Who: Cerise and Kellan What: Cerise does not appreciate being threatened. Where: Kellan's motel room When: Recently - right after this. Warnings/Rating: Swearing, drugs, post-explosion injuries being further injured.
If Cerise had been clear headed enough to consult with the idea of illusion, she might have picked up a bottle of cheap bourbon on the way over. Some bargain basement shit, the kind of liquor that Kellan seemed to prefer because it was the only thing close enough to battery acid that his burned out tastebuds could recognize any longer. No surprise - he was, for all intents and purposes, a walking ashtray. As it was, Cerise was too busy fuming and seething on her cab ride over to his motel to remember that she was supposedly bringing by something to drink. It wasn't anything to worry about, as its not like Kellan was going to have much of a chance to assess her lack of gifts before she knocked his fucking teeth in.
Whether Kellan recognized it or not, telling Cerise that he was going to throw her under the bus if he got caught(for his own shorthanded mistakes) was a threat. It certainly wasn't something that she was just going to sit there and nod pleasantly along with like some battered housewife accustomed to daily doses of bullshit and injustice. Apparently Kellan forgot just who the fuck he was dealing with, granted it had been a solid decade since they'd actually worked together. Some of those instances came with vivid recollection of saving his life, at least twice.. which apparently counted for nothing now. She was a few years out of practice when it came to throwing her weight around, but that didn't matter by the time she got up to his door and knocked ever so gently. She was drawing the line in the sand now. It probably didn't help that she was high as a kite.
It seemed to be taking him awhile, or the drugs fueled her with the impatience of a toddler with koolaid in their veins, so she knocked again. Monotonous thud, thud, thud. She might not have been kicking in his door, but that was only because she was saving all of that energy for kicking half of the life out of him.
The threat wasn’t something he regretted, really, but it was something he half-wished he hadn’t spat out. It was true enough but it was said in one of the moments when the pain surged up through a breath - fine, thin cracks that ran through his bones, making any attempt to try and soothe the aches of the burns away with a cigarette harder and harder to do. It took a while to ebb and in that time, he lashed out at her, got really angry at the way Cerise was deriding and insulting him. Yes, he’d fucked up. He didn’t need any more reminders of that, not when his bandaged hands and bruised chest reminded him with every twitch. Has-been sort of stung, considering the time between jobs.
It wasn’t a good week. The only consolation was that Dean wasn’t still there, deriding his every word and move and trying to make the pain even more unbearable - though the replacement for that wasn’t exactly comforting. The silence in his head was the kind you picked up from a caged animal; whoever was in there was waiting, restless, and mad as hell. It exacerbated his own anger. Made it easier to tell someone to their … face … that he wasn’t going to go down quietly.
Kellan probably should have been more concerned about the fact that Cerise decided to come over so readily, but through the pain and the nicotine withdrawal he wasn’t thinking. It took him a good five minutes to actually stand up before the first knock came, and by the time he got to the door she was knocking harder.
“I’m fucking coming,” he grumbled, unlocking the door and opening it enough to see her. She looked like hell, but he probably looked worse. Thin red first-degree burns, bandages around the worst of the lot, a tense, tentative care to the way he moved - and it was all his own damn fault, which made it that much more disgruntling.
Honestly, it was something to be expected of him. Saving his own skin was the only thing he was good at aside from setting fires(a talent which was seriously fucking questionable now). So if Cerise had caught wind of Kellan taking a ride down to the police station, she would have been on the next bus out of Las Vegas before Circus Circus had a chance to switch out their stage acts. Of course he would give her up in a heartbeat! She wasn't shit to him, and even if they had the faintest, shimmery little echo of good ol' times - which they didn't - it wouldn't have been enough to keep his slippery ass from giving out names to the highest bidder of reduced sentencing. She wasn't stupid, it was just the fact that he was so vocal about it that set her off. Sure she knew he was a piece of shit, but did he have to make her feel so ridiculous for trusting him enough in the fucking first place to get this fire off the ground?
And the fire! She was really trying not to think about it, or about all the room for fuck-ups her emotional volatility had brought along for the ride. It was part of the reason why she'd been out of her mind on drugs since Max killed Jack. That was just something that she couldn't think about without falling apart. After Max had confessed and Cerise had set up the hit with Kellan, she'd hit the nearest shithole club with mindnumbing intentions.. and she hadn't had a chance to come down yet.
He was right, she did look like hell. There was sleepless bruising around her eyes and she'd lost enough weight that it was noticeable, the conversion from healthy to just the other side. Her shirt was wine colored longsleeves of ribbed cotton with tiny plastic buttons that went down the middle but functioned as nothing more than decoration. The fabric was loose enough that the buttons never needed to be fucked with, and the jeans had probably fit her better once. The dark boots on her feet seemed to be the only thing durable about her when she eased into the room and nudged the door shut behind her. She gave him a cautious once over before that fresh anger - it was the first time she'd let herself get angry about what had happened.. not just the botched fire, but Max and Jack and everything - welled up and had her shoving the heels of both hands hard into his chest. She seemed to remember some mention of cracked ribs. "You son of a bitch.." Even if she wanted to scream, the words were a choked and growling sound.
