Pamela is made of (hemlockandhoney) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-09-18 22:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | dean winchester, poison ivy |
Who: Cerise & Kellan PART 1
What: Running into old work buddies that are not friends at all.
Where: Vegas streets, then a bar.
When: Recently, like everything.
Warnings: Language.
Kellan tried not to make too many fire-related comparisons to his life. For one, it was cheesy, and kind of ridiculous, and it would make him seem older than he was. For another, it was sometimes eerily accurate, and that just didn’t sit well with him. It may have been one of the most critical parts of his life, but it wasn’t his entire life. He was still human at the end of the day.
Right now, though, he didn’t care enough to fight off the passing thought. Right now he was in what felt like a brooding stasis, a house that had been on fire for so long it burned up all the oxygen inside and was just sitting there, waiting for a rush of fresh air to explode into flame again. It was anticipation and dread and anger and disappointment, all the deep, settling emotions that weighed him down and made him irritable. He hadn’t made any progress on revenge, and part of him was starting to deride him for ever thinking he could (a part that wasn’t Dean, for once). There hadn’t been any jobs lately, anything called or sent in - and while he wasn’t exactly desperate for the money, he was getting a little antsy for lack of action. Sure, he could have gone after another few buildings to show off again, but that would be stupid. Draw too much attention to the hard-sought serial arsonist again. No, if he was going to do that, he’d need to leave the city, which might not have been a bad idea.
But he didn’t go, because the closest way was west and that was where the last man he’d been was wanted. So in Vegas he stayed, striding down the bright-lit and semi-packed strip with a jacket slung over one shoulder. It wasn’t anywhere near cool enough to warrant carrying the thing around, but he’d gotten into the habit of it. Made it easier to get at his cigarettes, and it made a good tool if someone tried to come after him. Did wonders for a disguise, too - not very noticeable in the first place, adding a jacket with a turned-up collar rendered Kellan nearly invisible in a crowd.
Which there wasn’t much of tonight, he noted dully, pausing at a corner for the light to turn and tapping the ash of the end of his half-smoked cigarette.
In a wiser opinion, Vegas was only for passing through. This wasn't the kind of city that one could settle down in or get comfortable with. Not somebody like Cerise. There was too much black and white with little or no shades of gray to dance in between. This was a city of greed and gambling, of skin and sex, or drugs and chaos and crime. Anybody who said different was lying, or they were just pushing church pamphlets. It seemed to Cerise that nobody could actually live here, the entire city was a tourist trap. A den of neon that was never meant to get old, and she was forced to wonder about all of the people that grew up here. Did they grizzle into the architecture or just blow away?
It wasn't her first night in the city, but it was her first night back through in a long time. Certainly the first time she planned on staying longer than it took to fill up a tank or gas or put a knife in someone's neck. She didn't do much thinking on those days anymore, but it had been a while since she'd settled into a cheap motel room like this one. Since she'd felt the scratch of a change-by-the-day comforter at her back and fuzzy cable on the television set. It didn't put an itch in her blood like it used to, or maybe she just denied that it did, because it wasn't long after sunset that Cerise was heading out the door for the Strip.
She walked down the street like she knew where she was going. The lie in dusty gray carpenter shorts, frayed edges.. with no gun tucked into the back for a change. The night was dry enough that the heat was forgivable, and several people she walked passed were wearing jackets or suits. Not her. Not much changed about her. She was still running shoes with dark socks and freckled arms crossed over a dandelion tee shirt. Old, threadbare cotton things that felt as threadbare as she did.
