Who: Cerise & Sid What: Reunions. Where: Sid's fortress. When: Backdated to after Cerise had her chat with Ian and Sid had his chat with Drake. Warnings: Emotions.
Sid was getting used to Las Vegas. He'd unpacked. He'd hired an illegal, live-in babysitter for Zoe. He'd secured the house so well that even God - if he existed - couldn't get inside without Sid knowing it. And, now, he had Drake staying. Personally, he trusted Drake more than he did some deity when it came to keeping Zoe safe. And he thought it was good for his brother, being around a baby that didn't listen to Drake's bullshit. Because Sid knew that was all Drake was spouting these days. Anything that came out of Drake's mouth that didn't have to do with taking Lucien down, Sid discounted. He knew his older brother well enough to know when he was putting on a good show. It worked when they were kids, but not these days.
He'd just come off a two-day run, and he smelled of sweat, fire and ash, the remnants of a blaze over in east Henderson that had been started by a junkie's pipe and some matches. Half the complex had burnt down, and he'd spent the night dragging shoeless kids out into the street, where there parents waited glassy-eyed. He knew that defeated look on the faces of people who didn't know how the hell to pick up the pieces, but these people had even less than he'd had as a kid. It was hard those nights, handing over a small kid, only to know they'd end up in a shithole that was even worse than the one he'd rescued them from.
Drake wasn't there when he got home, and he sent Sara (the sitter) out to get some groceries, giving her the keys to the SUV and chuckling at the idea of the little old woman getting behind the wheel. He watched from the window as she struggled to get into the big vehicle, and he shook his head as he turned for the stairs.
He checked on Zoe first and, after finding her asleep, he unbuttoned the dirty blue shirt that Rescue for Firehouse 33 wore. He threw the thing in the laundry hamper, his thick red suspenders hanging down around the hips of dark blue pants that were just as grimy. He'd managed to free one button on the pants when the security system let him know someone was on the property of the big, tall house. Grey wifebeater and his thick, work boots still on, he headed for the stairs. He didn't check the guest room security monitors. He just stormed down, heavy boots against the step. And, after a brief pause to tuck some heat into the back of his pants, he headed straight for the door, where the doorside monitor showed him a view of the front yard.
Cerise was standing on the fringe of his front yard like a ghost of memory. Hesitating like an animal of prey, none of that predatory sense to scatter in the face of danger or heartache. She'd never quite learned how to avoid things that she knew were going to hurt in the end, aside from hoping that they wouldn't. But she could already feel the sadness that this reunion was going to scar her with. Her skin prickled with it and there were goosebumps on her bare arms despite the crawling desert heat.
She'd gotten dressed after talking to Ian, but her clothes didn't look like they'd changed very much in the last twenty years. An oversized black tee shirt, half tucked into her waistband to at least make it a little apparent that she was wearing something beneath it. Her blue jean shorts were weathered into swiss cheese, and maintained at her hips by a frayed military belt. She had gray cowgirl boots on, which were basically the only pair of shoes that she had aside from her beat up Reeboks. The black shirt was an old one of Jack's, something he'd left behind in Georgia and she'd never quite gotten around to tossing out. It was also now the only shirt she owned that didn't have a hole in the armpit or a random bloodstain on its sleeve. So basically, she was dressed up.
And fucking nervous. Skinny, guncarved fingers twisted in the scalp of her hair as she pivoted in the front yard grass, glancing back down the street from the way the taxi that had dropped her off had come from. It was a toss up as to whether she wanted to turn heel and flee or knock on the door, and she probably only had a moment to decide.
Her little talk with Ian hadn't gone well, and there was a nauseating emptiness in her stomach that had nothing to do with not having eaten. Life was beginning to feel like a nightmare she was never going to wake up from. In Seattle, she'd given up. She'd been at the fucking bottom and barely managed to crawl her way to the shore. She'd nearly died, and yet this time felt so much worse. Maybe because she'd believed them. She'd believed it was over, but they'd been wrong. They were going to be wrong this time, too.. and even if she had nobody to pray to, Cerise was begging the stars themselves to not let anybody get hurt. She didn't think the Wallaces would survive very much more hurt.
But she would, it was probably the only thing she was better at than anybody else. She'd had talents once, attributes that made her a good little soldier. These days, the only strength she saw in herself was the strange capacity to keep going despite having every reason not to.
Cerise glanced at the house again, knowing that if she did walk away, it wasn't going to change anything. She'd spend the day wondering, and the night awake and hating herself for being such a damn coward. She was very determined not to be a coward anymore, and that prompted her to take a step forward at last.
Sid opened the door before she managed to knock.
He'd aged in the past five years, and there was silver through his close-cropped hair that hadn't been there in Seattle. There were a few lines around his eyes and around his mouth, proof that thirty had come calling. But, otherwise, he was the same old Sid. Tall, too broad for anyone's good, with the kind of arms that were almost made for grabbing onto someone. He leaned against the frame, once the door was open, and he took his sweet time looking Cerise over. Some other man might have gotten nervous, shifted feet, ushered her inside just to do something other than looking. But that wasn't Sid. His gaze was assessing, rather than hot, though the corner of his mouth lifted just slightly in a way that spoke of smug old promises. He'd grown up with the woman that was standing there, looking unsure about whether she was going to turn around and run it on out of there. Five years hadn't changed her much, and he would have recognized her anywhere, from any angle, even if he couldn't see her face.