It was a familiar look on her, and one that made Kellan narrow his eyes as she pushed her way through the door quietly. That thin and that ragged, like she had been years ago. Slipped off the wagon was his first thought - the drugs she’d been so fond of coming back in a mess of … well, grief, he assumed. That sort of thing did happen in shit times, or so he’d seen. Never been one for that himself.
Anger he’d expected, but not the way Cerise lashed out. Her hands hit his chest and the entire world went white, breath dissolving in his lungs in the wake of a pain so intense it made a bullet look like a dream. He choked on nothing and staggered back when she shoved, clutched at his chest, almost tripped and fell in sheer pain but managed to keep himself on his feet long enough to sink to his knees rather than falling on his ass. Something felt more broken, felt shredded - if the bones were really broken now and tearing open his lungs …
“Crazy - fucking - ” he managed to choke out as he got his breath back. It was hard not to gasp but that just made things worse. “What the hell - is wrong - with you?” Kellan glared at her with a dangerous sort of pain-fueled intensity. “I didn’t kill - your goddamn boyfriend. I did you a favor. Never again if this is - how you pay people back.” He was more than willing to take the blame for his own stupid amateur mistakes, but he wasn’t going to take the full brunt of this, oh no. She’d called him in a hysterical mess, looking for revenge, willing to pay. Whoever’s blood was in his hands was on hers, too.
If he thought that all this rage was coming from the idea of blood on her hands or collateral damage, his mind must have really been turning to sour mash and nicotine ash at his old age. It would have been one hell of a moment to develop a conscience about such things. There was too much blood to account for, and fuck atoning for it! All those years spent working for the kind of people she worked for, a case of innocence wasn't necessary before sticking a knife in some poor bastard's throat. Or, say setting someone's home on fire.
So while coldblooded murder was a less comfortable option these days, Cerise was just fine with the idea of Max going up in flames. Max had confessed to killing Jack, and Cerise was never was all that quick to forgive or forget. The fact that other people had gotten caught in the crosshairs was unfortunate, but also easily shrugged off. When you didn't take your own life expectancy seriously, it was difficult to get that worked up about anyone else. Except for Jack. When Kellan mentioned the recent loss, in between all of his grimacing and choking, Cerise froze with a gasp of her own. Hearing it aloud made it a little more real, and soon enough her lip curled back in a death penalty sneer. "No shit. You obviously can't kill anybody these days without fucking it up one way or another." Not that she knew about any of his recent gigs beside this one, but if he'd drawn the attention of some copycat while in the city, he'd done something else wrong recently.
When he went to his knees, Cerise didn't relent. She might not have been as strong as she'd once been, but she was still mean as ever.. and breaking the already broken didn't take a whole hell of a lot of skill. She brought up a knee and slammed the heel of her boot into him, wanting to see him on his back against the carpet. She was high and unaiming, so he had some decent odds to take it in the shoulder rather than the chest. "That's right, I am fucking crazy.. you keep that in mind the next time you get any wild ideas about mentioning my name in any connection with this mess!"
The insult stung but not quite enough for him to snarl back - especially because he didn’t have the time to when he saw her boot come up. Kellan hunkered down immediately, willing to risk the fractured-now-broken ribs creaking and tearing as he did so rather than let her kick him full in the chest, and took it in the shoulder instead (which had its own problems these days). But Cerise still got her wish - he hit the floor on his back, gritting his teeth at the pain of both ribs and darkening bruises. He glared up at her, saw something in her eyes - an old gleam, of murder or drugs or something she might have been into in days long past. It wasn’t a good thing to see, matched with her expression and the weight of her boots, and so despite the low-burning embers of rage, he just rolled onto his side and held up a pacifying hand. Or what he hoped was pacifying. Otherwise she was going to curbstomp him to death in his own motel room.
“So I’m getting,” he said, still taking sharp, careful breaths. “Hate to … remind you, but you’re neck-deep in this … too.” His shoulder throbbed and he grimaced, trying to shift so he was at least sitting up and not flat on his back at the mercy of a crazed drug addict he’d pissed off. “Just like old times.” Less a fond joke, more a wry, bitter memory. “You kill me and … it just gets bigger. Worse. Something. More problems.”
He noted, but didn’t say out loud, that she was empty-handed. Her entire intent coming here had been to throw him around, hadn’t it. He supposed it’d been unusually optimistic of him to hope for something to black out the pain.
“Not gonna turn you in,” he managed after a moment, wondering if that was going to be enough to keep her from kicking him again. “Not to the cops. They’re looking … for a shit arsonist, anyway.”
