It was a quick way to get money— easy? Not so much, but it was something that Hasil knew how to do and that he didn’t need to pretend to be someone else for. Besides, he’d been roughed up many times, what mattered to him was that he was able to provide for you, for your family— the one you’ve begun to create after he left the clan on the mountain, making his choice to be with you.

Hasil knew you didn’t like it, the fighting, but he also knew that you knew that the money he got from it was needed. The deal he’d made with Butch was proving to be quite lucrative, enough for the two of you to afford real groceries, and a bed frame that he was still getting used to sleeping in— a lot nights, he still snuck out to sleep underneath the stars, but it was getting too dangerous to do that now.

The sheriff had already warned him about leaving town, he wasn’t meant to be down there already, and participating in an illegal fight club was pushing his luck already, he’d gone to wearing a disguise when going out in the day, clothes that didn’t feel right, itching against his skin that was used to the freedom of the mountain, his hair tucked under a hat— braids, beads, and feathers tucked away like a secret.

He sat with you now, watching you in the way he hated to see you, stressed and surrounded by papers that you called bills that he was still pretty sure were illegal, why would you need to pay for water? But, he’d stopped his questions by now. the answers made even less sense.

His eyes watched the way that you flitted through the cash that you both had brought in, his from his fighting, and you from the job at the store that he wished you didn’t have to do at all. A work in progress, he reminded himself.

“Well,” he spoke after a while, knocking his knee against yours for your attention as he sat beside you on the couch, eyes darting over the papers on the coffee table before back to your side profile, “what’s it lookin’ like, darlin’, we got enough this month?”