Time Warp: Can you help me find a way?

[Levi Xu]

((Continued from: Think that I would cry, on the phone?))

November 19th, 2024. New York City, Lower East Side

It took Levi less than twenty minutes to find the right train and make it down to the station Evan said. Twenty minutes was not nearly enough for him to conquer the lump in the back of his throat. A part of him still couldn't believe that the older man had been willing to let him crash on his couch (Guest room? Did architects make enough money that he'd have a spare room?) on such short notice.

While he headed up the stairs, he carefully brushed his hair down with his hand. With twenty-something hours of traveling, he probably looked pretty rough. But the wind up on the street had a different idea, messing up his hair again and making him wish he hadn't forgotten a hat. Or gloves, for that matter. He gripped his suitcase tighter and looked around. There weren't a lot of people around, so it was pretty easy to spot Evan, standing under a streetlight. (The pinned sleeve was a dead giveaway, and there was that same surge of recognition, that he was in the presence of a superhero, and everything was going to be okay.) His face looked pretty much the same, but somehow older. Steeling himself up for it, Levi walked over to him, looking up and adjusting his glasses. "Hey, Van. Thank you for doing this." Despite looking much more like an adult than the younger man remembered, he looked like he had back in college, or even back at Hammel. "How have you been?"

Looking up at Evan's face again, Levi forced a small smile. "You look good. Uh...you know, healthy." Why was it that he couldn't form a normal sentence around Van? He was fluent in four languages, and could never say something completely coherent. There had to be something wrong with him.

Levi at 28.

[Evan Brackett]

The meeting place Evan had designated wasn't far from his apartment, and he arrived there with more than enough time to spare. There weren't many other people out that late at night, but he decided to wait under a streetlamp just in case, with hopes that the light would help Levi find him. The wind was making siting anything himself difficult, as it was determined to toss his over-grown hair in front of his eyes no matter how hard he tried to keep it at bay.

His plan seemed to work out pretty well, as he didn't spot Levi until he was already on his way over. The other man hadn't seemed to age a day (although he was obviously weary from traveling). "Hey," Van greeted his ex coolly, giving him a small nod. "Yeah...do you want help with that?" He gestured at the man's luggage as he asked this. Maybe it was a little ridiculous for a phaser with only one arm to offer to carry something, but his manners would never allow him to let someone else bare the burden. Besides, Evan had gotten use to doing things with his left hand alone a long time ago. "Things have been alright. Work is going pretty well. And you?"

Of course, he initially mistook the other man's attempt at being polite as some kind of weak flirt. "Um. Thanks?" He eyed Levi suspiciously for a moment, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Neither of them were ever good with words. "You don't," he replied honestly, "And I can tell you're cold. Let's get going, shall we?" Evan held out his arm to direct the other man towards his building, absolutely not in the mood for anymore small talk at the moment. He just wanted to get home and get to bed.

And it really was cold out.

Evan at age 30.

[Levi Xu]

Yeah, on the rare occasions where Levi found himself drinking, he got carded more often than not. He was still short, and if he tried, he looked like he was in his early twenties. The rest of the time, he looked like a teenager who dressed like an adult. "Nah, I've got it. It's not heavy or anything." He hadn't brought a proper suitcase so he wouldn't have to check it. Everything he had with him fit into the small case, little enough to fit in the overhead compartment.

"It's not bad. I mean, the school liked me well enough and they said I was going to get tenure, but it looks like our district is being absorbed into another one, and they don't have a Mandarin course and don't want it." He shrugged a little and pushed his free hand deeper into the pocket of his threadbare coat. "And the U.S. delegation apparently needs people who speak Mandarin and Farsi, so...here I am." If he didn't get this job--or anything else--in less than a year, his only employment would be teaching once a week at the same Hebrew school where he'd learned.

The younger man shrugged again. Van was probably right, after all. "I was laid over in Denver and there was a delay in Chicago. I think I left home yesterday, but the time zones always screw me up." Levi nodded and fell into step beside his ex-boyfriend, but he kept looking up. He'd only been in New York a few times before, and the size of it still threw him every time.

Levi had also never been there during the holiday season, so he was more than a little surprised at how well-lit the storefronts were, despite it being late and the stores closed. "The street looks like something out of a picture book. Do they ever shut off the Christmas lights? Or do they leave them on from November?" And, he was no expert, but there was another problem, he thought, "And isn't the Christmas season supposed to start after Thanksgiving?"

