TW: anxiety

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“Thank you so much, Ray, you have no idea. I owe you a big one, seriously.”

“Hahahaha! No, not that big. Think smaller.”

“Pffft, you’re so-”

“No I didn’t! You bought that for me! Don’t you dare!”

Rosie finished the phone call with her friend from Earth while Droya transferred their breakfast from the hotel’s cart to the dining table. She hadn’t told him about anything bad that had happened since she got to Hell – only that she got the job and that she wasn’t going to be able to come back right away. She asked Ray to pack a few things to send her in Hell, and coordinate with a moving company to pack the rest of her apartment into storage. Droya thought he must be a good friend to help her with this. But not a good enough friend to tell about the bad portal trip and the mugging?

“Bye Raphael,” she chirped, and hung up. She immediately looked at Droya.

“Don’t make that face,” she said, hopping off the sofa and walking to the dining nook. She picked up a piece of toast and bit off a crispy corner.

“I didn’t want to bother him,” she said. “It wouldn’t do any good to tell him, or my mom. They would just worry about me.”

Someone ought to worry about you, he thought.

Droya shook his head. Rosie seemed like a different person this morning, all the pain washed away with a night’s sleep and a hot shower. But Droya knew it was there, just under the surface. He couldn’t look at her the same anymore. His first impression was that she was lighthearted, too earnest, and naïve – she was easy to play with and fun to tease. But now…

Now he could see every moment of that was hard won.

There was more to her than he’d expected. He didn’t really feel like teasing her anymore.

She had called her mother before Ray, after fretting for an hour about how to tell her she wouldn’t see her for a while. Her mother seemed to take it well, but Rosie didn’t tell her any other details, either. At least when she talked to her mother and her friend, her smiles were real. It helped the queasy feeling in Droya’s stomach to see her real smile. She also smiled genuinely when she ate, he noticed.

Rosie systematically demolished a stack of pancakes, stopping every few bites to close her eyes and make an adorable “mmmmmmm” sound.

“I wish you could try these, they are soooo fluffy,” she said while Droya and Zete ate from their own plates. She had insisted that Zete order food for everyone, and paid for it separately from her personal funds.

Droya flinched.

“Food should never be ‘fluffy,’” he said with disgust.

“It does smell really, really sweet, though,” Zete said, curious. “Is it anything like Earth breakfast cereal?”

“Um, I guess sort of?” Rosie said. “Not really, but I guess chemically? Like, flour and sugar and the same basic stuff, just combined differently?”

“Ah, then I will stay away,” Zete said with a chuckle.

“Why? What’s the deal with breakfast cereal?” Rosie asked, then stuffed her mouth full of pancake soaked in syrup.

“It seems to be a bit addictive to some demons and fairies,” Zete said. “So we have been cautioned to stay away. I hear the effects are wonderful, at first, but later it takes more and more, and it wears out our hearts.”

Rosie swallowed her bite and said “Huh.”

They finished their meals and stacked the dishes back on the cart. Rosie went into her room and came back with a small bundle of half-crumpled to-do lists. She walked through the room slowly, wandering around the sofa, staring at her lists and muttering to herself.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Job number one is to find a place to live. I’ve already got things on Earth mostly figured out, or at least set in motion. But after checkout time tonight, we’re homeless. So, we need something move-in ready. How do you find apartments in Hell? Is there a website, or like, an agent we could go to?”

Droya and Zete both frowned.

“I live at my guild when I am not working,” Droya said, and shrugged. “I have never had an apartment.”

“I live in a family hive,” Zete said. “And all my clients have stayed at hotels or business housing. I’ve never looked for long-term housing.”

Rosie pursed her lips and flapped her to-do lists back and forth in the air.

“Wait,” she said, her face alarmed and rapidly reddening. “I’m taking you away from your families and stuff, aren’t I? Oh God. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She pressed her hands to her face. “I can’t do this.”

Droya walked to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“This is a misunderstanding,” he said calmly. “You do not need to be upset.”

“Rosie, this is what we do,” Zete said, fluttering to the back of the sofa. “When we work, we live away from home. It’s normal.”

Rosie sought confirmation from Droya, and he nodded.

“And to be perfectly honest,” Zete said, “my hive is annoying, loud, and full of competing obligations. This will be like a dream vacation.” He reclined on the back of the sofa, his wings spread flat beneath him.

Droya squeezed Rosie’s shoulder and gave her a close-mouthed smile.

“You are not taking us from anything, Rosie. This job is a great gift, this much money does not come easily to us. Please do not feel bad about anything.”

Rosie took a deep breath in and held it for a second, then sighed it out.

“This is going to take some getting used to,” she said.

“What is?” Droya asked.

“Being, like… I don’t know.” She tried to think of how to say it. “With people, again.”

Droya raised an eyebrow, his forehead crinkling up against his short turquoise horn on one side. Before he could ask, she seemed to shake off her strange mood and snap back to “normal.”

“So how do we find a place to live?” she asked, stepping away from Droya and going to sit on the sofa with Zete.

“I can ask the concierge,” Zete said, perking up. “They might know where to get us started.”

“That’s worth a try,” Rosie said with a nod. “And I’ll poke around online to see what I can find.”

Between the two of them, they came up with a list of 10 phone numbers, and after an hour of phone calls, Zete was able to set up three appointments for that afternoon.

Rosie was excited. “It’s like those house shows!” she said. “We’ll go look, and two of them will be weird, then the third one will be perfect except it’ll be ‘dated’ or something, and then we’ll pick the weirdest one and people will say ‘what are they thinking?’” She laughed as she stuffed her lists into her small blue purse.

