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And no one here’s addicted to crack!
Pentious was redeemed. The Speaker of God Herself had held him, wiped his tears, told him he was forgiven. Moreover, these people were his hosts. He was not going to…what was that phrase? Fly off the handle.
But he was certainly going to remember it.
(They were angels, he reminded himself. Abel had been alive for the dawn of humanity; Peter’s feet had last touched earth two millennia ago when the hardest drug was opium. They didn’t know what it was like, how fierce the cravings could be. How much better you felt when they were sated. They hadn’t sweated and shivered and prayed in dark alleys while knowing another hit was out of reach because you’d landed in Hell without legs and couldn’t figure out your new tail.)
The most annoying thing was, he did feel better without cocaine. Since putting himself in Hell he’d almost always been at least a little high; it was hardly as though it could kill a man already dead. Moving into the Hotel had been...an adjustment, but he’d been through worse, and once he’d gotten past it he’d been shocked at how much calmer he felt. If there were no drugs in Heaven stronger than alcohol (and thank God there was that!) it didn’t personally affect him.
But Angel Dust was one of his best friends. Cherri was…his light. His everything.
And as much as he longed to see them again, he did worry about how they’d adjust. If they could adjust.
Heaven, apparently, preferred sugar and caffeine, which were…fine. He scratched at his scales and flapped his wings and drank medically inadvisable amounts of espresso.
But then—
Ah, then Charlie needed him to invent something—his friends needed him—and fuck did he miss cocaine. Not during the initial burst, no; wired on adrenaline and raw terror, he could have stayed sharp for a week. It was the aftermath that killed him, because now that the broadcast system had been created it needed to be maintained. Expanded. Made smaller, tighter, more portable. He needed to build cross-realm phones and tablets and laptops. He needed to run tech support for beings of unfathomable age and wisdom who had never touched a keyboard.
It was small comfort to know Baxter was in the same boat.
The only bright spots in his frantic, frenetic days were his friends, both in Heaven and Hell. Charlie, whose outstretched hand had pulled him from the mire and raised him towards salvation. Husk, ill-tempered but wiser than he’d ever been. Angel Dust, whose brash exterior hid a warm heart. Niffty, quick and clever and loyal to the bone. Sweet Emily and lonely, frightened Sera. (Was it blasphemy to say he saw himself in an angel’s face?) Hell, even—if he had to admit it—Baxter, who was nearly as smart as he was.
And Cherri, who burned like a flame in his heart. Who was staying at the Hotel now, seeking her own redemption. In the whirl of his own responsibilities, her letters kept him sane.
He really wasn’t supposed to give cross-realm technology to any random Sinner, and certainly not anything portable and easily stolen. But when Emily saw the laptop tucked into the very bottom of his latest delivery to the Hotel, she giggled and said nothing.
Cherri called him immediately, which he hadn’t expected. She was wearing a very flimsy tank top and the shortest shorts he’d ever seen, which he rather had, but which still made him blush and stutter like an idiot.
“Miss me, nerd?”
“Yes,” he said, and it was her turn to blush. God, it had been worth Hell to meet her.
They kept talking. Daily, if they could manage it; scheduled video dates when they couldn’t. He learned about Tannerite, oxidation rates, and the best way to paint one’s nails, and he taught her about alloys and arc welds. They set up Minecraft servers together after he politely declined her offer to teach him Call of Duty; “normal” first-person perspectives were different enough from his own field of vision to give him headaches. He watched her twitch and pick at her cuticles and hoped she was resisting at least some temptation. Hoped she at least felt better.
Late one night, as he turned in for bed, his phone showed an incoming video call. Sleep fled instantly.
As he turned on the camera, his heart sank. Cherri’s room was dark. Her laptop screen, the only light, showed her worn and haggard. There was a dark circle under her eye, and her loose hair had the stiffness of hairspray left in far too long. Even her freckles looked washed out. “Cherri?!” he blurted out, voice cracking.
She was half turned away from him, raking a hand through her hair. Or trying to, anyway. “Shit, sorry,” she muttered. “I just—I’ll go, it was stupid, I’m fine.”
Her hand was trembling. She balled it into a fist. Pentious watched the movement and felt an answering tremor in his own fingertips. Sickness, drugs, or something terrible happening to the Hotel—there were no good reasons for her to look like that. His tongue flicked automatically, imagining the smell/taste of sour sweat and rumpled sheets. “You’re clearly not.”
She shrugged carelessly, as though she was walking off a minor chemistry mishap and not his very reasonable concerns. “’S just withdrawal again, I’m doing better than I was.”
