four bags, correct change...and came nowhere near pushing his stress limits.

It was the first time Bruce actually had fun grocery shopping since well before the accident...since he'd still been with Betty.

He let the wistful pang of missing her wash over him with a sigh, brought back to himself only as a young man in a hoodie jostled him from behind as he stood just outside the entry of the supermarket. He paused, then glanced to the side...

"Not a bad lift!" he called out to the young man...or rather, a young woman, now identified by the rather stylish high-heeled boots she wore. "But I've been mugged twice and pickpocketed half a dozen times, so I've seen better!"

Turning more fully towards the culprit, still facing away from him, he raised an eyebrow. "Now you gonna give me back my wallet? Or am I gonna have to call the cops?"