Glen Scrimshaw - a local "artist", as you can see here. My nemesis.

Erik lay on the couch, Dustin's copy of Romeo and Juliet balanced open on his chest. His eyes kept scanning the page, but the words passed silently across his mind, leaving no record of their path, no matter how many times he reread the text. It was just like high school English all over again, except this time Dustin wasn't sitting nearby to help prod him along. There were Dustin's exhaustive little notes every other line or so, it seemed, but they were nowhere near as helpful as the actual person.

Even less helpful was Ray, who was sitting backwards on the computer chair, spinning it in circles. The word processor was open on the computer and at some point, when Erik hadn't been paying attention, Ray had apparently managed to think up at least two paragraphs worth of something to type, although he looked about as focussed as a bored toddler. He claimed, of course, that his current and distracting behaviour allowed him to communicate with his creative muse.

When Ray had begun to explain that his creative muse was the exquisite, blonde, and buxom Rosalie, Erik had turned his attentions back to Shakespeare, deciding that anything was preferable to actually listening to Ray continue on that particular topic. Unfortunately, the effort of blocking Ray out also seemed to be blocking out other things, equally frustrating and annoying, but rather more important than anything Ray had to say about the female sex.

Things were just beginning to click enough that Erik felt confidant in turning to the next page, when Ray's spinning knee hit him in the back of the head. "Could you sit fucking still for ten damn minutes, Ray?" he burst out, straightening and rubbing the back of his head. "For a guy who claims to be a ninja, you're damn clumsy."

"Or," said Ray, continuing to spin, "the actions I choose to engage in are all carefully selected, but part of a clever plan you cannot dream of comprehending, each one specifically done for a specific purpose that, if you were a ninja, you would understand perfectly."

"If that specific purpose is 'Annoy the fuck out of Erik', then it's not nearly as ninja-subtle as you think," Erik muttered. He considered moving to the other end of the couch, but then he'd be facing Ray, and if there was anything more distracting that the sensation of his hair moving every time Ray spun past, it was being forced to watch Ray spinning over the top of his book. He really needed to be in one of those classes with textbooks the size of very sturdy building materials that would completely obscure his vision in all directions. The textbook could double as something to bludgeon Ray with when he started snoring for an added bonus.

"I'm also thinking, Thor. Do you really want to disrupt my thought process?"

"Yes," said Erik flatly, his attention already turning to the more pressing concern of finding where he had been in the text before Ray distracted him.

"But I'm contemplating dreadfully important matters!" Ray said. He sounded hurt, surprised, even, as though Erik was in the habit of being anything better than reluctant and sceptical about Ray's schemes.

"Don't care," Erik pointed out, his finger running beneath a line slowly.

"Even as I try to decipher the best way to celebrate your birthday, Thor? That's not terribly appreciative."

Erik could feel his chest tightening. Was this what a heart attack felt like? Was this how he was going to die? On an ugly couch in a tiny apartment, reading Romeo and Juliet, and probably being left there for days when the cause of his death got distracted by something more interesting? He licked his lips. "We didn't do anything for my birthday last year," he said carefully.

"Of course not," said Ray brusquely as he spun past once more. "Last year you turned eighteen. Eighteen is nothing. Eighteen is unimportant. Everyone else was already eighteen and the novelty had long since worn off."

"But this year you moved your birthday so it was closer to mine and all that shiny newness hasn't quite worn off yet?"

"Don't be an idiot. This year you're turning nineteen! Finally, we can all go to the bar without worrying about you giving your na๏ve Viking self's underage qualities away."

"I see. How very thrilling for us all," said Erik in his dullest voice.

"Are you truly expecting me to believe, my dear Thor, that the nineteenth birthday for Canadians is not the equivalent of a holiday with deep religious significance?"

Erik sighed, putting his face down on the pages of the play, conceding defeat. "Dustin and I were planning on going out for a drink, yeah."

"A drink, Thor? A drink?" Ray echoed, aghast. "Oh, Thor, it's a good thing for you that I'm here to look out for you in situations like this."

"Because, I suppose, now you're going to inform me how I'll actually be spending my birthday?"

"A proper celebration of such a momentous occasion, Thor!"

"Which, I assume, means that instead of spending my birthday as I had hoped, relaxing with a beer after a tiring day of classes, I'm going to be in jail? In Mexico? In a Mexican jail?"

"Don't be absurd, Thor. The great significance of this birthday is that you're now old enough to drink in Canada!"

"So a Canadian jail, then," said Erik, glancing over his shoulder at Ray.

Ray dragged a foot along the floor, slowing to a stop behind Erik just so he could scowl disapprovingly. "I must say, your attitude is far from encouraging, Thor."

"It never is," Erik pointed out, rolling his eyes.

The spinning began again. "And this intention to show up to classes, well, I must admit to feeling no small amount of concern over that. How are you supposed to celebrate properly if you confine yourself to the University for the majority of that upcoming victorious day?"

"We'll be only a few weeks away from finals, by then, and there's never enough damn time in the weeks before finals. I'm not going to chance missing out on some important bit of studying related info just because the date happens to coincide with the one on which I took my first breath in this fucking awful world."

"Point," Ray admitted, much to Erik's surprise, as he spun around with his head craned backwards to ponder one of the many fascinating cracks on the ceiling. "Distressingly excellent point, my dear Thor. I shall allow you that point."

"Thank you. How very thoughtful," said Erik.

"But surely your classes on that particularly momentous day won't consume all that much time. You're far from the most diligent student on campus, after all. I know your schedule is far from being a six am until ten pm sort of arrangement."

"Unlike you, of course, in your role of Fujimoto the Ever-Diligent Ninja-Student."

"You don't have to be in class to be on campus, Thor."

Erik stopped his eyes from rolling so far back into his head that they fell into it, barely. "More words of wisdom."

