Nych was a bit nervous about meeting Blake in a different context than a classroom.

Usually, they didn't even look at each other. They had never spoken, never been partners, hell, he'd never even said the girl's name until that first day he spent talking to Willow.

But now, he'd be sleeping in the same apartment as her.

It was a bit odd.

They walked through the front doors of the building, and he turned to look at Willow. "What floor is it on?"

"The sixth floor." Willow glanced over at him, shrugging her shoulders as she walked towards the elevator. She stepped inside, waiting for Nych before she pressed the button for their floor and stood patiently as the doors closed and the elevator began its ascent upwards. She was somewhat dreading bringing Nych over, because she knew Blake would tease them both relentlessly, but she didn't care too much.

Anything to save him from the assholes that liked to beat the shit out of him every night.

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. Willow walked a couple doors down, stopped in front of what was presumably her apartment, and unlocked the door with keys she pulled from her pocket. "Hey!" She called into the house. "You home?"

"Always, dearest." A voice from the back said. And then Blake, a being of shadow at that moment, for all the lights were off in the back room, stepped into the light.

… And she was completely naked.

Nych averted his eyes, but Blake made no motion to cover herself whatsoever. She simply evaluated him, looking him up and down before she looked back over to Willow.

"I think you're going to owe me a hundred bucks real soon, missy." She said, glaring her down.

There wasn't any anger there, however. Merely something to tease Willow about later.

Willow stared at her blankly, and then rolled her eyes. "Oh my God. I swear, if you did this on purpose, I'm gonna beat you up." She walked over to the couch, grabbing the blanket and tossing it at her. "Put some clothes on, you slut." She stuck her tongue out at her, and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "... Why are you even naked anyways?" She furrowed her brows. "Do you have a guy over? Is he at least cute?"

She had so much faith in her friend.

She was also kind of mad. This wasn't really the best way to introduce Nych to her roommate and her best friend.

"Well, if I'm a dude, I think I’ve got some explaining to do." Another voice said, as a woman walked out from the back room. She, at least, was clothed in a large t-shirt and a pair of panties. She was blonde-haired and had hazel eyes, the green shining through very prominently. Her skin was that of a very light caramel, though her heritage was one that Nych couldn't quite place.

She was, in all honesty, quite breathtaking. Blake never scored someone that pretty.

"I'm Emmaline. Please, call me Emma." She said, holding a hand out to Willow.

Even though she was barely dressed, she was still extremely polite, and obviously very kind.

"... Oh." Willow blinked, staring at her for a second before she relaxed slightly and held her hand out for Emma to shake. "Well, it's nice to meet you. I'm Willow, but knowing Blake and her big mouth, you might already know that." She glanced towards Blake, and after a moment huffed and grabbed the blanket off the floor. "Put some clothes on, you bitch." She wrapped the blanket around her, trapping her, and heaved her into her arms as she started marching her back towards her bedroom.

They had... A very interesting dynamic.

That was exactly what Blake had been hoping for.

"I hope that all of the rumors turned out false, Willow. And I hope that this thing works out for you. I can see in your eyes that something's different between you two, and I've been your best friend for years, so don't even try to pull anything with me. I just..."

When Willow laid her on the bed, Blake sat up, and abruptly wrapped her arms around her.

"I hope this goes well for you. You're a stuck up little bitch and deserve someone to make you happy."

Willow was silent for a moment or two, and then she hugged Blake tightly.

She knew she needed to talk to someone. So...

She told her everything. And she knew Blake wouldn't say anything to anyone else when she told her this, because it was eating her away inside. She had to be the strong one for Nych, but that didn't mean that she had to be the strong one for Blake too.

"He has cancer." Willow whispered. "Terminal. He says he was supposed to be dead a day ago. Three months. It's been three months and one day." Her hands clutched her tighter, and she clenched her jaw tightly.

Blake didn't move. Her face didn't change. She simply stared at Willow with that same, dark, unreadable expression.

Then she spoke.

"That's what the rumors were about, then. He's sick, but not in the way everyone made him out to be. This is out of his control, but... Willow. Are you sure that you want to do this? Are you sure that you want to be with someone who won't last much longer?"

Coming from anyone else, those words would have been insensitive. But coming from Blake... They were just to make Willow reconsider.

"I will support you all the way. Hell, I’ll join a threesome if you want. But... Are you sure that this is what you want? Because I want you to be absolutely positive before jumping headstrong into a relationship that's focused so heavily around one thing."

"... I’m sure." She nodded slowly, looking down at the floor. "I just- God. He's so brilliant and amazing, and he's the smartest man I've ever met, but I..."