That's another thing that hadn't changed in seven years. Levi still asked too many questions.

[Evan Brackett]

Van nodded quietly as the younger man went into detail about his working situation. He didn't really mind the idle chatter, still more of a listener than much of anything else. At least that was still the same. "By the way, the company I work for has me on a project for a library out in the Bronx. They liked my design, so I'm working on the model at the moment. I should warn you that the apartment is a little messy. Sorry." Having a guest over while his place was in such a state was going to bother him, but it wasn't like this was expected. With nothing to be done about it, he simply shrugged.

"Hmm," he mused with a small smile, spending more time staring at the sidewalk than at the buildings around them. He was slightly amused by Levi's curiosity. Yeah, it was like the other man hadn't changed at all since they met in high school, and he had to admit that it was kind of nice. "People haven't followed that guideline for years now, Halloween is more common. And, yeah, most of the lights stay on until New Years. They don't call it the City That Never Sleeps for nothing."

As they came to a door with a small awning above it, Van tapped Levi on the shoulder. "Ah, this is my building here," he announced as he pulled out his keys. "Told you it wasn't far." He lead the other man inside and up several flights of stairs to his room.

The studio apartment was small, slightly cramped for even one person, let alone two, and obviously more geared towards a student rather than a working adult. Evan could have easily done better with a salary like his, but it was good enough for the modest man. His bed wasn't far from the door, the remaining furniture limited to a dresser, a couch, and a few other things. There was a small television on top of the dresser, accompanied by various framed pictures. As promised, the counters of the kitchenette on the other side of the bed were cluttered with balsa wood, glue, and hand tools.

Evan dropped his keys and the contents of his pockets on a shelf next to the door, and hung his jacket up on a wall hook below it. "Welcome to my humble abode. The bathroom's over there," he said, gesturing to a door on the opposite side of the apartment. Sitting on his bed, he kicked off his shoes before scooping up the cat that was napping on his pillow. "And this is Aurora. She's friendly."

[Levi Xu]

"It's fine, really." If all went according to plan, he wouldn't be spending much time in the apartment when he wasn't sleeping. He didn't want to impose any more than he already was, and it would just be...awkward.

It was already awkward, but not as much as he had been expecting. Van let him chatter and didn't seem hostile. "So you live in the coolest city in the world, then?" There were other people at Hammel with them who he would have expected would be living in New York. Levi had always preferred living in the city, but there was still a part of him that identified Evan as that farm boy with all the chores and the treehouse. It was a surprise that he was the one who was established there, even if he was an accomplished architect now. "Well, it really is pretty, all lit up like this. Must be nice."

Levi followed up the stairs, unbuttoning his coat as they climbed. He was in pretty good shape, but if he got the job and ended up moving in somewhere, he was going to have to find a place with an elevator. No walkups for him.

The second Levi stepped into the studio apartment, he realized exactly how much of a jackass he was for asking. Yeah, he would have expected this if they were still in college, but Evan was thirty. Who had a one-room apartment at thirty? Well, Evan, apparently. And he had a cat, but that was pretty much expected. After his rescue of Spider, way back before they even started dating, Evan had said something about always liking having cats around.

"Oh, hey there, Aurora. Aren't you a pretty gi--" He reached out to pet the pretty white cat, but didn't get there before she stretched out her paw, digging into his hand. "Fu--" He pulled his hand back to his chest. Yup, he was bleeding. With a weak smile, he looked up at Evan. "Friendly. Right."

He shrugged off his coat and hung it up on the empty hook on the wall, then looked around. "Do you have band-aids?" Until just then, his priority had been getting some rest before the interview. Now it was hoping that Evan's cat wouldn't kill him in his sleep.

[Evan Brackett]

It seemed inevitable that their meeting was going to be awkward--Evan had assumed that right away--but the lack of an oppressive, awkward silence was pleasantly surprising. All the resentment he held years ago was just...gone. His tears, which had long since been cried, must have completely washed his anger out of his system. The older man honestly didn't mind. Life carried on and Van went with it, silently forgiving his ex somewhere along the way.