"So on Tuesdays you should be done classes, unless something truly unforeseen happens around 2:30, correct?"

"You stalk me, don't you?"

"A ninja must be acutely aware of, and attuned to, his surroundings," said Ray with exaggerated solemnity.

"Somehow, I can't make myself feel surprised that you consider me part of the scenery."

"You are vaguely tree-like," Ray agreed complacently, pushing himself into another lazy spin with one foot. "But at the moment, that's hardly relevant. To return to the subject at hand, before you so thoughtlessly distracted me –"

"I distracted you?"

"—I assume planning festivities for approximately 3:00 is not unreasonable of me."

"Bars are open that early?"

"There is always at least one place willing to serve alcohol open at any given hour of the day or night, Thor. I'm fairly certain it's in the Canadian constitution. Article six, section b. For beer, one assumes, because your fathers of confederation were not terribly original gentleman and their choice of alcohol was rather limited. It was a difficult and tragic time for an alcoholic, in those days."

"Sounds like your plan of, I assume, drinking from 3:00 until arrest is one that's more of a pain in the ass than it's worth."

"That's because your ears are faulty and clogged with snow. I can think of no better way to celebrate the ability to legally consume alcohol than with a birthday pub-crawl."

"I can."

Ray dragged the chair to a stop once more and grabbed Erik by his shoulders. "Thor!" he protested.

"No pub-crawl, Ray. I don't want to spend my birthday in jail. Why is that so hard to understand?" Irritated, Erik tried to shake his roommate loose.

"Because I keep operating on the misguided notion that you are an actual human being and not some artificial creation with faulty wiring that causes your internal map of the universe to periodically malfunction, making you blunder helplessly into walls."

"And then I bleed."

"Just like a human," Ray agreed. "Robotic technology has advanced by such enormous steps, don't you agree, Thor?"

"Astonishing," Erik agreed dryly. "Isn't it a shame, then, that they haven't managed to produce a robotic liver or robotic bladder capable of enduring a nine hour pub-crawl? It's as though they're focussing all their creative energies in some other area that has nothing to do with robot drinking binges."

Ray's face split into an enormous grin. "Just wait until I have control of stocks in some robotics corporations, dear Thor," he said, eyes gleaming.

"Perish the thought. I'm hoping by the time that terrifying prospect is even remotely likely, space travel will have been invented, and I'll be living on Venus."

"Not Venus. Far too mythologically connected to the idea of sexual gratification for you to even be allowed in the Venusian pleasure domes of the future, my boy."

Erik shook his head to dismiss any potential mental images connected with that statement and dragged the conversation back on topic. Ray had been indulged enough. "And that's why we will not be celebrating my birthday with a pub-crawl," he said emphatically, hoping that through the complete avoidance of logic, Ray would be more convinced by this pseudo-argument than by an actual one.

"Aw," Ray whined, his face instantly contrite and filled with disappointment, "but I want an excuse for a pub-crawl. I'd pay all the tabs and everything; my birthday present to you!"

"You need less excuse for a pub-crawl than you need to breathe, Ray. No pub-crawl."

Ray pouted. "But –"

"We can eat some awful Chinese food and, if our stomachs survive that, we can go to a bar. A bar. I don't care which one."

Erik instantly knew he had said the wrong thing because Ray bounded out of the computer chair and bounced onto the other end of the couch. He was grinning so widely, Erik almost thought the top of his head would fall off. "So, we could go to that horrible fake-Chinese buffet and then, since we'd be downtown anyway, we could go to Diva's –"

Erik groaned. He shut his eyes. For added protection, he put a hand over his eyes as well. "We are not going to the gay bar for my birthday. That is not an acceptable birthday present, Ray."

"But Thor, there'd be lesbians," said Ray in a hushed, reverent tone of voice.

"I don't care if the bar was full of six foot tall blonds with enormous breasts and sexual appetites so voracious they'd sleep with anyone for a damn glass of water. We aren't going to the fucking gay bar."

"I knew you were a robot. A robot that clearly has unfortunate issues with sexuality and lovely ladies, to conjure up that kind of thing only to dismiss it without thought. We should get you help. And a mechanic. Maybe Dust knows how to repair malfunctioning homosexual robots."

"Maybe you should just try to deal with the fact that bad food and a normal bar, leading to a normal night, won't be the end of the world. As a gift to me, if nothing else," Erik pleaded, lowering his hand and cracking his eyes open warily.

Ray huffed with disappointment. "You know, I could do better things for a gift. I could buy you a whore –"

"No, Ray. No whores. My birthday and that's all I want. Just a normal night with some food and a couple of beers," said Erik firmly. Boundaries. That's what he needed to communicate to Ray. If he could just get that idea stuck firmly in his roommate's deranged brain, maybe, if nothing else, he could avoid spending his birthday in the drunk tank.

"It could be a boy whore," Ray persisted in a misguided, Ray-attempt at generosity.

"That's not necessary. Really."

Ray bit his lip. "I don't think there are sheep whores in Saskatoon, but I bet if we caught a flight to Wales –"

"No whores!"

"No whores?"

"No whores," said Erik, enunciating each syllable with care, looking directly into Ray's eyes.

"Oh. Well, then, why didn't you say so in the first place? Honestly, Thor, for this friendship to function smoothly, you really need to get better at communicating your needs. Things, as they currently stand, just won't do. Clear expression is the key to success, after all!"

Erik twitched.

"It's your birthday, after all," Ray continued easily, reaching over to pat Erik's head as he got up. "And if you want to die of boredom during the evening, well, who am I to interfere with a simple, na๏ve, and idiotic desire like that? I'm your friend, and as your friend, I shall willingly die of boredom in honour of your nineteenth birthday!" he concluded, standing back up and posing in what was probably intended to be a heroic manner.