She gulped, swallowing down the lump in her throat and taking a deep breath to keep herself together. She didn't want to cry. She wanted her time with him to be a positive thing. Something that she was glad she enjoyed while it lasted, instead of dreading waking up every morning and finding him dead.

It would break her heart, she knew that.

"... It just hurts." She sighed heavily. "And everyone is so, so cruel to him. He has no family. No friends. He's black and blue from getting mugged outside of his apartment every night. I just- it isn't fair."

Blake nodded her head, listening sympathetically to what Willow had to say.

"You know... I'm fine if he moves in here. If you want him to live here until his time's up, I'm fine with that. He doesn't even have to pay rent, unless he really wants to chip in."

Oh, she would love finding out about his wonderful machine that made rent a thing of the past.

"I'm with you one-hundred percent, Willow." She said, standing and walking over to the dresser. She finally pulled on some clothes, getting dressed before turning back around to her.

"He's seen me naked, so I guess he's allowed to stay."

Willow smiled ever so slightly, and cast Blake a thankful glance. She was glad she had someone like Blake in her life. Someone who was there if she needed her to be, but wasn't overbearing about it. She could usually deal with things on her own, and she preferred doing it that way, but... It was nice to have a shoulder to cry on every once in a while. "... Thanks, Blake. I'll talk to him about it. We'll see."

With that, she took a deep breath, calming herself down, and opened the bedroom door again.

"... Alrighty." She walked out, and looked towards Nych. "That's dealt with. You wanna check out some of my projects I've got lying around here?"

After Willow walked out, Emma nodded at her and took her place, closing the door behind her. The click of the lock could be heard, and Nych smiled slightly.

"I think Blake should keep her. She seems nice."

He nodded to Willow's question, obviously ready to see her projects considering she'd been so willing to see his own. He was actually incredibly excited to see what kinds of things she'd done.

"Lead the way, my... Date."

The word felt foreign.

"Date?" She snickered, looking over at him and leading him into her room. "I think any other pet name would work better than that, Nych." She laughed softly, turning on the light and looking around her organized mess of a housing space.

"Give me a break, I've never done this before." He grumbled, following her into her room.

There were mechanical parts everywhere, blueprints tacked to the walls, and clothing scattered about on the ends of the bed and on the back of the chair at the large, oil-stained desk she had.

"Tadaaaaa." She waved her hands around with sarcastic excitement. "It's a mess."

She looked around for a few moments, before she walked over to her dresser and pulled something down that Nych had immediately noticed.

... A metal arm?

When he looked back at her to see her holding out a metal arm, well... He took it, and began to inspect it.

As he did so, a smile began to grow on his face.

"These wires... These are perfectly laid out like the tendons in the human arm. Are you saying...?"

"It's a perfectly functioning robotic arm." Willow nodded eagerly, looking down at the arm he was holding. "There's a lady a couple doors down who's an amputee that I used as a model." She bounced on the balls of her feet eagerly, and after a moment ran over to her desk to pull out the blueprints for the arm. "We tested it a couple days back. It works perfectly. I finally worked out all the bugs. And it's detachable, too."

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She pulled the blueprints out, laying them flat on her desk. "... I plan on giving it to her." She said. "I just want to patent everything first. Then I have full control of the designs and what gets done with them."

She shrugged, and sighed. "I'm not letting some big corporation get a hold of it and charge so much no one can afford them. I want to handle it all myself, at least, for the time being."

Nych looked down at the piece of machinery in awe, his eyes lighting up. "This... This is incredible, Willow! Wow... If we get our stuff out there, we could literally change the world. My cures, and your prosthetics... Hell, we could save the world."

He was right. Medicine was better, and prosthetics were better, but neither came anywhere close to the two young geniuses.

They could control the world.

It was in that moment that he put his hands on her shoulders, and said, "When I die, I want you to take everything I own. Everything. Hell, please take the lab. You could use the space."

He gestured around the room, the smile on his face growing ever wider.

"You could come to the lab now! That way, you won't have to keep your apartment so cluttered! And you could get a cat!"

She blinked, and after a moment smiled. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, and looked around at all of her equipment that laid scattered around the room. "Well... If you're okay with that, I'll certainly start moving some of my things down there. I'm sure Blake would be happy with less stuff lying around." She was saddened by the thought of him being gone, but... It was reassuring. She would let his legacy live on. They could make the world a better place.

Even if he wasn't there to see it.

"I'm working on blueprints for legs right now." She grinned. "I figured it'd be easier to perfect an arm first, considering how complicated they are. So a leg shouldn't be too much of a problem." She walked over, rifling through the multiple blueprints she had. She found a chocolate bar wrapper mixed in among them somewhere, and tossed it to the floor. There was a beep from under her bed, and after a second a tiny robot holding a trash can wheeled out to go retrieve it.