The lights were distracting to a certain degree, although it had been a long time since she'd had to be the worried one, since she'd had to keep one eye open at night or dodge tails. She gave herself over to the atmosphere in this moment, for this walk. This city didn't smell like other cities. Not the grime of diesel-slick Detroit or the wet wintergreen of Seattle, not the fruity heat of Atlanta.. just.. different. Distraction had her nearly walking into a man in passing, and Cerise barely glanced up when she sidestepped to avoid anything more catastrophic than a subtle shoulder-brush. "Sorry.." No sooner had the word fell from her mouth, and Cerise dropped her chin in a hard diversion of attention. Some memories just didn't rinse away and some faces would never be forgotten. All she'd glimpsed was his profile glazed in smoke, but it was enough.. or maybe she was paranoid. Cerise kept walking, quick and deliberate. Slipping into the entryway of a casino, she gave a shift and a glance toward the man's back who was now standing at the nearest corner light. There was no doubt about it, recognition seared through her like a molten sword. Jackson.. Miles.. fucking Death, whatever name he was going by these days. It was assuredly him, and she'd never been much of one for coincidence.. which is why her sneakers turned back in his direction. The crosswalk was blinking go, go, go.. and go she did, right after him. What the fuck was he doing here?
Kellan barely noticed the people he ran into - on sidewalks, it was going to happen, and if they were polite enough to ignore him or pretend it was their fault over his, then he never even gave them a second look. From time to time there might have been a moment of familiarity, but he’d been in Vegas for a while; there were probably people here he’d seen before, in bars and casinos, working rather than visiting. Or halfassed resemblances from people he used to know. He didn’t look back, didn’t think for a second that there was a piece of his past ten feet, twenty feet, just around the corner from him. His past was, after all, his past; there was nothing left of it that he had any worry about.
Or so he’d told himself, ever since the day the fire took that man down. He’d made sure that was never coming back again. He wasn’t going to be haunted for another ten years.
Nothing struck him as odd when he crossed the street with the other people patiently waiting, and he made his way down the sidewalk, ignoring any nasty looks from people who expected Las Vegas to be a non-smoking citystate. Pipe dreams and all that. Still early in the pitch-black of the night, the crowds thinned and emptied sooner than usual, leaving him with only a handful of passers-by. Most people were heading inside to enjoy the air conditioning before the outside cooled to the nighttime lows. Kellan paused again, this time turning to look around at the streets (not too busy but jammed with cars anyway) and the tourist traps across the way. He took a drag, let it out in a sharp breath, glanced to either side to out of the usual low-grade paranoia that generally kept him from being snagged by the police at any given moment.
It wasn't fear that tangled its way up to her chest.. she knew that certain shared ghost from their past was long dead. That didn't mean that she liked the idea of this stray dog taking to the very same city that she'd decided to settle - at least momentarily - in. Cerise knew exactly what kind of creature Miles was, it didn't matter how many times he changed his name or tried to fade away behind some tricksmoke. She knew what his niche was, and that kind of thing didn't just go away because somebody pretended to turn over a new leaf. Thoughtfully, her eyes lifted to scan the horizon, half expecting to see some hint of a blaze in the distance.
Her black Reeboks prowled closer, finding a familiarity in the itch of curiosity that replaced whatever momentary churn of unease that had immediately unsettled her. So what if it had been more than five long years since she'd tried to follow anybody with a hint of discretion. Discretion had never really been her strong suit, anyway. Cerise had always been more apt to kick in a door than sneak through it. When he stopped to draw another year of off his life with that cigarette, Cerise froze. Caught on the fringe of a casino's window display with not a doorway to slip into, she backpedaled cautiously as he began to survey the evening scenery. Maybe she could have ducked around the previous street corner, but in her hurried turn, Cerise slammed into a drunk man. The collision sent the guy back on his ass against the asphalt, slurring loudly.
With enough background noise of passing cars and raised voices, there was no way Kellan would have bothered to listen for someone moving slowly, even if it was toward him. Footsteps blended into tires on the pavement and asphalt, and there were no flashing police lights, no sirens in the distance. Not that he’d done anything in the last few weeks, anyway. And his face was still relatively low-key in the city limits, or so he hoped.