With a relieved sigh, Erik turned his attention back to Shakespeare, ignoring Ray's posing. After trying to digest a line or two, however, he looked up at Ray, who had already gotten bored with his dramatic declarations, and had wandered to the window, standing on the tips of his toes to peer down curiously at the snowy path outside.

"Ray?"

"Mm, yes Thor?"

"How'd you know when my birthday was?"

"Oh, that," said Ray. Without turning away from the window, he reached into the pocket of his bunny-hug and produced something, which he tossed to Erik. After hitting Erik in the head and rolling into his lap, Ray took the opportunity to lightly scold him. "You really shouldn't leave your wallet in such an easy to access place, Thor."

Erik blinked and stared at the wallet in his lap. He reached to pat the pocket of his jeans where he was positive an identical wallet had been.

Nothing.

"Ray, you fucker, my pocket is not an easy to access place!" Erik shouted.

But Ray had already opened the window and jumped out, in his sock feet, to land in the snow below.

Pocketing his wallet once more, Erik got up to shut the window, glaring out of it at the rapidly disappearing figure of Ray. All things considered, the escape-through-the-window technique could probably be considered a good thing.

Ray only resorted to such drastic measures when he thought he was going to lose an argument, after all.

Erik couldn't decide whether Ray's absence when he arrived at the apartment on the afternoon was a good thing or not. It was always possible that Ray and his demented attention span had noticed something during the brief time he cursed campus with his presence that he had decided was far more entertaining or profitable than tormenting his unfortunate roommate. It was even possible that Ray had forgotten when Erik's birthday was, within days of discovering it. But Ray's absence could be a sign of something truly horrible and fear-inducing as well. It was hard to predict Ray.

A post-it note left on the fridge calendar revealed that it was more likely the latter than the former. Erik detached it carefully from where it overlay that day's square and noted that the date had been circled and, in Ray's precise handwriting, the words "Thor's triumphant ascent to adulthood" had been written, followed by three exclamation marks. Erik wondered when Ray had written that and why he hadn't noticed before.

"Thor, yours truly is smoothing out details for a distilled evening of awesome. Back shortly. Ray," read the post-it note.

Erik crumpled it into a ball and was in the process of trying to get it into the garbage can for the fifth time when the phone rang. In the seconds it took him to cross to the phone and pick it up, he decided that, if it were the police calling about Ray, he would tell them it was a wrong number and hang up.

Then, he would unplug the phone. Maybe call Dustin first and make plans to spend the night somewhere with an address Ray didn't know.

"Hello?" Erik asked of the phone.

"Sigurd," said the voice on the other end.

It wasn't the police. It was worse.

"Hello, Aunt Janet," he managed to say without sighing, screaming in terror, or unplugging the phone in his rush to get as far away from it as possible.

"I called to wish you a happy birthday, Sigurd," Aunt Janet said, the words inspiring as much joy in him as the drawing of his attention to yet another newspaper article about Collin did. Or a blizzard. When her comment was met with Erik's blank silence, she asked with palpable exasperation, "You do remember that it's your birthday, don't you?"

Erik rolled his eyes. "Mom called this morning," he said, by way of non-explication. It had been 7. His first class hadn't started until 10. He had wondered at the time if it had been some kind of punishment for any pain she had suffered during labour and, after the call, had folded up on the floor and slept until 9:45. His neck still hurt.

Aunt Janet gave a little sniff in response. "I suppose that's adequate."

"Uh," said Erik. He could feel his mind drifting into the coma-like state being talked at by Aunt Janet always put it in, all his thoughts and feelings safely protected by a filtering barrier that kept her words from resonating in his brain as anything other than a meaningless drone. Allowing them to actually connect could only result in irritation and rage and Aunt Janet would doubtless have Words with him if he lost his temper at her. The Words would be on the subject of anger management and an inability to express emotion as the result of a frigid and incompetent upbringing that would just start the cycle again.

"I don't suppose you have any plans, Sigurd," came the words, piercing the Aunt Barrier.

Erik's brow furrowed as he tried to wrap his mind around this. "Well –"

"As I suspected. You'll be here at 7 o'clock for supper with us, then. Do make an effort to be prompt this time, Sigurd. It's terribly thoughtless of you to be late when people are trying to do you a kindness," Aunt Janet said briskly.

"But," Erik began hesitantly. His head hurt. He had gotten too little sleep to be put through this. It was like anti-Ray, but just as awful.

"What is it, Sigurd? Lord, boy, are you incapable of completing a single thought?" Aunt Janet sounded as exasperated as Erik felt. Good.

The gears of Erik's brain spun in silence for a minute as he reeled from the shock of Aunt Janet actually almost ceasing her usual subtly-free barrage of criticisms upon him and his mother to actually listen to something he'd been trying to say. Now, if only he could figure out what he had been planning to say five seconds ago. "Can I bring a friend?" he finally asked as the apartment door opened.

"This is very short notice, Sigurd," said Aunt Janet without a trace of irony. "But I suppose we can make things stretch and we have a duty to aid the less fortunate –"

Erik's eyebrows rose. He had clearly missed the memo about university students being the equivalent of homeless panhandlers.

"Very well. 7 o'clock, remember. Be on time, remember."

"Yes, Aunt Janet," said Erik with a sigh as he heard the phone click without Aunt Janet even bothering to say goodbye.

Ray hovered on one foot next to him, absorbed in the process of trying to remove his boot without letting go of the box of beer that was tucked under his arm. "What was that about, Thor?"

Erik looked down, his face expressionless. "There has been," he said calmly, "a change of plans."

It was snowing.

Of course it was snowing.

The day it didn't snow on Erik's birthday would be the day before the world was destroyed.

