InsaneJournal

Who: Cerise & Kellan PART 2
What: Running into old work buddies that are not friends at all.
Where: Bar in Vegas
When: Recently!
Warnings: Language.

Her offering to buy was unexpected, but not unwelcome, though Kellan kept his eyes on her the entire time she was up at the bar out of old habit. Beer and shots - definitely wasn’t about to turn that down. He picked up the other shot but didn’t down it quite yet once she’d returned, listening to her instead. That sounded normal. That sounded like a life, though as he recalled Cerise had never been much of one for a standard life. Still, what did he know at this point? She’d clearly done it if nobody’d been able to dredge her back up.

“Didn’t know you liked crafts.” Didn’t know you liked boring shit. Wary as he was, Kellan knew intentionally pissing people off on such short reunion notice wasn’t going to bring things to a not-violent end, and they’d avoided coming to blows so far. It’d be nice to keep it that way until they were at least drunk enough to justify it. “So you’re basically flying under the radar just low enough that nobody’s going to realize where you are. Good move. One kids your age can pull off.” She already knew his methodology, despite his own claims to keep such secrets hidden. Change name, run like hell - usually preceded by an opportunity to present himself as dead or otherwise unavailable. Could he just sink out of sight? Possibly, but it wouldn’t last. He was too set in his ways - and too nationally wanted - to be able to hold out in a boring life like that.

He downed the shot without a wince and tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette into the ashtray. At least this place seemed stuck in its smoke.

Cerise took her own shot with the grimace of a novice. She pushed the empty glass away with the pad of her finger, wrinkling her nose defensively when he spoke. "I don't." Could he really envision her sitting down in the evenings to do lovely cross-stitch? As quickly as the fire rose in her eyes, peeking like the Devil from between her knife's edge squint, it was gone. Cerise reached for her beer to cool the whiskey heat in her throat. "It was a job, and it worked.. nobody found me. Although with him gone, I'm not really sure who'd be looking." It had taken her nearly a year after Seattle to actually believe that Sid had accomplished what he'd said he had. There was a year with no old ghosts emerging from the shadows of her past, no familiar skeletons crawling out of closets. Only after that year was she able to even think of slowing down, staying put, taking a breath, or sleeping with both eyes closed, anything. Nobody crossed her path, not even Sid. Which wasn't such a surprise, really. Some people were best forgotten. Between him and the teacher from Atlanta, all of her good memories were tainted black anyway.

"Kids my age?" There was a note of amusement from the rim of her beer. For a woman in her 30's, it wasn't everyday that she was spoken to like a child. Then again, it was pretty much the way he'd talked to her fifteen years ago when they'd worked the bullet and bonfire gambit. It had the same annoying effect on Cerise even then.

“Yeah. Your age. Anybody younger than me.” He almost smirked at that, turning it into a half-grin at the end. “So you didn’t do anything, run into anyone, try any exciting new tricks … until now, I take it.” Vegas was exciting regardless of what you meant to do there. “When you came here for … someone.” A flicker of suspicion, of worry, quickly settled into nothing more than the usual. “Am I gonna get an answer if I ask who? It’s not Sid, is it?” Because as much as he’d always liked Sid, their last couple of interactions, all those years ago, hadn’t been on the best of notes. And what with the whole continued changing of names, it’d just be more complication than he wanted right now.

Without the shadow chasing them, clinging to their throats and heels, there was a lot more potential for problematic questions. Prying ones that got into old actions he didn’t feel like justifying - or worse, dealing with the fallout of.

The idea of it made him grab his own beer and take a long drink, more to distract himself and get the burn of the alcohol into his veins than because he really felt like he needed a drink. Getting drunk was a bad idea but at this point, there weren’t many ideas that were worse.

“If it’s personal, feel free to tell me to fuck off.” After all, it could be. Though more personal for her than Sid, he wasn’t sure existed. “I’m not trying to pry, just protecting my interests. Limited though they may be.”

