“I didn’t say it like that!” Daisy tried to defend at first, but then she slipped back into a smile, crossing her arms as she put a hand over her mouth, trying to hide the absolute joy in her face at watching this all go down. “But I did tell you so.” If she was going to get in trouble for saying it — she might as well really say it, right? Shifting, she looked up at him, wondering if she should complement the view or not. Chances were, no matter what she said, he’d get even more pissed. So, she was happy to let him hover in the air for a while longer, laughing as he tried to figure out how the hell he was going to get down.
“Is this the part where I’m supposed to tap my foot and ask if you’ve learned your lesson? Maybe don’t touch magically imbued items because you think you’ve got a handle on it?” Daisy grinned, trying to hold in another laugh. “Get it? Handle?”
She hadn’t considered that he might actually feel everything on the way down., She had always assumed that the Rider had taken the brunt of anything, that whatever Robbie felt was just an echo of the reality. “Okay but you’re not taking into consideration that I could totally dampen your fall. If I can make myself fly across the city, then I can definably slow your fall.” She thought about it for a moment before shrugging and adding quietly: “In theory, at least.”
He was arguing with himself up there. The Rider must have said something to set him off because he looked just as annoyed as ever. Reminded her of the way he looked at her when she first showed up at his place of work in LA. That quiet anger that was on the edge of exploding. The Rider must have agreed with her.
“Don’t be a baby, Reyes.” Because taunting him was clearly the solution. “And I’m sure I could. But that requires more… finesse.” And Daisy was more of a baseball bat than she was a scalpel. “Jumping is your best bet. And I’ll slow the fall with a cloud of controlled vibrations.” She was bullshitting him, but there was a chance she could — and if she couldn’t? He’d heal.
“Could have fooled me!” Robbie glared down at her, though the motion was likely lost due to the physical distance between them. Still, the look intensified when she claimed that she did, in fact, tell him so. “When I get down from here, you are so sleeping on the couch. For a week. Maybe two.” His grip tightened on the broom, and the wooden handle creaked for a moment before he remembered himself and loosened it enough to ensure that the damn broom wouldn’t snap in half.
Robbie grit his teeth, muttering obscenities under his breath in both English and Spanish. In the back of his mind, the Rider seemed irritated. Whatever the psychic equivalent of rolling one’s eyes was, that was the Devil’s current state. Robbie glared at a spot in the sky in response. “Are you seriously making jokes? I could die up here.” It was a dramatic claim, and utterly untrue to the point that the Rider laughed in his mind.
You know I won’t let you die, Reyes. Not until we’re finished.
Yeah, Robbie wanted to reply, and when will that be? But he didn’t think he’d like the answer, and he knew better than to ask questions he didn’t want the answer to. He’d learned his lesson there.
Looking back down at Daisy, he narrowed his eyes. “Can you actually do that,” he asked, “or are you just saying that so I’ll let go?” She answered the question a moment later with the in theory comment, and Robbie huffed. “Not loving the confidence there, Johnson.”
And then the taunting started. Because of course it did. Of course his girlfriend was the type of person who’d goad him into breaking his damn legs and spending the rest of the night letting the damn Devil knit his bones back together in the living room floor. “Jumping is not my best bet. Jumping is a shitty idea. If I jump, you’re gonna have to drag me back to the damn apartment.”
I could make you let go, the Rider offered, and Robbie felt hellfire burning in his eyes.
“I will call a fucking exorcist,” he hissed. To Daisy, he called, “Just try to get the broom down. Come on. If you can’t, then I’ll... Fuck. If you can’t, then I’ll let go.”