"I guess." Thirteen years ago, Evan wouldn't have believed that he would end up as an architect, particularly not one living in New York City. He had always been a country boy, living in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota, and then the middle of nowhere, Vermont. The adaptation from farm life to City life was actually easier than he imagined, thanks to the buffer of living in Cambridge when he went to MIT. It made it more like a transition, rather than a culture shock. "Mm," he agreed with a nod

He quickly pulled the feline into his chest (which, in hindsight, probably didn't help anything) when he heard the other man cry out. "Oh my God! I'm so sorry," he exclaimed, dropping the cat on his bed. Aurora raised up her hackles before jumping to the floor and scurrying to hide under the couch. Hopefully Levi wasn't still afraid of monsters under the bed. Evan got up, grabbed his hand, and took a closer look at the scrape before tutting. "She's never had a problem with anyone before. Honestly." He looked Levi in the eye for probably the first time in seven years and shrugged.

Bounding to the bathroom, Van rummaged around in the medicine cabinet. There were a few different types of bandages in there, but he new exactly which kind he wanted the other man to use. He returned a minute later with a box in hand, grinning as he showed off the front, and then handed it and a tube of Neosporin over. Ever since he had bought similar children band-aids as a joke in college, he always kept at least one set of them in his medical supplies. Not even their breakup changed that. "Spider-man," he explained, taking a seat on the couch. "Still waiting for that spider bite to happen. I guess I ended up living in New York, at least." The weak attempt at a joke was followed up with a chuckle.

[Levi Xu]

Levi didn't even watch where the monster kitty scurried off too. He was a bit more preoccupied with the fact that it fucking hurt and he didn't want to bleed on his clothes. Maybe... maybe Evan had told Aurora about him. If she was protective of her human, he could see why she would want to attack him then. When the older man took his hand to look at the cut, the young teacher stiffened, and pulled his hand away again as soon as it wouldn't seem rude.

So maybe things weren't awkward, but they weren't back to normal, either. At least, what normal had been seven years ago.

And he couldn't help it; Levi's eyes lit up when he saw the package of bandages. "I can't believe you still have those." Okay, yes, Levi still had...some things from before the breakup, but they were all highly sentimental. Not cartooned band-aids that had become an in-joke. "And you're living on the Lower East Side. That's his territory." But with all of the training he'd received at Hammel, Levi was finally able to differentiate his power from this reality completely. That still didn't stop the idea that he was standing with Spider-Man from coming into his head, it was just no longer overwhelming knowledge.

Once his hand was cleaned and bandaged, Levi sat down on the other end of the couch. It was small though, so it was less the other end and more the other seat. He started taking off his shoes, but then realized where the cat had to be lurking. "Uh, I'm not going to be kicking her off the couch, am I? I don't want her any more mad at me."

He looked around at the small room, hoping to find a better topic of conversation than the demon cat who might or might not also like his ankles, and he was keeping his feet in shoes until he was sure. Quickly enough, he spotted the framed photos by the television, and pushed his glasses up so he could see them better. One was Evan, obviously in front of that one Ferris wheel thing, the Eye of London. "You went to London?" Levi nodded towards the pictures. Yeah, a story about going abroad would be nice, but he was actually a bit more curious about the man Evan had his arm around in the picture. He looked a little....familiar.

[Evan Brackett]

Evan did still talked to his cat, naturally, but he never really said much about Levi, except when he was reminiscing about fond memories. That went for all his conversations about the other man. He didn't come up often--the phaser didn't dwell on the past, and he certainly didn't talk smack about anybody--but it was difficult to avoid the subject entirely when it spanned nearly six years of their lives. If anything, she was acting on instinct.

"How coincidental," he said apprehensively. The brunette knew that Levi was able to control of his power to a certain extent now, but it still irked him whenever he learned of a new similarity between him and the web-slinger. Both of them living in New York he could handle (it was a big city). The same neighborhood too? That was pushing it, and it ruined a bit of the novelty of the joke. Sometimes he wished he new a little more about the comic book superhero just so that he could avoid those kind of coincidences.

Evan scratched the back of his neck, considering using the incident as an excuse to head to bed. But before he could get up and escape to the bathroom with his pajamas, Levi was sitting next to him and asking questions. He couldn't just cutoff the conversation there, because that would be rude. "No, she'll be fine. There's a cat bed under the couch that she can sleep on. It's kind of like her personal lair down there." Not helping, sir.