Droya did not share her amusement.

The hotel itself was fairly secure. Going out again meant there was danger around every corner, and he would have to be on high alert. He felt heavy with the weight of keeping her safe.

“We’ve got a few hours until the first one, right?” Rosie asked.

“Three and a half hours,” Zete said.

“Great, well, I was supposed to sight-see today, but what I really need is to get more clothes.”

She pinched at her shirt.

“This is my last clean outfit, and I don’t think I’ll have clothes from home for a couple more days. Besides, honestly, I haven’t gotten new clothes for a while anyway.”

“I know of a few nice clothing shops nearby,” Zete said. “With Earth-style clothes. They might have wing holes or tail holes, but I’m sure we can find something that would work.”

Rosie giggled. “I hadn’t thought about wings and stuff,” she said. “Yeah, hopefully they have something that won’t show off my underwear.”

Rosie glanced at Droya, but he said nothing. She cut her eyes toward the door, and slung her purse over her shoulder.

“Let’s go!”

Droya was deathly silent during their exit and the drive. He kept his eyes moving and his ears alert, watching out for every potential threat. He moved around Rosie actively, blocking off entrances and exits, inspecting the car before letting Rosie near it, and taking a circuitous route to the shops.

His caution was making Rosie anxious. She asked Zete a few idle questions about his home hive, hoping to draw Droya into the conversation, but he seemed to be ignoring them in favor of checking all the mirrors in the car for the 8th time. She desperately thought ideas to get him to relax, but her mind just went blank.

Okay, she thought, what would Ray do to cheer me up if I was stressed out? What has he done before that worked?

She tapped her fingers on her leg, thinking.

Ice cream, she thought. But he probably thinks ice cream is gross.

A movie? Hmm. I think he’s too on edge to sit through a movie, though.

She smiled, remembering all the ice creams and movies Ray had dragged her to when her mom was sick and when she could get away from Mike. Ray was always there when nobody else was, even after she’d chased away or ghosted all her other friends, he never gave up.

Hoarded Books! she thought with a start, jumping slightly in her seat. Droya slammed his foot on the brake and grabbed her arm, his face a jumble of panic.

“What?” he barked.

Rosie stared at him, her eyes as wide as they could get.

“N-nothing! I was just thinking!” she stammered.

Other drivers honked behind them.

Droya took his hand off her, but he didn’t relax, just turned back to the wheel and started forward again.

Holy fish sticks, Rosie thought. She looked at Zete, and even though she couldn’t make out all his features clearly, she could tell from his body language that he was wide-eyed as well.

Hoarded Books, she thought again, calmly, without moving. It was her favorite used bookstore. The building had been a Victorian-style house, and when the area was rezoned for businesses, instead of tearing it down and rebuilding a strip mall, the owners just turned it into a bookstore as it stood. They put bookshelves everywhere. The parlor, the kitchen, the bedrooms, even hallways and closets (what few closets it had) were lined with shelves. It was a maze of yellowing paperback fiction, battered but solid nonfiction, inexplicably perfect hardcovers of all shapes and sizes, mysteries with pages worn from many fingers. It was the closest place to Heaven that Rosie could picture, aside from her childhood library.

It was a bit of a drive, but Ray took her there when she needed to chill out. They would stay for hours and come out with stacks of the strangest books, or sometimes nothing at all, just coming to be there and visit the books.

Rosie cleared her throat gently, hoping to keep Droya from almost causing an accident again.

“So… what’s your favorite place in the city?” she asked.

Droya glanced at her briefly, frowning.

“I do not know,” he said stiffly. “I cannot think of a place I would call favorite.”

Rosie clenched her lips together.

Not helping, Droya.

“The old shadow theater,” Zete said with certainty. Rosie turned her attention to his position on the dashboard. She could tell he was smiling, just from his voice.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I haven’t been there in a while,” Zete said wistfully. “It’s sort of a silly thing. We would go there and tell stories, be together with family. I know it’s still there, and my hive still takes the children out there sometimes.”

“Could we go?” Rosie asked Zete. If Droya wouldn’t cooperate, she could at least do something fun for Zete.

“It’s not much to look at, really,” Zete said. “But if you want to, of course we could go!”

“How far is it?” Rosie asked.

“Hmmm, about 10 minutes from here,” Zete said. “Wait, you don’t want to go now do you?”

“Yes,” Rosie said. “Right now! Why not?”

“Because we are already going clothing shopping,” Droya finally broke in, a growl in his voice.

Rosie and Zete stared at him. His entire body was rigid.

“We have time,” Rosie said, anger raising her voice a little. “I want to go now.”

Droya clenched his jaw.

“It is harder to plan for your safety if you change the plan suddenly,” he said after a moment of strained silence.

Rosie let her anger drain out, relaxing her shoulders. He was just worried about keeping her safe. She felt bad, in a couple different ways. She didn’t want him to tie himself in knots over one random mugging. Part of her knew it was his job to protect her, and he was just trying to be good at it. Another part of her felt guilty for letting him see how messed up she could get when she got stuck remembering Mike’s bullshit. Maybe if she had been able to hide it better, he wouldn’t be so bent out of shape today.

“Please?” she asked, gently but still determined. She touched Droya’s arm lightly with her fingertips. Even his arm was tense and hard.

His frown deepened. His arm somehow tensed even more under her touch. But he gave up.

“Give me directions,” he said to Zete gruffly.

Rosie smiled and gave his arm a squeeze, then leaned back in her seat a little and watched the city curiously out her window as Zete navigated the car.

Droya could still feel where her fingers had touched his arm, like tiny bolts of lightning.

His stomach hurt.