Sabrina headed into Dorian’s with the hellpuppies trailing after her. They might not have been allowed at the apartment, but that hadn’t stopped the little beasts from following her everywhere else that they could. Much to Salem’s chagrin. She quickly scanned the place, nodding to the people she knew before heading back to where Nick’s office was located. While she knew he wasn’t scheduled to be there that day, Sabrina had known that she’d find him there when he hadn’t been at the apartment when she’d gotten back from finishing what she needed to officially enroll in the regular university for the year.
“I thought you had today off,” Sabrina told him as she strode into the office, the trio of hellhounds following her inside. They had plans to head to Beketh later that day and introduce the puppies to the coven. One of them would eventually be going to join the coven in another month or so when they could be away from their mom.
"Do I really have any day off?" Nick asked, looking up from his paperwork, but he immediately set it aside and smiled at Sabrina. He needed to register for classes for the fall at the University of Unseen Arts, but he wasn't sure how many he wanted to take and was putting off that decision for as long as he could.
"Hey puppies," he said, greeting the hellhounds who were exploring. "Have you decided what to do with Lucifer?" He had to smirk at the name, and at the relationship Mazikeen and Lucifer had that they each named hellhounds after each other. The demon's disappearance had left them with an extra puppy.
Sabrina arched a brow at him. Yes, yes he did have days off if he actually took them, but she'd bring that up again in a few minutes. She sat down in the chair in front of the desk, giving the paperwork a pointed look before glancing back at him. She couldn't really speak to how much paperwork there was with running a business. Her cousin ran Cerberus, even if her name was technically on the paperwork there too.
"Pandemonium has the room so he can just stay there unless like dad wants him." She'd need to ask Lucifer about that later, but it wasn't like the pup needed to be given off right away. His sister might like having him around to annoy anyway.
"You're still up for going to Beketh today, right?"
Right. That was today. Nick was losing track of things occurring outside of their apartment or Dorian's, and had been working pretty much non-stop. The most notable exception had been when his phone had dinged with the last disappearance notifications and Zelda's name had been on there.
At that point he'd immediately left work to find Sabrina.
But other than that, the day to day operations of Dorian's kept him busy and kept his focus away from drifting to his life back home, or lack thereof. "Yeah, I'm still up for it," he said, trying not to sound like he'd completely forgotten about it.
At this point, Sabrina was pretty sure she was going to need to start filling out his social card going forward. Otherwise she didn’t think he’d manage to do anything besides head to work and hang out with her at their apartment. She knew it was a coping thing and while Nick had never been as social and involved in everything as she had, he’d been doing more than he was now. It was difficult to get involved in things though, she understood that too. Maybe she could see if Roz or Hazel or his friend Serefin could snag him for lunch things every so often.
She also knew nothing was really going to go back to how it had been. It couldn’t. Not with what they knew about their lack of lives back home. Figuring out how to live new ones here with that knowledge was going to take time.
“You trust the people you hired, don’t you?” Sabrina asked him after a few more seconds, gently trying to steer into the conversation.
"Oh yeah," Nick replied. "There's just a lot of paperwork and …" He gestured vaguely to the mess on his desk.
To be fair, he worked mostly during the day. At night, he was still at Dorian's, but focused less on work and more on having a drink or two while being social. But where he would have previously fed off of that, now it more often than not left him drained. Which was tiring and annoying. And every time he tried to find some semblance of normalcy it seemed it moved further away from him.
He'd have thought it would have been a relief, no longer keeping secrets from Sabrina. But somehow he was also avoiding her more. "Are you ready to go to Beketh then?"
She shook her head. “No.” They still had time to get there and could easily teleport over if needed.
“But you do that during the day, don’t you? And you hired enough people to be here at night so you don’t need to be.” She leaned back in the chair as she started putting things slowly together. “You’re still here though. At night. Until last call most days. Closing this place up and then you’re right back to it the next day.”
There was never a break for him. Not really. Not that she could see at least. “I remember you said you’d do it the first two weeks to make sure they were all doing what you wanted, but it's been over a month now.”
"Good thing I like what I do then," Nick replied. He knew what Sabrina was getting at, but he was ignoring her. "And if we're not leaving yet, do you want to get a drink at the bar?" Nicholas Scratch was becoming a master of avoidance.
“Do you though? Because I don’t think you do.” She crossed her arms and sunk further into the chair. “And no, I don’t want a drink. I want to actually talk to you because we promised each other that we were going to do that.”
"Well I would hope I liked it, Spellman. Because I just put everything into this and I want to make sure it works."
But she was right. They had agreed to talk, and even though he really didn't want to, he also wasn't going to go back to where they had been before. They'd been through too much now.
"I thought I was alright," Nick said, avoiding looking at her. "Knowing everything that happened, sessions with my therapist, you finding out and not having to keep it a secret anymore. Turns out I'm not. And this is one of the ways I can avoid thinking about it. Because at least you died a hero, Sabrina. Not that you should have had to. But…"
Her stubborn expression softened at that and she leaned forward, resting her elbows against his desk. She wasn't surprised that what he'd done was eating away at him. Especially because there wasn't a way to go back and change it.
"I don't think being alright is in the cards for either of us for a long time, Nick." Not with all that they had endured. "Is it helping to avoid thinking about it though? Because you don't seem happy doing this." She gestured around the room. "Like I think you are sometimes, especially at the start when you opened and during those first few weeks, but it feels a little like you're punishing yourself for what you did now."
She didn't like seeing him like this or knowing that he was thinking so badly about himself. But Sabrina wasn't sure how to help him with this either. "And like I know you're angry with yourself for what you did," she started, struggling for what to say. Their meeting up in the Sweet Hereafter still didn't sit well with her. She didn't understand why she'd reacted as she had. "But...I don't know."
"It's only been a month," Nick pointed out. "The numbers are looking good, but this is far from sustainable yet. Which is one of the things I knew I was getting into when I took it on, and part of the reason it took so long."
He sighed. "I'm still going to counseling. But I thought I was over it and well… I'm not."
He shrugged. "This helps. You don't need to worry about me."
“I’m always going to worry about you, Nick. It’s part of the whole relationship package.” But alright. She wouldn’t push this just yet. There really wasn’t any sort of mapped out trajectory for how long it was supposed to take them to work through their deaths. Two or three months was definitely not going to have healed much.
“And I’m going to steal you for a date night once a week starting next week,” Sabrina added before pushing herself up off the chair. “We picked that street to live on so we could try out all of the restaurants together.” They hadn’t been able to make much of a dent in them yet.
"Food is an acceptable form of distraction, Spellman," Nick said, his grin genuine as he thought about the different restaurants they had yet to try. She was right, that was why they picked their place. "I mean, if it wasn't for the food, that place with the troll portraits was always an option."
She made a face at that. “Don’t even joke about that.” Knowing Vallo it could still somehow make it their apartment. Lucifer barked, reminding Sabrina that they were there and where they were supposed to be going.
She held out a hand to Nick. “I’m ready now if you are.”
"Let's go," NIck said, standing from his desk and taking Sabrina's hand. He was ready to leave work behind and spend the day with her.