She was nothing like Jenny, nothing like Anne, nothing like Angie. She wasn't blonde, and she didn't have a whole lot to grab onto. She was still too skinny, but she always had been, all those drugs and living hard keeping her hipbones where he could feel them beneath the skin without even holding tight. He could still see the girl she'd been, when he looked at her, and that was as close to nostalgic as Sid got. After he'd run away from Drake, she'd taken his place, and he still couldn't think of her without remembering the backseats of old cars and hiding in dark corners of Lucien's house, hands all up under each others clothes, when they didn't even know what the fuck they were doing. He'd been addicted to her, before he'd ever been addicted to the needle, and he rubbed the ditch of an arm as he pushed away from the doorframe and stepped aside.
He was broad enough that there wasn't much room for her to enter, even when he leaned back against the door. He could have gotten out of her way, but that wasn't Sid's style either. There was something proprietary in his gaze when he looked at her, something nearly twenty years old that had never managed to shake itself free. He grinned, and it was an old grin. "Coming in, or do I need to go out there and grab you?" he asked, a little boy's smile, Kansas rumble in his voice, plus something fond enough to melt butter, without him even realizing it.
The suddenness of that opening door made her freeze, the strangest and most exhilarating terror in the pit of her stomach like a flock of demonic butterflies. In the fraction of a heartbeat that existed before he fully brought the door open, she had the common sense to recognize that she probably shouldn't have come here. Her heartbeat was hiccuping and locked knees left her feeling almost light headed. It felt as if she had a year to reflect on everything as the door opened with an aching, teeth-grinding slowness. But it hadn't opened slowly at all she realized, because with a blink, there he was. It felt like she'd had all the time in the world to turn around and run, or to at least smooth some of her curls with her fingers.. but then there he was. Her spearmint eyes rolled up to see his face, and it felt like she shrank a bit as she did so. Her mouth was open with the want to say something, hello probably would have been the proper thing, but instead she just stared. He was taller than she remembered somehow, as large and overwhelming as her feelings for him had once been.
It took some effort for her to swallow, and she didn't like the feel of it when she did. Her throat was tight with the feeling that came when she was bound to start crying. Fuck, she didn't want to start crying. Cerise didn't even know why she would aside from the sudden and overwhelming gratitude for realizing that he was still alive, and that he still had that little half grin that felt like the only giddiness she'd ever had in her youth. It felt like another year since she'd walked up to his door, twelve months of staring up at him until he moved back and she blinked.
The blink helped, it centered her, and Cerise extended her glance into the portion of his house that she could see, finding it clean and nice and nothing like the motel rooms she would associate him with. She stepped past him with an off center smirk, slipping into the easy familiarity of it without meaning to. "I'm not armed," she told him, although she also doubted that he would care if she was. She could have walked up to his door with a bazooka in hand and been no more a danger to him than if she'd walked up carrying daisies. Only one of them had ever been capable of hurting the other, and it'd never been her.
He knew that off center smirk, just like he knew what that deer-in-headlights and wet at the corner of her eyes look meant when he'd opened the door. Sid was selfish, self-absorbed, but he'd grown up at her knee, and he'd watched her grow alongside him. With her, there was that awareness that came with puberty, with finally realizing that girls were girls, and the fascination that came with that realization. Other guys had watched girls in classrooms, behind desks and and always an arm's length away. But not Sid. Sid had woken up with Cee in his bed, and he'd gotten to know all kinds of things about girls, while other boys were just getting used to jerking off without staining the bedsheets. He'd fumbled with her until he figured out what she liked, and it was that old understanding that made his grin warm when she managed the quip.
"I don't care if you are armed, sweetheart," he told her, confidence and that smile that was too young for the man he'd grown into. But he meant it. It was like he'd told Drake; he knew Cee wouldn't hurt him. Maybe it was vanity, man, but he trusted her not to sell him out, and he trusted her not to hurt him. He would have put a knife in her hand and turned his back on her, that was how sure he was. He didn't think she was in love with him anymore, but he thought what they had went deeper. And he knew he'd deserve the knife in the back; he'd fucked her over more times than he cared to remember. Out of all the crap he'd done in his life, leaving her sleeping in a Mexican motel room was the one he couldn't make himself forget.
He closed the door, and he set the alarm again, and he watched her walk into his house. The place was nothing like their lives. It was nothing like anything he'd had, and he knew she had to be thinking the same thing. Little Sid Wallace made good. "The insurance settlement from Anne was sweet," he explained. "Anne would want Zoe to grow up in a house, not like me and Drake did," he explained, not even needing to let her ask it. He nodded toward the stairs. "I was about to change and wash up," he said, motioning to the sweat and soot on his clothes. "Wanna come up?" That was a challenge, and it showed in the dimple that kissed his cheek and the way his eyes crinkled. Want to come up, or want to stay downstairs, where it was safe?
There was a distracted stutter in her walk, and she couldn't help it. He made her nervous, and the stutter started to sway. He was the bad times and the good, but mostly the good when compared to everything else. He was her childhood and a sliver of her hatred and there was something self-strengthening about walking through fire all over again. Sid always felt like fire a whole hell of alot more than Lucien ever had, all that warmth that got too hot and too dangerous way too fast. Cerise had a shoulder up and tucked against her cheek, the anxiety of this moment fading under the deja-vu knowledge of it all. How many times had she walked by him? Him, her friend, and lover, and brother in so many ways.
She chewed up her anxiousness and tossed him some sidelong green eyes when he said he didn't care if she was armed. "Why?" As predictable as she was, she wanted to know how he could be comfortable with that. There was a confused twist in her eyebrows and a disgruntled crook to her mouth because.. after all of this time, how could he know? She knew. She knew he'd never hurt her, not without meaning to. She wouldn't let him hurt her in any way that he didn't mean to, she'd never let him get the upperhand with a knife.. but she also didn't have to worry about that. With him it was everything else that was the problem. With Sid, a smile was the knife.
