Page 40 of Fear
Tobias still stuck close to his side as they went through the door, and Jake rested his hands on Tobias’s shoulders as they stood in the back of the shop. Focusing on breathing slow and even, Tobias made himself look around instead of staring at the floor. Some reals stood in line before the counter, behind which were shelves of what Tobias supposed were donuts. They looked like delicate bagels with different colored toppings and textures. Other reals sat at small tables, eating the donuts with their fingers and drinking from white paper cups.
When they reached the counter, the young woman behind it flashed a smile, eyes flickering past Tobias to Jake. “What can I get for you?”
“We’ll take a dozen mixed,” Jake said. As she rang it up, a man next to her turned to start filling a box, and Jake dropped his mouth to Tobias’s ear. “Do you want coffee or milk?”
Tobias shivered, feeling Jake’s breath over his ear and neck, aware of how close Jake was behind him, hands still on his shoulders. “Milk’s fine,” he whispered, and Jake squeezed his shoulders.
Jake got a coffee for himself, and they took their drinks and the donuts to an empty corner table with a window. Tobias tried not to think about all the eyes that might see him, instead focusing on the box Jake had just opened. Jake pulled one out of the middle that was a light yellow with a crumbly glaze of white sugar that stuck to his fingers. He tore it in half and offered Tobias the bigger section. It was warm and softer than a bagel.
When Tobias bit into it, he expected something bagel-like, but the flavors hit him from the tip of his tongue to the back of his throat: the rush of sugar, the sweet burst of a flavor that he could never have imagined. His senses couldn’t quite believe that anything so good, so real, could be happening to him. He had to close his eyes while the sugary softness swept from his mouth to his stomach and somehow through the whole rest of his body. When he came back to himself and looked up, blinking dazedly, he saw Jake grinning even wider, like he was barely containing laughter—but not at Tobias.
“Pretty good, huh?” Jake asked, licking his fingers clean of the white sugar flakes.
Tobias waved the last piece of donut. He wished he had words that could remotely describe the sensations from just that bite, or the bright dazzling feeling of lightness inside him, like a kind of happiness that might have him floating away, if not for the surety of Jake’s grounded presence. Jake, who carried him through the worst of the real trials, then gave him the best parts of the real world as a reward for Tobias’s bravery.
Chapter Eight
They spent the rest of the day at home, but it felt better than the last few days. Maybe it was because, for the first time since Jake had realized just how badly those bastards had messed up Tobias, he felt confident about some things. He could tease Tobias (carefully) and knew that he would get a small smile if he was obvious enough about it. He could leave the house for a run—damn, it felt good to be moving again—and Tobias wouldn’t spontaneously combust in the time it took him to circle the block three or four times at an easy jog. And Tobias liked donuts and learning things about the real world, including stuff it had never occurred to Jake to explain before.
“So, he puts on a bat costume . . . to fight crime in the night?”
Jake grinned at him, flipping the grilled cheese and ham sandwich in the frying pan. “Yup. And he’s incredibly badass. Of all the superheroes, Batman’s the best.”
Tobias absorbed that, leaning against the counter next to him. He looked perplexed but thoughtful. “Would you ever dress up as a bat to go hunting?”
Jake sighed. “Nah, don’t have the tech for it. I always thought that a grappling gun would be super cool. But without that and, like, the mask, I might as well stick with the denim and plaid uniform. Easier to blend in anywhere, you know? And besides, I don’t know that the bat schtick would work anywhere but Gotham—that’s a made-up city, but it’s based on New York.”
Jake had belatedly realized he ought to brush up Tobias’s comic book knowledge, since Tobias had already read the X-Men volume a bunch of times and seemed to enjoy it. They’d covered Superman, Wonder Woman, and Spiderman before getting to Batman. Tobias was fascinated by the colorful world of mutants, aliens, and billionaires that fought baddies long before the world knew the supernatural type of monster was real. When Jake had tried to casually check that Tobias knew none of it was real, he’d gotten a look somewhere between pity and concern, which for some reason made him grin like a lunatic.
After dinner, Tobias asked hesitantly, “Will you be l-looking for a hunt? Anytime soon, I mean? I’ll be okay—I mean, you don’t have to stay home for me.”
Jake paused, mind whirring. In the months he’d spent finding a place in Boulder and waiting for that damn call, he’d assumed he’d take a break from hunting after he got Tobias. He hadn’t put much thought into when he’d get back to hunting. “Boulder’s pretty clean, I’m keeping an eye on things.”
Tobias was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know m-much about . . . never mind.”
Jake tilted his head back, catching Tobias’s gaze. “Hey, you got questions, I want you to ask them.”
Tobias fidgeted with the napkin, brow knit, and then tried again. “It all seems—the donuts and meals and everything you keep g-giving me—I, I don’t know how much money it is, but I don’t want y-you to, if it’s costing you too much—”
Then it clicked. “No way. First off, dude, I’d rob Fort Knox for you. Second, I’m not about to run out of money, don’t sweat. The ASC sends me a chunk of change every month.”
Tobias’s eyes widened, and Jake hurried on. “It’s not ’cause of you, it’s—they do it for everybody who signs up for this life, all the active hunters. It’s not hard to register after you get your license. Then if you report your monster kills—missions, I mean—a few times a year and stay in the network, they keep you on salary, and it ain’t bad. The Dixons are good for one thing, at least. And the ASC money is better in our pocket than theirs.” That was something Leon had always said, though Jake was suddenly unsure how it would sound to Tobias.
But Tobias just nodded, seemingly unbothered. Maybe even a little reassured.
“LAUGHING GOAT COFFEEHOUSE,” Jake repeated. “No shit. That’s what it’s actually called.”
Tobias blinked at him over the top of his new book: Oxford History of Medieval Europe. “Why?”
“That is a good question.” Jake sat back, dropping the well-worn brochure map of Boulder. It felt like he had been going through the thing with a fine-toothed comb for hours, trying to figure out where their next exploratory adventure would lead them. They should probably go back to the grocery store—the orange juice had disappeared so fast, Jake wondered if maybe he had been pouring more down Tobias’s throat than he should have, but vitamin C was good for you, wasn’t it?—but Jake didn’t think either of them were up to that at the moment. Another restaurant sounded like the best bet. “What do you say we go find out?”
Tobias hesitated, lowering the brightly colored book slowly to his lap. Jake knew he still wasn’t completely sold on leaving the apartment. Sometimes Jake just wanted to agree that they didn’t have to go anywhere, but he knew the best thing for them both was to go out again and again, getting a little better at it each time, until Tobias really truly believed that the normal people out and about on their day were not going to hurt him, hate him, or even butt in front of him in line at a stupid coffee shop. So that was the mission: find places with stuff that Tobias had never seen before (hell, Jake had never been to a coffeehouse that featured goats, laughing or otherwise) so that Jake would have something to delight and distract him from whatever made him nervous.
“Sure,” Tobias said at last, the would-be casual tone still forced, but it still made Jake glow with pride. He reached over to rest his hand on Tobias’s ankle, and a smile bloomed over Tobias’s face.
“I think you’ll like it. It’s downtown, we passed it when we were circling around last Sunday, remember? It had that purple-and-green canopy and the little round tables outside.”
Tobias nodded. “I remember. On Pearl Street. It looked . . . nice.”