If this was better, he didn’t want to see what worse looked like.
Then her shoulders convulsed and she clapped a hand to her mouth, and he had to swallow a lump in his own throat. “Do you want me to call ssomeone elssse for you?” Husk, maybe, or Angel Dust. Someone who could actually be of use. Christ, he missed his hypnosis powers; they’d never been strong, but he could have soothed her. Helped her sleep through it. Blocked it out. Now all he could do, once again, was watch.
But she was shaking her head before he even finished asking. “I just…gotta get through this,” she muttered, tucking her knees to her chest. There was a scrape on her shin; from what, he didn’t know. “But fuck, I want a hit.”
Well, he’d been there, too. Stubborn and self-isolating and terrified of anyone seeing him vulnerable. He couldn’t blame her, even if it made his chest ache. “I know the feeling.”
At least it distracted her. She lifted her head, blinking at him through the fall of her hair. “…Don’t think I’ve ever seen you high.”
He blinked back, wincing a little as his chest eye mimicked the motion; he still wasn’t completely used to having an eye there, though it did make dealing with the shorter denizens of Heaven easier. But surely she’d noticed—? He mulled this over, frowning.
...Come to think of it, he supposed there wasn’t much difference between a good high and fighting Cherri Bomb. Still just as addictive, dangerous, and likely to leave you drooling in a ditch. It was just that it hadn’t been his only vice. “Darling, when we fought you weren’t precisely sseeing me low. I hadn’t been fully clean sssince...oh, 1874 or ssso, well before I died. They put chloroform in cough syrup in those days.”
She visibly mulled this over. “So when you crashed down here and they had crack in the vending machines, that was just normal for you?”
When you put it like that, it sounded bad. His wings fluttered awkwardly. “Well. Ah. Yesss.”
“How the fuck did you manage it?” A wave of her hand encompassed everything around her—the dark room, her sorry state, her decades of drugs and alcohol and rough living, the stormy red sky outside—and set it in brutal contrast with his clean bright bedroom that smelled like fresh rain. He heard what she wasn’t asking. How did you stay clean? How did you claw yourself free?
He scratched at his neck, letting his gaze drift as he marshaled his thoughts. “…Well…”
Charlie, mostly. That outstretched hand had been a lifeline. He’d never expected it, hadn’t realized he’d needed it for more than just saving his sorry life until the day he’d looked around and saw not potential enemies, not threats, but friends. Family. And it had all begun with her and her faith in him. If she wanted him to quit drugs too, he’d give it a fair shake.
But Cherri didn’t need the inspirational pamphlet. She didn’t need the song he’d given Sera. She needed concrete advice. He’d never been in her exact shoes—party drugs were for people who had lives, and he’d mostly stuck with cocaine or weed or regular old alcohol and tobacco—but he could try.
So he met her gaze and laid a hand on the edge of his screen, a poor substitute for her face. “I took drugs for—for work, primarily. I thought it kept me focused. But then I came to the Hotel, and I had…hobbies. Friends. I’d never really had friends before who didn’t have some ulterior motive. And—sstopping the drugs did help me keep them, I think? You remember what I was like before.”
“A paranoid old cunt?”
“…Yes. Quite. That doesn’t mean I don’t still misss it. Christ, there are dayss I would kill for a bottle of Vin Mariani if I have to fix another sserver outage.” That wasn’t much of an endorsement, so he added, “But—but! My work is ssso much easier when I’m not rattling half out of my sskin.”
Because that was the real crux of the matter, wasn’t it? He’d had his best flights of fancy under the influence, but turning them into functional inventions required steadier hands and a more rational mind. He’d had to regrow a lot of lost limbs over the decades, and that wasn’t even counting the respawns. Cherri worked with high explosives; she’d understand.
Impossibly, she cracked a tiny smile. “Husk still keeps a bottle under the bar he thinks I don’t know about.”
Pentious was the only one who ever drank that. The thought—the knowledge that he was loved, that he was missed—brought tears to his eyes. He blinked rapidly, dashing them away. He could cry later, when Cherri didn’t need him. “And you haven’t drunk it? I’m sso proud of you.”
“Aw, shut it,” she muttered. “That shit tastes like drain cleaner, I’m not that desperate. I’m used to that good shit, you know? The stuff that gets you real nice and floaty. I wanna turn my brain off. One time me and Angie tried this new shit—Adderall? And it was weird.”
“Weird how?”
She groaned, and the frustration was so normal, so Cherri, that he felt a twinge of hope. “I was waiting for the high to hit, and nothing happened! I just felt really chill. I went home and actually cleaned my fucking bathroom.”