The sudden sharp turn drew a brief glance, and he turned to smirk when a woman ran into a drunk man hard enough to knock him over. Kellan snickered and brought up the cigarette and - paused, as he watched the woman stagger and caught sight of her profile. It was dark, and his vision wasn’t the best these days. The lights were odd and the pollution was almost tangible. But there was some strange familiarity there in the lines of her face. It wasn’t a deja vu sort, and it didn’t make him think of brief if pleasant bits and pieces of his past. It was … a low-grade sort of dread, a wariness and a discomfort, that rolled into his mind and rose through him like an awful mist.
He stared at her from where he stood. The pieces weren’t coming together, but he was working frantically to make sure they did. If his life was on the line, he’d have to figure her out, fast.
Cerise made with a careless and stalking retreat from the body laid out on the asphalt. The man was cursing and muttering, pushing himself up with his skinned elbows. He was the closest and would have been the immediate threat if he'd been anything less than a stumbling groomsman overindulging for some bachelor party. He didn't pull a gun on her, and it had been a long time since Cerise had expected that to be the natural order of things. Collison, bullet, death. Her attention weaved once more onto Miles, where he stood in judgement of the spectacle. A tar stained filter frozen in limbo, the ash extending as he stared.
She straightened, lifting her chin as headlights splashed over the yards of sidewalk between them. Her hair was down, chaos in damp curls that dried into an unholy halo in the desert heat. There was no point in pretending that she hadn't seen him, as he didn't seem to be walking away. Ignoring the drunk man entirely, she stepped around him in favor of the familiar face. Its not that she thought of him as an enemy, they'd been on something of similar sides during most of the time that she'd known him. But that didn't mean she liked the guy. "Miles," she said. She was healthier than Seattle had seen her, it was surprising what a lack of heroin and gun shot wounds could do for a person. "You look like hell." Older, at least. Then again, she supposed that so did she.
Looking straight at him, shoulders back, chin up - visible in the passing lights and without anything but the thin trail of smoke off the end of his cigarette between them, the memories crumbled into place, replacing the dread with shock and surprise and more wariness and a flickering moment of mute horror. Kellan almost said her name aloud but cut it off in the back of his throat, clenching his jaw when a name passed between them instead. Cerise. Still alive. Still kicking. Still with knowledge he wished she didn’t have, and now she was in Vegas, for some reason.
Part of him was willing to accept bullshit coincidence or fate just having a good laugh, but the rest of him had a deep, quiet suspicion about other possibilities. Finding the Giacoma girl in a shit bar had been one thing, highly unlikely and weird but not altogether bad. Finding Cerise was completely different. Ainslie knew he had done work for her grandmother, and that was still work he was doing.
Cerise knew he’d acted at another man’s bidding, had done the same herself, had lived in that godawful shadow longer than even he had. There was a brief instant of terror that the shadow hadn’t disappeared - but it was just that instant. That bastard was dead. No arguments.
“So do you,” he shot back after a moment’s hesitation (whether he should have answered or just turned and walked away, or run like hell). Though he had to admit she at least didn’t look as miserable as the last time they’d been cornered, with him stalking her into a parking garage. How many years ago had that been now? “And don’t call me that.” A name that wasn’t his, didn’t even come close to being his. Not anymore. He took a sharp drag on his cigarette to try and forcibly hold down all the anger and irritation that was clawing up his spine. Maybe she’d been following him, but so what? (On whose orders?)
To her, he looked a little nauseous around the edges and the telltale clench of his cancerous jaw said that he'd been as surprised to see her and she'd been to see him. It was comforting. As comforting as crossing paths with pyromaniac affiliate ever could be. Cerise didn't remember him ever being that good of an actor. Not to mention that he'd always struck her as more of a duck and cover coward than the type of person who would willingly cast himself in the shadowlands of ex-associates. She knew his modus operandi, and she wondered who he was working for now.. even if she wasn't exactly all angel wings and halos herself.
