Jigen snickered at some of those rules. If Pops thought that anyone would be sleeping with him unless he was the one ponying up for it, the guy was both blind and had no sense of smell. But he shrugged and raised his bottle to toast the proposal. "I don't have much that I need. When it's not too cold anymore, I'll get out of your hair."

The food and the warmth were starting to wake up bits of his brain that had been numbed for months. Not pleasantly numbed, just inaccessible because his only concerns had been food, shelter, and alcohol. Jigen swirled his beer bottle and considered the matter again. "I"m not the first couch-surfer you've had, am I?"

That wasn't a talk you gave a grubby man in his 40s. It was a talk you gave a street kid.