The Night Shift: A Red Dead Redemption 2 AU

xiv. Best-laid Plans

Mia had grown accustomed to sleeping in until the absolute last moment, according herself just enough time to shower and travel to Outlaw before shift's start. But the following day she woke at dawn, eager to find Arthur and show him Charles's discovery.

She headed for the restaurant and then past it, towards the industrial district she vaguely remembered from the night of the Christmas party, back to when Arthur wavered drunk on his front step.

Mia walked a few streets of factory-style buildings until she found one with a row of buzzers, a single, pruned shrub in a pot below them. She saw the step and the door beyond, and all of the nervousness she'd suppressed during her search roared to life, her stomach roiling.

The buzzers weren't labelled, so Mia took a deep breath and pushed all of them at once, multiple times, saying "Arthur" repeatedly until it grew to a frantic yell. A few residents stuck their heads out of windows above her, first with curiosity and then annoyance, scowling at her doggedness.

A figure emerged at the other side of the door's smoky glass and then Arthur himself came through it, shrugging on a navy cardigan and looking furious. "You tryna get me evicted?" He hissed.

Mia's fingers snatched away from the buzzers and she squeezed them in her opposite hand. She'd forgotten the size of him, how he loomed over her. Arthur looked a bit wild, his hair unkempt and beard grown out, a tshirt and sweatpants on under the cardigan.

"I didn't know how else to contact you," she said in her defence, backing up against the wall and wincing as she set off a buzzer accidentally. Arthur frowned.

"So what is it?" Confronted with him, the man she'd thought about for months, she'd forgotten, especially in the face of his sour demeanour. Remembering her purpose, she pulled her phone from her pocket and prodded it to life, navigating to the page Charles had sent.

"Charles found this," she said, holding up the phone towards Arthur and swiping through the photo gallery on the screen. "It's an old ski lodge, maybe twenty minutes from him."

"And?" Arthur's face was impassive.

"It's Antler, it's your restaurant," she said, resuming her swiping, refusing to be deterred. "It's got a big service kitchen and multiple rooms, a big dining room." Arthur took the phone from her and started to page through the photos himself, which Mia took to be a good sign.

"It's all broken down," he grumbled.

"Which means it's affordable," she pressed, admitting, "It's broken down as shit but it's good, has good bones."

Arthur looked at her and then back to the screen, his eyes widening and then narrowing into an angry squint. "Affordable like hell, I don't got this kinda money."

"No one does," she acknowledged, "except Dutch. Get him to invest in you, in your idea. He wants money, you'll make it for him."

"He and I, we ain't seen things alike in some time, he'd never give me that sort of cash-"

"-Outlaw is tanking, Chef," she said, cutting him off. It was a half-truth, a speculation, cobbled together by her take home pay, which had lessened, the litany of poor reviews the restaurant had received in the last month, and the growing crease between Dutch's eyebrows. "Dutch needs you." Arthur grimaced and swayed on the spot, glancing at the door behind him. Mia felt a stone in her stomach, the idea festering within her that she was his problem.

"Look," she said quietly, determined to keep the tremble from her voice, "I don't care if you don't want to see me anymore. But you have to do this, or at least try to."

She'd looked away from Arthur, feeling like even a glimpse of him would send her bawling out into the streets, so it was from her intense staring at the shrub that she heard him reply, "You think I don't want to see you anymore?"