One of the windshield wipers was frozen in place. In an attempt not to die in a flaming wreck, Erik was forced to keep his window rolled down so he could reach out every few minutes and wipe the windshield clean with his hand. His suggestion that certain people who claimed to be ninjas could make themselves useful by doing this life-saving task themselves was met by Ray musing aloud on the subject of why no one had yet marketed a car with lasers, as though Erik hadn't spoken at all.

"If this takes much longer," Ray observed, his head resting against the passenger window, "I'm going to wonder why Canadians don't start arranging for jets to take them from one area of their municipality to another."

"You probably aren't taking into consideration little facts of Canadian life like not wanting to get into a horrible car accident on slippery streets in the middle of winter," muttered Erik, gloved fingers feeling numb on the steering wheel.

"Yet another issue my proposed modification to public transportation would fix," said Ray airily.

"I'm sure the mayor is going to get back to you any day now. Turn up the heating, would you?"

"It's up as far as it will go. I think the car may be sick. It's got the hot and cold wires crossed," said Ray, poking vaguely at a dial. "Or maybe it's trying to kill you. Cars rigged to be devices of death aren't uncommon. I already spoke to the mayor, anyway. He said he was having trouble convincing the rest of city council about the pure brilliance of my proposal, so it might take a bit of time. He was quite taken with it, himself, though."

Erik bit his tongue on the usual, instinctive response. "Save it for supper," he advised instead, and reached out to wipe more snow off the windshield and squint into the darkness at the upcoming street sign.

Despite having lived in Saskatoon for over a year now, Erik's visits to Aunt Janet's house had been infrequent at best, something which he attributed primarily to the fact that he would search for any excuse under the sun to avoid visiting her, but also to the fact that his aunt saw teenage boys as creatures only fractionally above panhandlers in human hierarchy. As a result, Erik's understanding of how to get to Aunt Janet's was less than perfect.

Erik could glumly recall learning to drive, his memories alternating between those of his mother's grit teeth and her fingernails digging permanent marks into the dashboard of the car, and those of his father's tired voice and apparently endless supply of comments that began "Why are you doing it like that, Sigurd?" In all that time, Erik had learned to drive with little more than landmarks and the occasional warning sign directing him. Driving in the big city was harder, but not impossible, since in most areas you could navigate primarily by landmarks anyway and ignore such minor details as what street you were on. But the area Aunt Janet lived in was another matter entirely. Street after curving street dead-ended or looping around to bring you back where you'd begun, or several blocks back. Identical yard after identical, snow-covered yard, perfectly shovelled sidewalks and driveways, each house looking like it had been carefully made from the same mould as its neighbour, snowy roofs and perfect, gleaming, unnatural strips of vinyl siding. It was too dark to even make out the colours of the houses, despite the light coming from each of frosty windows.

"Are you lost?" asked Ray, writing something in possibly-Japanese in the frost on the window, scraping industriously with his thumbnail.

"I'm not lost! I'm just disoriented. All these buildings look the same."

"That one has a plastic reindeer on the lawn. Does your aunt have plastic reindeer on the lawn?"

"I don't know. I doubt it."

"Its nose is flashing," said Ray with a frown. "I don't think I approve."

"Neither would my aunt. You're going to get along like a house on fire. I can tell already," Erik muttered, trying to decide if the thing he was about to turn onto was a street or someone's driveway.

"I get along with everyone," Ray said, pressing his nose to the window in an attempt to consider his writing from another angle.

Erik rolled his eyes and dragged the subject back to where it had begun. "Doesn't this look like the sort of place where a zombie movie would be set? Creepily idyllic suburban homes as a backdrop for a post-apocalyptical zombie holocaust where the families within are being threatened by a horror not all that different from the lifestyle they've been encouraging all these years?"

"I think," said Ray slowly, "that you should stop talking to Dustin so much. Or possibly stop attending classes so diligently. It's given you airs and the mistaken belief that you have an intellect. Next thing you know, you'll be trying to use words like 'dystopia' and 'antidisestablishmentarianism'."

"Fuck you. You could at least answer the question."

"It's rare for zombie movies to have ninja in them," said Ray simply.

Erik groaned softly. "Is that all you watch? Ninja movies? Is that what you'd think when going on dates in high school? 'Should I take her to the movies? Well, maybe, but only if there's a ninja in it!'"

"Don't be silly, Thor."

An eyebrow rose, unseen, behind the confines of Erik's toque.

"Then I'd be going to watch those horrible faux-ninja movies the Americans put out. Never go to a Hollywood movie that claims to involve ninja, Thor my boy. It'll only end up breaking your heart."

For the remainder of the drive, Erik found it preferable to focus on the street and the houses they were passing than to try and engage Ray in conversation. He was sure he'd have some kind of headache by the end of the night, anyway, and he didn't particularly want to start the evening off with one. His aunt wasn't about to provide sweet, healing alcohol to help him cope.

After spending five minutes driving in a circle and nearly parking in someone's backyard, Erik found the right house. The fact that there wasn't a basketball hoop nailed up over the garage door distinguished it hugely from its neighbours. As he was locking the door, Erik found himself looking at Ray's writing in the frost. "That doesn't say anything rude in Japanese, does it?"

"Is it important if it does?"

Erik stared for a moment longer before shaking his head. "I suppose not," he said, pocketing the car keys. "Let's get this over with."

Ray walked up the perfectly shovelled path, while Erik stomped across the snowy lawn, the snow reaching above his ankles. "Your feet are going to be damnably wet all night, Thor," Ray observed from somewhere between his toque and scarf.

"And at least one of my limbs will be damnably broken if I walk on those paving stones. I think my uncle goes over them with a Zamboni." The total number of times Erik had been to the house might not be many, but he could remember a few things with perfect clarity.

Erik paused on the front porch to try and shake the snow off his boots and pants, but stopped in mid-shake to grab Ray by the shoulders and haul him away from the door with the strength born of sudden terror. "Don't," he hissed.