Cerise gave a little half snort at his rebuttal, with a flutter of lashes that was mostly a roll of her eyes. For a woman that lived in cargo shorts and with no concept of makeup, looking like hell came with the territory. Taking a step forward, her tongue took a jab at the inner flesh of her cheek, amused. "Thanks." This didn't seem like the type of conversation to be had with a couple yards of chipped sidewalk between them, so she moved closer while reading the caginess of his posture for any prelude to escape.. not that she planned on following him, if that was the case. She'd just keep an eye open for structure fires, maybe go home and read up on some news articles. See what he'd been up to. "I thought that was your name," she explained cooly, closing in. "What do you want to be called now?" Was he still hiding behind the Jackson alias? Was he hiding from new enemies, was he a new enemy?
He didn’t - did not - back away when she came closer. Even if he was prone to running he didn’t have a coward’s heart, just a survivalist’s, and there was very little in him willing to bet that at this range, Cerise could put him down. Even if she had a gun. Besides, she didn’t look murderous, just startled. As startled as he was. Neither of them had been expecting this, it seemed. And for good reason. Why would they have?
“Hasn’t been my name for ages. Thought I told you that last time.” Nobody was listening to them - not a passerby, not the drunk asshole still slurring his way to the next bar after managing to get back on his feet - but Kellan still felt antsy about the name business. Miles was just uncomfortable at this point; Jackson might get him jailed. He wasn’t entirely sure he could trust Cerise not to try and quietly help along the latter, unintentionally or not. “It’s Kellan, now.” A strange enough name for someone his age, and about as predictable. “I’m just going to assume you didn’t pick up my shit habits and that you’re still Cerise. The hell are you doing in Vegas?”
What would anybody be doing in Vegas? It was a city of vice and sin and if she was still in the grit and grime of the underworld, then it was kind of a stupid question. If not, she could just be visiting, making her way from one city to another. The little nagging suspicions in the back of his mind went dismissed again, because that just wasn’t something he wanted to consider right now. Kellan eyed his dwindling cigarette and took another short drag off it. The glowing end crept closer to the filter, and he wondered if it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try getting it right down to the end for once.
Cerise could have argued the matter of him always being Miles to her, but it didn't seem like anything worth arguing about. Even if she suspected it would make him wonderfully uncomfortable, she'd always had a knack for digging her dirty fingers into old wounds. Changing his name didn't change who he was, although that isn't why she suspected he shuffled through aliases quicker than a deck of cards. She'd always been far enough off the grid herself that adopting a new name had never been much of a priority. There was a little twitch of eyebrow at the name Kellan, a contemplative purse of her mouth that said she wasn't sure it suited him. "Still Cerise," she confirmed with an inhale that drew her freckled shoulders up, shrugging away the tension. "And I could ask the same thing of you.."
But she wasn't going to string him out without a true answer Far from a master of deflection, Cerise had the tendency to be brutally honest about whether or not she wanted to answer a question. War time interrogations couldn't get it out of her if it wasn't something she was willing to part with. So while she didn't entirely trust or expect the truth as to his own reasons for being in the city, Cerise gave him a splinter of what had brought her here. "I'm looking for someone." Green eyes flicked up, watching him past the burning cinders of his shrinking cigarette. "I'm a little surprised you're still alive." And not in a prison cell somewhere, to be honest. Then again, he'd always had a knack for making a clean getaway.
Never the best at picking names for anyone or anything, Kellan had given up trying to explain his choices to people, especially to people like Cerise. When her mouth pulled just slightly, the tinge of disapproval there evident, he shrugged carelessly. It was a name. It had been in the paper on his way out of the country all those years ago. Convenience was convenience, especially when he was in a rush - wouldn’t have been the first time. Better an actual name than a crossroad of the two nearest street signs.
When she said why she was there, the tension in his shoulders dropped just slightly. Obviously, it hadn’t been him. It might have been someone he knew, but clearly not involving him in any real way - so that put him out of the picture (temporarily) and thus out one more little piece of stress. He banished doubts and continuing suspicions and straightened up a little more. He was nearly fifty, he chided himself; he didn’t need to slouch like a haunted, hunted brat. Leave that to the actual brats.
