The three of them are frozen for a moment, King in the rain and the girls sitting in the bus stop, King's dog tugging at the leash. Then King approaches them, pulling the hood of his jacket down once he's under the awning.

"Good evening," Elizabeth says politely, as the dog circles from her to Diane and back again. Diane reaches over and scratches the dog's ears with her unhurt hand.

"I didn't know you had a dog," Diane says, smiling, but her voice is still flat; tired and drained. Elizabeth watches King look over Diane: her red eyes, swollen knuckles, the obvious signs she's been crying. Diane looks bedraggled and exhausted and wet from the rain. Elizabeth scoots closer to her friend on the bench, so their shoulders are pressed together. The dog jumps up on his hind legs, resting his front paws on Diane's knees, his tail wagging as she pets him.

"Oslo! Get down," King scolds. "And — yeah. I have a dog." He looks over at Elizabeth. "Is everything okay?"

She doesn't quite know how to answer that question. "Hey, King," Diane says, while Elizabeth is trying to decide. "Are you still mad at me from this afternoon?" she asks bashfully, tugging at her limp hair.

"What? Oh — no, I'm not. I mean…" King hesitates. "It wasn't your fault, Diane. I was never angry at you."

King's dog comes over to see if Elizabeth will pet him. She does, pretending not to hear the conversation happening on both sides of her. Oslo is a shaggy, low-bodied mutt with gray around his muzzle; ignoring his master's request, he props his front paws up on the bench to allow Elizabeth easy ear-scratching.

"But are you okay?" King is asking Diane. "You look…"

"Haha…" she says weakly. "I got into a fight with Meliodas. Elizabeth has been comforting me."

A fight? Scratching Oslo's ears, ELizabeth isn't sure that's what she'd call it. Diane had announced her new job, and then they'd ignored one another until Meliodas had left. Why did King have to show up just now? She immediately feels guilty for thinking so — it's none of her business, really, but Diane had been just about to tell her, and…

In the past, when Diane and Meliodas have butted against one another, Diane has played it off as a joke, ignored him, or gotten briefly upset before getting over it. Had she only been pretending? What if Elizabeth is witnessing a permanent fracture? And if so, what does she do?

"What on Earth could you two have argued about?" King asks.

"Oh… the usual stuff," Diane says vaguely. She says it like King knows. It's true they often sit together and chat in the café, and Diane has said as much. But… Elizabeth lets her hand rest on Oslo's head, looking into his brown dog eyes. If she and Diane are best friends, why does King know about it and not her?

"It's stupid, if you ask me," King says huffily. "It's none of his business what you want to do with your life."

"He doesn't mean it like that!" Diane protests — loudly enough that it draws Elizabeth out of her stupor; she catches Diane's face go red and her expression change back to upset, defending Meliodas and then remembering their fight. "I mean… he…"

"Well, either way… the two of you shouldn't just sit out in the rain like this." King crosses his arms, his groceries rustling in their bags.

"We'll head inside in just a minute," Elizabeth assures him, breaking into the conversation. "We need to get some ice for Diane's hand, anyway."

King clearly just notices Diane's hand only at Elizabeth's words. "What did you do to it?" he exclaims, immediately crossing the small bus stop to her.

Diane laughs nervously. "I hit a wall a couple of times?" she admits, blushing and playing with her hair and raising her hand for King to look at it more closely.

For some reason, King glares over at Elizabeth, who feels her own face grow red. "I - It wasn't Diane's fault!" she stammers.

King sighs. "Look, why don't you guys come over to my place? I have ice and some bandages." He makes it sound like a huge favor, but he's also blushing. Elizabeth's head is starting to hurt from all the connections she's missing. Diane and Meliodas, Diane and King… she's never even heard King talk this much in the month she's known him.

"You live near here?" Diane asks, with interest.

"Of course I do," he says huffily.

"Thank you very much," Elizabeth interjects.