"I was going to ring the doorbell, Thor."

"I know. That's what I'm talking about."

Somewhere behind the scarf, a spark of interest seemed to have been stirred within Ray. "Is it wired to detonate if a non-Viking finger pressed the button? Can it read DNA through wool?"

Erik stared down at Ray for a minute before emitting a tired sigh. "No. I'm just operating on the assumption that you're an expert in the art of annoying doorbell ringing."

"A ninja must hone all his skills to perfection," Ray said, apparently confirming Erik's suspicion. "One never knows when the most minor talent will be all that standards between life and death."

"I thought the entire point of ninjas was silence," said Erik, keeping one eye on Ray as he rang the doorbell himself.

"I am a ninja visionary, refusing to confine myself to the tired, stereotypical understanding of what a ninja is. A true ninja in this modern age must learn to move with the times, adapt to any situation he may be thrown in, and recognize that sometimes, in order to succeed at a mission, he must play Knock and Run. Naturally, this is only in instances when it would be for the good of his clan."

"Naturally," Erik muttered, before the door opened and he lapsed into uncomfortable silence, hunching his shoulders and staring down at his cousin Twyla.

Twyla was a year younger than Erik, the youngest of Aunt Janet's three daughters, and when she said "Good evening, Sigurd. Happy birthday. Try not to track and snow or mud on the floor," Erik remembered that, despite being a person who had the misfortune to be named Twyla, she was entirely unsympathetic to his repeated attempts to get his family to call him anything but Sigurd.

"Hey, Twyla," Erik mumbled through his scarf and squeezed past her. She showed no inclination to move off the unwelcoming welcome mat, forcing Erik to drip primarily on the gleaming tiles off to the side, something Aunt Janet would contribute to a basic lack of manners and disrespect for other people's property when she noticed.

"That's not Dustin," Twyla said, looking up and down Ray's bundled figure, clearly not impressed with what she saw. "Mother said you were bringing Dustin."

"He had a compacting accident," Erik said dryly, unwinding his scarf.

"Dustin would never wear that absurd Santa hat," Twyla continued, as though Ray weren't there.

"You've seen through his clever disguise. Congratulations. If you're playing mini-hostess, shouldn't you be taking my jacket or something and making yourself useful?"

Twyla ignored this. "Where's Dustin?"

"He's busy. Tonight is the meeting of his 'Deranged Geniuses Who Are Trying to Improve the World before they Inadvertently Blow It Up' Club. DGWATIWIBIU for short. If it weren't for that, you know nothing could keep him away from your always-charming presence."

"You are nothing like funny, Sigurd," Twyla said with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh, I don't know," Ray's muffled voice came from behind his scarf. "I think he's doing quite well, for all it's his first time."

"Who is this, Sigurd? Mother said you were bringing Dustin."

"So you've said. I never told her that. I just asked to bring a friend."

"You don't have any friends but Dustin."

"Shut up," said Erik with a scowl, getting out of his coat and tracking muddy snow across the tiles as he made his way to the closet.

"You and your cousin clearly don't communicate in a suitably open and straightforward manner. If you did, you'd realize that dear Sigurd here is slowly working his way out of his shell of innate patheticness and learning to communicate with human beings who actually possess a vocabulary and the ability to interact with others!"

"For fuck's sake, don't defend me."

"Don't swear, Sigurd."

Erik could feel a nervous tic starting in the corner of one eye. "You," he said, glaring almost at Twyla's eye level as he removed his boots, "don't have the fucking right to tell me how to speak. And you," he continued, wrenching his head around to look at Ray, who was still standing in the open doorway, bundled in his winter gear, "will be the best ally a prosecutor could have if the world decides to continue its habit of great fucking cosmic jokes and makes you a defence attorney."

"Profanity is a poor attempt at humour on the part of those who confuse genuine funniness with shock value," Ray said to Twyla in a stage whisper after he had pulled his scarf away from his face. "But you can't fault the boy for trying."

Twyla's face had turned a furious shade of scarlet and she finally removed herself from the welcome mat in an attempt to put some distance between herself and Ray. "Who are you?"

"Ray Fujimoto!" Ray said in surprise, removing his hat. "I didn't think I needed an introduction."

"Oh God," said Twyla, as Ray shut the door.

"Profanity," Ray chided her gently, waving a mittened finger under her nose.

Erik edged away from the pile of melting snow, one hand absently picking at the lint on the sleeve of his sweater. "Ray's my roommate," he finally explained.

"He's a menace to society," Twyla said vehemently.

"To the dregs of society," Ray corrected her, unzipping his jacket. "But I knew you couldn't have forgotten me so quickly!"

"What did you do?" Erik asked. He was torn between a desire to shake the life out of Ray for being Ray and the urge to hug him for, apparently, doing something to make the life of Erik’s despised cousin a little less smooth.

"Why," asked a cold voice, "is the front door open?"

Twyla promptly darted past Ray to pull the door shut before locking it. Erik watched Ray watch this before Ray looked back at him, raising an amused eyebrow, a gesture Erik did not return, his eyes going to the floor. "Sorry, Aunt Janet."

"It wasn't open that long, Mother."

"Yes, it was. I came out to see what was keeping you; we were worried there had been another accident."

Erik's face burnt with embarrassment at that memory and he kept his eyes on the floor, scuffing one damp, socked foot across the tile.

"Sorry, Mother."

"It costs money to heat this house. Be a good girl and try to think, please, dear."

"Yes, Mother," said Twyla. Her voice had been growing softer with each word since Aunt Janet had appeared; by now it was a scarcely audible whisper.

