Blix woke with a gasp. Silhouetted against the gray light of early morning, Alf bent over her, deliciously warm hands pressed to her skin as tingling heat burned into her stomach. She let out a contented sigh and smiled up at him.

“Most guys aim a little higher when they’re feeling up sleeping girls.”

“Hey…” The exhausted lines of his face relaxed into a smile. “How are you feeling?”

“You tell me. You’re the one with his hands all up in my shirt.”

“I can do magic now.” He started to pull away, but she snagged a hand and held it to her chest as sort of a peace offering—one of those thanks-for-saving-my-life-but-you-suck-at-feeling-girls-up kinds of things. “Um…” he continued after an awkward pause. “Two healing spells: Minor Healing 5 and Major Healing 2.”

“Seriously? How?” A spike of adrenaline surged into her brain, hitting her like a quart of coffee. Healing? Her throat tightened, clamping down on her next words. “How much… What are the, um… limits?”

“Major healing covers a volume of 200cc.” He looked at the ground, at a rock wall—anywhere but at her. “You had a punctured lung and your side was ripped up pretty bad. I had to use it three times, but I think it took care of most of the worst of it. I just did your abdomen again, you know, in case there was a perforated bowel or sepsis or stuff.”

“What about scarring?” Maybe it was her imagination, but Alf’s face seemed to darken. She pushed up onto her butt and scooted around until she was right in his face. At least she would have been if he’d bothered to look at her. “Did it… leave any scars?” Her words came out a breathy whisper.

“I didn’t look,” he said, way too quickly. “But I didn’t feel… I mean… I don’t think so.”

“Alf…” She swallowed back the lump in her throat. Her heart was pounding so hard, it felt like she was having a heart attack. “Would you… Could you try healing my face?”

“What happened?” He looked up from the floor and leaned in closer, brow furrowed like he was horrified at what he saw. “Where does it hurt?”

“What do you mean, hurt?” she snapped. “The scars!”

“Oh…” His face fell. “Doesn’t scarring mean it’s already healed?” He glanced back down at the floor.

She glared at him until he started to squirm. He could at least pretend to care. Or did he like that she looked like a troll? “What’s your problem?” she demanded. “Do you like seeing me like this? Does it make you feel better about yourself? Superior. Better than the ugly crippled girl?”

“What? No!” He turned on her, but looked immediately away. “I like the way you look. And you’re far from ugly.”

Hot magma welled up inside her, threatening to erupt. “Bull shit! You’re just saying that because you think you have to. I am not some this-side-up, handle-with-care snowflake. You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not lying. I’m…”

“Then heal me!”

“I can’t! At least not right now. I can only use it once per hour.”

“But when it’s off cooldown, you’ll try?” She swiped a forearm across her eyes. She hated this. Hated everything about this. Why did he have to be so… whatever he was being?

“Sure, but…” His gaze wandered to a rock wall. Apparently, he couldn’t even stand to look at her.

“But what?” she demanded.

His shoulders rose and fell in a thready sigh. “If major healing does, you know… get rid of the scars…” He took another breath, still refusing to meet her eyes.

“Just say it!”

“It’s just that… I like who you are. The way you are right now. I’ve always thought you were pretty. Really pretty. And if others can’t see that, then they don’t deserve you.”

“Oh? And you do?”

“I didn’t say that. I just…”

“Hey…I know I can be a bitch sometimes. And it’s not like I don’t appreciate everything you’ve done, but I… The therapists are always so… you need to accept reality, you know? And then with the dust and my dorm mates turning into double-D elves and stuff, reality’s kind of a moving target right now, and I… I guess I just want you to be straight with me.”

Alf sucked in a breath like he was about to say something else, but then he just nodded.

“So…” She decided to let him off the hook. For now. “Healing spells. How did that happen?”

“Oh, yeah.” His eyes brightened. “I’m at level five now. I managed to kill this huge, fifteen-foot-tall high orc with a long sword and full plate armor. Okay, not exactly kill personally. But I got it to chase me to this deep thermal spring outside, and got it to fall in and, well… plate mail. So anyway… Getting to level five unlocked the Paladin class, and Paladins can do healing, so here we are.”

She asked him a few more questions and eventually got the whole story out of him: how he’d fought the wolves, carried her to the cave, and then went back out to grind monsters in the dark like an idiot.

“I’m glad you survived,” she said. “But don’t go getting cocky on me. Those wolves could have killed you. And that porcupine thing, and don’t get me started on the orc. You got lucky. You should never let your health drop below fifty. Ever. Next time put more points into constitution.”

“But you were bleeding. I needed to kill things quickly.”

“A lot of good that would have done if you’d died.”

“But I… I have three more attribute points to spend…” He acted like he was doing her some kind of favor.

“Hold onto them for now,” she said. “We’re going to have to go into town soon, and things could change real fast.”

“What makes you think there’s even a town left?”

“Remember all those campus buildings?” She leaned towards him, trying to get him to actually look her in the eye. “Dust wasn’t changing them into trees. If Jane’s mother was basing this on MMORPGs, there will be shops and pubs and maybe even a castle. We need to get food, water bottles, and a way to make fire. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to get armor and weapons as well.”

“And clothes,” Alf added in a strangled voice. “Definitely clothes.”

She looked down at her tunic. It was bloodstained and had some pretty major gashes in it, but it wasn’t like she was hanging out of it. At least not that much. “Is that what’s bothering you?” She grabbed Alf by the chin and forced him to look at her. “Aliens are trying to kill us, and you’re obsessing over my boobs?”

“No, I…”

“Look at them!” she shouted. “They’re just boobs. We have a lot more important things to worry about. Like dehydration or starvation or decapitation.”

“I was just trying to be polite. You said all that stuff about feeling you up and—”

“I was kidding! If I was really worried about you, I wouldn’t have said anything. God! Why do you have to be so…”

“What?” he asked. “Why do I have to be so what?”

“Look, I get that this has been hard on you. I’ve had my own battles with social anxiety. But there’s such a thing as being too nice.”

He clamped his eyes shut and nodded.

“Hey, look at me.” She gentled her voice. “I get that school was a nightmare. It was a nightmare for all of us, but you’re a really great guy. You have to believe that. You have to own it, because if you don’t, you’ll just come across as, I don’t know, wrong. And when great guys are around girls with boobs as perfect as mine, it’s okay for them to look. Know what I’m saying? Don’t be obnoxious about it. And if you’re in the middle of a fight with a pack of wolves, that’s probably not the time, but refusing to look at a girl, even if she’s hanging out a bit, well, that’s just rude.”

Alf nodded. “I wasn’t lying about thinking you’re pretty. You need to own that too.”

“Fine. I’m smoking hot. Does that make you feel better? I’m so hot I can make a bloody piece of burlap look good.” She scooted around to climb onto his back, but he turned and crushed her in a tight hug. “It’s a curse.” She sighed. “Guys can’t help trying to feel me up.”