Cerise suddenly hesitated. He was talking to her, but she couldn't be sure about what and washing up and what. She stared at him for a moment, conflicted. Never quite frightened, just apprehensive, and her eyes were the security beams when he asked her about coming upstairs. There was a challenge there, she could read it clearly in his grin and body language that she wanted to read like so much braille. She almost said no, go ahead. But then there was a dimple and Cerise realized she was still frozen at a standstill a few steps away from the front door. She didn't come here to be nervous.. so she shook the dark hair out her eyes and straightened while tugging ever nervously on the edge of her black shirt. "I'll come up, we can talk.. about Lucien" Might as well set the parameters now.
He was grinning by the time she gave him that sidelong look that was all green and familiar. "Why?" he asked, repeating her question with a tone of good-natured incredulity. "Because you're not going to shoot me, Cee," she told her. The shrug of shoulders he gave her immediately after was broad and helpless. "Nobody's saying you shouldn't, but you won't. Not any more than Drake would." And maybe it would serve him right if she pulled out a piece and ended it all right there, but he didn't see that happening, man. He moved forward, and he cupped her cheek with blunt fingers that slipped behind her ear. "Doesn't mean I don't deserve it," he said, looking down at her seriously. "Just means I trust you not to. Just like I trust you not to walk Lucien in my door." Which Drake would have suspected her of in a heartbeat, had he known she was in the house.
He stepped back as quickly as he'd moved forward, almost too much agility for a man of his height and breadth. "I wouldn't hurt you either, not like that. Not other ways, either," he added. He hadn't ever physically hurt her, but he'd scarred her up in plenty of other ways. Realizing that came too damn late, but at least he'd (eventually) realized it. She agreed to come up, and he took the stairs two at a time, long legs and no need of a hand on the railing.
Upstairs, the house was as spartan as downstairs. It was obvious no woman lived there, and even the baby's room - which he peered into before continuing on to the master bedroom - was lacking in anything warm. Clean and open, that was the feeling the house gave, and that was as intentional as anything else. It didn't feel like a crummy motel, and it didn't feel like the cramped back of a car. And, open and bright, it felt nothing like Lucien's house, which had been opulent and dark.
He walked into the bedroom, listening for her footsteps, and he ducked into the open bathroom door as he reached behind his head to pull the dirty wifebeater off. He ran water in the sink, and he stripped to his boxers and scrubbed up in the sink. "Drake says we killed someone else," he called out over the water. "If that's true, why'd Lucien come here? And why's he being so damn obvious about what he's up to?" he asked, turning the water off and toweling up. He walked out of the bathroom a second later, unbuttoned jeans loose on his hips and the damp towel draped along his shoulders. "Is he just getting old and senile?" he asked of the man that had so terrified him as a kid. "He's too much of a coward to kill anyone himself. I got that part now, but he used to be less obvious. Half the fucking town wants to kill him, Cee. With us, he went after people who didn't have anyone. He's lost his damn mind now."
If she'd had a moment more to anticipate it, Cerise would have scrambled backwards or maybe just run screaming instead of letting him touch her, but he was too close before she could manage to do either. She stared up at him, cramming down the weakness that threatened her knees because it didn't belong here anymore. Sid deserved a lot of emotions from her, but love wasn't one of them.. but knowing it and practicing it were two different things. Cerise was eternally grateful when he backed away and turned for the stairs. She exhaled a breath that she hadn't realized she was holding tight to, and shaky knuckles pushed away the dark flop of wavy bangs that were forever getting into her eyes.
The brightness of the house felt alien to her, and it was a pleasant distraction while Sid scrubbed away the smell of fire and work in the bathroom sink. Cerise went for the window, staring at the blue and cloudless sky, wondering how it could be the same and yet entirely different from other blue skies she'd seen. There were desert mountains in the distance, shadowy outlines that she traced on the windowpane with her index finger. She didn't glance away, even when she heard the water cut off and the solid thud of his footsteps. "I don't know," she began. "There's.. something wrong with him," and with a sigh she searched the street outside the window for any sign of suspicious cars. "I know there always has been, but this time it's different. He was sad the other night, Sid." That, more than anything, frightened her. Ian had always been destructive in his anger, but even she wasn't sure of what he would do when he was like this. "I think something bad is going to happen," it didn't take a whole lot of imagination to foresee.
He was surprised to see her at the window, once he stepped into the room. He didn't know why he was surprised, but he was, and he didn't say anything for a few seconds, watching her instead. Then, there were footfalls as he dug out a clean t-shirt, snug and blue and with the firehouse emblem on the front. And though she didn't come to him, he crossed over to her. He leaned against the wall beside the window, crossed arms and a pale gaze that had never been the kind to look away. They'd been through some shit, but he'd never been the guy that looked away from it. He'd rather see it all coming head on, and maybe that was a result of so many damn fires and deaths in his past. He'd fucked up (again) with Anne, and he wasn't going to fuck up here.
"There's always been something wrong, Cee," he began, but her acknowledgement stopped him long enough to let her get the rest of the thought out. Lucien? Sad? This was brand new fucking territory. "So he's evil, and he's lost it," he suggested, and there was a hint of an uptick at the end of his sentence, making it into the shadow of a question. Alright, that was bad news. He uncrossed his arms, and he rubbed his hands over his short cropped hair as he paced away from her. Anne had always said she hated seeing him pace. He was big, and scary, and he took up too much damn room when he was agitated. But it was safer these days than when he was on the needle, and he was confident he could pace the entire damn house without Cerise looking at him with that scared look that Anne had gotten in her eyes sometimes.
