Ache.

Headache, to be precise.

That was the first thing she registered. Someone must've filled her head with lead last night. She reached to her side, grabbed an alarm clock and put its face against hers. After staring at it intently and allowing her vision to focus a bit, she concluded it was some time in the morning, based on the fact that the room was lit up.

She sat up and blinked up a few times, to no avail. The world in front of her was still a blur colored a calming shade of green. She stopped resisting gravity and slumped back in the bed, deciding to just sleep until her head stopped being so heavy.

And then it hit her.

The walls in her room were blue.

And she didn't have an alarm clock on the side of her bed.

She attempted to spring out of the bed, only to get tangled in the coverlet and land face-first on the floor. Admittedly, it was a pretty effective sobering aid. She scrambled up to a standing position, tossing off the covers, revealing her body to the empty room. Something clicked in her head for the second time in a row and she glanced down.

She was not supposed to see the tattoo on her upper thigh. Or her upper thigh, for that matter, her shorts were supposed to cover that.

Her shorts should also be on her.

"Fuck!" she hissed, and grabbed her head. Making any sounds louder than the dust settling were a less-than-stellar idea. She needed to clear her mind and assess the situation, and the throbbing pain in her head was not helping.

Heh, throbbing.

She scanned the room she was in. There was a bookcase on the wall above the bed, with the books arranged alphabetically. An ant farm standing on the chest of drawers, with a split-flap display showing 8192 attached to one of the side panes. A not-to-scale model of the Solar System fixed to the ceiling. And the labels. The labels were everywhere.

"Of fucking course," she rasped.

She reached to the desk and pulled out a small box labelled "Alka-seltzer" and an eight-ounce bottle of water. She never understood why he kept those around, considering that his favorite drinks were virgin mojito, virgin Bloody Mary and virgin screwdriver. She crushed a tablet in her hands, threw it in her mouth, and washed it down with the water.

She slammed the bottle down, and noticed that it got stuck to a yellow piece of paper. The words weren't clicking inside her head yet, but she understood something about her clothes on the chair and a breakfast downstairs. After getting dressed (and sniffing her threads for a minute or so; the lavender softener's smell was soooo goooood), the girl marched out of the room, down the corridor, and stopped at the top of the staircase. One step down, then another, then another, looped until she reached the first floor. Then, straight to the kitchen.

The host was sitting by the table, reading some papers. Marie approached him and looked over his shoulder, and noticed a pen in his hand, tapping an empty column in a mostly-filled crossword. She focused on the hint list written on the side of the puzzle and one answer reflexively came to her mind.

"Pockets."

Edd dropped the pen, startled. "Whu-what?"

"Seventeen across." She grabbed the pen and poked the relevant row in the crossword. "Missing in female trousers." She wrote down the letters. "P-O-C-K-E-T-S."

The boy stared at the solution that, for reasons beyond his comprehension, seemed to fit. Then, he turned to the girl. "Is this… an issue? I mean, is this a thing that is relevant to female clothing?"

"Why do you think I'm wearing cargo pants all the time?" Marie replied. "Also, good morning, sweetheart."

"Good morning, Marie," Edd said, putting emphasis on the last word.

"Did your lover do good enough to get some breakfast?"

The boy raised an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?"

"I woke up in your bed, naked." She smirked. "You don't need to be coy, love muffin."

Edd pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering some curses under his breath. Then, he stared her in the eye. "You broke into my house inebriated, for the third time this month, discarded your clothes on the upper floor corridor, and passed out in my bed."

"Wait," Marie raised an eyebrow, "you mean you didn't do anything to me?"

"I have both a moral code and some shreds of dignity," he replied, offended by the assumption. "Now, what do you want for that breakfast?"

The girl decided to accept defeat and not bite the hand about to feed her, for now. "I'unno, whatcha got?"

"Are you fine with scrambled eggs?" he offered. "Reportedly they help hungover people recover quicker, or so Eddy claims. I cannot confirm."

"Sounds awesome." Marie slumped on one of the chairs by the table. "Knock me out, Oven Mitt."

Edd scowled. "Could you register that I have a name?"

"That nobody but your parents use." Noticing Double D's icy glare, she raised her hands. "Okay, okay, I'm shutting up."

The boy opened the refrigerator and pulled out a couple eggs, a chunk of bacon, a few onions, some cheese and champignons… shit, back at her home scrambled eggs consisted of eggs and whatever fat was lying around. She didn't pay attention to that before, but all three Eds seemed pretty comfortable in the kitchen. Even the dumb one was capable of preparing himself a warm meal, and the short one managed to get Lee to leave him alone with a few secret family recipes.

To be fair though, the omelet and the Armenian sauce were worth it.

"Wash your hands, please," the boy asked, politely. Marie stood up, and, leaning on the table for as long as she could, approached the sink. She turned the tap on and let the water go through her fingers. After a moment, unprompted, she put her head in the sink, under the stream of cold water.

Edd ceased chopping the champignons. "Is everything alright?"

She looked back up, her hair rinsed. "Yeah, yeah, I just needed something to wake up." She shook her head to dry off, spraying water everywhere.

The boy covered himself with his hands. "Are you having fun right now?" he growled.

Marie glanced at him. "No, I'm not. I'm hungover, I feel sick, and I'm one unfiltered remark away from you tasing me or something."

"First of all," Edd reached into one of the cupboards and pulled out a bucket, "use this if necessary. You helped yourself to Alka-Seltzer in my desk?" She nodded, prompting him to continue. "Secondly, that happened once and it wasn't for trash talking. Thirdly, it's hard to feel sympathy for you when you seem to put no effort into self-improvement."