King tugs Oslo away from the bench, pulling his hood back up. "Come on. There's no reason to sit out in the rain like this."

King lives around the corner and two blocks north. Elizabeth had never put much thought into it, but it makes a certain amount of sense he also lives in the neighborhood: after all, he does come to the Boar's Hat almost every day. His apartment is in an old brick building, on the fourth floor: he unclips Oslo's leash in the lobby and they walk up the stairs in a quiet group as he leads them down the hall and into his apartment, flicking on the lights.

"It's huge!" Diane says.

"Sit down, and I'll go get the bandages. Elizabeth, there's an ice pack in the freezer," King says. Oslo trots across the room to collapse onto a round dog bed.

The apartment isn't huge, but it's almost empty, making the room look larger. There's a small kitchen by the front door, with a table and two chairs. The living room is an open space containing only a sofa, the dog bed, and a low TV stand with holding books and a television: there's no decor or even a rug anywhere. A door off the kitchen has been propped open, opening to a tiny balcony hardly wider than the door, letting in the rain. There's another doorway on the opposite wall leading to a hallway containing the bedroom and bathroom; King heads down it as Diane sits at the kitchen table and Elizabeth opens the freezer.

It's completely empty aside from the ice pack. "Has he just moved in?" she muses aloud, wrapping the ice pack in the lone dish towel she sees.

"He hasn't mentioned anything… thanks," Diane says, taking the pack and pressing it to her hand.

Elizabeth shuts the balcony door and grabs a handful of paper towels to mop up the puddle on the floor from the rain. "It's very nice of him to let us visit," she says.

"It's no problem," King says, coming back into the room with a roll of sports bandage. "I couldn't exactly leave you alone outside."

"I'm pretty sure nothing is broken," Diane says, as the other two gravitate around the kitchen table. She removes her ice. Her knuckles are red and scraped and swollen, but not excessively; Elizabeth agrees with Diane's assessment.

"But they'll still hurt in the morning," she says.

"They hurt now!" Diane replies with a laugh, and then a bashful look. "Seriously… you don't have to take care of me like this. Both of you." Her voice gets quieter, shyer, as she speaks.

"Don't be ridiculous," King says.

Elizabeth helps Diane wrap some tape around her fingers, just in case, before reapplying the ice. King's apartment is incredibly quiet, every little sound seeming to echo around the empty space. She sits in the other chair at the table, and he sits on one of the counters, facing them.

"Have you lived here long?" she asks, trying to make some more casual conversation.

"About a year," King says.

"What brought you to this neighborhood?"

King shrugs. "It's pretty cheap."

The fridge hums. Elizabeth remembers King's reputation for never talking about himself. That doesn't seem to be the case right now, and she isn't sure why. She wants to ask him more, but she also is still worried about Diane, who is being quiet, picking at the grain of the kitchen table. "So after you graduated college?" she asks.

"Something like that," he says.

Could it have only been an hour or two ago she had been talking with Meliodas about secrets? Meliodas, who said he wasn't keeping secrets. Diane, who is so good at not mentioning things that Elizabeth didn't realize she had them. And now King, who is very obviously avoiding answering her questions.

What is it with these people? She sighs.

"What?" King asks, narrowing his eyes at her.

Elizabeth keeps her mouth tightly closed — but it's welling up inside her, and she just can't help bursting out with: "Why is everyone so secretive? I'm not trying to be nosy, but it seems like every single one of you spends most of your time being mysterious about little things, and it makes no sense! I hate not knowing what's going on!"

From his doggy bed, Oslo lets out a sleepy bark. Elizabeth catches both Diane and King staring at her, and she blushes, looking down at her lap.

"Sorry," Diane says bashfully.

"You don't have anything to be sorry about!" King tells Diane. Embarrassed over her outburst, Elizabeth doesn't mention that at least half of that was about him.

"It just… feels hard, being the outsider. I know you've all known one another for a long time… and I'm new, and it's not my business, and I'm being terribly rude…" oh, she is being terribly rude! Why did she say anything in the first place?