“I hear that a lot.” Now his tone was less defensive and approaching casual, though the wariness never fully left him. “I’m just here to see what work I can pick up in a relatively clean shithole like this one. Never know when some casino mogul could use my help in a matter or two.” If Cerise hadn’t known about his career choice after his faked death, it wouldn’t be much of a jump for her to figure it out. She knew what he did; that he’d decided to do it freelance probably wasn’t going to surprise her. “Not that they have, lately,” he added after a moment, a little more of a grumble than a real comment.
"Still up to your old tricks?" As if she even had to ask. A little clarity never hurt anybody. No wait, even Cerise knew that wasn't entirely true. Certain truths were meant to be avoided, buried deep, locked away, tossed out to sea, or burned at the stake. Leaning back on her heels, she crammed both hands deep into the recesses of flimsy, worn out pockets. Old habits died harder than ghosts, and her green eyes had a tendency to snatch a hold of every passerby in their periphery. They came few and far between on this lulling corner of sidewalk, but she shifted her hips in either direction with a pacing step of retreat now and then. Just so that she could rightly face any new arrival. It seemed second nature even if Cerise neglected to consider the fact that she hadn't done it once in the last three years. It was something renewed in the face of Miles. Old habits died just as hard as phantom pyromaniacs. She gave him a little eyebrow twitch at the grumbling, a smirk of pessimistic mirth. She wanted to ask him if he'd run into Sid in the last five years. But because she wanted to, she didn't.
“Like I could stop.” It was said less humorously than he normally would have managed it. To an old business associate, he would have laughed about it, but Cerise wasn’t … quite under the same umbrella, even if they’d technically worked together. Yes, he was still burning down buildings if other people paid him to. But only if they paid him to. He didn’t do requests or favors (unless he really wanted to, and really liked the person involved, but. But.) and he certainly didn’t take orders anymore. “What about you? Last I heard you’d disappeared off the face of the planet.” He gestured at her with his cigarette, half-accusing and half-questioning. What had happened to her, he wondered?
On hearing of that man’s death, Kellan had bolted - hadn’t bothered to ask Sid or Drake or Cerise where they were going, what they intended to do. He didn’t want to stay and see if there was some sudden need for vengeance unfulfilled. So as far as he’d ever known, they’d just … stopped. Until now.
"The planet is round, Kellan. Everything that disappears comes back around." If he didn't believe that, he hadn't been paying attention in Seattle. Not that Cerise really wanted to reconsider Seattle as a whole, even if it was a little impossible not to. Lucien's death should have been a relief to her, and there was some of that in time.. but there was also ache. Guilt that came from being connected to the murder of somebody that she still halfway considered to be her father. Miles, Kellan, whoever he was.. he was a stitch in that old patch of history. Not exactly comfortable, but not ready to be ripped loose for no reason. He was far from a friend, but he was also far from an enemy. Cerise had a real bad habit of examining people in chronic shades of gray, it left her on shaky ground with old faces.
The only thing she could really do was go ahead and ask. Its not like it would be any surprise, Cerise had never been one for the spy game. "So where do we stand?" Sizing him up, Cerise lifted her chin and gave him a dose of steady eyes. If he was lying to her about who he was kicking around town with, it would come back on him. Hard.
Everything … yes. He knew that. Being at that party all those years ago and having his past catch back up to him in a horrible, near-deadly fashion had shown him that much was true. Plus, wasn’t he walking evidence of it? Disappearing on a regular basis, he had to show back up again once or twice for other people, whether they recognized him or not. Kellan eyed Cerise, the way she was standing and eyeing passers-by, the set of her shoulders and the strength of her gaze. She wanted to know the score. Probably the better question for him was, what score?
Casually, he dropped the burnt-out cigarette and ground it out under a foot. Lighting up again was such a smooth, instinctive reaction at this point that he actually had to think about it and stop himself when he got the pack out. He was a way better negotiator with nicotine in his system, but there was a slight clarity of consciousness, a focused intensity, he could only get without it. Maybe it was just the pent-up aggression suddenly having something viable to hold on to.
