DISCLAIMER: These wonderful characters are all the brainchildren of Silvio Horta and I don't own a single one of them. Drat.

Chapter One

Leaving the Nest

"Careful with that, you guys!" Betty cried as the lumpy brown couch she'd found on CraigsList careened through the tiny doorway. "That thing cost me fifty bucks!"

With a resounding bang, the couch dropped to the ground, stuck partway through the door at a peculiar angle. Ignacio leaned back against the wall to catch his breath for a moment.

"Papi, are you OK?" Betty asked, suddenly concerned that moving her furniture might make her father have a heart attack. "You should sit down. I'll get you some water." She practically shoved him onto one of the cheap wooden dining chairs standing haphazardly in the center of the room. Before he could protest, she had sidled past Hilda and Justin where they sat dutifully assembling an IKEA dining table and had rushed into the kitchen to get him a drink.

"At this rate, we'll never get her moved in," Ignacio muttered, though he watched after his youngest daughter fondly.

"Or we'll die trying," Daniel peered in from the other side of the doorframe, trying his best to hide the fact that he was more than a little winded himself. "Mr. Suarez, I'm sure Justin can lug this thing with me if—"

"Yeah, I can help Daniel!" Justin exclaimed, looking up with bright eyes.

"I'm fine," Ignacio bristled, sitting up a little straighter. "I'm not a feeble old man just yet, I think I can still get a couch up a few flights of stairs."

"Seven flights of stairs," Daniel amended. "And no elevator."

A slurred voice shouting obscenities on the street far below carried up to their ears, and both men glanced towards the open window uneasily.

"This neighborhood doesn't seem very…" Ignacio trailed off, then lowered his voice. "Did you see those boys smoking on the steps downstairs?"

Oh yes, Daniel had definitely seen them. Moreover, once the Suarezes had gone inside he had taken it upon himself to politely tell said boys to get the hell away from Betty's apartment complex. And he'd had to fight back a powerful urge to throw his assistant over his shoulder, whisk her off to Soho and set her up in a penthouse with a burly security guard stationed at the front door.

"I can hear you, you know!" Betty called from the kitchen. "This neighborhood isn't any more dangerous than Jackson Heights, Papi. Ugh, where did I put the cups? Hilda, are they in one of the boxes out there?"

Hilda looked up from the assembly instructions she and Justin were boggling over and eyed the dozens of boxes stacked precariously in every corner of the room.

"Probably. You wanna come figure out which one?" Hilda said.

Betty emerged from the kitchen looking thoroughly flustered, red glasses crooked and thick black hair a tangled mess from the countless times she had run her fingers through it in agitation that day. Leaning against the doorframe, Daniel couldn't help but smile; he could almost see the gears turning in her head as she tried to figure out her next course of action. She stared at the intimidating number of boxes before her.

"Right," she muttered. "OK. We'll worry about cups later. First, the couch." And, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, she marched right over and positioned herself at the other end of the couch, ready to lift. Daniel just stared at her.

"Betty…" he began, but Ignacio beat him to the punch.

"M'ija, what are you doing? You can't lift that, let me--"

"No," Betty said firmly, despite the exhausted shrillness in her voice. "You are going to sit."

The two men looked at her like she was speaking another language. There was no way she could lift that couch. She looked so tiny just standing next to the thing that Daniel was afraid she might break if she even attempted it.

"Papi. Sit," she ordered, then turned to Daniel with businesslike brusqueness. "On three."

"Betty, I really don't think this is a good--"

"One," Betty said. Daniel sighed. She had that look in her eyes, the one that meant arguing would be little more than an exercise in listening to his own voice. He said a silent prayer that the Suarezes had a first aid kit on hand.

"Two."

They both crouched down, ready to lift.

"Three."

With a mighty heave, the couch was in the air. Betty's side dipped significantly closer to the floor than Daniel's, but she'd at least gotten it up. Her face was red and she irritably blew a loose strand of hair out of her eyes.

"Betty, are you--?"

"Just move it!" she cried, her voice strained. Daniel shut up and obeyed. It took a bit of back-and-forth work to get the thing through the doorway, which was just slightly too narrow, but soon enough they dropped it in the center of the living room with a triumphant thud.

Betty collapsed onto the couch.

"I think I broke my back," she groaned.

Daniel and Ignacio were beside her in an instant.

"Seriously?" Daniel asked. She rolled her eyes.

"No," her voice was tired but she smiled teasingly up at him, black hair framing her face in a sort of psychotic halo. He found himself grinning stupidly back at her, an embarrassing habit he seemed to have developed of late.

"Do you need ice, m'ija?" Ignacio asked, taking her arm and helping her sit upright. "Does anything hurt?"

But before she could answer, there was a great crash from the other side of the room. All three of their heads whipped around just in time to see the nearly-finished table collapse to the floor in a thousand pieces.

"Eeee!" Justin squealed, scrambling away and clutching his hands over his head as though the table were going to chase him down.

"Ay, this is impossible!" Hilda cried, standing amidst scattered wooden parts and tiny screws. She crumpled the instructions and hurled them to the ground in frustration. Finally convinced he was safe from falling bits of table, Justin peered through his hands at the others with a long-suffering expression.

"Hilda, it's IKEA," Betty said. "How hard can it be?"

"Oh, so that's how it is, huh? OK then, if you know so much why don't you put the damn thing together?" Hilda said, stalking away from the pathetic pile of dining room table and throwing herself into the nearest chair, crossing her arms sulkily across her chest.

Betty, looking tired and cross, opened her mouth to respond.

"You know what I think we need?" Daniel jumped in. "Pizza. It's almost nine."