He couldn't argue with her about something bad coming. If there was something Sid knew, it was that unsteady homicidal assholes were worse than the machinating ones. Sane, lucid, he and Drake could predict Lucien's movements and act. If what Cerise was saying was true - and he believed it was - they were good and fucked. "He's not looking at Drake and me," he said, even though it was obvious. "Who does he like these days?" Cerise had always been like a daughter to Lucien, and if Lucien was going to trust anyone, it was her.
That made him stop his pacing, and he crossed the room and stopped behind her. He began to put his hands on her upper arms, close and crowded enough to do it, but he stopped himself. "You scared of him?" he asked. It was an unselfish question, and it had taken him awhile to get there, but he'd found his way around to it eventually. In the past, he wouldn't have even thought to ask it, not if Cerise could help.
Cerise glanced over at him when he crossed to the wall, and her green eyes didn't flinch from the proximity of the memories that threatened her like a swarm of poison. She was still trying to remember when he'd gotten so tall, and his shoulders so wide. When they were younger, Sid had seemed just as narrow as she'd been, but maybe she wasn't remembering things exactly as they'd been. She had a problem with that, romanticizing the past into something good when it obviously had been anything but. If it had been good, she wouldn't have been wearing so many scars, and she wouldn't have ended up so worthlessly alone. The thought turned her attention back to the window again, and this close maybe he could tell that she wasn't really looking at anything out the glass. The sun warm glare was just a point to get unfocused, to stare without seeing anything, and simply remember.
When Sid asked if Lucien had lost it, Cerise was glad that he went immediately to pacing somewhere behind her. Her throat ached again, and she didn't know if it was fear or regret or what she'd never in her life wished that things were different as badly as she did in this moment. At least when she'd been living in hell, she'd been able to just turn it all off.. but these days she was exposed like a frayed wire, and everything hurt all of the time. Cerise had no idea when she'd gotten so weak. It was disgusting, but she didn't know how to stop it either. "The woman," she murmured. "From Seattle. Her family is here, and they are making problems for him. He asked me to follow you and Drake, which means I'm sure he wants to deal with them himself.."
Cerise could feel him behind her, and she closed her eyes because it seemed like he felt closer that way. If only she could squeeze her eyes tight enough, maybe she could send them back to when she'd still believed he cared. When the look in his eyes was enough, and she could trust him.. not like today. Today, when he looked at her in that old familiar way, she felt the old, so fucking familiar pain of him abandoning her. Waking up in empty motel beds, goodbye phonecalls in hospital beds. Eyes still closed, she swayed a little bit on her Reeboks while reflecting on it all. Then Sid asked if she was afraid of him, and Cerise exhaled solemnly. "Always."
He didn't have a clue what she was looking out on. Maybe the city, with its unforgiving heat. Maybe nothing at all. Cee had always been more prone to thinking than he had. Even in those drug crazy days of their childhood, he'd always been the one who grabbed and pawed and wanted everything shucked off until there was only sweat and clinging. It was the only thing worth holding onto then that wasn't the drugs. Even later, in Mexico, where neither of them could stay clean worth a damn, he always wanted to come back from a job and fuck his unhappiness out of his system. He'd fallen asleep countless times, knowing she was lost in thought, and too heavy limbed and strung out to care to ask what she was thinking. He was still an ass these days, though not as much of one, and looking hard proved those tracks were still there, faded, all alongside his arms and up to his armpits. No, their lives hadn't been good, and they hadn't always been good to each other, but kids weren't made for the lives they'd led. Hell, he thought it was a miracle they'd made it out of that hellhole of Lucien's at all. But at what cost?
He looked up from his pacing when Cerise mentioned Iris. "Drake said she was here. We go after her, and he'll come to us? Or, we go after her, and he'll burn the damn city down?" It wouldn't have mattered once, as long as they got Lucien and ended it. Hell, maybe it still didn't matter so much to Drake. But Sid had enough blood on his hands, and he was only itching to add one more layer of it before it was all done. He was more than willing to use Iris as a pawn, so long as it didn't end up with a ton of dead bystanders. He scoffed. "She was always a piece of work," he said of Iris. He and Drake had tried to reason with Iris hundreds of times in Seattle. They'd tried to get her away, to explain the things Lucien did to kids, to families, to prove to her about the trail of bodies the man left in his wake. Iris had always insisted there was good in Lucien that canceled out the monstrous things he did, and Sid couldn't stand her for it. The woman had invalidated every dead person in his family, and he'd never forgive her for that.
But he didn't believe that Lucien had it in him to deal with anyone himself. Lucien had never gotten his own hands dirty. Unless he was unstable enough for it now, which made him unpredictable, and Sid hated that he'd just circled back around to that. When she admitted she was scared of Lucien, Sid finally did close calloused hands on her upper arms. He tugged her back against him, real light pressure, in case she wanted to fight him on it. "Sorry we fucked up last time." Sorry for her, for himself, for Drake. For Anne and Rome, who he wouldn't ever get a chance to apologize to. For Zoe, who wouldn't even realize what his fuck-up had caused, not 'til years down the line.
"Iris could be a bargaining chip," she agreed. "She left, but I know he wants her back." Admittedly, she wasn't entirely sure of what Lucien would do if he thought Sid and Drake were keeping Iris from him, but it wasn't like he had a list of targets to go after anymore. Lucien had already killed everyone that the surviving Wallaces cared about, and she didn't know of anyone left to threaten. She didn't see Sid overwhelmed with the kind of hero complex that would have made Lucien want to go after innocent bystanders in the city, either. It didn't make Cerise feel good to hypothesize about all of this, because there was a very real possibility that she could be wrong. She didn't want Sid and Drake to do something on her recommendation, only to have it blow up in their faces. Which is why she eventually conceded to a softspoken, "But maybe there's a better way.." She just didn't have a fucking clue what it was yet.