“I don’t know,” he said after a few moments, flipping the pack in his hand and watching Cerise as levelly as she watched him. “He’s dead - ” A moment of tension, jaw clenched and eyes sharp; even the very mention of the dead man was enough to make his skin start to crawl again “ - which means someone doesn’t have us by the balls at every second. You never did anything I took personally. I’m willing to say we’re on even ground and just walk away from that whole shitshow if you are.”
Cerise watched him in wait, following the drop of that cigarette filter and the executioner's grind of his heel. She briefly wrinkled her nose when he produced that pack again. She never quite understood the appeal of chainsmoking. Of course, a lot of people might argue that they didn't see the appeal in a decade of intravenous drug abuse. To each their own. When he finally spoke, she blinked back up to his face after having somehow found a moment's lament and distraction in the movement of his firestarting hands. He's dead. Her eyes betrayed nothing but a momentary flinch, a tightening at one side of the mouth. "Yeah.."
She smirked faintly, finding the idea of doing something that he'd take personally somehow laughable. As if his morals were so lofty. Cerise saw no reason not to acknowledge the olive branch for what it was. They were both e patriot criminals, once upon a time murderers. Whatever he was up to now under the umbrella shadows of his new name, she didn't see anything but benefits in keeping on his respective good side. "Alright." Decidedly, Cerise extended her hand toward him. It was tradition, they had to shake on it.
So at the very least they weren’t walking on glass or eggshells. Stepping carefully, maybe, as people with close pasts tended to, but at least without much worry about things shattering underfoot. Kellan eyed the extended hand, briefly blanking out but then tossing the pack to his other hand and shaking. It was brief, but strong, his skin dry from the nicotine and the arid desert air and too many evenings spent washing off ashes. He took the opportunity to eye her wrists, a moment’s recollection that she’d been the kind to use the really fatal drugs, before breaking the grip and tapping a cigarette out of the pack - and offering it to her.
“So if we at least don’t hate each other for that much, what’s the future hold?” Whether she’d picked up smoking or not in the last five years, he didn’t know. But it was at least polite to offer. “Do we forget about each other’s existence and just accept we might run into each other, or what?”
Her decline was the drop of a shoulder, a tiny shift of her stance into retreat. Cerise scrutinized him with a squint and pop of brow, amused that he would offer. "I'm fine." She shrank from the offered cigarette before taking a fresh breath and extending her attention beyond him. This city seemed so loud compared to all of the places that she'd been hiding out over the last five years. Maybe she'd had it all wrong, maybe the gentle country towns weren't the kind of place to vanish into. If he knew better, it was best to do it in a big city, where it was so easy to be overshadowed and lost in the crowd. "Or what?" Slipping back into the conversation with a hard blink, green eyes found him again. "We grab drinks and exchange our trade-secrets on how to disappear off the face of the Earth?"
The decline wasn’t unexpected, so Kellan took the cigarette for himself, tucking the pack away and resuming the swift single movement of lighting up with a practiced ease. He watched her as she looked past him, at the city’s bright lights and listening to its dull rumble, the low-lying pollution corrupting the air (not that he was helping that any). He raised an eyebrow at her suggestion, a little less tense and a little more amused now than he would have been five, ten minutes ago.
“Grab drinks, sure, if you want to,” he said, still a little caught off-guard by the whole thing. “But I like to keep my ‘trade secrets’ close to the vest.” His tone was amused but his expression stayed the same, a little too stoic to be completely serious or completely a joke. “Been doing it for too long to give myself away.” Even to someone who probably (probably) wouldn’t turn him in. But then, if she did, she’d be giving herself up as well - and if Kellan was going down, he was going to take everyone he’d ever known with him.