... What else did she have hiding around there?

Nych looked down at the robot, and a compulsive smile spread across his face.

"Are you working in the field of AI at all, by any chance?" He asked, looking down at the small robot. "I've been trying, but... Artificial intelligence is a bitch to program. Plus, we run into the filling problem. You can't build it on too large a hard drive, or it'll become too large of a file and corrupt itself. Either that, or... Go rogue."

There had been a prototype AI that had nearly launched a nuclear missile at its mother country before it was shot down. That had been five years ago.

Those were dark days.

"But you... I feel like you could do it."

"I have been working on it, actually." Willow nodded, glancing back at him. "I've had a bit of an AI pet project going. His file name is D3N-N15, but I call him Dennis." She grinned, tilting her head to the side. She was obviously very proud of her work. "He's just on my computer right now. Super basic so far, but... I think as long as I set the right perimeters he could grow into something quite beneficial. I'm being very, very careful with him."

The trash robot picked up the wrapper, and then with an amiable chirp wheeled itself back under the bed.

"I could show him to you, if you want. But he's kinda boring right now." She shrugged. "He just answers very basic questions, nothing much."

Nych nodded, smiling. "I've built something similar before, and she's still sitting on my computer, just waiting to be opened. I actually got pretty far in my AI; I could hold a full conversation with her. I stopped working on her when..."

He seemed to go distant, before he came back to the conversation.

"When she erased part of her code when I told her I had cancer, and she effectively killed herself."

He had created a friend on his computer, and even she had left him.

"I have the code saved, of course, but... I didn't want to bring her back into a world she didn't want to live in."

"... Oh. Wow." Her brows furrowed, and she shook her head. "They really must have a mind of their own, huh?" She grew somewhat solemn, pursing her lips as she set her pile of blueprints down on her desk. "... What if we could bring back people?"

What? That was a very out of the blue question.

"... Like, I don't know. If we somehow preserved the brain and personality of the person, we could bring them back. Stick them into a robotic body that has the same functions as a human body, and they could continue on their lives as usual." It was evident she had started thinking about this earlier that day, as her thoughts seemed somewhat scattered. "... Do you think that would be plausible? God- I guess there's no way to tell unless you had a brain to test it on. And that oxygen was still provided to that brain during the transfer process."

Nych's smile continually widened as she spoke, until finally, he nodded his head.

"Yes. I very well do think it's possible. In fact... I built an apparatus to test it."

What?

"In my lab, there is a box. The box is a very special box, because it is filled with a very special liquid. It is, for all intents and purposes, a type of preservative spinal fluid that regulates the oxygen level within the box. Therefore... The box could keep a brain alive, or even bring a brain back to life in some cases, so that it can be used later."

That... Was a miracle.

"I think it would have to be a mixture of hard drive and brain, in order to provide electricity to the brain in small enough bursts. It would also help for data storage, considering a brain begins deteriorating rapidly after death. In fact, if a brain isn't pulled from the body in three hours or less, it won't work."

Willow nodded slowly.

"... And, hypothetically. If one were to ask that of doctors, so to have their brain 'preserved' for science, they would remove the brain after the fact to keep it alive?" Her voice garnered a strange sort of tone. "And perhaps could have that box used. Because if it's a person's so-called 'religious' values, they would have to do that, no?" She sat down on the edge of her desk, tilting her head to the side.

Willow had an idea.

And once she had one, it was very hard to make her forget about it.

Nych tilted his head, giving her a strange expression, and then shook his head slowly. "No, that wouldn't work. Doctors aren't allowed to release brain matter into the custody of an individual person, even if it is for religious purposes. Disease would spread too easily that way."

Damn. That put a fork in her plan.

"If a person is an organ donor, however, their organs are often preserved quite well until they can be passed along to the next person."

Well... It might just work.

"... But the brain is iffy." She bit her lip as she thought. "Perhaps if a special request was made? Like if one wanted it preserved the same as the other organs so it could be donated to a university or science program." She thought for a moment or two. Yes. That would work. The university sometimes used donated human brains in labs, or simply to have them for study in some of the higher scientific programs.

She looked up at him.

"... Can I steal your brain from the hospital?" She asked after a second, quite bluntly.

...

Nych simply stared at her, his eyes cold, unreadable, calculating.

"...Yes."

That was certainly an unexpected answer.