"No! Elizabeth, I promise! I'm not keeping any secrets from you!" Diane says, lunging across the table to try and grab Elizabeth's hands.

Elizabeth lets Diane take her hands. Diane is practically lying on the table, trying so hard to reach her. The sight is pretty funny, and she can't help but smile. Diane smiles back. "See?"

"I know you're not," she says. "And after everything tonight, it's selfish of me, but…"

Diane shakes her head. "No… I really mean it. It's not that I'm trying to keep secrets. It's just…" she scoots back into her chair, her expression serious again. "It's a little hard to talk about."

King is the one to break the silence. "…I'm not trying to be secretive either."

"Really?" Elizabeth says at the same time as Diane, both women turning to look over at him. He's staring at the fridge, but flushes.

"I mean… not from you… both of you," King says. "It's complicated." He keeps staring at the fridge. "It was never my intention to be part of the 'group,'" he says. "I just…" he trails off and doesn't finish his sentence.

"It's too late for that, King. We're your friends, if you like it or not," Diane says. King frowns and doesn't reply. Diane plays with her ice pack. "My family was in a car accident when I was ten," she says.

Elizabeth and King both turn to look at her. She's looking at her hands, her expression distant. "I was at a friend's house for a sleepover. It was the weekend. My family all went out to get ice cream… I called home to say goodnight to my mom, and my sister answered. She said they were going, and I got really jealous. I wanted ice cream, you know? Even though I was at my friend's house. I complained to my mom… there was an accident on the way there. A driver lost control of his car…" Diane trails off, heaves a sigh. "My mom and my sister were killed instantly."

But… Diane's sister is named Matrona. And is still alive. Elizabeth swallows, looking over at King — she doesn't know why, for support or to check in. Diane is still staring at her ice pack.

"Dad hung on for another couple of days, but he didn't make it," Diane continues, "and Matrona was in a coma for a while, and she lost her leg. It got crushed, you know?"

Two sisters. Diane had had two sisters. Somehow, almost more than the horror of losing her parents, that pulls at Elizabeth, draws the beginning of tears into her eyes. Diane's family had been just like hers. What if she lost Veronica? Or Margaret? And her father? What if she'd lost them all when she'd lost her mother? How can Diane be so cheerful?

"I stayed at my friend's house for a couple of weeks, but then I had to go into foster care. It wasn't bad or anything. They moved me into the city because Matrona was in Kingswood Hospital, and the family I got placed in was really nice. They had decorated my bedroom for me… bought me some toys and stuffed animals to try and cheer me up. That's when I met Meliodas. He'd been there for a year or two already."

Diane pauses again, looking up at the ceiling and taking a deep breath, then another. "I was a real mess back then. I thought it was all my fault, because I was the only one who hadn't been there. I didn't want to do anything. I'd just lie in bed… watch TV… my foster parents didn't make me do anything. If I said I didn't want to go to school, they'd let me stay home. If I was a brat, they let me get my way. Everyone thought I was some traumatized little kid, even though I was the only one who was fine. I mean, I was the only one who didn't even get hurt, you know? It's dumb, right?

"Meliodas was the only one who didn't treat me like that. He'd boss me around… if I wanted to watch TV and he was already watching, he wouldn't let me change the channel. He picked on me for missing school. Or for not getting out of bed. I really hated him at first. He never left me alone! But then … when he found out I had taken a dance class, he somehow found a studio for kids and got our foster parents to enroll me. When I was a brat and refused to go, he forced me when they said I didn't have to." Diane smiles weakly. "He had this crappy old bike and I'd ride on the back. He'd bike me to all my lessons and then wait for me. Even if I didn't want to go. He signed up for Judo with me, too. And summer camp. And swimming classes. He really took care of me. He's so nice… he was always taking care of me." Diane's eyes are welled up; a fat tear breaks free and rolls down his face. "It's like he knew I needed to be busy to get better. He's always taken care of me. But… but now, he…"

Diane's shoulders tremble, from the story, the memories, or both, and Elizabeth gets out of her chair to kneel beside Diane's, wrap an arm around her shoulders. King watches from the counter.