"Oh my gosh!" Betty exclaimed, hands flying to her mouth in horror. "I'm so sorry! I didn't realize it was so late. You guys must be starving. I'll order us something. Where did I put my phone…?"

Daniel shook his head, pulling his Blackberry out of his pocket.

"Nah, don't worry. My treat," he said.

"Daniel, it's really OK, I've got cash…" Betty said as she searched amongst the boxes for her purse. "Somewhere around here."

Daniel just shook his head, smiling. It was silly, maybe, but he loved buying things for Betty's family. Some big and some small--a Christmas tree the first year he'd known them, a bottle of wine when he was invited for dinner, plane tickets to Mexico, pizza to keep them from tearing each other's heads off after moving Betty into a new apartment--but he always felt good about it afterwards. There weren't a lot of things he felt he could offer the Suarezes in return for their endless kindness towards him, and occasionally picking up the tab was the least he could do.

"I want one without cheese," Justin declared. "And just tomatoes on top. I've had way too many calories this week."

"Nuh-uh, don't even start," Hilda said, giving her son a teasing shove. "You're the skinniest one here."

"Yeah, could I get two large pizzas?" Daniel said, balancing the phone against his shoulder while he fished out his credit card. "One with tomato and no cheese, and could the other one be a meat lover's with extra cheese? And a cheese-stuffed crust, too. Yeah." Betty shook her head at him with a laugh and he responded with a roguish wink. Just because Justin wanted to avoid the tastiness offered by extra calories didn't mean the rest of them had to suffer.

By the time the pizza had arrived and been eagerly devoured it was after 10:00 p.m. and everyone looked half-dead, but significantly more cheerful than they had an hour prior. Even as he struggled to keep from nodding off in his chair, Daniel had to congratulate himself on subduing the cranky family with greasy food. Crisis averted.

"OK, I don't think we can do any more tonight," Betty said after taking a look at her dozing family and friend. "You guys seriously deserve some sleep after all this. I'll see you in the morning?"

Those words snapped Ignacio out of his exhausted stupor.

"What? You aren't staying at home tonight?" he asked. Daniel suspected he was thinking about those sketchy kids on the front stoop again. So was Daniel.

"My bed's here already," Betty smiled, though it looked a bit more hesitant than her usual metallic grin. "Papi, I'll be fine." She walked over to her father and gently kissed his cheek. Ignacio took a deep breath and made a pitiful attempt at a smile.

"Well, we'll be here bright and early to help you unpack," he said. "I'll cook us all breakfast. We've got to make sure that kitchen works."

"Are you gonna come tomorrow too, Daniel?" Justin asked, eyes wide and hopeful. Daniel glanced sideways at Betty and shrugged nonchalantly, though he knew full well there was nowhere else he'd rather be.

"Sure, I suppose," he said. "Hey, let me call a car for you guys."

Ignacio and Betty both started to protest, but Hilda's eyes lit up and Justin let out a high-pitched squeal of pure joy. It was decided then.

As he and Betty's family made their way towards the stairs, Betty caught Daniel by the arm and held him back behind the others for a moment.

"Hey," she said. "Thanks. We couldn't have gotten all that stuff up here on our own." She looked tired and a little sad. Thinking about Henry, maybe. If Grubstick had still been in the picture, he would have been the one hauling second hand furniture up seven flights of stairs instead of Daniel. She probably wouldn't have bothered Daniel with it if he hadn't been the only option.

But he tried not to think about that.

"It's really no big deal," he said, then noticed that her face looked a little too pale for his liking. "Are you going to be OK?"

"What?" she started as though her mind had been somewhere else entirely, then waved him off. "Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I dunno," he said, glancing at the peeling paint on the hallway walls. "If you need anything, call me."

"Yeah," she managed a timid little smile. God, she looked so vulnerable. How could he possibly leave her here in a building that he had convinced himself was filled with drunks and weirdos? Not that he had much choice. Somehow he doubted that Betty would approve of him camping out on her doormat all night.

"OK," he said. "'Night, then."

"'Night."

It was ridiculous, he knew, to worry about Betty spending the night alone in that apartment. She was 24 years old. It was about time she got her own place; he'd moved into his first apartment when he was 19, after all. Of course, his first apartment had been a luxury loft in Cambridge courtesy of Mommy and Daddy Meade. But still. She needed this. It would be good for her.

So why couldn't he stop worrying?

He worried all the way home, watching the lights of Manhattan through the town car's tinted windows.

He worried while he greeted the doorman and rode the elevator up to his loft.

He worried while he stripped down to boxers and sank gratefully into bed.

He worried while he lay staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep because he kept wondering how Betty was holding up on her first night away from her family in her entire life. Her first night completely alone.

He worried until he finally fell into a fitful sleep.

But the real fear didn't set in until he was jarred out of his dreams at 2:00 a.m. by the sound of his phone ringing. Only half conscious, he reached for it and glanced at the screen.

It was Betty.

"Hello?" he said groggily.

"Daniel?" her voice was higher-pitched than usual. "I need you."

He sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake.

"Betty? What's wrong? Are you OK?" he was already out of bed, tugging on his jeans and wrinkled Harvard t-shirt.

"Can you get over here? Fast?" she whimpered.

"I'm on my way," he said. "Betty, what's--"

She shrieked. There was a crash.

And the line went dead.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The lack of new episodes is driving me a bit stir-crazy, so I thought I'd start up a new fic to keep myself sane. Please review and let me know your thoughts, feelings and obscure ponderings. Reviews make me squee for joy and inspire me to write new chapters faster. ;-)