And then that elusive awkward silence finally made an appearance. Van began to strum the surface of the couch as he looked anywhere but at the man next to him, the subtle tapping filling the still air. "Hm?" He glanced over at Levi, then followed his gaze to the indicated photograph. "Oh, yeah. My friend Jake and I went there a couple years ago when we were still dating," he rambled aimlessly. The words sort of just tumbled out of his mouth out of habit, with no concern for what his ex might think of it. "We mostly went so I could meet his family, but we also spent a few days site seeing. It was fun." He smirked as the memories of being an American tourist in London came rushing back. Things hadn't worked out with Jake in the end, but their breakup had been consensual and he still talked to the British pharmacist on occasion.

[Levi Xu]

Honestly, Levi didn't mean anything by his comments about Spider-Man. He couldn't help but be enthusiastic, and Evan started it by still having Spider-Man bandaids in his cabinet.

Evan's story about going to London was cool enough, but the way he spoke of his "friend" was telling. That man wasn't just a "friend" to the older man. (Trust him, he knew about stuff like this. Well....at least when it came to Evan.) "Oh, that's pretty cool." Levi nodded, for once, thinking before he said anything. If he was going to say something, he would have mentioned that Evan evidently has a type, and it was apparently shorter, Chinese men. (And if Jake was short for Jacob, then it was shorter Chinese men with Hebrew names.)

But he didn't, because there was no polite way to point out that Evan's new boyfriend looked very similar to him. However, there was another awkward question that really did have to be asked, no matter how uncomfortable ti made Levi feel. "Are...are you still seeing him? Will it be weird for him that I'm staying here?"

He was going to be good. He was not going to cause problems with any new boyfriend.

After another awkward moment, Levi stood up again and grabbed his carry-on. "I'm going to go brush my teeth and stuff. Interview tomorrow..." That would give Evan enough time to do whatever he had to do to get ready, except the bathroom stuff.

In the tiny bathroom himself, Levi took a moment to look at himself in the mirror. Yeah, Van had been right earlier, he looked like a proper mess. But he'd have to do something about that in the morning, but now he just had to brush his teeth and change. He took another look, though, a bit closer. Yeah, he was pretty sure Jake looked a lot like him.

Unpleasant.

When he forced himself to leave the bathroom, Evan had already kind of made up a bed on the couch. It didn't fold out--good thing, if it did, it would be touching Evan's bed--but it had a pillow and a blanket. That was all he needed. "Goodnight, Van. And thank you, again."

[Evan Brackett]

Had anyone ever pointed out his tendency to date shorter Chinese men with Hebrew names, Evan absolutely would have been embarrassed (and would possibly wish to curl up and die). He hadn't noticed. "Jake?" he asked rhetorically, surprised by Levi's interest in the man. Van probably should have anticipated that, but it had been seven years. Of course he had seen other people since. "Oh, no. We haven't been together for a long time. Work is starting to consume my life," he said with a laugh, "So I haven't had time for relationships lately."

It took him another long moment before he realized how awkward all this must have been for the other man, but before he could try to break the ice, Levi was already helping himself to the bathroom. "Uh, sure," he mumbled, standing up at roughly the same time.

As soon as the younger meta had shut the door behind him, Evan hastily dug his pjs out of his dresser and changed. He didn't want to have to do it in front of his ex, and changing in his own bathroom would have been weird. Once that was taken care of, he tossed one of his pillows and a spare blanket on the couch, and feebly tried to make it into a tiny, psuedo-bed. It was the best he could do on such short notice.

He was sorting through the mess in the kitchen when Levi finally reappeared, the piles of modeling supplies slightly more organized and set to the side. Looking at his guest, he smiled and replied, "Good night." By the time he had taken care of his own business in the bathroom, Levi was fast asleep.

The phaser woke up before his alarm the next morning, and, noticing that his ex was still sleeping soundly on the couch, shut it off so that he wouldn't be disturbed. Quietly, he crept out of bed, gathered a set of clean clothes, and got ready for work. After breakfast, he left a box of cereal out on the small kitchen table, a post-it note attached to it that read:

Had to go to work, help yourself to breakfast. There's a spare key on the shelf by the door. Good luck with your interview!

Van

And with that, he left for the day.

