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Rodeaux hisses as the disinfectant soaked cotton ball is pressed against the worst of his injuries.
“Why the fuck are you even doing that? I’m going to heal up before long.”
“You can tolerate the pain of being beaten around and blasted away, but you can’t deal with a little rubbing alcohol?” Chita clicks her tongue in disapproval. “Even if you do heal up fast, it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to infection. Now let me do this and stop complaining.”
Rodeaux curls his upper lip at her, but says nothing as Chita continues to poke and prod at his injuries.
All things considered, they could be worse. After getting hit with an attack as powerful as Rein’s Dioga-class spell, the fact that Rodeaux is in good enough shape after just a day of rest to be mouthing off at her is impressive. Demons heal fast, to be sure, but injuries inflicted by the powers of other demons tend to be a bit harder to shrug off, and then there’s the fact that Chita had to lug him to civilization draped over her back as dead weight…
Honestly, she credits the fact that they even made it out of there at all to pure luck and the mercy of their already exhausted enemies, rather than any skill on their part. Not that she’s going to say something like that to Rodeaux. He’s in a bad enough mood as it is.
He’s always in a bad mood when he loses a fight, unsurprisingly. But it’s different now that the fights that they’re winning or losing aren’t for their own sake.
Rodeaux is still in a bad mood, but it feels… Different. Less like a child throwing a tantrum over not getting their way, more like one more straw on the camel’s back slowly building and bubbling up inside of him.
Can Chita blame him? Not really. The situation with Riou has been frustrating since the beginning. For someone like her, who really doesn’t care what happens to her life, it’s already agitating enough; for someone like Rodeaux who values his own freedom above all else, she knows it has to be a thousand times worse.
Still, no matter how familiar she is with her partner’s moods and no matter how much she might sympathize with the situation they find themselves in— one that someone could argue is only their own fault, but knowing the lengths Riou has been willing to go to in order to recruit new members of the cult, definitely feels like the illusion of choice— she still doesn’t want to deal with his attitude all the time.
Rodeaux falls silent, thankfully, as she continues to tend to his wounds as thoroughly as she thinks she needs to, which is not nearly as thoroughly as she would tend to a human. She doesn’t think Rodeaux would sit still and let her poke and prod at him for that long, anyway… Not when this is largely for her benefit, because Rodeaux is right: as someone who heals as fast as he does, this sort of thing isn’t really something he needs.
For Chita, though, she finds it… Calming. Even as Rodeaux grumbles and bitches about it, there’s something soothing in the act of cleaning him up, in taking care of his wounds. Although she knows Rodeaux wouldn’t be able to get anywhere without her, not only because she’s the only one that can read his book but also because he doesn’t have a particularly strategic mind, she often finds herself feeling helpless in the face of the situations they’re made to deal with.
Case in point: Rodeaux having to throw himself on top of her to protect her from Rein’s spell. A necessity based on how the battle works, but a frustrating one nonetheless. Compared to his, her body is so fragile— and still she can’t do the one thing that would truly help him, truly give him an edge over the rest of their enemies, which is a constant output of energy so she would be able to use his spells to wipe the floor with just about anyone they came up against.
But all of that is just ridiculous for her to think about, so she instead lets her mind empty as she focuses on tending to his wounds. The wounds that he got for her, because of her.
“We knew trying to convince people to come over to Riou’s side would be difficult,” she reminds him, her voice flat— she’s not trying to make it a lecture, but she also doesn’t think it’s going to do much in the way of comforting. Just a simple statement of fact. “We need to pursue only demons who are powerful enough to be able to unleash Faudo’s seal… But that also means that they’re powerful enough to pose a real challenge to us. Riou’s ability to curse demons to join us has a limit, and the kinds of demons who would be willing to join us of their own volition are also the kind we know we can’t trust— and the kind who would be more willing to fight first than to hear us out on anything involving teamwork.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rodeaux mutters, staring out the window as she wraps him in bandages he doesn’t really need, just because it makes her feel better.
He’s heard it a thousand times before. She’s said it a thousand times before.
Nothing has really changed, but she still feels like sometimes… She needs to say it.
Chita lets out a small sigh as she starts packing away her medical supplies, as neatly as she can manage. They’re running out of a few things that she’s going to need to pick up here in this small town they’ve found, far enough away from the demons that just defeated them for them to feel safe, before they head back to make their report on the situation to Riou.
Neither of them are especially eager to return, even if they’re technically there of their own free will. As not only willing members of Riou’s group but also some of the first, the two of them are trusted with tasks and freedoms that the other members don’t always get to enjoy— especially their cursed comrades, who Riou likes to keep a close eye on ever since one of them ran away with no regard for her own life. It’s the kind of freedom the two of them are reluctant to give up.
Of course, the time of unleashing Faudo is drawing ever closer— provided they can find enough demons who are strong enough in time.
Rodeaux is still silently staring out the window as she closes up her first aid kit and sets it aside, and Chita lets out a small sigh as she looks for a scrap of paper and starts making a list of all of the things she’s going to need to pick up in town before they leave to return to Riou’s strangling grip.
There’s nothing more she can do to convince Rodeaux or try to make him feel better, and she’s only going to frustrate them both if she keeps trying, so she decides that it’s better to just leave him alone to pout until he gets tired of that, too.
Just because she knows her partner well by this point… Doesn’t mean there’s really much she can do about him.