"You put no effort into growing a spiiiii-" She stretched the last letter. "-I need to can it, do I?"

Edd just looked at her with the expression of a guy used to this stuff. "It's 'don't I'."

"Yeah, whatever. You know what?" The girl nudged him towards one of the chairs with the usual Kanker subtlety. "Sit down, I'm gonna make those eggs myself."

"With due respect, a guest preparing meals for a host seems ridiculous."

"Guests don't break in." Marie tripped him, causing him to lose balance and land on the chair. "Stay here." Edd asked himself whether arguing with the girl about that was worth it, and decided otherwise.

Was he too passive about her roughhousing? It's not that he was unable to bring her down a couple of notches if he was forced to – as the Lichtenberg figure on Marie's chest would remind both of them – it was that he didn't want to. Partially because with their friends' tempers things could escalate really easily, and partially because he thought that maybe, juuuuuust maybe, the Kankers weren't beyond redemption.

Eddward of the past would probably call him crazy – and not without reason. The list of all instances where Lee, May and Marie had ended up being spanners in the works for the Eds would be inordinately long (Edd was sure it was still lying around somewhere). But as people age, they sometimes mature and reevaluate their actions. And, for whatever reasons, Kankers had done just that. Him and his friends had three theories as for why that happened – they had pragmatically decided that a ceasefire is more beneficial than trying to assert dominance, they had become desperate for companionship after realizing they have no acquaintances beside each other, or they had had a genuine change of heart and attempted to atone in the best way they could. Nobody bothered to ask the girls themselves, and they probably wouldn't have given a straight answer anyway.

Noticing the girl was almost done with the meal, Edd allowed himself to get up and pull out two small dishes and two forks from the cupboard. Marie split the eggs into equal portions and put them on the plates. The boy gave her a fork and some bread, and took another set for himself. The two sat by the table, opposite each other.

"Enjoy," Marie said, putting a morsel in her mouth.

Edd did the same. Then, after chewing it for a moment, he went to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of sparkling water, and drank straight from it.

"Too much salt, huh?" Marie inquired, chewing.

"What makes you think that?"

She swallowed. "I like 'em salty, and you've drank a pint of water after a single bite."

Edd just shrugged and returned to his place with the bottle in his hands. He took another bite of the eggs when Marie said "Why aren't you complainin'?"

"About what?"

"About anything. Like, I break into your house and sleep in your bed and you're still like 'oh, presumably I sleep on the couch tonight'. I know you can take a stand, so why don't you do that?".

"I do not want to be rude."

She tented her fingers. "I am going to spell it out, cutie:" she said, registering his scowl, "I'm a shitty person, and I'm so out of touch that I need people to point out when I'm shitty, so that I can be less shitty in the future. Comprende?"

Edd sighed. "Si, señorita."

"So lay it on me." Marie made a 'come at me' gesture. "Everything wrong with Marie Kanker in thirty seconds. I've got thick skin, I can take it."

The boy said nothing, hoping that the topic would naturally fizzle out, but the girl's expression made it abundantly clear that this wouldn't happen. So, he inhaled and let out:

"You have zero consideration towards others' feelings. You're abrasive, oftentimes on purpose, to deliberately aggravate your peers. Your penchant for drinking irresponsibly might cause you problems in the long run – though I hope with all my heart it won't. Your concept of flirting would seem too blunt in a femdom porn movie." He noticed Marie raising her hand. "Morbid curiosity, never dare to bring that up again." Her hand went down. "Your grades are below what you would be able to achieve if you put some actual effort at school. And what's the point of adding a variety of ingredients to scrambled eggs if you then kill all flavor with excess quantities of salt?"

After a moment of pause, Marie piped in "Is that all?"

"Actually, no." Edd took a deep breath. "Despite all your shortcomings, I believe… I want to believe that underneath all that is someone who attempts to be an overall good person."

"Fucking lovable." she muttered. "I'm getting the most second chances from a guy who should hate my guts."

"It's nothing," he reassured.

"It's fucking everything," she countered. "To have someone other than my sisters to who I can just break in and fall asleep in their bed and then get a breakfast and just… him just get a little pissy when I'm a bitch, call me out but still stick around and believe in me and… oh screw this, can I just glomp you?"

Edd pondered it for a moment. Then, he stood up and moved away from the chair. It's not that it was his first tackle hug – heck, he knew Ed for over a decade, it might've been a four-digit number. He didn't mind. He was used to that.

And then Marie stood up, calmly walked up to him, and embraced him.

"You're not as good as you think, Double D," she muttered. "But you're good enough for me."

The boy returned the embrace. "I will take that as a compliment."

The two just stood there for a good minute or so, in complete silence, hugging each other. After that, Marie released Edd. "If anyone asks, this never happened."

The boy responded by moving his thumb and forefinger across his lips.

"You got any plans for today?" Marie asked.

"Not really. Why do you ask?"

"I drew some smut for a porn mag." She pulled a fifty from one of her trousers' pockets. "How 'bout we round up all six of us and go bowling?"

"That's an… unorthodox way of making money, but I respect it." Edd averted his gaze. "And yes, I can ask Ed and Eddy what they think about i-"

He was interrupted by the sound of his phone ringing. He excused himself with a gesture and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Two-D, have you seen Marie?" Lee asked on the other side, concerned. "She went out yesterday and I'm going to fucking kill her for not getting back home before morning."

Edd handed the handset to the girl. "It's for you."