Cerise wasn't even remotely buzzed enough - and the bar's interior wasn't nearly dim enough - for her to miss the strange breeze of worry that momentarily ghosted his eyes. The question that followed shouldn't have been surprising, but it was. She quirked a brow in the lulling silence and peeled a corner of the label from her beer's bottle while contemplating. If Miles and Sid had ended on rough terms, she didn't know about it. This wasn't unusual or even alarming, both of them were more secretive than spies. "..No, it's not Sid." Still, Cerise didn't offer the name of who it actually was. Although Jack and Miles had both been in Seattle at the same time, Cerise doubted that they knew of one another. Vigilantes and arsonists were like oil and water.

Getting drunk hadn't been the plan tonight, but there were worse things she could do. Hell, there was probably even worse company to be found, although she wasn't much of a social animal by nature. Too suspicious, too reclusive. Too many bad things; memories, dreams, and habits. The introspection got her talking again after she swallowed some more beer. "It's not personal. I left Seattle with a friend. He helped me get clean.." Because it couldn't have been much of a secret that she'd taken a hard dive in Seattle. In the end she'd become little more than pale skin, triangle sharp bones, and glassy eyes. "Anyway, I know he came out this way." Although how she knew that was a bit more complicated. How did she explain that there was a voice in her head? One that knew someone she actually once knew? Maybe she was crazy, although the forums suggested not. Falling quiet, she had to wonder if Kellan had a similar experience, or if coincidence alone brought him here.

Someone she’d known back in the explosive shitpit of Seattle. Well, hell, as long as it wasn’t Sid or … what was his name, Sid’s brother, or someone really high into law enforcement, he didn’t really care if the guy was here or not. Someone who helped her get clean? Clean from the hard drugs, then. She didn’t seem to mind drinking that much. Kellan took a drag on his cigarette and watched her with a raised eyebrow, tilting his own beer to the side out of idleness. He didn’t find anything suspicious in the idea that she knew he’d come out this way; they’d both been hunters of a sort, able to find whatever it was that man wanted them to find and take it down or kill it or bring it to him, in a bag or on a leash.

The thought made him take another drink, a long one. Nostalgia wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on right now.

“Good luck finding him. Vegas is a hell of a place to start looking.” Thousands of people, coming in and going out every day, mingling and murdering or worse. “You’re sure he’s right here and not already moved on? If he’s anything like us - ” because god forbid they could find anyone who wasn’t “ - then if he’s been here for any real amount of time, he’s already gone. Just out of habit, probably.”

Nostalgia wasn't worth invoking, not for creatures like them. It's not like they had the best of memories to share. Everything was blood and grit, fire and ashes. Despite mind numbing intentions, some of it couldn't be helped. Seeing an old face could be triggering like that. Just sitting across the table from Kellan brought on a Pavlov itch in her veins. Something long extinguished but never quite forgotten, it brought a thoughtful wrinkle to her brow. Even if she opted out of reliving their time together, some inherent, deep-seeded part of her refused to roll over and play dumb to the truth. Cerise sat up a fraction more, her spine was relaxed as a railroad spike.

"He's here," she said. Not that she could be sure. "I'll find him." She'd spent the better part of her life finding people who didn't want to be found, it shouldn't be difficult to excavate that skillset, even if she was a little out of practice. "And he's nothing like us." Except for maybe when taking into consideration the body counts.

"Don't think I've forgotten that you're buying the next round." Which was something she'd cimply decided on rather than ever asking him to agree. She nursed her beer to half mast.

“Hey, just saying.” There was something defensive about her actions, something Kellan didn’t want to pry too deeply into, and he held up a hand as if to ward her off. “You and me, we don’t attract a lot of normal types.” He watched her a little more carefully, ignoring - for the moment - her implication that he was paying for the second round (it was only fair). She must have liked him, to come to his defense like that. Because even Kellan knew that ‘nothing like us’ was more a compliment to the mystery man than a statement of fact; they weren’t good people.

Maybe they both had the potential to become good people in time, but it would take a hell of a lot more time and effort than he was willing to spare. He was pretty sure the same could be said for Cerise.

“I mean it, though. Good luck. Hope whatever information dragged you here is solid.” Kellan tilted back the beer bottle and finished it off, then leaned back himself to snag a passing waitress with a glance when she accidentally met his eyes. “Two shots of whiskey and another couple of these.” The bottle flashed in her direction, she nodded and headed for the bar, and he leaned back forward again, a thin haze of drunkenness pilling up in the back of his skull. “More solid than the shit that got me here, anyway.”