"Maybe it wouldn't be so expensive if the lady didn't seem to have the superpower to turn her every word to ice and chill the room." Ray was kneeling over his boots, slowly unlacing them, addressing his quiet comment to his footwear. Erik didn't think anyone else had heard. Erik knew no one else could have heard. Ray wouldn't be peacefully kneeling there, the knee of his pants absorbing moisture from the welcome mat, if anyone but Erik and the boots had heard.

"Nevertheless, it is a relief to see it's nothing more than simple foolishness and thoughtlessness, and no one's injured themselves on the steps. That would be a simply terrible way to begin the evening and it certainly wouldn't be the way I'd imagine you would want to spend your birthday, Sigurd."

"No," said Erik, thinking that it would hardly be the first time he's celebrated his birthday in the emergency room.

"Twyla, why don't you go and tell your father he can put the phone back and needn't call the ambulance after all."

Erik thought he saw his cousin mouth a tiny "Yes, Mother" before making her escape.

Aunt Janet said nothing until Twyla had vanished around the corner. "Good evening, Sigurd, and happy birthday, dear," she said, reaching forward to pull Erik into an uncomfortable embrace that neither of them evidently wanted to be involved in, the sensation of barely-covered bone hitting bone feeling weirdly macabre before Aunt Janet had decided that enough time had been spent in this false display of familial warmth. "And good evening to you, Sigurd's –new – friend."

"Ray Fujimoto," said Ray with a bow that would have been absurd no matter what the situation. For Ray, it was a relatively low-key introduction, but the expression on Aunt Janet's face suggested that she had just eaten something unpleasant, her lips twisted into an almost abstract shape, her nostrils pinched in, and every muscle on her face seemed to be suggesting that they were undergoing a truly revolutionary workout.

"Ray's been my roommate since first year, Aunt Janet. He's pre-law. Dustin was busy tonight, so I figured you wouldn't mind me bringing someone else, and Ray's good people," Erik said, lying through his teeth. When his tongue didn't fall out and he wasn't struck by unseasonable and impossible lightning on the spot seemed a fairly good indicator that god was either dead, had never existed in the first place, or took no issue with nephews lying to their bitchy aunts. Erik didn't really care which of the three it was.

"One of the best!" Ray agreed, a happily demented smile cracking his face.

"A bit of warning in the change of plans would have been the thoughtful thing to do, Sigurd," Aunt Janet chided him, her eyes passing over the beaming Ray as though he weren't there.

Erik rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I mean, I never, uh, really said, specifically, that I was bringing, you know, Dustin. Just that I was bringing a friend, and Ray's a friend. I mean, a girlfriend would technically be a friend, if I'd brought her –"

"Is there a girlfriend now, Sigurd? My word," Aunt Janet said with false pleasantness, each word dripping careful, loving patronization.

"Er, well, I mean, a hypothetical girlfriend, if I had one, which I could have brought …" Erik fumbled for a minute before making another grab for the shaky ground he'd been on. "I guess I just assumed that what was important was that I didn't bring more people than you expected, or too few people, and you'd end up with all these leftovers that had been for the person you thought was coming and then wasn't …"

"At least your other friend is a known quantity, Sigurd," said Aunt Janet, her eye finally lingering on Ray long enough to focus on the slight outward curve of Ray's stomach, more visible beneath the thin fabric of what Erik thought of as Ray's baby lawyer shirt than it was when Ray wore his usual attire of baggy slacks and bunny hug. "You really should know better than to assume things, particularly when your assumptions affect the lives of others."

"It was such a spur of the moment thing that there didn't seem to be much point," Erik said, carefully avoiding specifics. "I knew you'd … rise to the occasion demanded of your skills as a hostess. Ray's been missing out on home cooked meals even more than me. His folks are all the way in Ottawa."

The emphasis Erik put on the last word had the desired effect: the expression on Aunt Janet's face suggested that Ray could reveal himself to be the multi-billionaire charity in human form that went around saving starving, orphaned babies and she would still be desperately wishing he was in someone else's front hall. "Of course," she said, her voice barely wavering. "It's a pleasure, of course, Ray. You'll have to excuse me if anything I said may have inadvertently suggested otherwise. It can be a bit trying, at this time of year, to have plans change unexpectedly. All that seasonal stress just creeps up on one, and Twyla's been getting ready for her Christmas exams –"

"I quite understand. You needn't apologize for a thing! I'm happy just to be here!" Ray said, his apparent and loud sincerity making Aunt Janet look a trifle uncomfortable as she merely smiled thinly in response and turned, gesturing with a tiny twitch of her hand for the two boys to follow her.

Erik had only taken two steps when Ray grabbed his elbow and then the collar of his sweater, pulling him down so his ear was near Ray's mouth. "Very impressive, Thor my boy. I'm starting to think my benevolent mentorship is having an affect on you."

Erik did a full body shudder at that horrifying prospect and shook Ray off, lengthening his stride to catch up with his aunt so she'd have one less thing to bitch at him about.

"You have a lovely home," Ray said brightly as they followed Aunt Janet to the dining room.

"Thank you," said Aunt Janet coolly, as though she could care less about how the house appeared, especially to people like Ray Fujimoto. Behind her back, Erik rolled his eyes.

The house looked the same as it had the last time Erik had been there, as far as he could remember. Spotlessly clean – thanks to a cleaning service – with all the walls painted in the same off-white shade of paint. Photos of Aunt Janet and Uncle Thomas and their daughters, interspersed with one or two Glen Scrimshaw paintings, presumably in a misguided attempt to provide something resembling local – yet classy – Saskatchewan colour. The furniture was all in white leather and chrome, except for the dining room table that was glass, at which Uncle Thomas was already sitting at the head of the table, while Twyla finished setting out cutlery and lit the candles in the centrepiece. They could have been part of the d้cor themselves. Ray was stretching his capacity to bullshit to the maximum, unless this really was the sort of place that looked good to him. Fucked if Erik knew. Everything Ray told him and presented to the world seemed to be such a collection of absurd and contradictory lies that Erik could almost believe anything as an alternative to what Ray actually said.