[Levi Xu]

Levi was out cold in minutes. He wasn't good at sleeping on planes or in airports--his mind went into overdrive, processing all the details of people in alternate dimensions--so once he had curled up on the couch, he was fast asleep.

When he did wake up, he didn't recognize where he was right away. There was a moment of groggy questioning before he remembered why he was sleeping on the couch of a tiny studio. Right. Evan's tiny studio, which was curiously Evan-free. He grabbed his phone and checked the time, then got ready and and had some of the cereal that had been left out. (Also, he exchanged the Spider-Man bandaids for plain tan ones.) He carefully folded up the blanket and made sure everything was neatly packed into his suitcase, then left for the interview.

******

When Levi returned--took him a while to find the place again; he'd put down the wrong building number, but he eventually figured it out--he was grinning. The interview had gone well. Really well, to the point where it was a bit surprising. They were looking for metas to hire, people who already knew about the meta schools and how they were run. Of course, Hammel had been demystified a few years before, kind of. It was common knowledge that there was an American meta school, but the exact location and logistics were still kept pretty secret. So when he'd applied for the job with Hammel on his resume, they had taken notice.

He stopped, though, just outside of Evan's door. Levi had taken the spare key, but he didn't know if Evan was inside the apartment. Was he supposed to knock, or just....whatever. He knocked on the door and then used the key to let himself in. He was in too good of a mood from the interview to let awkward ex protocol drag him down.

Inside, he kept grinning sheepishly as he shucked off his coat and hung it up, then turned to look at Evan. "Hey. I brought a peace offering." He turned back to the coat and pulled something out of the pocket. No, it wasn't a peace offering for his ex, unless he liked neon green catnip mice. "Does she respond well to bribery?"

[Evan Brackett]

Levi was gone by the time work was out, but so was the spare key. Evan expected him back. The later it got, the more worried he became. He wondered if it was appropriate to worry about an ex like that, especially when it wasn't even that late out, but Levi wasn't accustomed to the City and he didn't think that interviews normally ran this late in the afternoon. It was justified worry.

Evan bridged the time between getting home from work and the other man's arrival by cleaning the apartment. It was venting tactic, of course. The only problem with it was the small size of the studio. It didn't take long for the phaser to tidy the place up, particularly since he kept it mostly clean already. Even thoroughly scrubbing the bathroom didn't take enough time. He ended going through the main room and purposely messing things up again so that he could clean more. It was a bit ridiculous.

At the knock, he looked up from making his bed for about the fourth time to stare at the door. He almost thought it would be someone else until he heard the key turning in the lock. Van could only imagine how strange it seemed when the other man walked in, and relief washed over him. "Hey, I was getting worried," he blurted out before forcing a correction, "Er, I mean, I thought you might have gotten lost or something." A slight blush had crept up his neck, but he didn't want the other man getting the wrong idea.

"Uh, I dunno. Never had to bribe her before," he responded, tilting his head slightly. "I guess it's worth a shot." He came around the bed and sat on the end to watch the interaction (and possibly save Levi from his cat, if this didn't work out well).

He sat quietly for a moment, running the fingers of his left hand over the prosthetic of his right as he thought. He was spacing out again, something that he hadn't done in quite a while. When he broke out of his stupor, however, he had decided that there was at least one important question he needed to ask. "What are we going to do for dinner?" Which was far less important than the next. "Oh! Right, how did your interview go?" After spending a couple of hours cleaning, he had forgotten why his guest was missing in the first place.

Must have been the bleach.

[Levi Xu]

"I didn't...much. I had to find a pet store." And thank G-d for the GPS app on his cell, or else he might have had to call for directions. He held out the toy for the cat to sniff, hoping that bribery would work. He'd done enough to piss off the occupants of the apartment already, but he figured it would be easier to patch things up with Aurora first.

(He had always been more of a dog person, either way.)

Aurora got up from her perch on top of Evan's pillow and stalked over, looking at Levi suspiciously. She didn't trust him, but she sniffed the outstretched hand and toy anyway. After a moment, she decided to ignore them both and returned to the pillow, purposefully facing the other direction.

Okay then. "Well... you can keep it anyway," Levi said to the cat, before putting the little mouse down on the table and going to sit down. He noticed that the apartment was a lot cleaner, which made him blush a little himself. He was imposing on Evan, he hadn't been expecting a guest... It was one more night, and then he'd be out of Van's hair.