"Which was what? Some estranged wife looking to collect on an insurance policy after the smoke cleared?" Alcohol did nothing to soothe the standard pitbull bite of her commentary. Abrasive didn't effectively cover Cerise on a good day, and if there was any interest in playing to the political or polite side of things, it was fucking gone after a couple of drinks. Which was probably why she never drank, but Las Vegas seemed like the time and place to try something new. Killing her beer, Cerise made no comment about whatever information it was that had brought her out of her East Coast hidey hole. Out of principle, she didn't trust the journals. The hotel was a little easier to accept as it felt like something she could control - which is what a lack of trust always boiled down to with her, a lack of reigns - but not necessarily something that forced her to connect with others.

When the waitress returned with their tray of drinks, Cerise fell silent in wait. No need for lighthearted banter in front of strangers. Her fingers were cast forward to fish a shotglass of whiskey back in her direction. She lifted it with a gesture toward him expectedly. "What should we cheers to? Surviving?" There just weren't that many things about the two of them worth toasting about. Making it out of hell alive was the only good thing that came to mind.

Kellan almost laughed outright, because - while she was far enough from the truth, that one suggestion was actually fairly close to any real reason for him to be somewhere. He snickered and took his own shotglass from the table once the waitress had left, setting the cigarette’s glowing end close to the ashtray while they drank.

“Not much better to be cheerful about,” he said, tilting his glass toward hers. Yes, surviving. That was what they did, and to some degree it was all they could do. Live another day, despite the way hooks and nails dragged them back down toward the grave. Live another hour, even when they spent the other 23 clawing madly toward their own deaths. Not intentionally, but their habits weren’t quite living-prone. “To surviving.”

The clink of the glasses, muted in the heavy air of the bar, made Kellan sigh to himself before he threw back the shot. It didn’t burn going down the way those kinds of things used to, which was both good and bad. Or maybe it was just shitty whiskey. At this point he couldn’t really tell.

“And for the record,” he said once he’d finished, “I don’t do little shit like that anymore. If someone’s going to give me part of an insurance payout, it’s big time and five digits. At least.” He grinned - maybe it was a lie and maybe it was the truth. He could make it sound like both, though Cerise would probably be able to cut straight through the hapless old man bullshit.

While his tone held a self deprecating kind of humor, and his words were even enough, the entire effect was almost depressing if Cerise let herself think about it. No, there wasn't anything else to be cheerful about. Just living while so many others fell to the dust. It wasn't that she reflected on the lives she'd stolen, but those that had been stolen from her. It brought on aches to think that such was life, but it was worse to think that there was a reason for these things. To think there was a reason that people like Miles Kellan and herself evaded death at every turn. What a horrible idea, that she deserved to be here.

"Right," she whispered nonchalance against the lip of her shotglass when he denied doing little shit like that anymore. A swig and the glass was set down, traded out for the new beer which cured the acrid taste of liquor from her tongue. "Then what actually brought you here?"

After so long, and so many near-deaths, near-mutilations, near-destructions of the soul and worse, Kellan had stopped thinking about it. Survival was key, almost a way to keep score at this point. The black pit that resembled a heart still beat and bled, but if there were lifetimes he’d missed, lives he could have had? He didn’t think about them, even in passing.

He didn’t do much good when it came to sympathy, so he didn’t even start to pick up on any second thoughts from Cerise. He just eyed the empty shot glass disapprovingly and traded it for the second bottle.

“Like I said. Just looking around. Playing the field.” A shrug, idle, not entirely the truth. He wasn’t even close to drunk yet (and didn’t intend to be) but the alcohol was starting to pull away the wary suspicion that normally plagued him, especially around old colleagues. “Wasn’t my idea to look here, but what the hell, I figured. Might as well just see if there’s actual business to do instead of getting caught between passing crowds of tourists.”