Cerise didn't fight him when he pulled her with gentle comfort into the line of his chest. It was easier to accept with her back to him, even if she could see their faces reflected blurrily in the windowpane before her. Her sigh was worn ragged and damn near defeated when he apologized for being wrong. She wished he wouldn't say that, because Cerise had never quite learned how not to forgive. She relaxed bit by bit against him until she was no longer stiff and unyielding against the strength pressed to her spine. "I trusted you," she whispered. She'd trusted him when he'd said it was done, and really, shed trusted him with a whole lot more that he'd let her down with as well. Really, she shouldn't have been fucking surprised. Her own fault, again.
His fingers tightened on her shoulders when she gave in and let him pull her against the broad expanse of his chest. He listened to what she said about Iris, and he considered, for a few seconds, if there was a better way. Eventually, he sighed, hot air and agitation in the exhale. "I want to walk in and shoot him between the eyes, but I don't want to end up in jail, Cee. If I didn't have Zoe, I wouldn't give a damn. But I do, and I have to be more careful than before." Which was, really, the only thing that had kept him from universal code and firefighters had to local security systems to go in and blow Lucien's brains out. "And, if I can manage, I'm going to try to keep Drake from ending up in a chair over this bastard." Because he was sure it was only means and opportunity that were keeping Drake from walking up to Lucien and taking him out plain, where everyone could see. "What better way?" he finally asked, and the question was rumbled equality. He trusted her ideas about dealing with this just as much as he trusted anything he could come up with on his own.
He had to take a second for a long inhale when she said that she'd trusted him. "I know, sweetheart," he said, rubbing at her arms. He wasn't going to shift the blame and explain that Drake had set the dead man on fire all those years ago. Sid hadn't looked Lucien in the face, or this might have all been averted, and that was his own damn fault, and he wasn't about to shift it. Rome and Anne were dead, and there was no turning back time to fix that. He moved his hands from her upper arms, and he slid them around her waist in an approximation of a hug. They'd spent so much of their childhoods clinging to each other, and he hadn't even thought to miss it until just then. There was something appealing about not needing to pretend. He felt like he spent his whole damn life pretending. "Why are you letting me do this, when you know I'm an asshole?" he asked gruffly. Because Drake would forgive him anything, and no one else really knew him. But Cee, she knew what cloth he was cut from. Cee'd always known.
Cerise didn't know where it had all gone wrong, and even in the nostalgic comfort of his arms, this all felt like such a bad dream. She still didn't want to believe that it wasn't over, although it wasn't as if the last year of her life had been some paradise. It seemed as if she was continually slipping through black holes to some deeper level of hell. She had no idea when the last time she'd actually been happy was. Some time with Jack maybe, although she was always forced into the sour realization that even that was a joke. Jack hated her now.
Cerise thought that letting Drake go after Lucien on his own sounded like a fine idea, although Sid would never agree to it. It meant closure, but both of the Wallaces were too self-sacrificing to let the other go down with charges. She closed her eyes when his arms went tight around her waist, and she didn't fight the embrace even though she knew she fucking should have. She should have told him what she had to tell him and fucking left.. but she was still here, and it felt like there was still a lifetime of things to say. Words couldn't even convey most of it, and she sniffed gently against the threat of tears that felt nostalgic for once rather than fearful. Even if Sid was shit for romance, he always stood by her. She knew that he defended her to Drake, it was the only thing that made sense as to why Drake was still so fucking pissed at the sight of her. Sid got her in a way that nobody did.. and maybe nobody ever would again. It didn't mean she could trust him with her heart, but she could trust him to be genuine.
Comfort from him was difficult, because she still wanted to be there for him in all of the ways that she always had been. She wanted to chase the darkness from his eyes with her hands on his body, but she was always the one left remaining wounded when he left. She could forgive him that, but she didn't want to forget. The worst part was that she knew how it always ended, and she still loved him. There wasn't anyway not to. He hurt her like nobody else could, not even Lucien, but it didn't dilute the emotion. Turning her head slightly, Cerise pressed her cheek into the fabric of his shirt with honesty. "Because I'll always be here.."
In the window's reflection, he could tell when she closed her eyes, and he ducked his head and let his chin rest on her hair. He took a deep breath, his chest rising against her back, and he didn't say a damn thing. He didn't mind the quiet with her. He never minded quiet. Maybe that came from being told to shut the hell up in the back of the car too many times as a kid, but he didn't need a lot of noise. He could talk someone's ear off, but he didn't need to fill silence with his own voice. His arm around her flexed, tightened without thinking, and his thoughts strayed to Lucien, as they did all the fucking time since he learned the man was still alive. She was right in thinking he wouldn't let Drake take this on his own. Truth was, he thought Drake was better off sitting out the whole damn round. His brother was a drunk, and not just a day's worth of drunk. Drake smelled like drunks that spent their whole paychecks in bars, and Sid wasn't young enough not to notice, like he'd done with his old man.
When she turned her cheek and pressed it against his shirt, he moved his hands to her waist and turned her toward him. He was big, and his hands were big, and it was nothing to turn her around like she didn't weigh a thing. He stroked her hair for a few seconds, long strokes and a cupped hand, something more mature than the tangled fingers of his awkwardly gangly teenage years. His hand found her back then, and he rubbed it from shoulder to hip, flat palm and burn-scarred callouses through the black shirt she wore. Eventually, his hand slid up over her shoulder, and he tipped her chin and stepped back, so he could look down into her face. They weren't kids anymore, and there wasn't any hiding from that. They didn't look like those skinny hungry children without shadows or lines around their eyes. "I only took off because I thought you were okay with him. What happened?" And he wasn't talking about Lucien anymore. Where the hell is he? is what he really wanted to ask, but he didn't. He knew better than anyone how fierce Cee could be when she loved a thing, whether that thing deserved her love or not.
