After his kiss with Caden—after Caden had noped out of HQ following the kiss—Joey honestly couldn’t figure out what he was feeling. On the one hand, it had probably been the best first kiss Joey had ever had, since it wasn’t just a Grindr hookup and it had been a long time coming. On the other hand, despite being the one to instigate the kiss, Caden had straight-up bolted away.
So: confusion and hurt at the rejection, mild elation at finally, if briefly, having an outlet for Joey’s crush, and a smattering of anger that Caden had shut him out again. Because Caden did shut him out after that. On gigs together, Joey would avoid saying anything to Caden, and Caden spoke even less than usual, leaving Frankie and Indira to make up the difference. It was tense and awkward to the point where even Indira noticed and commented.
“Did something die?” asked Indira in the minivan on the way to an assignment, and Joey wanted to answer, Yeah. Hope. Instead he said unconvincingly,
“Everything’s fine.”
Snorting, Indira returned to her conversation with Frankie.
Out of the corner of his eye, Joey spotted Caden looking at him mournfully and wanted to shout, You did this! You don’t get to act all upset!
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it—Joey didn’t have too much time to dwell on failed romantic endeavors, considering business suddenly kicked into high gear. Whereas before they’d have maybe 2 or 3 gigs a day, now there were up to 5 or 6 to deal with. Chicago was abruptly experiencing a boom in supernatural infestations, with no cause that any of them could see. Mac put in a call to Home Office to see if they had any ideas, but after two hours alternately on hold and speaking to clueless representatives, had nothing to show for it.
The extra activity meant extra cash for all of them, but there was no time to spend it. Joey found himself dragging his ass out of bed at 6am and not collapsing back into it until midnight. The whole team was sleep-deprived to the point where they didn’t even chat on the way to and from gigs, just sat staring into nothing like zombies while Frankie drove the van seemingly in her sleep.
Two weeks into this and Frankie had started sniping at everyone, with Indira snapping back, and Caden snapping one-word answers to questions. For Joey’s part, he’d retreated inside his own head, drifting in and out of conversations and often not even recognizing if someone was speaking to him. Mac, still mostly hanging back at HQ, was less affected by the general malaise, but with the terrible atmosphere clouding over the team when they regrouped, would simply bark orders at them. No more smiles or jokes.
19 days after Caden had kissed Joey then run away—not that Joey was counting or anything—was the first time someone got hurt on a gig. The day started inauspiciously, with Caden actually approaching Joey instead of just watching him with a hangdog look. They were waiting outside an honest-to-God hat shop for Indira and Frankie to finish questioning the owner about the three (three!) gremlins wearing hats and trashing the back room when Caden spoke up.
“Have you lost weight?” he asked Joey softly, sounding concerned.
Uncomfortable, Joey shifted, crossing his arms and looking away. “Could probably stand to lose a few pounds.”
There was a pause. “You shouldn’t say that. You’re fine the way you—”
“Don’t talk to me,” said Joey abruptly and after a beat heard Caden step away. He immediately regretted his outburst—that wasn’t him, he didn’t snap at people! But what did Caden honestly expect? As if it was okay to just come over all caring after blatantly rejecting Joey the way he had. Total dick move, Joey thought to distract himself from the sick ball of hurt nestled under his ribs, even close to three weeks after the event in question.
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After another few minutes of frosty silence standing in the chill November air, the bell on the shop door rang and Frankie beckoned the two of them inside to deal with the gremlins.
Once they’d handled the gremlins it was onto a fire station with an unidentified monster inside. Indira had grabbed the El back to HQ to cover the antiques shop, so it was just Frankie, Joey, and Caden.
“Yeah, we don’t know what it is,” explained a firefighter named Len as they stood outside the closed garage doors. Behind the closest door they could hear scratching and unearthly bellows of whatever-it-was. “Chief said to call you. We kinda need to get back in there in case we need to, you know. Fight fires.”
Through the fog in his brain Joey vaguely observed that Len was just as handsome as the firefighters on those calendars. Were all firefighters this handsome? Did they have to send in headshots with their applications?
“We’ll take care of it,” Frankie told Len, though her dark circles under everyone’s eyes were probably less than reassuring, considering Len’s dubious look. “There a back entrance?” Frankie asked Len, and Len obligingly led them to the back door.
Once Len had disappeared back around the corner, Joey assumed the position at the door, ready to peek through and evaluate the situation. This had become standard procedure due to Joey’s almost encyclopedic knowledge of the threats they faced. Frankie silently counted down using her fingers, and once she pointed at him, Joey swung the door open and stepped inside the station. He crept down a hallway toward the unnatural sounds in the garage and peered around the corner. For a brief moment he just took in the sight of the fire trucks and the equipment hanging on the walls, and the fire pole (cool, they actually had those?), before the creature appeared from behind one of the trucks.
It only took a few seconds for Joey to identify their quarry, which hadn’t spotted him, so he hurried quietly back to the door and bolted through. “You won’t believe this,” he told the others once the door was shut behind him. “It’s a chupacabra.”
“The hell?” One of Frankie’s eyebrows shot up. “You sure?”
“Scrawny body, big canines, tufts of fur sticking up,” Joey confirmed.
“What’s one of those doing this far inside the city? That’s a country beast.”
“Yeah, no goats here.” Joey shook his head. “Unless the firefighters are keeping some.”
Frankie said, “So how do we fight it?”
Joey reluctantly turned to face Caden. “Caden, can you do illusions?”
“Yeah,” he replied. Great, another one-word answer.
Snapping her finger, Frankie pointed at Joey. “Smart. We need a goat.”
Caden nodded. “Okay.”
“Caden will distract it, Frankie, you get in with your machete, and I’ll Box it. Good?” asked Joey. It occurred to him briefly that even two weeks ago he wouldn’t have thought to tell the team what to do. Now he simply did it automatically, and the others listened. Weird. “Caden, you first.”
Without another word, Caden stepped forward to the door and opened it, sneaking into the hallway. Frankie followed behind, unsheathing her machete, with Joey bringing up the rear, making sure to close the door behind him. It wouldn’t do to have a chupacabra roaming the streets.
By the time the door was closed, Caden was already drawing up a spell with his hands at the end of the hallway. As Joey watched, an illusory goat faded into existence by the fire pole at the back of the garage, and let out a bleat.
With a scraping of claws against concrete the chupacabra appeared from behind the farthest fire truck from them, letting out an inhuman howl and throwing itself at the goat.
“Frankie, now!” said Joey, but she had already lunged forward and sliced at the chupacabra, her forward motion already carrying her past the creature.
Joey was hot on her heels, skidding to an unsteady stop a few feet from the chupacabra and moving his fingers to open the Box. But before he could flip the little switch the chupacabra, which had realized the goat wasn’t real, turned to Joey and began to charge. Its side was dripping purple blood from where Frankie had slashed it.
Stumbling backwards, Joey fumbled at the side of the Box, trying with sweaty fingers to frantically flip it open before the beast reached him, when Caden suddenly appeared in front of him facing the chupacabra. Caden threw up his hands toward the creature, which crashed to a halt—
But not before its jaws reached Caden’s hand and closed with a crunch.