She paced the carpet before him, a tiger barely contained by invisible bars. Getting him flat on his back seemed to charm her from any further attack, and she listened to his words with careful, momentary clarity. Trying to decipher where any bullshit or deception resided. Pain wasn't necessarily known for functioning as a lie detector, but Kellan wasn't telling her anything that she didn't already know. Except for the reassurance that he wasn't going to turn her in. She knew that didn't mean he wouldn't give her up if he got taken in himself, but that only meant that she couldn't be giving him up either. Not that she planned on it or would have any reason to.
"I'm not going to kill you," she offered up her own reassurances. "I'm going to kill her, and the problem will be fucking solved, okay?" Exhaling roughly, Cerise acknowledged the buzzing notification of her phone that said she had a message on the journals. Taking a step back from where Kellan was crumpled on the floor, she loosened her shoulders before glimpsing the screen. She went pale and backpedaled until she bumped the bed. Collapsing for an inspired seat, she swallowed before pocketing the phone. Her glazed, dilated eyes drifted to take focus on the window with the darkly patterned curtains. It was the kind of material meant to keep the desert-bright light of day out, so that people could be dead to the world. Dead. Jack wasn't dead.
There was no assessing it, not right now. It was something that she wouldn't be able to process until hours later. Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out some folded cigarette packet cellophane with small pills inside. With a dollar bill, the hard edge of a lighter, and her motel room key, she crushed one up before leaning down to snort it. Sitting back, she sniffed while the fuzzy warmth started at the top of her head and seeped all the way down to her toes.
"Change of plans," she finally said. She'd been effectively ignoring Kellan for the last ten minutes, but now she looked at him. Taking a stand, she crossed over to him and dropped the cellophane with the dozen pills onto the carpet beside him. "Oxycontin. For your ribs." She didn't trust herself with that kind of stash.. not right now, not after what she'd just read. "You're going to need to change motels, tonight." She was already on her way to the door.
If Cerise wanted to solve this problem without getting him further involved, Kellan was fine with that. It was the best he could hope for given the situation at hand. He watched her as she paced, pulling himself back against the nearest wall to rest and try to give the pain a break. He didn’t notice her reaching for her phone and going white until she sat down heavily on the bed, staring at the device in her hand. All he did was raise an eyebrow. Something must have happened, he figured. Something more surprising than his own boot-fueled change of heart.
While she was stunned, Kellan managed to fish the cigarettes out of his pocket and stared at them, wondering if it was even a remotely good idea to light up. It would hurt like hell, no doubt, but at the same time it would call off the cravings that were already making everything except his ribs hurt more. He chanced it and, yes, it hurt to inhale, but at least that was tempered this time around. He stayed there in silence until Cerise moved, and then he watched her critically. Back on the drugs. It was probably the whole boyfriend deal, but a part of him wondered if he was just that bad of an influence.
The change he wasn’t expecting. (As if anything about tonight had been expected?) He glanced down at the pills she dropped, a stash nobody was going to just up and hand over like she had, then back up at her as she retreated toward the door.
“Why? Don’t tell me she didn’t die and already figured me out.” Moving motels wasn’t difficult, but doing it on his injuries would be a little trickier. He wasn’t all that keen on trying hard drugs just to keep himself standing. “Give me at least a damn reason.”
Cerise hesitated at the door. Her hand found the jamb and her grip skimmed its ragged, heat-warped molding with a dissociative sense of reality. How could he be alive? Unless Max had been wrong or lying. Max had never struck Cerise as the type of woman to be wrong about that kind of thing. It didn't make any fucking sense, and while she harbored in limbo near the door, trying to make sense of it before finally resolving herself to the fact that she'd just have to answer him. And she would, but it had to wait.
She'd never been that good at confrontation unless it was strictly violent. The message, although only typed letters on a glowing screen, said a lot for a man back from the dead. The Jack she knew would be angry, probably already was. The fact that this involved Max made her think back to the Jack she knew in Seattle, not the Jack she'd rode along with across the country. She sniffed away the narcotic drain of the pill, taking on a sad smile as she thought about how everything seemed to be going back to the way it was. Licking the dryness from her lips, Cerise shook her head and answered without looking back at Kellan. "That dead guy I had you start the fire for? Not so dead anymore." She sniffed, thoughtfully adding, "You shouldn't be anywhere I know about for awhile." Not if him going down meant her going down. At least at this point all she probably had to worry about was Jack trying to kill someone. Admittedly, she was forced to consider that getting rid of Kellan did get rid of the problem entirely.. and if Kellan wasn't such a notorious survivor, she might have considered the idea a little bit further. But no, not worth the risk just yet. "Just.. move." Dropping her eyes from the gleam of a setting sun, Cerise opened the door and slipped out.