He felt closer than family. To her, Sid was everything good she would never forget and all of the bad that she just didn't want to forgive. The worst part was knowing that she inevitably would, though. She understood Sid too well to hold a grudge, and maybe Cerise didn't get where he was now, but she sure as hell knew where they'd been then. A person could forgive a lot when they knew the silt that sprouted such weeds, but that didn't mean she wanted to make the same mistakes.
Once facing him, Cerise kept her cheek against his chest, absorbing the comfort of his hands and the silence that she didn't find daunting at all. She was fairly certain that she'd meant to come here all serious and straightforward business-like, and the realization that nothing ever turned out the way she wanted it to made her smirk softly to herself. Even now, her own weaknesses still surprised her.
Cerise swallowed away the dryness in her mouth when she tilted her freckled face up to look at him. She knew he was asking about Jack, and somehow Cerise wasn't quite prepared for that. Her expression crumbled momentarily; bright and hopeful eyes falling flat when she glanced away. "We don't really talk no more." She rubbed some fingers nervously over her sternum, as if there was some subconscious connection between the words and the fluttering pain in her chest. It wasn't real, she reminded herself, and dropped her hand determinedly a moment later. There was still hurt there, and probably always would be, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. She'd done it to herself, really.
She loved the guy, Sid realized. Really realized. Sure, he'd known she had feelings for the dude, or she never would have left Seattle with Jack. But feelings weren't the same as love, and Sid had that old jealous thing going on that still felt like no one had a connection that matched up as strong as theirs did. It was the kind of emotion that didn't need explaining, because it was old and bone deep. She could get married a hundred times over, and he could get married a hundred times over, and that old feeling would still be there. You didn't spend your entire adolescent wrapped up in a girl, only to lose that connection just because you grew the hell up. Maybe relationships made later, in the 20s or 30s, weren't like that. But they were different, and it made him jealous mad to think of her loving someone else enough to need to rub him off her skin that way. Selfish. Sid had always been a selfish bastard, and the fact that he'd gone off with Irene, just like she had with Jack, didn't matter worth a shit just then.
"He's an asshole, sweetheart," he said, though he expected she'd wallop him one for it. But they'd always been good at fighting, and he didn't give a damn about that either. She could swing on with her fists as long as she wanted, and he'd just grab them up in his hands once he thought she was done. He ran a thumb over the freckles that dotted her cheek, and he remembered counting every last one during one really high night in a backyard somewhere, some dingy lantern lighting them up, and him unable to keep count of the number with all the shit in his system.
Love wasn't the same as it'd been when she was young, or maybe it had more to do with the differences between loving Jack and loving Sid. As a teenager, love had been warm safety that told her that nothing would ever go wrong, despite how often everything went wrong. Now love was a dusty thumbprint, something that smudged and tried to be clean and good, but really just ended up ruining everything it touched. Maybe it was a good thing her love always ended up so one-sided, she wouldn't know what to do with somebody that ever looked at her the way she'd once looked at the man holding her now.
And leave it to Sid to say the completely wrong damn thing. Her green eyes softened, instinctively taking his words to heart before she actually got a second to analyze them. Once she did, her stare narrowed before rolling with exasperation. It should have been a sweet thing, but sweet things only served as a poisonous reminder to her these days. "Shut up," she sighed, peeling away from Sid when he touched her face so gentle it was like he thought that might actually soothe her. Cerise wasn't a little kid anymore, and she didn't need to be put back together like so much broken glass. Honestly, that was the last fucking thing she wanted to hear from him, the guy who'd proven time and again that he was incapable of loving her right back. And maybe she was a little afraid that she would fall apart if he kept it up, she'd only been on the verge of tears since walking in his door.
Sid couldn't put anyone back together. Not him, not her. He wasn't made for gluing things back. He was made to break things, or to set them on fire without even being near them. He'd been leaving bodies in his wake since his mom had died, and it hadn't stopped. He knew Lucien's grudge had something to do with his parents, and nothing to do with him, but he'd been the one to walk into Lucien's house and stay, and a ton of people had died as a result. He didn't have Drake's guilt, but he knew better than to think he could glue either himself or Cerise up without cracks showing. Hell, he'd never tried to glue anyone together in his life, man. He'd just accepted that he tore things down, and that's the man he'd grown into.
He let her peel back, hands moving back to her upper arms when she moved. He didn't let go altogether, because he wasn't the kind of man to just let her walk. Selfish prick through and through, he wanted her there with him. He didn't stop to think whether it would be better to let her go find a life without him, Ian or Jack, because he could have suggested it. He didn't stop to think it, because he didn't want it. It had been a hard year, and this was the first time he'd stopped pretending the whole while. "It's true," he insisted. "Just like I was an asshole," he added, shouldering some of the blame for doing the same damn thing he was pissed at Jack for. But he would have never let her stay with Ian without doing something about it, and that was just facts. "What do you have planned to get out of that house?" he asked, the thought bringing it to the forefront. If he'd been thinking of using her help earlier in the conversation, he did an about-face now. His anger at Jack had reminded him that he had to do better at keeping her out of harm's way.
