Greg took a deep breath, raised his hand, and knocked.
The door swung open almost immediately, as if Dustin had been waiting.
He was wearing a faded t-shirt and sweatpants, his hair ruffled and slightly damp. He'd put his piercings back in because of course he had, and yet… He looked soft in a way Greg hadn't seen before, and Greg's stomach did a painful little flip that he aggressively ignored.
“There you are.” Dustin smiled at him and stepped aside to let Greg in.
Greg looked around the motel room, though there was nothing special about it. Nothing aside from Dustin's gear spread across the desk: harnesses, carabiners, something that looked like a fabric wing folded into a surprisingly small package.
Dustin followed his gaze. “Are you thinking about messing with my stuff again?”
“No,” Greg said, his voice coming out strange. “I wouldn't do that again.”
“You'd better not. That would make this thing between us very awkward.”
This thing between us.
Greg didn't know how to process those words, so he stood awkwardly in the middle of the room and said nothing.
He'd come here for a reason, hadn't he? What was the reason again?
Dustin reminded him.
“So,” he said, dropping onto the edge of the bed, legs spread, leaning back on his hands. “How much trouble are you in?”
Greg licked his lips. “A moderate amount.”
“On a scale of one to ten?”
“Seven. Possibly eight.”
“Damn.” Dustin didn't sound particularly sorry. “What'd they say?”
They told me to dig into your past. They told me to find the flaw. They told me you should already be dead and something is preventing it and I need to figure out what.
“They want me to understand why you won't die,” Greg said carefully. “So I can restore the natural order.”
Something flickered across Dustin's face. “And how do you plan to do that?”
“I need to ask you some questions. About your history.” Greg pulled out his clipboard and tried to look official. “I need to know about anything unusual that might have happened.”
Dustin's eyebrows rose. “Are you seriously going to interrogate me right now?”
“It's not an interrogation. It's an investigation.”
“With a clipboard.”
“The clipboard is company issue standard equipment.”
“You want to sit down for this investigation?” Dustin patted the bed beside him. “Plenty of room.”
“I'll stand.”
“Suit yourself.” Dustin's grin sharpened. “What do you want to know?”
Greg looked down at his clipboard. He'd prepared questions during his eleven minutes of standing in the parking lot.
“When did you start jumping?”