It wasn't that Cerise believed him, as Kellan wasn't really a reputable source on anything in her book - not even his own life and motives.. but she didn't quite have a reason not to. Maybe it was new territory and a clean slate that dragged him down Maybe not. Either way, she didn't think that it was anything to do with their shared past, and therefore nothing that she gave a shit about. She'd always been more bad than good, and her vacation from crime didn't change a whole lot. Except for maybe the extent of her hospital stays. "So that's what you've been doing here? Business?" It was a legitimate question. She'd already told him what she'd been up to since their departure from the mass grave that was Seattle. Of course, his business was his business. If it didn't hurt her or her's, she had no interest in whatever he'd been up to.

"I mean, if you've been behind the California wildfires for the past five years, I wouldn't be..." The bottled beer found her mouth as the waitress sprinted by to check their table for needed drinks. Cerise motioned for more shots before speaking again, ".. surprised."

He actually snorted at that, almost choking on his beer.

“Wildfires? Who the hell is going to pay me to set a bunch of empty fields on fire? Any dumbass can do that for free, or by accident. That’s how it usually happens, doesn’t it?” Kellan wasn’t offended by the question, though; he was almost laughing at the implication. Once the waitress was out of hearing range, anyway. “Nobody’s going to be dumb enough to charge for that.” A wistful sigh, as if he would have liked them to. “Otherwise … yes and no. Business isn’t good right now. Some asshole’s been playing copycat, scaring off potential investors.”

One way to say clients. Kellan fell silent as the next set of shots were brought, then picked up one and, for once, just sipped at it instead of downing it in one go.

“So nobody’s paying and all my old contacts aren’t interested right now.” Kellan’s contacts, not Jackson’s. It was kind of a shame how many he’d had to abandon, but sacrifices came with ditching one arrest record for another. “Anybody I know here is … ”

He paused, a little longer than necessary. The only person he’d really known here was dead. His attitude shifted, pulling in, a little more sullen than before in a few quick seconds.

“ … they don’t have anything, either.”

Any shark could smell blood. Kellan's wounds - whatever it was that had driven him to such an awkward, mourning silence - were fresh. To be fair, most emotions and reactions were considered awkward by Cerise's fucked up standards. She could have just imagined it, although likening this guy to any degree of emotional investment seemed like a strange time to develop a wild imagination. In the end, she noted his lament but chose to concentrate on the more distressing subject matter.

"A copycat?" Completely neglecting her shot in favor of conspiratorial conversation, Cerise dropped folded arms onto the sacrificial slab between them. While he might have thought it laughable that she likened a couple of overheated grass fires to the kind of sleight of hand that he pulled, the truth was that Cerise didn't see a whole lot of talent required for his supposed skill set. Any overzealous idiot with a pack of matches could light a few fires. The only thing about him that she found remotely impressive was his ability to stay alive. In their old line of work, that was the true test.

"Are the fires something that happened after you came to Vegas or before?" Namely she wanted to know if somebody was copying him.

At her sudden interest, her leaning in and watching him in earnest - Kellan didn’t lean back. He did not. But he fixed her with a raised eyebrow and something like a glare, but not quite as intense. He took his time to take another sip of the liquor and consider an answer, remembering the little details that usually got muddled up in memories.

“If Vegas has regular problems like that without me here, then they stopped before I showed up.” Doing at least a little preliminary research generally didn’t go amiss when moving someplace new. “I did a job for someone, took out an apartment a few months back, and someone did the exact fucking thing about a week later. Shit job of it, though.” Like most egomaniacs, Kellan held himself to a particular higher standard - that his skills, developed over years of effort and practice, were superior to someone with a can of gasoline and a lighter. “Then there were a couple other half-assed fires when I was trying to get things done. I don’t know if it was someone copying me or just some dick trying to get the most out of the chaos, but … it’s brought on the cops.”

Automatically, he glanced around as he took another drink, trying to check for surreptitious listeners, off-duty cops with a sidearm, anyone more inclined to morality than he was. It didn’t look like anyone was listening in. Not that he intended to stop even if there was.

To Cerise, it didn't sound like anything strategic. If somebody was building on his funeral pyres to expose him or drag him out, there were better ways to do it. Should that be the intention, it didn't seem like the person knew what they were doing. Probably some younggun firebug reveling in the chaos, like Kellan said. Cerise didn't have enemies, and most of her old associates were dead now, so it didn't seem like anything for her to worry about. Kellan and her had worked together once, and back then she would have been concerned.. but now? He was on his own with those problems. "There have to be better ways for you to get work," and yeah, she was judging him. It was there in the swamp glow of her eyes.