Though he didn't know what to say to the first question, the second one made him grin widely again. "It went great. They really want more metas in the delegation, since we're the fastest-growing minority population. They want me to come back tomorrow to meet with the head of the interpreters, but the woman I spoke to said it was mostly a formality. They're probably going to hire me." He was thisclose to interpreting for the US delegation to the U.N. and it felt pretty awesome.

"And for dinner..." Levi shrugged, but he was still smiling. He almost had a job--one that paid a lot better than teaching--and it seemed like Evan didn't hate him anymore, at least enough to expect that they would be having dinner together. "I don't know what's good around here. Pizza, right? That's what you're supposed to have in New York? Pick a place, but this is on me."

[Evan Brackett]

Hearing the good news, his expression mirrored that of his houseguest. "That's great. I'm happy for you." It was nice to see the other man getting along so well, after what happened between them. The fact that it was the first news he had heard about Levi in nearly five years just made it sweeter.

He had the laugh at the suggestion, but Levi had a point. If there ever was a place to get good pizza, it was New York. "Pizza it is. I know a place that isn't too far from here," he said as he stood up to get his coat. Normally he would have protested someone paying for his dinner, but he was letting the other man stay with him. That made them more than even.

***

It's funny how going out to dinner can turn into a couple of hours at the bar, and how a night at the bar can turn into drunk sex.

Evan was mortified the next morning when he woke up naked with a warm body pressed against him. And not just any body, but the body of his ex. His ex that was an ex for a very, very good reason. It wasn't acceptable, and came with quite the panic attack. He only felt worse as the memory of the previous night returned to him. They had gone out for pizza, and it was like being back at Hammel, eating dinner together in the cafeteria again. All the awkwardness caused by the last few years evaporated. They went out for drinks after to celebrate the success of Levi's interview, and when they came back...

Shit.

In all his panic, Van decided to try to hide the mistake, as if that would help the matter. He phased his arm out from under the other man (into then out of the bed; it was always easier to phase through inanimate objects, and Evan still had nightmares about splicing), quietly pulled on his boxers and pants, and crawled onto the couch. Laying with his back to the rest of the apartment, he stared at the cushion, pretending to sleep.

It wasn't a very sound plan.

[Levi Xu]

The first thing Levi did when he woke was nuzzle against the warm... Oh G-d why was he naked in bed with Evan again?

It wasn't the first time Levi had woken up in someone else's bed, naked. It wasn't the first time it was Evan's bed. It wasn't the first time it had been a pretty bad idea. It was, however, the first time it was all of those things at once. He didn't move, not wanting to wake up the older man, but not sure what to do next. Thankfully, he had a flight back to Portland that night, he wouldn't have to see Evan again after this. They could pretend it never happened.

Except the memory from last night was vivid in his mind:

They'd stumbled into the apartment, grinning, and trying to smother their laughter so they wouldn't disturb the neighbors. Evan was always thoughtful like that. It was almost as if they were back at Hammel, with the whole issue of their dating and breaking up erased. They both sat on the bed, trying not to laugh as Levi told a story about his little nephew, who was convinced that all metas were secretly superheroes. (No, he was only four, way too young to have any power, let alone his uncle's.) When they finally had a firmer grip on themselves, Evan had sighed, "We should probably turn in. What time's your meeting tomorrow?"

"Not until two. I'll be fine."

They both got up, and while Levi went to find his pajamas, Evan had taken off his shirt and started fumbling with the strap on the harness of his prosthetic. "Ah. Lev, can you help me with this?"

Even when they had dated, Evan didn't like it when he touched the false arm. He'd said it was weird, since he couldn't feel it. And now, years later, when Levi worked the stap loose, it felt strangely...intimate. He looked up at the taller man, smiling shyly.

He couldn't remember who started the kiss.

Levi was pulled from the memory by the feeling of the arm disappearing under his body. Van was awake. He continued to lie still until he heard the older man settle in on the couch, debating the whole time if he should let him know that he was awake.

He was going to have to get out of bed sometime, and he was naked. Might as well be now. With a wince--the room was a bit bright--Levi sat up in bed, making sure the blanket was covering to his waist. "Good plan, but I was going to wake up naked anyway. I think I could have pieced it together."