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It became clearer and clearer to Elena that Nick - while definitely much improved since his addictions - had a serious problem. A very serious problem.

He had lived alone for far too long.

He had no sense of regard for his neighbors, which - in his current house - was no issue, provided he lived alone. But he didn't live alone anymore, and Elena was forced to endure the mortifying encounter of that morning. Elena labeled it, "Whose Clothes Are These?"

Elena was in the habit of morning showers, as are most people. She was also in the habit of bringing her clothes into the shower room with her. There was something about military life that made you feel more comfortable clothed and ready to go at any moments notice.

Nick, too, was in the habit of morning showers. He was also in the habit of walking around the house naked, apparently, which - combined with his early morning catatonic state - provided for a thoroughly awkward and infuriating mess of things.

He stumbled into the shower, and according to his account, he forgot that he had a house guest. Said house guest was turning off the water and about to step out when, in order to quickly avert an embarrassing incident, Nick grabbed her skirt and donned it.

After a heated debate, Elena clutching the shower curtain to herself the entire time, it was agreed that she wear a new skirt and he would wear the one he had on into the shower. This, unfortunately, became a regular thing for the rest of that week.

Among other such incidents, the one that surprised her most was perhaps the most annoying. Late the first night, she heard Nick singing loudly. He was not a bad singer, and Elena was likely to forgive him of many things - but the volume of his rendition of Celine Dion's classics was too much to bear.

She burst in, her eyes foggy with deprivation from sleep, and she demanded, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Nick looked at her very solemnly. It was almost chilling, how very serious he looked in those moments. Elena's eyes cleared as she stared back at him, a connection formed in the silence.

The the moment was ruined when Nick whispered, equally as seriously, "Only Celine Dion can understand the depth of my emotional pain."

Elena wanted to slap him. She refrained. "What?"

"I was just kidding," he joked. He still looked haunted. "But seriously, I am in a world of emotional injury."

"Why?" Elena resigned herself to single-word responses. She sat down on Nick's bed, remembering offhandedly that he usually slept in only boxers.

Nick's humor faded away. "Kevin. I haven't seen him in a long time. Last time I was over his house, the lock was blown."

Elena didn't know what to say to that. So she questioned his musical selection. "'My Heart Will Go On?'"

Nick's mouth quirked up, and things began to fall into place for Elena. Things Nick mentioned. Things Nick pointedly did not mention.

"Don't tell me you were having sex with your drug dealer," she blurted out, shocked.

Nick snorted. "No. Not Kevin, anyways." He looked a little embarrassed - not at the admission of sex (never at the admission of sex), but rather at the mention of his previous depths of his addiction.

Elena stared at him in mild surprise. "Then you actually like him?"

"I love that man," Nick corrected her. "I love him like there's a hurricane going on out in the Sea of Gasoline and Terror, and someone threw a match in there. I think it was probably Kevin." The later it was, the less coherent Nick became. Elena wasn't amused. Nick didn't seem to notice or care. "It hurts, Elly, not knowing if the he's alive, dead, cold, sick, hungry -"

Elena interrupted him before he could continue. "I know."

Nick looked at her for a while, and he calmed himself. "God, I miss him."

Elena stroked Nick's hair and soothed him back to sleep.