"Seems like fire always gets a little too high profile for you to handle." Wasn't that why he was always dropping off the edge of the Earth, emerging from the mass grave of old aliases? Fresh of name, but never of soul. Maybe it was all the talk of burning buildings, but the cigarette smoldering down in the ashtray before her was distracting. She reached forward and pinched the filter's end without asking, grinding its burn out in the ashtrays ashy bottom. With a soft exhale, Cerise blew away the lingering smoke that wafted between them. "Sorry," she said. Apologizing for the cigarette's execution, but she didn't really sound sorry.

Kellan waved a hand, dismissing her words, her actions, her judgment out of hand - though he did give her a scowl when she put out his cigarette with an insincere apology. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a whole pack tucked away in a jacket pocket, but it was the principle of the thing. The invasion of his space, even if the ashtray was technically neutral ground.

“As if.” He pulled out the cigarettes and the lighter and tapped them against the table. “If I was bothered by how visible it was, I wouldn’t be doing it. The fact that I’m still a free man after all this time should tell you something. The big changes always had to do with people.” Which was true, ignoring the various and sundry jail sentences he’d served for his arsons. There was some danger in continuing with this line of work after two other selves had been notoriously good at the same thing - but when you had a specific skillset, why let it go to waste?

Instead of lighting a fresh cigarette, Kellan finished off his shot. Now there was a thin haze over his mind, enough for him to decide more hard liquor wouldn’t be a good idea, but beer probably wouldn’t hurt.

“Anyway, if you know someone with a problem I can solve, pass my name along. This name.” Tacked on with some insistence. Their few occasions working together had been a while ago, and the last time they’d met hadn’t exactly been on the best of terms. Kellan didn’t trust Cerise except as someone as mired in shadows as he was, which wasn’t precisely a compliment. “In the meantime, I’ll just see what my east coast contacts are up to.” If there were any left. He set the pack and the lighter on the table, still a little more drawn than he’d been a few minutes ago.

Cerise had his hands in a predatory scope when Kellan unearthed that cigarette pack. The weight of her stare said that she'd be just this side of irritated if he lit up another one after she'd gone through the effort of putting the last out. If she was going to smoke the damn stick, that was one thing. But if he was just going to let it burn down on the table and make her hair smell like a toxic bonfire, she wasn't in the mood. Slouching back against the rickety back of her chair, Cerise remembered her shot and collected the small tumbler from neglect. She twisted the glass between her fingers, analyzing the fuzzy warmth in her body. It was different. Not entirely pleasant. Not enough of a separation from herself, not the same kind of warmth she was used to. She knocked the shot back, it crashed in her empty stomach like so much battery acid. Wincing, Cerise gave him unamused eyes. "I won't be giving anyone your name."

She could have added on something about no offense, but with Cerise that was kind of like putting a glittery bow on a rottweiler. Not going to fool anyone. "I'm not getting caught up in any of your business." She used the term business very, very loosely when it came to him.

Kellan smirked.

He didn’t know much about Cerise, truth be told. Their involvement had been a while ago, and short-lived; their closest connection was, as he’d recalled before, the man they both worked for. But where his leash had pointed him at this or that place to burn down, often with someone still trapped inside, hers had been different. He didn’t know the fine details, but somewhere along the line it had to do with Sid - and given the shit that had gone down in Seattle, it hadn’t been a pretty line of work. Though it never was. What he remembered was that she did drugs that could have killed her and could keep someone’s attention while he snuck around back with a few little arson tricks, could put someone down without flinching, could get a wallet or a weapon out of someone’s pocket before they even knew what happened. She’d been one of the hollow-eyed kids he’d been just too old to be when he joined up. More a blessing than a curse - at least his way, the indoctrination hadn’t left unhealable scars.

He was willing to believe she didn’t want to get caught up in his shit. Kellan was a problem, still a problem, and there was no lie big enough to say he wasn’t. If her life had gotten better after Seattle, it made sense that she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with his singularly charming way of making a living.

But he had his doubts about that won’t. Don’t want to was different than absolutely never will. Or maybe he was just too arrogant to think that anybody could ever pass up what he could do in a time of sudden need.