"But only if you promise that you'll bring me back only when everything is perfect. I don't want to come back inside of a computer, Willow. If I do, I will corrupt my coding. I want to come back in a body, if that is possible. If it isn't, then I am dead. End of story."

He narrowed his eyes at her, a smile coming to his face.

"You'll have a bit of trouble, though. Brains infected by cancer aren't typically sent off for scientific purposes. They're nearly impossible to get."

"Deal." Willow nodded, and after a moment tilted her head to the side with a grin. "I'll get Blake to help me. A grand heist of the hospital. I think it'll probably be a lot easier, considering we're dating and that I'm going to probably be the one arranging everything funeral wise." It hurt a bit to talk about, but she was somewhat lightened by this new prospect. She would bring him back, if it was the last thing she ever did.

And it would be her crowning achievement.

"I'll stash it at my parents’ house. In the crawlspace. Nobody would ever think to look there, if they could even find it in the first place." She shrugged. "I can start planning everything now. Making sure I'll be able to get into where I need to go."

He looked to her dubiously, before he nodded his head. "Fine. I couldn't really stop you anyway, considering I'd be dead. But you do you, boo. And if you can bring me back... Hell, that'll be great."

He looked around the room, a slight smile forming on his face.

"But that's enough death talk. We should probably sleep soon."

He was right. It was getting late. He was very happy that he'd be sleeping without fresh bruises that night.

"Yeah." She nodded, and glanced around the room. "So... I guess we can sleep in here. But I don't know. Do you want to go to bed now, or stay up and watch a movie for a little while?" She asked, gesturing towards the TV that was mounted to the wall across from her bed. "We also have popcorn in the cupboard, so we could make a bag of that if we wanted." She walked over, and sat down on the edge of her bed.

So she wasn't making him sleep on the couch after all.

She looked up at him, and tucked one strand of ginger hair behind her ear. "Up to you."

Thirty minutes later they were laying together in the bed, a bowl of half-burnt popcorn in front of them and the newest horror movie playing on the large television.

The room was, of course, entirely black.

"I can't believe you don't watch any horror movies." Nych muttered, gesturing towards the TV. "They're obviously the best." They were pressed up against each other, and honestly... It felt amazing. There wasn't anything even intimate about it; just their proximity, their skin pressed against each other... It was intoxicating.

Perhaps both of them had been starved for affection.

"I... Might want to stay here more often."

"... Blake said you could move in, if you wanted." Willow glanced up at him for a second, and then looked back towards the TV screen. She sighed internally. Him and Blake were going to get along great, with their stupid love of horror movies. She really didn't understand the appeal. They just used the same cheap scare tactics every time, and they were predictable as all-

There was a bang in the movie, and Willow jumped.

"If you want." She continued, playing it off like she totally hadn't jumped. "We'll help you move."

Nych stared at her in absolute awe, a slow smile spreading across his face.

"Weren't you the one complaining about moving fast?" He laughed, wrapping his arms around her and laying his head on her chest. It showed he was comfortable around her.

He also wrapped his legs around hers, which signified something completely different.

It signified that he wanted to be closer to her.

"Oh, whatever." She rolled her eyes, but relaxed when he moved closer to her. It was nice, having someone be so close. To be able to feel his breathing, the warmth in his body, and more importantly, how his body felt against her own. She could really get used to something like this.

She knew it would be cut short, however. But it was still something she desired.

She pushed her thoughts aside, and lightly laced her fingers up into Nych's hair. She ran her hand through it, lightly stroking it and trying to soothe him as she wrapped her other arm around him to hold him as well. Her eyes were still locked on the horror movie, but all of her actions were focused on Nych.

It was at that moment that Nych held a hand up to her chin, turning her head slightly so that her eyes were looking directly into his own.

A beautiful green against a strange, beautiful orange.

He pressed his forehead against hers, their bodies now moving as one as he lightly pushed her down, moving so that he was on top of her.

And then, he asked something he never thought he'd ask.

"Can I kiss you, Willow Grace?"

Her cheeks tinted, and she looked up at the man on top of herself. She stared into his beautiful eyes, and for a moment she didn't dare breathe, simply taking in the beauty of the man in front of her. The man who had charmed her so effortlessly, and the man who was now asking to kiss her.

So instead of answering him, she did just that.

She leaned up, letting her eyes flutter shut as her lips pressed to his. It was a soft and tender kiss, nothing too passionate. She didn't want to frighten him off for any reason, but she held the kiss and let her hand drift to his cheek. His skin was so warm against her own, and it was like molten rock had been encased in living muscle. And his lips... She had never thought another person's lips could be so soft.

For a few precious seconds, Nych was shocked into stillness. Then...

He kissed her back.