Cerise had been prepared to question him on his smoking for the hell of it. Ask him if he'd ever thought about quitting, something. Although when he answered a question that she'd somehow posed as more genuine than actually intended, Cerise fell suddenly silent. The offer had been only a fraction of serious, so she was a little surprised when Miles-Jackson-Kellan actually took her up on it. There had to of been a whole hell of a lot of other people that he would have rathered to snag a drink and catch up with. With that thought passing through, Cerise was forced to realize that she didn't know much of anything about the guy. Just because they'd worked alongside one another over ten years ago, that didn't mean that they knew a splinter from the entire picture frame. All she really knew about him was the basic credentials: firestarter on the leash of a madman. And maybe her's were the same in his eyes: junkie bitch with blood on her hands.
She smirked a little as his words progressed. Oh, she read between the lines just fine. He didn't trust her at all. Which was fine, the feeling was mutual. Cerise was the kind to bury her secrets up to the neck, he was the kind to burn his to ash. It was the voice in her head that had an itch to dig things up from the root, the urge to unmask all men. Cerise fought against it with a click of her teeth, she wasn't even a drinker. She could see him as one, though. Maybe it was the cigarettes or the lines of distrust around his eyes, but she could bet that he loosened up after a few drinks. It would be worth it just to see if he actually went through with it. A man with something to hide surely didnt want to sit around in a bar all night with an old face. "If you say so." She considered him for another moment before glancing back over her shoulder, into the direction from which she came. "I don't know this city, got a place you want to go?"
He was passing up fewer and fewer opportunities to find a drink these days, even if he wasn’t a heavy drinker when he got there - Kellan knew that all his bad habits were going to catch up with him one day, so it was a matter of deciding whether he wanted the cancer to spread from his lungs outward or if he wanted to start it in his liver, too, and see which starting point won out first. Not that he really believed he’d ever live long enough to get cancer fatally, but the fact that he was a year or so from fifty was starting to make that little idea waver on its base. Regardless, a drink wouldn’t have been a bad idea. All the shit tendencies had really started to pile up since the memories that weren’t his had trickled out of his skull. Too many people, too much he had to do but wasn’t or couldn’t - and no fucking work. No wonder he was drinking so much.
“Not really. Every cheap bar’s shit and every expensive bar’s not going to let us in.” A girl in cargoes and a man in a leather jacket. They’d be stuck somewhere on the mid-to-low-end scale of drinking. “There’s a couple places down the street that might not look twice, though.” Somewhere he hadn’t been yet, maybe. Half-assed watering hole with semi-decent booze seemed to define everywhere in the country that wasn’t upscale. “Don’t feel obligated just ‘cause I suggested it, by the way. I’ve got nothing else planned tonight, is all.” A deviation from his normal stalking and wondering just how flammable a casino could be was probably a good thing at this point. For all his skill, experience, and mind-blowing arrogance, he wasn’t completely sure he could get away from something like that unscathed, or unjailed.
Maybe she'd never picked up drinking because there had always been more fascinating - and deadly - ways of distracting herself from reality. But while those days were five years gone, her life wasn't entirely stable tonight. She was a war weapon floundering, purposeless in times of peace. Even when living beside Jack, she'd never quite gotten the hang of how somebody was supposed to live normally. Normal, to Cerise, meant a lot of loose ideas: sleeping without knives under pillows, entering a building without casing it from the outside, not romanticizing dirty motel rooms, etc. She'd gotten the part time jobs - which were pathetic considering her lack of experience in any modern field - and she'd straightened up without attending meetings. She'd had Jack to watch after, and then she'd been shacking up with the school teacher.. but now she was all by herself. Nobody to distract her from the ache of silence pressing in from an empty room, or the discomfort of undiluted blood in her veins.
She didn't argue him about not being allowed inside the nicer establishments, she'd never been the type to clean up nice. Then again, she'd never tried. "I suggested it," she countered immediately. The fangs rearing up like she just enjoyed having a thing to argue about. Even if she hadn't entirely meant the suggestion, she was going to stand by it now that he was claiming it for his own. "Lets go."