"But Matrona got better, didn't she?" he asks. "She recovered from her coma?"

Diane nods against Elizabeth's shoulder, wipes her eyes. "Yeah. After a few months. She still had a lot of recovering to do… and she was only sixteen… when she was old enough, she applied for guardianship of me. Matrona gave up on college, on everything, to take care of me. Even though she lost our parents and Dolores too. She's so tough. She's - she's the best, you know?"

"She sounds amazing," Elizabeth says.

"Yeah," Diane says. She sniffs. "A- anyway, that's it. That's my big secret story," she says, laughing weakly. She rests her head against Elizabeth's shoulder. "Meliodas… he took such good care of me. And he helped me learn that I needed to keep busy, so that I could stay happy. But now we're both grown up, and he still…"

I don't want to be his kid sister! Elizabeth remembers. Meliodas bossing Diane around. Telling her she can't work for him. Rejecting her, getting angry when she finds a job… She smiles a little to herself. She'd been imagining something else, something darker, maybe. It isn't that Diane's feelings aren't real… but to Elizabeth, it seems that the problem isn't that Meliodas hates her. "He loves you a lot, doesn't he?" she says.

Diane doesn't reply; just sniffs back more tears.

There's a slight thump as King jumps down from the counter. "If he does, he shouldn't try to control Diane's life," he says cooly.

"I'm sure he doesn't mean it like that," Elizabeth protests.

"It's okay," Diane says, wiping her eyes with the back of her uninjured hand and sitting up straight. "Anyway, that's…" she takes in a deep breath. "Anyway, I - I'm actually still in touch with my foster parents from back then. And Matrona and I are both fine. So it's all okay, you know?" she smiles at them both, like she's trying to convince them.

Elizabeth smiles back. King clears his throat. "It's getting pretty late," he says.

"Do you mind if I crash here?" Diane asks.

"What?" King is immediately red and loud, although Elizabeth has almost the same reaction.

"What?" Diane asks them both.

"I - I don't have any…" King stammers.

"Diane, is that really appropriate?" Elizabeth says at the same time.

"He has a couch, doesn't he? I'm worn out. I just want to sleep," Diane says. If it weren't for her red eyes and tired expression, she'd look and act basically like always. Maybe that's the point, Elizabeth wonders.

"I can't let you just stay at someone's house alone!" Elizabeth insists. "As your friend, I think it's dangerous!"

"I'm standing right here!" King retorts. "It's not dangerous!"

"I'll stay too!" Elizabeth says, turning to him. He gets, if possible, even redder.

"It's sweet of you to try and protect me," Diane says, grasping Elizabeth's hand.

"I…" King looks lost and overwhelmed. "… Fine. Okay. Sheesh." He rubs his forehead, mussing his hair. "Okay. You guys can sleep in my room, and I'll sleep on the couch… I guess. But it's no problem. How did this even happen?" he mutters in a quieter voice, to himself.

Elizabeth can't help but giggle. For a second, she could swear King smiles back. "Come on," he says.

He leads them down the hall to his bedroom. It's a sharp relief to his almost empty living room: there's a full sized bed against a wall, a dresser, and about a dozen potted plants of all shapes and sizes, ranging from small flowering plants to potted trees. "How amazing!" Elizabeth says.

"King, are you a plant lover?" Diane asks.

"What? No, not really," King says, blushing as he strips his bed of its sheets and blankets and fetches new ones from a closet. "I take them home from work when my boss is going to throw them away… this room gets the most sunlight."

"From your work?" Elizabeth asks, as King starts to make the bed.

"Mm. I work in a flower shop," he says.