By the time Chita gets back to the room they’ve rented for the night, the sun has dipped below the horizon. Rodeaux must have gotten up at some point to flick on the light, but since then he’s gone back to staring out the window.
He does look a little less annoyed— more like he’s deep in thought. She takes that as a sign of progress, although considering what Rodeaux is like, asking him to be in a good mood any time he’s not fighting is a fairly tall order.
Since he doesn’t even bother to acknowledge her walking into the room aside from a small twitch of the wings that tells her he heard her— not that she thought otherwise, she’s sure Rodeaux heard her coming up the path nevermind entering the building and making her way up to their room— Chita does the same and ignores him, busying herself unpacking her purchases from the big canvas bags she’s carrying.
Most of them are supplies they’re going to need either for the trip back to Faudo or once they get there, things they needed to stock up on anyway that she might as well pick up while they’re gone and lengthen the duration of their freedom without drawing Riou’s ire or making Zaruchim suspicious. She’s going to need to sort through them and do her best to pack them into her bag. Rodeaux does the bulk of the heavy lifting, but she still needs to be able to carry her own weight, as well.
Aside from that, she’s also picked up something for the two of them to eat. With an appetite like Rodeaux’s, she’s surprised he’s not starving; it’s not like they had a lot between them during their trek back to civilization, and his body is going to need plenty of fuel to repair itself.
She half expects Rodeaux to perk up and immediately snap out of his funk at the smell of food. It’s not too surprising that he doesn’t, she supposes, even as she pulls out everything she got at the open air market that all smells tantalizingly delicious. He does turn his attention towards her and her spoils, but there’s still a sort of… Far away look in his eyes, like he’s too busy thinking to be able to focus on the present moment.
It’s an uncommon look for him, but Chita doesn’t say that because it will probably come across as an insult. She doesn’t mean it to be one, and Rodeaux would probably just get snippy with her, which isn’t something that bothers her but isn’t something either of them need right now.
There are enough things getting on both of their nerves for them to not intentionally start getting on each other’s.
Rodeaux wanders over as she lays out the street food on the rickety table. The man she had bought it from had expressed surprise that a girl her size was buying so much, but she had just said she was feeding some big appetites and left it at that.
“Dig in,” she says flatly, as Rodeaux is already helping himself because she’s even had a chance to sit down. No words of thanks, no words at all.
Chita doesn’t care, not really. She knows Rodeaux well enough now to know what to expect, after all. And she knows that if he really wanted to be rude, he has plenty of ways to do so actively instead of just ignoring her.
They eat in silence. Both of them are exhausted. They have a difficult journey ahead of them— and a difficult end to their journey when they have to explain to Riou that they failed to recruit Rein, leaving them still quite short of demons to be able to unleash Faudo.
By the time food is eaten and things are put away, the moon is high in the sky and considering how tired they both are it’s naturally time for them to crawl into bed. The room is small and there’s only one; most nights Rodeaux doesn’t bother to sleep, claiming that demons don’t need nearly as much rest as humans always seem to, but Chita can tell from the way he’s carrying himself and how rough that battle was on both of them that he’s about ready to pass out regardless.
Chita climbs into the bed first, once she’s ready for the night. It’s small, too, just like the room, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of bed that should be big enough for both of them— but without hesitation, Rodeaux crawls in behind her, and pulls her in against him with an arm around her waist so the two of them fit perfectly on the bed.
Rodeaux’s arms are tight around her. Not tight enough to be uncomfortable, just tight enough to feel… Safe. And just like how she knew he would be there to protect her from Rein’s attack, it makes her relax, clears her head.
Rodeaux is so big and she’s small enough that she’s almost entirely engulfed by him, Rodeaux’s one arm around her waist, the other under her neck allowing her to use him as a pillow. He’ll complain about his arm going numb when they wake up in the morning but he won’t do anything to try and move it before then. She’s learned a lot of useful things about him as his partner, to be sure— how hard he can fight before his body gives up, the fact that he won’t stop fighting until his body gives up, how hard a hit he can take and what she should and shouldn’t counter.
A lot of the things she’s learned about Rodeaux aren’t quite so useful, though. A lot of them are just the sort of things you naturally learn about a person who you spend almost all of your time with. She knows what kinds of foods he likes, how he can only ever fully sleep through the night when he’s completely exhausted, all of the ways in which he’s willing to touch and be touched and the ways he shies away from whether he knows it or not.
She knows that even if he wasn’t so exhausted he’ll end up sleeping through the night, he would lie there all night with his arm under her head and his hand on her waist. And then in the morning the two of them would wake up and he would insult her for falling asleep in the most inconvenient and uncomfortable position possible, in spite of the fact that he’s the one largely in control of how they end up falling asleep.
Frustrating as he might be, she wouldn’t change him for anything. She just won’t tell him that, for the same reason he insults her for things that are in his control.
Even if they fall asleep together like this, even if there are words in their mind regarding how much they care for each other, there are certain words and thoughts that— knowing what the two of them know about what will happen to the two of them one day— that are just too painful for them to say out loud, nevermind think about.
Chita’s eyelids are heavy and she finds herself falling asleep quickly, but just as she’s about to nod off, Rodeaux says,
“Hey, Chita.”
“Mm?”
She thinks maybe he’s ready to talk about whatever it is that’s been bothering him—
“What the fuck happened to the brat and his old lady?”
“...Just go to sleep, Rodeaux. We’ll worry about them in the morning.”