Anger fluttered inside of her like so many acidic butterflies, and she glared at him for a moment. Cerise couldn't even begin to explain all of the ways that he was wrong about Jack being an asshole because that would mean getting into the whole story about how she'd tried to have Max killed. That was something she really didn't want to get into now, or really ever with Sid. She knew what she'd done was unforgivable. As much as Sid had a tendency to piss her off when she thought about all of the times he'd gone off and left her scrambling in the dark with all the broken pieces of their lives cutting her open like gut-wrenching shards of crystal.. she didn't want him to know about what she'd done. It would kill something inside of her to have him look at her in the way she still remembered Jack doing.
Cerise stiffened when he unexpectedly changed the subject, and there was a brief pause before she spoke as if she was already formulating a sound argument for the disagreement that was sure to follow. "I told him that we should leave, just the two of us, and just.. stop all of this." She could have lied, but Sid had always been able to read through her like oiled tissue paper, and she doubted that a small handful of years had much changed that. If anything, leading a semi-normal life for a few years had probably made her even worse of a liar than she'd been before. Another weakness brought on by her brief flirtation with normalcy.
Sid didn't realize Cerise was hiding something from him. They'd been apart for too long, and he'd forgotten how to be observant when it came to her. Give him a few weeks, a month at most, and he'd be back to reading her like he read Drake. But just then, all he knew is she didn't want to talk about Jack, and that pissed him off even more than the green running through his veins did. It was all masculine, all proprietary and mine. Sid could be a boy on a playground, just as much as any man. More, actually, because he was used to reaching out and grabbing what he wanted for himself. He liked words just fine, but there was a time when words just didn't get the job done. That had been a lesson learned in the back of a car, while fighting with his dad about every damn thing that came into his mind.
"You asked him to go with you, and he wouldn't?" he asked of Jack, surprise showing plainly on his face. "What's the man? Stupid?" he asked, and he meant it. He wasn't going to stay in Las Vegas for some fictional woman through a door, and he didn't expect Jack or Cerise to do the same. He liked the girl from his Door just fine, but she was just a girl from a story, and he wouldn't stop his life for her, so why didn't Jack agree to up and go? He realized he was missing something, but he figured it had to do with time. Something in the past five years. He had his own failed relationship in that time, and he was sure Irene wouldn't come running if he called again, no matter how loud he yelled for her. He tipped her chin with his knuckles, rough and familiar. "I'm here now. So, how are we getting you out, Cee?" he asked.
Five years was a long time. Cerise hadn't realized just how long until this moment, staring up at Sid and trying to navigate all of the differences between then and now. She remembered how when she'd found him in Seattle, it had felt like forever since she'd been able to dig her nails into his skin and fuck the pain away, and now it was another half decade. This time though, she didn't want to just close her eyes and will it to be yesterday. They couldn't ever go back, even if she momentarily wanted to. Her love for him was too painful, although she'd eventually gotten over wishing it would just go away altogether. After all of these years, Cerise had finally come to terms with the fact that it never would. She still couldn't stare into his face without getting weak-kneed from memories and the dizzy rush they could bring.
Realizing that, she dropped her eyes and hesitated when he started on about Jack. "You don't understand," she whispered. She couldn't help but to glance back up at him when he tipped her chin. Those green eyes were clear of tears, but bottomless with worry. He wasn't going to like it, and she tried to prepare him for the words by soothing her fingertips along the side of his neck. A gentle, pleading stroke. "Not Jack. I asked Lucien to leave with me.."
He didn't want to go back five years either, but for different reasons. It had taken a lot of work for him to get where he was, standing there, knowing he was a selfish asshole and trying to do something about it for once. It was cliched to say becoming a father had changed him, and maybe he couldn't ever change completely, but his old man had been an ass, and Sid didn't want to follow in those particular footsteps. Meant he needed to make changes, and trying to see himself clearly was the first.
He knew he wasn't going to like whatever was about to come out of her mouth, and he knew it as soon as she lifted her green gaze to look at him. It was that gut punch of being a teenager and hearing her come back to say something had happened with Lucien, back when everyone was dying left and right and there wasn't enough sobriety between the two of them to even realize there were any other options for them. When she touched his neck, he ducked his head, an old mannerism from when he was much shorter and when she'd been nearly his height. He wanted to close his eyes and just let himself feel it, but he knew it was meant to be a distraction, and he caught her wrist in his grip just as she started talking again.
He held her wrist in the painless vice of his fingers, the grip loose, but hard to break. He didn't lower her hand, and he stared into those damnable green eyes of her. "Why?" he asked. "Why the hell would you do that? You're done playing sacrifice to get this man off people, Cee." Because he assumed that was it. He didn't assume, not for a second, that she wanted to go anywhere with that crazy old man.
Instinct narrowed Cerise's eyes when he caught her wrist in the midst of the touch, and she twisted her hand to draw back, but when freedom failed to be gained by a simple tug, she didn't fight him. Cerise did have a tendency to go sturdy under pressure though, and she immediately stopped withering like a heartbroken little girl under the weight of his memorable eyes. The hackles of defensiveness were quite suddenly on the rise. "He said no, okay? He said he wants to stay here and finish whatever-the-fuck it is that he has planned." Her words ran bitter like so many years of blood, "So congratulations, you'll get your revenge or he'll get his.."
And the reason for such bitterness was suddenly evident when she took a sharp breath and crammed the heel of her free hand into his chest, begging for distance so that she could just fucking run away if she started to cry, which felt like too real of a possibility. She'd forgotten how much human contact could make her panic, it was an illusion that was so, so wonderfully easy to slip into. "And why the hell do you care? You left me with him once, as I recall." They'd just been kids.. and she didn't really blame him for that, or maybe she just didn't want to think she did. She'd pretended like she hated cared at the time, and on the outside she'd been a nonchalant shrug, but she could remember so many nights afterward spent crying herself to sleep.