“If you say so,” he said, opening the pack and tapping out a cigarette. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of business of your own, anyway, hunting down your not-like-us. Wherever the hell he actually is.”

Cerise watched him from over the burnt amber glass of her beer bottle, tilting it up for a long sip while he spoke. If you say so. He had a way of saying that, like he didn't quite believe her, like he was patronizing her. Or maybe she was paranoid, overly sensitive, jetlagged. She took another sip to cure the ailment of agitation. Her green eyes were war flint from across the table, and Kellan knew just how to spark a fire, didn't he? Drawing back, she licked the hops from one side of her mouth. Dusty freckled flesh developed a pink hydrangea bloom from the alcohol, a warmth coursing through her that was different from the opiate thrills she remembered, but not entirely unpleasant. The buzz of liquor felt cluttered, muddy, and Cerise was aware of the subtle loss of her brain's coordination, whereas when spiked with heroin, the slowdown of cognition was a thing so easy to remain ignorant to. It just was, she just was. Everything was warm poppies and if it had ever been different, it wasn't worth remembering. And while this wasn't Cerise's first time knocking back drinks, the differences never failed to register in the back alley of her consciousness. The loss of inhibitions, for somebody like her(knives! blood! horror!) didn't hold the promise of lighthearted things. Not like the simpering sweethearts, the laughing bachelorettes, and the guffawing old men that populated this dive.

"I don't think there's anybody like us Mi--" Quick sip from the bottle found her correction, "Kellan." Where once was scalding distaste and eye-rolling annoyance, now there was just a hint of fondness at whatever she was thinking. "We're a dying breed." As much as she hated to admit it, he'd planted an idea in her head. What if she didn't find Jack? What if she couldn't find work out here? She was too old to strip, and let's face it, that would have never fucking happened even when she was younger. As much as Cerise prided herself on the straight and narrow, it was mostly the drugs she'd been so desperate to escape from. There were all kinds of criminal avenues that didn't have to end in a great wall of dead bones. "Really I.. I didn't think a lot of this through.." Blunt nails scratched at the label of her newest beer, admissions made her nervous. She was too foggy to rethink why in the holy hell she was admitting anything to the guy across from her. "I didn't bring a lot of money, and I can't really be sure he's still here.. so I guess it's all sink or swim from here on out." Eyes, chartreuse spiraling through olive oil, glanced up to him with the knowledge that he'd relate. Survivors like them always could.

There was a flicker at the corner of his smirk when she started the wrong name, but it was just a flicker. She corrected herself, after all, and despite his indignant attitude toward people getting it wrong, Kellan knew that it was kind of bullshit to expect everyone to deal with his name switches as easily as he did. He pulled the cigarette out of the pack but didn’t light it quite yet, moving it between his fingers idly and listening to her talk. She was getting a little drunk, probably. So was he. And admissions while drunk were a dangerous possibility. He shrugged when she looked up at him, letting the patronizing grim smirk fade, looking down at the unlit cigarette, mostly nonchalant and still just a little gloomy.

“No shit. Criminals these days don’t know what they’re doing, and they die too easy.” The memory of three dead men on the floor of an RV made his hands pause. “ … nobody who comes out here thinks about it, Cerise. They’re just running on greed or fear or a shit ton of booze or a letter with an address and no note.” He paused with a grimace - at least when he said it out loud, it sounded like some kind of elaborate metaphor. Hopefully she’d take it like that and not think he was getting senile. Momentarily disgruntled, he tried to cover it up. “Whatever we’re out here for, means we’re stuck here, right? Unless you want to go back to that craft store job for another few years. If you want real money, something to keep you on track, I can keep an eye out.”

It technically wasn’t getting involved in his business. It was him getting involved in hers, rather. It was probably the alcohol talking, influenced by some sort of oddly desperate abyssal kinship he thought he’d buried decades ago.

Funny how chemicals could flip the script. Whereas she might have earlier hurled some knuckles in his face for even fucking suggesting that she could eventually get beartrapped into whatever criminal activities he was operating as a by-the-hour flamethrower for. But now she actually considered it. Not with a polite smile, and not with a flattered blush or incline of her head. Just a bit of tension around seaglass eyes, thoughtful even if she didn't comment on any of the thoughts whirling like dervishes in her head. She wasn't built for a lifetime of retail. All the old, brittle ladies behind conveyor belt counters and bad root jobs on unnaturally red hair.

