Re-Awakening: I Became a Pay To Win Boss Monster

Chapter 1037: A Little

The light had gotten a little brighter by the time either of them moved, and even then it was just Rael shifting his arm to rest behind his head, giving her more room without fully pulling away.

Gaia didn’t say anything about it. She laid there a little longer, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet of the room and the distant sounds of whatever was happening outside it.

It was strange, she thought, how comfortable this was. She had spent a very long time in spaces that were entirely her own, filled with silence she had chosen herself, and she had never once thought of it as lacking anything.

This was different. Someone else’s warmth beside her. Someone else’s breathing in the room. The silence felt fuller somehow, which didn’t make much sense, but she wasn’t in the mood to interrogate it.

Rael stretched at some point, arms going above his head, then settled again. She glanced at him sideways and found him looking at the ceiling with that expression he wore most of the time — easy and unhurried, like the world was mildly interesting and he had no strong feelings about any of it.

“Hungry?” he asked, without looking at her.

“A little,” she said.

He reached over and pulled up the shop interface, scrolling through it with the ease of someone who’d spent a genuinely unreasonable amount of time in there. He tossed something her way without looking and it landed in her lap — a small wrapped thing, still warm. She opened it. Soft bread, a little sweet. Simple enough that it had no business being as good as it was. She took a bite and said nothing.

“Good?” Rael asked.

“It’s fine.”

He laughed quietly and went back to the shop.

Eventually he produced something more substantial — two portions of something warm — and handed one across before settling back against the headboard with his own. They ate like that, side by side, without much conversation. He wasn’t the kind of person who talked to fill space, and she’d spent enough time around people who did to know how much of a difference that made.

“We should figure out the next step today,” she said, when she was nearly done.

“Yeah,” Rael agreed, in a tone that suggested he’d already considered it and wasn’t stressed about it.

“Which means actually getting up.”

“It does,” he said, finishing his food and setting the container aside. Then he did nothing else for another long moment.

She looked at him. He looked at her.

“You’re not in any rush either,” she said.

“I never said I was.” He rolled his neck slightly. “We’re allowed to take five minutes. Nothing’s on fire.”

“As far as we know.”

“As far as we know,” he agreed, cheerfully unbothered, and she exhaled through her nose in something that was almost a laugh and looked away before he could notice.

He probably noticed anyway.

She was the one to get up first. She sat up, pushed her hair back from her face where it had gone messy from sleeping, and swung her legs over the side of the bed with the quiet resolution of someone who had decided that lying there thinking wasn’t going to accomplish anything further. Rael watched her, then got up himself without making a production of it.

She went to the wardrobe and scanned through it. More variety than she’d expected. She pulled something out, considered it, put it back, tried another. Behind her she could hear Rael moving around the room at his own pace, neither crowding her nor pointedly ignoring her.

She picked something and turned around to put it on. Rael was sitting on the edge of the bed looking at the shop interface with his chin resting in one hand.

He didn’t snap his fingers this time.

She noted it, dressed in peace, and said nothing about it.

“There’s a lounge on the floor below,” Rael said, not looking up. “We could go down there to figure out the plan, if you want a change of scenery.”

“Is there food?”

“The interface says there’s a bar. So probably.”

“Then fine.”

He looked up at that, and the smile was there again, small and easy. She turned away from it and went to deal with her hair in the mirror, because it genuinely needed attending to and that was the only reason.

The lounge opened up into a wide, low-ceilinged space with large windows along one wall looking out over old growth — deeply, extensively green, the kind that suggested long rain. A few other people were already there. A pair near the windows talking quietly. Someone alone at the bar. The atmosphere was easy.

Rael picked a table near the windows but not too near and dropped into a chair. She sat across from him and looked out at the green for a moment before looking back.

A server appeared and Rael ordered without much deliberation. When the drinks arrived they were warm, which was what she’d wanted without having said so. She wrapped both hands around the cup.

“So,” Rael said.

“So,” she replied.

“Next steps.”

She laid it out in broad strokes — what she knew, what she suspected, the gaps that needed addressing before anything real could be done. He listened without interrupting, eyes on her the whole time, and she had the sense he was actually processing it rather than waiting for his turn.

When she finished he was quiet a moment, then said, “The second part is the issue. The first part we can move on quickly. The second part has too many variables.”

“I know. I’ve been sitting with that.”

“Any leads on narrowing them down?”

“One or two. Nothing solid.”

He nodded and picked up his drink. “What about Nyx? She tends to know things she shouldn’t.”

“It’s possible. What would you be asking her?”

“Just whether she’s heard anything moving in the relevant direction.” He paused. “She mentioned Lilith earlier. If Lilith’s having problems in the Demon Realm, that might be connected.”

Gaia looked at him. “You made that connection just now?”

“I made it last night. I was waiting for the right moment.”

She held his gaze, then looked back out the window. “You’re more deliberate than you look.”

“Most people think I’m just coasting.”

“Most people are probably half right.”

He laughed — a real one — and she felt the corner of her mouth pull slightly before she could stop it, and covered it by taking a sip of her drink.

“I want to check something before we move on the first part,” she said. “There’s a place I know. A few hours if we’re efficient. There’s something there that might narrow the second part.”

“Something you left there?”

“Something left there a long time ago. Not by me.” She paused. “Think of it as a record. One that doesn’t get passed around.”

He accepted that without pushing for more. “Today?”

“Tomorrow would be better. Today I’d rather —” she stopped.

“Today you’d rather not,” he supplied, easily.

“Yes.”

“That’s fine. One more day here isn’t going to change anything already in motion.”

She nodded and looked back at the green. Neither of them said anything for a while. The lounge carried on around them — low murmur of other guests, something being set down at the bar, morning light doing what it does when it’s properly underway.

She was aware, quietly, that this was a good moment. Not remarkable. Just a still morning with someone she was becoming, against most of her prior expectations, genuinely comfortable with. Warm drink in her hands. Green through the window. Nothing on fire.

She’d had considerably worse mornings.

“What are you thinking?” Rael asked.

“That this is fine,” she said.

He looked at her with something warm in his expression. “High praise.”

“From me,” she said, “it is.”

He smiled, and she looked back at the window, and the morning stretched on, and neither of them was in any rush to be anywhere else.

“Another round?” Rael asked, nodding toward her empty cup.

“Yes,” she said.

He signaled without fuss. She looked at the trees.

The second round lasted longer than the first.

At some point Rael had acquired a small plate of something from the bar — she wasn’t sure when, she’d been looking out the window — and he slid it between them on the table without comment. She took one without looking. It was good. She took another.

“You keep feeding me,” she said.

“You keep accepting it.”

She didn’t have a response to that, so she let it go.

The lounge had filled up a little since they’d arrived. Not crowded, but less empty. A group near the far wall that sounded like they were debating something with more energy than the morning probably warranted.

A woman at the bar who had replaced the man who had been there before, nursing something amber and reading what looked like a very long document. The server moved between tables with practiced ease, not lingering.