He wasn't surprised when she turned angry, and maybe it was all coming back to him. The way this worked, the way they worked. "He won't get a damn thing," he reassured her, though he knew there was some part of her that still cared about the bastard that was Lucien. Sid had never gone into things with Lucien with the adoration Cee did, because Sid had always approached the man as a potential killer. Lucien had lured him, wormed his way inside, but Sid had always kept that truth in the back of his mind, even when he felt himself softening toward the man. And he could see Lucien saying no to her. The plain truth was that Lucien had never given the kind of damn about Cerise that Cerise had for him.
He gave her the distance when the heel of her hand connected with his chest. He let her go, and he stepped back enough not to crowd her with his size and height. "That was a long time ago, and I wouldn't do it again," he said of leaving her when they were kids. "I didn't leave you in Seattle. I got you out. I didn't leave until I knew you were safe." He was solemn when he said it. He wasn't proud of leaving her when they were young, and he wasn't proud of leaving her sleeping in Mexico after she'd helped him scrape himself off the ground when Jenny died. But in Seattle, he hadn't left her in Lucien's clutches. He had still been a selfish bastard through and through, but he hadn't done that.
"I care," he said simply, "because I never stopped caring about you. I thought we were shit for each other, that all we did was bring out the drugs and the bad things, but I never stopped loving you, Cee." He didn't give a damn if it was the wrong thing to say.
"I'm not helping him, if that's what you think." Because it seemed suddenly important for Cerise to convey that she wasn't working for Lucien, and she didn't still idolize him even if everybody thought that she did. This wasn't Seattle, and that mantra repeated in her head like a record skipping over and over. Nothing was going to happen the way it had with her doing the tightrope walk between faithless loyalties. She didn't want to be dedicated to Sid either. Cerise thought she wanted to be dedicated to herself, but sometimes she wasn't entirely sure of where she stopped and everyone else began. She'd spent solid chunks of her life with Sid, and Jack, and even Lucien.. so to a degree, they felt like as much a part of her as she was.
She simmered quietly, threatening to scream like a teakettle any moment, when he told her that he still loved her. And despite the straightness in her posture and those pulled back shoulders, her voice cracked a little when she spoke. "How can you say that to me?" She hated him in that moment for saying that, because as much as it was the wrong thing to say, it was also always.. always the right thing. She wanted to hit him, and she wanted to kiss him, and she wanted to cry into her hands all at once. Cerise stared at him desperately, just barely keeping it together. "Don't you know it fucking kills me when you say that?"
"If I thought you were helping him, we'd be having a different conversation, Cee," he said, plain. He believed her, and it was clear on his face. He wasn't good at hiding things. He never had been. And that different conversation they woulda been having, it would still have been about getting her out and clear. He knew Lucien was like a dad to her. He knew how hard that had been to shake back in Seattle, and he figured she still fought with it to this day. He'd never been as bad off as her, but he'd wanted to believe Lucien every time the man told him that he was worth something, the words warring with his old man's disapproval for every damn thing Sid did as a kid, And he understood about not knowing things about yourself. He'd spent his whole life defined by people dying under Lucien's thumb, and it was hard to step back and force that out of the way. He had no idea who he was, but he was working at it.
He watched her simmering, and he almost grinned, inappropriate as it was. He remembered that simmering from shitty motel rooms. Remembered lying back on some nasty, stained bedspread and watching her across a faded, threadbare carpet. High as a fucking kite, and no landing in sight. He remembered, and he let her simmer, waiting for her to whistle. He shrugged, boyish and helpless and too damn young for the size of him and the grey dotting his temples. "Doesn't matter how much time goes on, sweetheart. Doesn't matter who you're with, and it doesn't matter who I'm with. That's never changing." Plain. It didn't mean they were supposed to be together, though something in his eyes said he wasn't discounting it. But he'd accepted that emotion in a way he hadn't in Seattle. It was there, dug deep from when he was skinny as a she was and just as scared. Damn feeling wasn't going anywhere.
Cerise didn't know if it was comforting or just really fucking tragic that she was obviously going to feel this way about him forever. Half of her life she'd loved him, and she supposed that he was right about that, it wasn't going to change now. Not after all of this time. It was just another bittersweet fact of life, she was always going to get goosebumps when she looked at him, and his smile was always going to dismantle her steel reserve into lightheaded hopefulness. And as sad as the realization was that he could do her wrong a hundred more times and she'd still be simpering after his shadow.. maybe it wasn't all bad. She hadn't felt all that alive in the last six months, too junked up and numb to even really be sad, so seeing him now was more of a relief than she realized it would have been. It broke her heart and it warmed her to her toes all at once. She remembered how easy it was to fall for him, over and over again. She'd fallen in love with him so many times that it was practically their greeting, and she sighed feeling enamoured and so fucking predictable for being so.
"I'm not leaving Lucien's until its done, okay?" Whatever done meant, she didn't want to think about. She didn't want anybody to die, even if one party certainly deserved it.. but she couldn't just go sit in a motel room across town and imagine all of the hundreds of ways this could go wrong. Straightening a little, she glanced toward the bedroom door, formulating a goodbye that she wasn't quite ready for. What if it was the last time she saw him?
"I should go.. before he does something." There was no question that Lucien was acting reckless and strange lately, she wasn't sure how long it would be before he lashed out and hurt someone. Maybe he already had. She caught Sid in a brief hug on her way past him, suddenly too anxious to be caught and held by one of his large arms. "Be safe," she whispered before peeling back to give him a dose of solemn eyes. The eyes told him that she loved him, but she didn't say it. She just turned and left half-hurried, checking her phone for missed messages.