The next morning, Prince Charming woke up on SICH’s popcorny couch, rubbed his stunningly blue eyes with the manly knuckles of his pointer fingers, and rolled into a heroic standing position. 

Today, he would move into his midtown apartment with the mysterious Jemma. Today, he would “apologize” to his mother for the table thing, and ask if she had any friends looking to hire very handsome and intellectual men for some kind of job. He did not know what the job would be, but he imagined he would excel in most fields. Charming yawned and went in search of the SICH bathroom on the second floor. He tried to tiptoe up the creaky wooden stairs of the townhouse, but as soon as he put his foot on the first step, Screech yelled down “Don’t use my shampoo!” and Lac yelled back “or my bath towel for the love of GOD!”

Charming ignored both of them. He should smell good for the first day of his new life. He should treat himself to Screech’s expensive lavender shampoo and Lac’s giant fluffy bath towel. He wished he could treat himself to clean underwear. He let himself into the bathroom, which had been decorated in the pink tile of the 1980s and varnished in a light coat of black mold. 

He turned the cracked plastic faucet to “hot” and disrobed in short order. In this house, you had about three minutes of hot water before whatever minor deity lived in the pipes decided that you should experience either third degree burns or frostbite. He flung himself into the shower and snatched Lac’s Axe body wash from the rim of the tub. 

He had always been athletic, even before his powers manifested, but now the newspapers described him as a “modern-day Adonis,” or “if Michaelangelo’s David had a big dick.” He may have slept with that blogger, or maybe they were just being quippy; he couldn’t even remember anymore. Charming would not have called himself vain, but he always soaped up carefully, checking for irregularities in muscle size and to make sure his hip dip hadn’t disappeared in his sleep.

Charming washed his face and grabbed Screech’s lavender shampoo. When he upended it, the cap flew off, and almost half the bottle poured into his palm, running over his fingers and down the drain. 

“Oh well,” he muttered, flipping it upright again and slapping his hand onto his head to salvage what he could. He put the bottle (cap still spinning circles around the drain) back on the rim of the tub, where a decent amount of shower water sprayed into it. At least Screech wouldn’t notice if it still looked full.

He lathered with the desperation of a man who knows the water temperature is about to change, sluiced soap suds from his body, and managed to turn the water off just as the first sprays began to scald him.

Lac’s towel hung on the opposite wall. Dripping water, Charming crossed the room and snatched it down, pulling the entire towel hook out too. The tile cracked angrily and a small chunk of plaster appeared on the wall. The towel hook chimed as it hit the tile floor. 

“Make an omelette, break some eggs,” he mumbled. “Can’t control my own strength.”

This had been happening more recently, though he tried not to think about it — maybe he was getting stronger, or he had less of a handle on how much force he was exerting. He rubbed himself dry with Lac’s towel, dropped it on the floor, and put his clothes back on. They weren’t quite sticky yet, but he would be glad when he could go to his parents’ and grab his stuff. 

With a sigh, he tromped back downstairs, grabbed his laptop, and left the building; he could hear Lac and Screech calling after him, but he ignored them.

First, he made his way uptown to his parents’ apartment on the Upper West Side. It was unseasonably warm. Though significantly delayed by several tourists in Times Square who wanted to take pictures with him (they didn’t seem to notice that his clothes smelled), he made it to his parents’ by 10:30 a.m. He smiled at the doorman, who frowned back in a way that says “I know everything that has happened in your apartment for the past twenty years.” He took the stairs up to the apartment (the mantra “always take the stairs” helped him maintain his trim physique. He did not think he would be employing it when he lived on the 45th floor). 

The long hallway smelled like Chinese takeout and looked like it had been decorated by a person who only believed in the color maroon. His parents’ apartment was at the end of the hall, the door still decorated with its Christmas wreath though the holiday had long since passed. Stomach sinking, he knocked on the door.

After four long heartbeats, his mother opened it, wearing a blue apron covered in flour and embroidered with cats. Meowulf the cat wound his way between Mom’s feet. Meowulf was also a little bit dusted with flour, his brown fur caked white. 