"You work in a flower shop?" Elizabeth echoes, smiling. Somehow… it's such a cute job. But somehow, it seems to suit the grumpy King.

"King, is this you and Oslo?" Diane has been examining the top of King's dresser, which is bare except for a single framed picture. Elizabeth walks over to look at it: it's a chubby little boy with orange hair, his arms around the neck of a shaggy dog. A little girl with blonde hair, barely a toddler in a white grass-stained dress, is laughing as she lies belly-first on the dog's back.

"Yeah," he says, throwing the discarded sheets in the corner and pushing past Elizabeth and Diane to reach in the dresser for clothes.

"Is the girl your sister?" Elizabeth asks.

"…Yeah," King says flatly. "I don't have any clothes you guys can wear, but if you want to use the bathroom, go ahead."

"Thanks!" Diane says.

"Thank you so much," Elizabeth says, following King as he leaves the bedroom. "I know we're really imposing on you… I mean… I didn't mean to, or anything… I know you like your privacy, but I didn't want to leave Diane alone, and…"

King hesitates. "Don't worry about it," he says finally. "I don't want to leave Diane alone right now, either."

While King makes himself a bed on his sofa, Elizabeth calls her father to let him know she's having a sleepover with Diane… leaving out the part that they're staying at a boy's house. It's only a white lie, but it leaves her feeling a pang of guilt anyway. She washes her face and uses the bathroom, and when she returns to King's room, Diane is sitting on the bed, having stripped down to just her blouse and underwear.

"Hey," she says shyly.

"Hi," Elizabeth replies. She strips into a similar state of undress and sits next to Diane on King's bed. Diane is playing with her hair.

"I just wanted to say… I know I've been really pushy and weird today."

"You haven't been!" Elizabeth insists.

"I have been! I've been mega crazy and emotional, and I promise I'm not usually like this!"

"I know you aren't," Elizabeth says.

"Right! And I'll try really hard not to be… but… for now, I mean…" Diane stretches out her legs. "I'm sorry. And thank you… for being a really good friend… I guess."

"There's no way I'd just leave you alone when you're upset," Elizabeth says, smiling over at her.

All at once, Diane reaches over and hugs her, and Elizabeth hugs back. "You're my best friend, okay?" Diane says.

"Of course!" Elizabeth says. "You're my best friend, too."

Elizabeth braids her hair and they turn off the lights, climb into bed. The whole thing is a little weird. The bed feels different, smells different. The lights from outside are wrong. The close contact of Diane is wrong, something Elizabeth isn't used to; she's used to her big quiet bedroom, her huge bed, the quiet hush of heaters or fans. Not a small bedroom with the rain on the windows and traffic outside.

"We should thank King in the morning," she murmurs, thinking of poor King, exiled to the sofa in his own apartment. Diane doesn't answer: exhausted, hiding her emotions, she must have already fallen asleep.

Elizabeth eventually drifts off, too.

She wakes up in the middle of the night. The room is dark, and Diane is gone, but she doesn't know how long it's been. She's disoriented at first — where is she? Why is she here? — the bedroom door is open, and she can hear the faint murmur of voices.

Elizabeth climbs out of King's bed and pads to the doorway, and then down the hall. From the end of the hall, she can see the kitchen, the door to the tiny balcony. It's open, and there are two figures lit by streetlights, barely more than outlines, standing outside.

"… really don't mind," King is saying. His voice is soft, but everything is so quiet that Elizabeth can hear him clearly. The couch is in disarray, Oslo tangled up in King's discarded blankets. "…I mean it. I like you a lot."

"You do?" Diane says, her voice just as soft. King tends to speak quietly, but her voice is usually loud… much louder than this… "…how do you mean?"

"…first time we talked, I…"

Elizabeth's stomach seems to clench up as she realizes this isn't a conversation she wants to eavesdrop on. Diane is in no danger. As quietly as she can, without being noticed, she creeps back to King's room and into bed.

Diane doesn't come back before she falls back asleep.