"To be honest, I never thought I'd live to thirty.." Forty was fucking daunting on an entirely new, unfeasible level. Cerise didn't say the words like they were a sad thing, and not even like they were a pleasant surprise. It was just some strange, unexpected fact that didn't make a lot of sense to her. She didn't know very many people that lived as long as she had, and certainly not as long as Kellan had. The idea, like a refugee, crawled past the barbed wire of her barriers and made her wonder, if only for a second, if Sid was still alive.

"Besides, I'm not a criminal anymore," she reminded him with a gunslinger glint in her eye before she knocked back what remained of her beer. Not that the affirmation did anything to kill the infective wonder that she'd sprung loose within her. With the big bad wolf long dead in Seattle, picking up a little gig here or there didn't seem like such a dangerous thing.

"Give me your address," she said suddenly. Sliding a half damp table napkin his way before leaning back and borrowing an ink pen out of the apron of a passing waitress. The waitress didn't seem to notice, even if Cerise's fingers weren't quite as street rat nimble as they'd once been. Or maybe the waitress just didn't care, or she was drunk on the job, a hundred or, or, or's. Naturally, Kellan could always give her something false, but the fact that she asked was the only unspoken clue that she might, might consider what he had to offer. But why? Cerise didn't even fucking like him, the booze was definitely to blame here.

“You never really think about being old,” Kellan mused, half in response to her and half to himself. “You just wake up one morning and it turns out you’re there.” With all the little problems that came with it, like worn muscles that weren’t going to bounce back and a rotting liver and tar-clotted lungs. It was instinct and habit more than anything else that made him light up the wayward cigarette and take a drag even as the knowledge of the state of his insides drifted across his mind. When he was young, cancer had never been so much as a passing thought, much less his inevitable future. And true, there was no evidence he was screwed yet. But the warning on the pack did occasionally remind him of his own mortality, especially now that lurking shadows were off his trail.

And then Cerise distracted him by throwing back her beer and passing him a chintzy napkin and a pen, asking for his address. For a second he just blinked at her. No more protestations? No more moral high road? Was it just the alcohol talking, and she’d withdraw her words in the morning? But it wasn’t a guarantee. He didn’t know where she lived, or how long she intended to be here. She’d have information on him, but one motel room was as cheap as another; if he got worried, it wasn’t a huge problem to just cut and run. At this point he was already on his second place.

Kellan picked up the pen and scrawled the vague location, cross streets and room number, before pushing it back in her direction. Despite the buzz and haze of alcohol he watched her almost warily, like he could figure out what she was going to do with the information before it disappeared into her pocket.

“It’s not much, but it’s half a home.” Another round would probably go badly for the both of them, so he pulled out his wallet (took two attempts) and glanced at the slim pickings inside. “I’m not there too often. Best chance to find me these days is late afternoons.” They may not have hated each other, but Kellan felt fairly certain that neither one of them wanted to trade phone numbers unless it was absolutely necessary.

"It's not really fair, is it? That people like us grow old." Or maybe that was the punishment, decades of reflecting on all of your sins and all of the loved bodies that you'd been forced to bury. Cerise took the napkin from him with all the secret agent discretion that one would trade a briefcase full of unmarked bills. Some careful, one-handed origami tucked the bit of paper into her pocket. There was no commitment in her expression, even if she did take the napkin. It was just another ingrained habit brought about from her days with the devil man.. it never hurt to have a connection, especially a self-destructive one. She watched him light the cigarette with a tired lolling back of her head, sea witch eyes marking him in the crosshairs of unmasacara'd lashes. Like she was one to judge on self-destructive. She doodled idly on another bar napkin for a moment as the crowd around them began to thicken with nightcrawlers.

"If I need to find you, I'll find you." Afternoons or not. While Kellan fumbled with his wallet for the second time around, Cerise was already sliding out of her chair and making for the door. No goodbye, no paying her half of the tab. All that was left in her wake was that doodled napkin, one femininely cursive word. Sucker.