"Sigurd," Uncle Thomas said, giving Erik the barest nod in greeting and gracing Ray with the same treatment. Twyla had apparently taken the time to explain to her father about the change in what the Lanes had considered set-in-stone plans. "Sigurd's friend." Sort of.

"Evening, Uncle Thomas," Erik said dully, sitting down.

Ray sat across from Erik and next to the spot Twyla had set for herself, still beaming. "Good evening, sir!" he said brightly, inclining his head in Uncle Thomas' direction, the picture of politeness.

When compared with Aunt Janet's tendency to coolly ignore things and people whose presence she didn't wish to acknowledge, the level, disinterested stare Uncle Thomas focussed on Ray seemed almost friendly. At least he wasn't trying to pretend Ray wasn't there. His refusal to appear anything but already bored of the situation was a refreshing kind of honesty.

It was egalitarian, too. After a minute of staring at Ray he turned the look on Erik. "Are you aware that, at the time the doorbell rang, you were already twelve minutes and thirty four seconds late?"

Erik stared at the centrepiece between himself and Ray. Braided wheat, precise red ribbons, and white beeswax candles: fire hazard. "Not exactly," he said, focussing on the tiny flames and managing to resist the urge to roll his eyes back into his skull. "We got kinda lost, though."

"You would get lost," Twyla muttered, sitting down and carefully inching her chair as far away from Ray as space would allow.

"Twyla," Aunt Janet scolded her daughter, "you must remember that to people unused to cities, somewhere as carefully organized as Sunset Vale is very confusing. And even if that weren't the case, you know boys are allergic to maps and genetically incapable of following maps."

Uncle Thomas poured himself a glass of wine, not caring to dispute his wife's statements. He didn't offer the bottle to anyone else, instead setting it a convenient distance from his own glass, in case there was an emergency which would require him to drink a copious amount of wine.

"It was dark," Erik muttered, watching his aunt set out supper from beneath his bangs.

"And we haven't progressed to the 'seeing through blackest night' part of his lessons," Ray added helpfully. In the silence that met his comment, he tipped his head to one side in thought, touching a finger to his lips before speaking again: "Or the 'seeing through night that is as black as it's going to get considering all the street lights and people who forget to turn off lights in their houses when they leave the room' lesson, for that matter." He frowned. "I've been seriously remiss in your lessons of late, Sigurd."

For a minute, the only sound was Uncle Thomas, drinking his wine, Erik, in his nervousness, fiddling with his silverware and hitting the edge of his plate with a fork, and Twyla trying to shuffle her chair across the floor to put another millimetre or two of distance between her and Ray.

"What lessons would those be?" asked Aunt Janet at last, pinning Erik with her eyes.

"Oh," Ray answered airily, before Erik had a chance to put his foot in his mouth, "life lessons."

Again, there was silence, and Erik shifted in his chair.

"Life lessons," Aunt Janet echoed.

"About life and for life," Ray confirmed with a determined nod of his head.

Aunt Janet looked cool. Twyla looked pained. Uncle Thomas looked appreciative of the presence of wine.

Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. It was going to be a long night.

Ray smiled up at Aunt Janet, then around at everyone at the table, before reaching past Twyla to the head of the table and grabbing the bottle of wine, filling his glass to the top after he disposed of the water that had previously occupied it in short order.

"Roy –"

"Ray. For Raymund. Not Raimundo. An entirely different sort of beast, a Raymund."

Truer words, Erik thought, had never been spoken.

"Ray," Aunt Janet said, carrying on despite Ray's valiant attempt at a distraction, "we do not allow children to drink in this house."

"I'm nineteen," said Ray, sipping his wine. "You can see my ID. I have lots of it. Although my hands are occupied right now, but maybe the lovely Twyla would be so good as to help me find it."

Twyla shuddered. If she moved her chair any further, she'd be sitting behind her father.

"It is not a question of age; it is a question of maturity."

"I'm Italian."

Aunt Janet looked less inclined to believe Ray than Erik. "Nevertheless –"

"Different cultures, you see. One of the things I most enjoy – most respect! – about Canadians is their multiculturalism, their embracing of disparate cultures and allowing them to peacefully coexist unless they speak French or were here before Caucasians."

"All very lovely," said Aunt Janet, whom Erik suspected had only half paid attention to the bullshit falling from Ray's lips, "and flattering, but the fact remains. My own daughters are not allowed to drink when they're under this roof."

"Well, of course not. She's underage. I know; I've seen her ID," said Ray, flashing a private smile in Twyla's direction. Erik's cousin looked ready to pick up the centrepiece and brandish it at Ray like a frightened villager waving a torch in the face of a wild animal, in the hope of being left alone.

Aunt Janet exhaled sharply and Erik watched with what he hoped was a bland expression. It was like watching the hypothetical battle between Norway, the cold and stormy hero of Absent Appeal VII, and Tigerstrum, the fierce but mute hero of Absent Appeal VIII, that he and Dustin sometimes discussed after a long and Ray-free night of drinking. It wasn't possible for Erik to guess who was going to win this odd battle of the wills and he didn't dare show any enjoyment for fear of encouraging either party.

Erik had never seen Aunt Janet look so thwarted.

"Surely," Aunt Janet said, pitching her voice to aspartame levels of sweetness that left an aftertaste of condescension in Erik's ears, "you noticed that only Mr. Lane's place was set with a wine glass."

Ray lifted his chin and flashed Aunt Janet a confused smile. "Oh, Mrs. Lane, I didn't even think of that explanation! I just assumed you were in an unfortunate financial situation and that, coupled with having dear Sigurd for a nephew, was preventing you from replacing your wine glasses!" Ray's laugh was embarrassed and he turned his attention back to his plate, shaking his head, as though he couldn't quite grasp the extent of his own folly.

