Jill looked at her mail and felt annoyance. Pure annoyance.

Tori sent the proposal through proper channels, attached to a letter with annoyingly formal language and no presumption upon their former interpersonal relationship. That was even more annoying.

Jill glared at the copy of the book someone had brought in to her office (again, as if it kept reappearing there like magic), and cursed all the things it had brought into her life, the little annoyances every day.

But she sat down and read the proposal. She could do the professional thing and find a reason to reject it, even if she didn't want to go to the effort of doing that work. She could give it the same small chance she gave everything.

*

Maxine turned over what she had learned about the shapeshifters in her head, examining it as if from a distance between tasks on her to do list. She didn't want to look lazy while she was desk-bound, even if she wanted to be lazy.

Anyone in the office or the entire chain of command could be a different person than they presented as – of course, that was always true when you worked in intelligence, even if most of what she did was hunt down information on visa overstayers.

Amy at the reception desk on their floor raised an eyebrow at Maxine when she got up to get coffee for the 13th time that morning. So Maxine raised an eyebrow back. Amy rolled her eyes and went back to looking at her phone. People were used to Maxine's mild paranoia and strange drinking habits, but a shapeshifter could just as easily roll their eyes at Maxine as a regular human could, and who knew how long any of them had been on the planet. Maxine had no plan and no idea how to find out.

She finished out her tasks for the day and went home, annoyed when she got home to see Dylan still there, wrapped in a blanket on the couch and watching a Korean romantic comedy, even though she knew he would be there. Pale colours flashed across his face in the dark room. She didn't know how to share her space.

"You eat pizza, right? Can shapeshifters eat pizza?" she asked, dumping her stuff on the edge of the couch and slumping down next to all the mess.

He looked up, eyes big and wide. "I can eat pizza."