It was after the kids had gone to bed by the time Taylor retreated to his music room for the night. He had a piano piece rolling around in his brain that he really needed to get recorded, but there was another pressing issue he wanted to sort out first.
He grabbed his cell phone and dialled Christian's number. He hadn't spoken to him since the time he and Zac had crashed the apartment, and they hadn't really parted on the best of terms. But he'd contacted Steel in order to get his number, and he seemed convinced that Chris wouldn't mind hearing from Taylor regardless.
"Yo?" Chris answered.
"Ah... hey! Hey Chris. It's me, Taylor."
"Taylor?" he could hear the frown in his voice.
"Yeah..." he was already wondering if this had been such a good idea, "I ah, I meant to call earlier, but things have just been crazy here and-"
"Why, to check up on me?" Christian's tone was anything but appreciative, "or to check up on your sister?"
Taylor sighed. He'd known this wouldn't be the easiest phone call from the start.
"You," he replied finally.
"Huh. Had to think about that one, didn't you?"
"You're not exactly making it easy for me."
"Well maybe I don't need to feel like I have a babysitter."
"That's not what I'm trying to-" Taylor stopped himself and closed his eyes for a moment.
"Chris, you didn't call. You didn't even send a message through Steel or Tanya, to say that you were back..."
"Tanya doesn't know," Chris shrugged.
"What?"
"Or I assume she does by now. But I didn't tell her."
Taylor paused.
"You just came back to Earth on your own? You just walked out? What were you planning to do when you got here?"
"What I am doing," Chris replied, "starting over. I figured that involved losing some connections."
Taylor refrained from making a snide remark about him having stayed connected with Avery so easily.
"It doesn't have to be that way," he insisted.
"I just figured it would be safer, you know," Chris shrugged again, "you and I don't exactly have the best track record for being good for each other. When we're in the same city, people tend to notice."
"It didn't end that way," Taylor pointed out.
"Actually it did," Chris corrected, "I was running for my life when Leroy took me in. And I still have absolutely no idea of who they were or what they wanted. Aside from me, not dead."
"Have you had any trouble in N-Y?"
Chris hesitated, thinking it over.
"No," he replied a little too suddenly, opting not to mention that at least two people had already found him, "like I said, fresh start."
Taylor heard the lie immediately, but taking into consideration the tone of the conversation he chose to ignore it.
"Okay well, that's a start."
"What about you?" Chris asked.
"What do you mean?" Taylor frowned, glancing toward the door to make sure it was shut.
"Have you had any trouble? I mean, since I've been gone?"
"Oh. No. Not at all, actually," Taylor hadn't really thought about it, "but I haven't really been paying attention, you know? I've been busy with the band, and starting a family and all that. I guess I put the blinkers on."
"Would be a little hard to miss if you were in the kind of trouble that I brought you," Chris smirked.
"That's what I figure. So no, no trouble. Which when you think about it is a little disconcerting."
"Why?" Chris frowned.
"Well, it just stopped suddenly, didn't it?" Taylor considered, "I mean right, we - or you rather - took out Blakesley. That was a big kick in the balls for the bad guys right there. But I mean you were taken by that Guffrey guy before, so what happened to him? There's every chance he could have worked out what my power was-"
"He could have just assumed you had sonics," Chris pointed out.
"-Right. He could have. But we're..." Taylor hesitated, thinking of how much he wanted to say over the phone, "we're working with a theory that power borrowers can sense what powers are around them. Otherwise how do they know what they're going to get, you know?"
"Interesting theory," Christian nodded to himself as he paced his room, "what does Isaac think?"
"We haven't really spoken about it much, but he's leaning toward it yes."
"And it's not exactly like you can ask Guffrey himself 'hey, how does your power work?'" Chris went on.
"Right," Taylor bit his lip.
"So if you're right, and Guffrey worked out you had Tongue, why hasn't he resurfaced?" Chris thought out loud.
"The only other reason I can think of, and I hate myself for thinking it-"
"What?" Chris demanded.
"What if he got Sheldon?" worry was evident in Taylor's voice, "I mean he was around at the time. He suddenly took off one day never to be seen again, and-"
"Sheldon's safe," Chris sat on the bed.
"What? How do you know?"
"Steel put him under a sort of underground witness protection program," he explained, "he's safe. Steel would have told me otherwise."
Taylor paused, taking a deep breath.
"Good news for him, bad news for me."
"Pretty much."
Taylor glanced at the time.
"Hey Chris, I've gotta go. Early start and all that," he insisted, "but basically I just wanted to call and say happy birthday."
"Why? It's not even my birthday?"
"When do you think your birthday is?" Taylor asked.
"I don't know."
"Well, today is mine. And you're mostly me. So by 90% technicality, today is your birthday too."
Christian paused as he let it sink in.
"I guess I do kinda have a birthday then..."
"Yeah," Taylor couldn't help but smile a little, "so, happy birthday Christian."
"Happy birthday Taylor, I guess."
Taylor hung up, feeling much better about the call at the end than the start.
Chris threw the phone aside and lay back on the bed, looking up.
He did have a birthday after all.