“Hello, Galahad.” His mother didn’t seem pleased. “I see you’re here to gather your things.” 

His mother taught early English at Columbia University. She stood almost as tall as him and as straight as the battering ram she’d bought at an auction in England three years ago. 

“Mom, it’s Charming.”

“For the love of the Holy Grail, Galahad, I am not going to call my only son ‘Prince Charming.’ Are you high?”

Another cat, Sir Purrcival, joined Meowulf at the door. 

No one ever made him feel quite as dumb and small as his mother. “Can I come in?”

She sighed. “Yes. I’m attempting a vegan interpretation of a 14th century meat pie for my recipe blog, though, so please don’t touch anything in the kitchen.”

He didn’t see his father in his usual chair in the living room. That meant very little. His father, a professor of economics who specialized in renewable energy project financing and often traveled for the United Nations, could have been anywhere in the world. 

Their third cat, Sir Bleohiss, stalked out of Charming’s bedroom, looking pleased with himself. He stepped into his bedroom, dodging his mom’s battering ram and his dad’s five foot by five foot model solar farm. His mom had already put a suitcase on his twin bed, obscuring most of the Hulk. The rest of the Avengers on his bedspread were still visible. 

With a quiet groan, he started grabbing items haphazardly. Some underwear from the wardrobe, the laptop charger off the floor, some warmer shirts from the closet — all flung into the suitcase without care or attention. “Can I take the bed?” he called out into the hallway.

“Please do,” his mom yelled back.

He zipped his suitcase shut, picked it up in his right hand, and lifted the mattress under his left arm. For a moment, he stood in their entryway, looking into the kitchen. His mom stared back at him from her place by the counter, something strange in her eyes. A part of him thought she might come hug him, tell him to stay. But she said nothing.

“Maybe I’ll come for dinner on Friday,” he said. She escorted him to the door.

“Text first,” she replied, shutting the door behind him.

Charming took the stairs back down, fully-made bed under one arm and suitcase in the other. Despite some mild difficulty maneuvering through the doorways, he made it back outside and set off along Broadway for what seemed like the millionth time that week. The sheets and comforter of his bed dragged slightly on the sidewalk, but aside from that and the mild inconvenience an extra long twin bed can cause on a crowded street corner, he made it to his new home without any difficulty.

The day was brisk and he was glad to be back in the sterile lobby of the high rise. He got into the elevator and rode up to 45, hoping that Jemma would be there as they’d agreed. 

When he kicked the metal door with his foot, he dented it. Winced. Jemma pulled the door open and stared at him with pursed lips. 

“I’m assuming that if you dented it, you can un-dent it,” she said, staring up at him.

“Yes, just let me put my stuff down.”

He felt her eyes on the cat hair-covered suitcase, the dangling bedspread, the old, slightly worn mattress. He jerked his chin at the right hand corner of the living room. “Can I take this side?” 

She shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter,” she said. The apartment looked exactly the same as it had yesterday, bare and white and with those huge windows facing east. On his left hand side, the fridge, stove, and sink sat in quick succession. He weaved past the kitchen island and glanced off to his right at the hallway that contained the bathroom door and Jemma’s bedroom door.  

Charming trekked across the empty space and dropped the mattress with a soft thud. He placed the suitcase a little more carefully, stomped back to the door, and applied a kick in the other direction, adding a second dent. Well, then. Apparently it was hollow in the middle.

Jemma watched all of this but said nothing. 

“Well, what now?” Charming asked.

“We set ground rules,” she said. She did not look at Charming the way that most people did. He didn’t like this. “Like, stay out of my room.”

Charming tilted his head. “Anything else?”

She thought for a moment. “No,” she said. 

In the pit of his stomach, a feeling he didn’t usually feel started to bubble up. He tried to push it down. Everything was great. He had a midtown apartment. He had a chill roommate. He had a mild sense of dread.

All good.