It was going to be a long night, but not nearly as long as it would have been if Ray weren't there to attract the majority of Aunt Janet's disapproval.

"A proper female relation would have loaded you up with boxes of leftovers and at least one cake," said Ray, leaning back in the passenger seat of the clunker and putting his hands over a stomach that wasn't close to being full.

"Maybe your female relations," said Erik, shivering as he drove. Hopefully, the heat would come on sooner rather than later.

"There wasn't even a cake."

Erik spoke between chattering teeth, "Aunt Janet doesn't believe in desserts. Or sugar."

"Or fun," Ray sighed dramatically, propping his feet up on the dashboard. "Someone needs to explain to your aunt that you can't have a proper celebration of ageing without either a cake or alcohol. If she doesn't believe in cake, she's obliged, by international law, to provide the latter."

"That would have made my cousins' birthday parties rather awkward."

"Yet I'm sure all involved, except for dry, soulless types like your aunt, would see an instant improvement in every way."

"It would also make my cousins' birthday parties rather illegal."

"Your relations look like the sort who could afford, at the very least, a mediocre lawyer."

Erik snorted.

"And if they couldn't and were merely putting on a good show, well, I can always travel back in time and lend a bit of legal assistance of my own. I'm the soul of generosity in that way." Ray smiled into the darkness. "Give the boy a free meal, get free legal representation from the future's greatest lawyer."

It was hard not to laugh. "Somehow, I don't think Aunt Janet would appreciate your legal aid even if you were the greatest lawyer in the history of every universe."

"The correct response, Thor my boy, is to question my ability to have a time machine. You're slipping," Ray chided him softly.

Erik blinked a few times, surprised by this little scold. "The combined forces of you and Aunt Janet have finally driven me over the brink of madness," he said at last, in an attempt to excuse himself.

Ray chuckled. "It wasn't nearly as short a trip as you like to pretend."

"Shut up, Ray," said Erik genially. "You're not allowed to be in a good mood after a night like that."

"But you're forgetting, Thor! I had wine."

"Don't rub it in," Erik sighed. "Uncle Thomas made damn sure to keep that bottle away from you after you went in for that second cup, though."

"And you use the term 'cup' loosely, I'm certain." Ray stretched as far as he could in the little car before settling back down in his seat, his feet level with his head. "I think, when I'm in a position to influence the day-to-day running of the universe, I'm going to have traditional wine glasses and champagne flutes abolished and replaced with tankards. No one but me may realize it, but everyone will be much happier."

Erik thought wistfully of having that much alcohol at his disposal, deadening the pain of all uncomfortable social situations. The thought did have a certain allure. Damn Ray. "Yet, when you're Overlord of the Cups, you'll still be permanently banned from Sunset Vale, in spite of your pretentious, dish-related powers."

"I have diplomatic immunity."

"I don't think even diplomatic immunity can withstand the disapproval of Aunt Janet," said Erik, semi-serious.

Ray was aghast. "What's to disapprove of? I was charming! I was politeness and propriety incarnate while wearing neatly pressed pants!"

"When you're that over the top, even someone like Aunt Janet can tell you're full of bullshit. There's a limit to the amount of fake charm the average person can stomach, you know."

"I suppose you have scientific studies to back up all these terrible and hurtful accusations of yours?"

"Ray."

"Of course you don't. Because I am actually helping Dust investigate human tolerance of slick charm. I hope to get a mention when he wins the Nobel Prize for Awesome."

"He's not investigating human tolerance of anything," Erik said, surprised by how calm her sounded.

Ray kicked the windshield. "He's not?"

"He's working on turning frogs into to-scale, living models of dinosaurs. That breathe fire."

There was the sound of breath being abruptly sucked in on Erik's right, then Ray exhaled slowly. "Oh, I hope you're still too much of a loser to be lying, Thor."

Erik had been feeling something near a good mood, a feeling which dimmed abruptly at Ray's words. He scowled into the darkness as he turned and escaped the uncomfortable, picture-perfect world of Sunset Vale and re-entered the real one, where the streets needed to be cleared and snow looked like people actually interacted with it. "Asshole," he grunted.

The noises Ray made were over the top and wounded. "I thought we were bonding, Thor!"

"Not a fucking chance," Erik said firmly. "In certain situations, you company just seems preferable to that of certain others. Which is no great compliment."

"Pout," said Ray.

Erik snorted. "I think that's more effective if you do it, instead of just saying it."

"A ninja doesn't always have to choose the subliminal route, Thor."

"Pouting does not count as a subliminal message!" exclaimed Erik in exasperation, his tone effectively putting an end to the conversation. Ray simply stared at him for a minute before putting his head back and closing his eyes, apparently asleep.

Erik enjoyed the experience of driving in peace and quiet for all of five minutes.

"You awake, Ray?"

"Mm," said Ray, not opening his eyes.

"It's just barely 10, you know," said Erik, assuming the clock on the dashboard was correct, or even working.

"A ninja is always aware of what time it is, for we are ones in tune with the universe."

Erik rolled his eyes. "Ye-eah. Okay, Ray. So, if it's still 10, it's still, technically, my birthday."

"No technically about it, Thor. Never try and hit on an English major, my boy. You'll just end up making her cry."

It was an effort for Erik to keep his voice pleasant, his fingers tightening on the steering wheel. "So that beer you bought is still in the apartment," he said, his voice trailing off.

Ray's eyes snapped open. "That it is, Thor! That it is! I knew you'd come around eventually!" He grinned.

"Beer is not bonding," Erik cautioned him, keeping his eyes fixed on the road.

"Whatever you say, Thor. It's your birthday after all!"