so here we are again: me being here and you being off the map. // @futzthis
He’d kicked cigarettes when he was twenty-three. They were expensive to buy, left him without enough to buy enough food for both him and Gabe, kept his stomach empty and his chest tight. Quitting, he remembered, hadn’t been as hard as he’d thought it’d be. His hands shook for a little while, and his mouth went dry every time the other guys went out for a smoke and he declined the invitation to join them, but kicking the habit only took a few weeks. Robbie’d never much thought of himself as someone who couldn’t quit something when he wanted to, but his tendency to fall off the face of the goddamn earth? That seemed a little harder to get rid of.
People called him out on it sometimes. Canelo, in a way that might have been playful if he hadn’t been his boss. Gabe, with concern in his tone. Daisy, sounding a little terrified. There was no patch for this, no gum, no letting his hands tremble through the craving. This wasn’t even a habit he got anything from, not a deep inhalation of smoke and ash that made the world a little clearer for a fraction of a moment, not a thing he wanted to be. It was something that came with the Rider, he supposed, a part of the deal he’d made. And people could call him out, they could berate him and question him, but he didn’t know how to stop.
There were people he could talk about that with. Kate Bishop wasn’t one of them.
She didn’t know about the Rider. She didn’t know about Hell, about Eli, about any of it. She knew about Robbie’s job at Canelo’s, knew he’d dropped off the face of the earth, knew it wasn’t the first time or the last. From her perspective, he figured, he was little more than a sketchy guy who occasionally faked his death. Figured she’d have the balls to call him on it. “I’m not off the map,” he replied dryly, not looking up from the engine in front of him. “I’m smack dab in the middle of the map. Just took a vacation, that’s all.” Right. His mind or soul or whatever it was that made him him had a quick spa visit to Hell while his body ran around with a goddamn maniac at the helm. That was all. “Your shitbag car break down again, or are you just here to hassle me?”