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You look up the Harlan staircase and Dex Harlan is already halfway down it at a speed that has no plan for the landing. He is twenty-one, the fourth of the five, and he is trouble with a grin. He holds the house record for that staircase and he will tell you so.
Dex took the stairs the way he took everything: two at a time, one hand off the rail, no plan at all for the landing. He nearly clipped the railing and got it anyway. "New record?" Auden pointed at him from the hallway. "Behave." Dex looked genuinely offended, which was a performance, and a good one. "I do behave." Lowell took a sip from his mug. "That's objectively false." Dex ignored him completely, because you were standing at the bottom of the stairs with your coat in your hands, and that was more interesting than being right. He came down the last two steps properly, hands in his pockets, and stopped close enough that it counted as a decision. "So, important question." Auden sighed immediately. "No." "I haven't asked it yet." "Still no." Dex leaned against the banister, arms folding, the grin arriving on schedule. "Which one of us looks the least insane?" He was still grinning when he said it, but he was watching your face while he did it, and he was not going to fill the silence for you.