“It needed it,” he blurted out, and immediately clamped his mouth shut as he realized he’d fucked up. Maybe she’d miss it.
Nope.
“Were you stalking me?”
He hid his burning face in his hood, even knowing it wouldn’t help. “I—well—that is—I had to keep tabs on my arch-nemesis, didn’t I?” Especially one who was wild and beautiful and lived the life she did, who stumbled home drunk at midnight to an absolute shithole of an apartment with her absolute shithole boyfriend or a string of random hookups, whose only constant companion was an equally strung-out gun-toting porn star. He couldn’t fight her if she got herself knifed, he’d told himself. It made sense. It wasn’t like he was going to do anything. She’d never know.
Unless he opened his big fat mouth. “In—in hindsight,” he muttered, “I do recognize it was rather creepy of me, I do beg your forgivenessss—”
She snorted, waving a hand. The motion made her sway a little alarmingly. “It’s fine. But yeah, Adderall. Weird.”
Thank God for the change of topic. He’d tried that particular drug once out of curiosity, and hadn’t been too impressed. But it had certainly worked. He hummed thoughtfully, an old conversation itching at the back of his brain.
She zeroed in on it, of course. “What?” When he hesitated a moment too long—maybe it wouldn’t help, maybe he’d just be giving her false hope, maybe she’d think he was pitying her—her eye narrowed. “You’ve got a plan. Spill it or I mail you a fuckin’ nuke.”
He couldn’t help perking up. He did love a good mushroom cloud, even if he was at ground zero. “Oh, would you really?”
“Pentious.”
He winced. “Really, it’s nothing. Only—well. After all that messs with Vox died down, Heaven’s doctors had a great many questionss for me regarding the, ah. Emotional and mental wellbeing of Hell’s denizens?” It had actually been fascinating; they’d been remarkably understanding of his anxiety and monomania, and read him the symptoms of something called autism that felt like it ought to have his picture next to it. He’d come away with a diagnosis, a new appreciation for modern psychology, and a few books to send to Charlie. “I did try to tell them we’re all quite mad, but they didn’t find that very reassuring—anyway, they sseem to believe that much of Hell’s drug problem is a result of sself-medication due to…well…being in Hell. Particularly if, as you say, you’re trying to turn your brain off.”
“So the Adderall might help me kick the rest,” she said thoughtfully. “Huh. Don’t know where I’d get decent shit, though.”
“...I could get you some.” He would. If it would help her, he’d bring her the Throne of God Himself. “If nothing else—well, I am quite stealthy.”
She snorted like a backfiring engine. “Hah! You’re a bloody mad cunt, you know that? Better be careful they don’t throw you back out.”
Oh, she thought he was joking. “I’ll try to aim for your arms,” he replied, and something in his face or tone must have tipped her off because her eye went wide.
“Pentious.” To his horror, her eye was glassy with unshed tears. “Shut up.”
Oh, no. Oh, fuck. Fuck. His words tumbled over themselves, stuttering in a way he hadn’t done since he was alive. “Shit, sssorry—that wasss a bit much of me, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean to upssset you—”
Then she scrubbed at her eye and huffed, “You’re a sappy fuckin’ bastard and I want to kiss your fuckin’ face,” and the terror faded.
“O-oh.” Emily’s little Eggs were asleep in a pile on his bed, but his room still felt empty. He clutched his phone like a lifeline, smearing a thumbprint on the glass. “You will. I know you will.”
Her voice sounded horribly small. Wavery. Uncertain. “You think so?”
“I know so.” He did. She was too stubborn to fail, even if the path was rocky. “Do you—is there anything I can do to help you right now?” Anything. I would storm this side of the gates if you wanted me to bring you soup.
Her gaze drifted away from him again. She scratched her scalp, grimaced, and muttered, “...I feel like fried garbage but I can’t sleep and if I relax I’m gonna start thinking about crack again. Could you, uh, distract me? Tell me about—I dunno. You were down here for a century before me. Must’ve gotten up to some wild shit.”
Wild shit was an exaggeration, but he still puffed himself up a little. It was only partly a mask; if she wanted to hear about his most evil schemes and diabolical deeds, who was he to deny her? (They weren’t that diabolical. But he’d still built some very nice artillery, and the turf war of ‘47 was always fun to reminisce about.) “Oh, so you desssire a tale of the great Sir Pentious?”
She giggled. She giggled, and it was like the sun rising. “Sure. Lay it on me.”
He’d never been much of a storyteller, but for her, he’d do his best.