Kellan almost laughed at that but held it back with a half-grin. He still wasn’t entirely happy with the way the evening had evolved, but the fact that it hadn’t ended in knives and guns and attempted murder on both sides was at least that much less stressful. There really were a few bars close enough for them to walk to without too much of an awkward silence between them, though given who they were, it was more likely to be contemplative and wary than really uncomfortable.
“All right.” He didn’t contest the ownership of the idea and just headed toward the closest bar. It didn’t have neon lighting above it, but it was still a little classic Vegas on the inside; thankfully, it also wasn’t supremely busy. Kellan glanced over at Cerise before finding a table that wasn’t in the back and wasn’t near the bar. In the middle, less likely to be noticed because of how suspicious it wasn’t.
Draping the jacket over the back of one chair, Kellan sat down heavily and leaned his elbows on the table.
“So how many disappearing secrets are you going to share?” he asked, more than a little wryly.
The bar wasn't one that she was familiar with. Cerise had gone through some effort to memorize locations situated near the motel where she was staying. Although once she'd spotted Kellan, everything around her had become a monotonous blur of technicolor and humming background noise. Only in glancing around after the fact did it dawn on Cerise how little she'd been paying attention.
The bar was nothing special, just dark and loud enough to be comforting. Sparsely populated for breathing room. She let him pick the table, giving only a discretionary survey of the few faces they passed. The table was a good spot, partially obstructed by the curve of the bar, but with a steady view of the door. The little benefits of any battle set on unfamiliar ground. "I don't know," she murmured while taking a seat across from him. Cottoned shoulders crept up with a note of distrust before she shadowed him with elbows on the table's edge. Finally her attention dropped to him and she continued. "We worked for the same guy, I think we know most of the same secrets." Nothing that was especially warmblooded to discuss, like leaving no witnesses.
A little more careless than her, Kellan had only looked around for the telltale signs of police on patrol (or off-hours) before choosing to stay in the bar. With his age, and his ego, he didn’t feel the need to look around too closely for so-called enemies. Whatever of them he had, they weren’t going to be here, and the few that might have been weren’t going to know his face at a glance. Too old. Too gray. Too … accompanied by a younger woman, though it wasn’t as if she looked entirely pleased to be there with him.
“Suppose so.” For once, he didn’t constantly keep smoking. He just kept the cigarette close to his mouth, between two fingers on the hand he was resting his chin on. His eyes kept moving from the bar to Cerise to the ashtray between them, the people nearby, the clock, the walls. He knew it made him look restless; most of him didn’t care. He didn’t feel restless. But even looking restless could be a sign of weakness. “I might have a few extras on hand, but in general … you’re right.” Were they supposed to order at the bar or wait for some grumpy, underpaid asshole to stop by and see if they wanted anything? There were a few around; Kellan could see aprons over jeans and t-shirts indicating something resembling employment. “Guess that means we’re out of conversation topics. Drinking in silence it is.” A vague attempt at humor, tempered by the quiet atmosphere of the bar (so far).
Cerise admittedly had less to worry about with the police than her company did. She wasn't wanted, and she didn't plan on leading a criminal life ever again. There was no reason for her to be wary from the law, except for out of habit and hardwired necessity. Cerise's own unease faded soon enough, she'd spent enough of the last five years with suppressing that kind of thing. Determination helped to keep a lid on it, even in the presence of old faces. Maybe not every old face, but the ones still alive were infinitely less daunting. She smiled a little when his words slipped away into the echoes of the bar's life that surrounded them. "I'll buy the first round," she murmured. Thens he slipped out of her chair and made for the bar before he could say anything else. It might have been more considerate to sit and wait for a server to come by, since they were taking up a table.. but already having drinks in front of them ensured that they weren't likely to be interrupted.
Cerise returned a few minutes later. Two shotglasses brimming with amber in one hand and two longneck bottles of Budweiser noosed by the fingers of the other. "I didn't know what you wanted," she explained while taking her seat. Pulling one of the shots toward herself, Cerise decided to take a chance and confide a bit. "I've worked in a craft store for the last two years, and I haven't killed anyone in over five.. that's how I disappear."