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[handleyourshit]

  


This is Rosita.  I'll hit you back when I can.

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[handleyourshit]

She's calmer by the time she shows up, or at least reserved for a different reason; being on a hair trigger at her current job doesn't exactly lend itself well to peace of mind, but she makes it through.

She's able to think more clearly, although she paints the line down her neck and slips in just before closing, actually, so she can ask: "Any way I can get a double of something stiff before you lock the till?"

[hippie_ninja]

He gives her a little smile and pours for her. The club is quiet, Vrenille somewhere else, the other staff already clearing out the guests. He nods at the bouncer to indicate Rosita is with him.

"How mad are you now?"

[handleyourshit]

It's been hours, and not that Rosita isn't perfectly capable of holding a grudge as long as she needs to, but she's not feeling surprised and defensive anymore. She shakes her head and taps her fingertips on the bartop.

"Mad isn't the right word," she admits. "You know how it is when someone gets infected. What a gutpunch it is, how fast you have to be - and how there's always one person thinking this one is going to be different because it's someone close to them."

[hippie_ninja]

"I stopped being that naive a long, long time ago," he says gently. This isn't that.

He pours a drink for himself. "But I do understand."

[handleyourshit]

"I know," she says, calmly enough it could be an apology, reserved enough it's not quite. She does know though. She's seen him.

"This place has us all spun though."

[hippie_ninja]

"It does." He sips his drink, makes a face at the burn. "I hate it."

[handleyourshit]

"Mmhmm." She turns her own glass on the bartop, still standing, elbows leaned against the edge.

"So where do we stand now?"

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm not mad." He's not sure what he's feeling. "I'm wondering how much you trust me."

[handleyourshit]

"Why, because I think shit is weird around here and that we need to allow for that?" she asks, but there's none of the challenge that had lashed out of her before.

[hippie_ninja]

He shakes his head. "Because the risk I took in trusting him is no greater a risk than the one you took in trusting Grayson."

[handleyourshit]

"I don't trust Grayson," she reminds him, shaking her head.

"And I told you that."

[hippie_ninja]

She did, though, at least in that situation where she was vulnerable. "You let him work magic on you. Vampires need only a drop of blood to control people, Ro. Maybe some need even less than that."

[handleyourshit]

"Because there had to be some kind of test, and I certainly wasn't about to ask you to do it," she answers, unblinking and unhesitating.

[hippie_ninja]

He looks at her. Starts to say something, then shakes his head. "What?"

[handleyourshit]

"What what?" she asks, genuinely confused about how they keep missing each other on this. What piece she's missing in turn that lets them talk past each other.

"Which part of that isn't clear?"

[hippie_ninja]

"That's not okay, Rosita." The thought that something actually could have happened to her and she would have just put her neck in the noose to see is somehow very different than what he'd been picturing. "You're not expendable."

[handleyourshit]

Expendable hits her in a weird way, like it always does; of course she is, some part of her offers immediately. She's the weakest fighter they have.

Of course not, a newer, quieter, but harsher part of her says. That's not what it was about.

She taps her fingers again, then shakes her head. "I took a risk to get information, to test a possible ally. How is that any different from anything we've been doing so far?"

There are only three of them. She asks Carver for nothing, and even if she didn't have a dozen other reasons she did what she did, she wasn't interested in risking Jesus.

[hippie_ninja]

"It's just that it's usually my job." As the scout. As the one with no ties that can be painfully severed if he fails.

[handleyourshit]

"What? To be expendable?" she asks, a muscle in her jaw jumping.

[hippie_ninja]

Not expendable.

But yes.

"We need you, Rosita." And softer, "I need you."

[handleyourshit]

Why is she such a sucker for that tone and that sentiment?

She flattens her palms on the bartop, pulls her hands back to tuck under her elbows.

"I need you too, Jesus. Whole. Healthy."

[hippie_ninja]

"I am." Somehow, he's not dead. And she isn't a vampire's slave, and Drake isn't a zombie. "And I mean to stay that way."

[handleyourshit]

She presses her lips together, drops her eyes. Packs herself up behind her ribs, her fists, her teeth, as safe as she can make herself.

"You think I don't see what you've been doing, J? That I don't know?"

[hippie_ninja]

He looks up as the last of the rest of the staff leave. He has a key; he'll lock up. It's just them now.

"What do you mean?"

[handleyourshit]

"We're less than a month out from having property, from having a place to start over, but you've been building it already for months." Which isn't unexpected. It's what Jesus does, what he's always done, it's who he is.

But: "And sometimes you run things past me, and sometimes you run behind me - and you send me people, and send me at people." Which doesn't make for any specific pattern, unless you've seen it before.

"I was there when Maggie took Hilltop. Remember?" She saw Jesus just behind and at her friend's side.