Who: Gus and Justice. What: Gus talks to his only guy friend about his hook-up the night before. It doesn't go the way he planned. Where: The Cellar. When: Evening. Rating: PG-13. Status: Complete.
Gus was still reeling over what had happened last night. One minute he’d been annoyed, ready to get into it (again) with Bastian Sinclair. And the next minute? He’d been screwing the daylights out of one of his employees. She’d come onto him like a goddamn freight train, and he’d just let her run him the hell over. And after a long shower and sleeping on it? The world hadn’t ended. The town wasn’t in flames, and he actually had Emilia Blake’s phone number in his cellphone. Gus wasn’t sure if it was her actual number yet, he hadn’t called her (he was pretty sure there were rules for that sort of thing), but he was pretty sure it was. Francine, in retrospect, had been a solid seven. The best he’d probably had in his life was an eight.
Emilia was a perfect ten. One of Bastian’s perfect tens, an annoying voice reminded him, but he had found it easier to ignore the more he thought about it. That woman had wanted him so damned bad she’d practically begged for it, and she hadn’t even blew him off afterwards. He wasn’t an idiot, he didn’t think that ‘relationship’ was going anywhere, but maybe what he’d really needed was just some sort of damned assurance that he wasn’t a washed-up middle aged man doomed to Kindergarten teachers and...
That wasn’t very kind thinking and he shook himself out of it. Whatever had happened, he needed to give a play-by-play to someone. Lucy was a little uncomfortable with this particular topic, and since Justice was his guy-friend anyway? She was the one getting the earful. He couldn’t tell nobody about it. While Gus didn’t exactly want it getting around, it wasn’t illegal to have sex with women. It just wasn’t very polite to have raunchy hook-ups in the Brimstone Casino. In the establishment of the man he was trying to bring down.
Yeah, so. He needed to talk it out a little.
Gus arrived at his usual time (although he had missed last night) and headed over to the bar. He actually felt pretty good. Great, even. He’d needed that, and while it was unfortunate it had happened exactly when it did, it really wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things. People had done a lot goddamn worse, and maybe it was time he started getting a little back for all his effort.
Really, the only thing that could bite him in the ass was her blabbing about what happened. The missing cuffs weren’t even a problem - he was Sheriff, and he could talk to the quartermaster, and besides, he was pretty sure he knew who had them. He just had an excuse to go see her again when he went to retrieve them.
“Hey, hey,” he knocked on the bar when he caught Justice’s eye, grinning at her, “Beer me, Coop, and beer yourself. We’re celebrating.”
It was sort of busy tonight, which was great. He worried sometimes that the casino was going to wring her place dry, but she seemed to be keeping afloat.
She was, but only just. There was a reason the phrase was ‘keeping one’s head above water’ in situations like the Cellar, and it hadn’t been easy for her to do it. There’d been cut-backs since she bought the place; a bare minimum selection of beers on tap, fewer well drinks, and an almost complete eradication of the menu itself. Justice was the only employee, and still tip money was what kept her heat on at home, since the casino’s popularity had not only sapped most of the customers but also driven up property values, including her rent - both here and at home.
But at least she didn’t have a car payment, right? Because Justice was always the silver-lining type.
A handful of small groups and bar-flies clustered around the bar and tables; she’d just mixed a gin and tonic for the aging cougar on the end of the bar, still a little ruffled from being referred to as one the night before. Sure, she’d been able to vent a tiny bit of her frustrations on the drunk idiots who were harassing Lucy, but the only thing she’d been thinking about since was how there were now five people who could put her and her violent tendencies in that parking lot. That messed up her plans for a while. It was more than annoying
Gus’s sudden presence cut through those thoughts, however, and she couldn’t help but crack a grin back at him in greeting. The sort that was on his face had a way of being infectious.
“Celebrating?” she parroted while heading back to him, scooping up two beers from the cooler on the way. She hooked them under the opener mounted behind the counter and plopped one in front of him. “Don’t tell me - you won the lotto and you’re givin’ me a fifty-grand tip.” Justice rested a hip on the edge of the bar, watching Gus with the beer to her lips.
Gus laughed at her guess and shook his head, accepting his beer and tapping his own against hers before taking a celebratory swig. Ahh, things tasted better when they were drank in celebration of victory.
“Broke a two year dry spell last night,” he said, “Wasn’t planning on it, but I broke it and scored a number.”
In Gus’s world, since he had regulated Justice to the friend zone, this was a perfectly acceptable conversation to have with her. She was a brother in arms, after all, and he would’ve definitely high-fived her if she’d had any conquests to fill him in on.
Unfortunately, her recent ‘conquests’ were of a very different nature, and Justice was still adjusting to her own suppressed and complicated emotions regarding their dynamic; maybe she could’ve handled a sudden blow like that without blinking in a month or two. Right now, though...
Not so much.
“Really,” she finally managed, dryly, and after swallowing a lot more than just the beer in her mouth. Fine. She got it. She wasn’t his cup of fuckin’ tea - that much was clear two weeks ago at his place, but it took a serious lack of tact to rub this in her face. That, or she’d just done her job of pushing people away really well, despite her best efforts. Justice leaned on the bar with an elbow, but looked anywhere but him. “Good to know someone’s getting some. Congratu-fuckin-lations.”
“Ah, don’t be like that,” Gus said, expression turning a little sheepish, “You’re my only guy friend, Justice. I had to tell somebody.”
Well, there would be no need to discuss details, then. Which was for the best - the details made him look like braindead moose.
Justice just rolled her eyes in an over-dramatic fashion, on purpose, and took down about half her beer before responding, “Well if I’m you’re only guy friend, you can handle a little back-lash.” She kept her tone dry, and unaccusing, like the only thing she could possibly be jealous of was Gus himself.
Still, she dug a cigarette from the pack in her pocket and stuck it in her lips. “So go on,” she said with it bobbing around her words, sparking it from the plain grey Bic lighter cupped in her hands. “Let me live vicariously through you.” More sarcasm.
Something in the back of his mind had been a little uneasy with her first reaction, but now she seemed settled into sarcasm without a hint of anything else. That, he didn’t have to worry about. Justice and sarcasm went hand in hand.
Details, though. Now he was wondering if he ought to lie about them, and that thought threw him off completely. Really? Lie to Justice? Whom he had just dubbed his guy friend?
“Well, uh, it’s a little confidential,” his grin was guilty, but it was still plenty broad. Gus leaned forward, and motioned her in a little closer, “I swung by Brimstone to follow up on an anonymous tip, and for the first time ever, the asshole isn’t there waiting with that smug look on his face. His... assistant, I think? She invites me back to her office to wait.”
He paused to swig his beer, watching Justice’s face for a reaction.
“Turns out she had a whopping wide-on for me, because she came onto me like a frieght train,” and how could any man not grin big at that? “If I didn’t have her number, I’d be pretty sure I imagined the whole thing.”
If Justice thought she’d been struggling to keep an even tone three minutes ago, what she felt right then was the equivalent of an M-80 compared to a damned hydrogen bomb. She didn’t even bother to turn some semblance of a smile on her lips, and her eyes were hard.
“Bastian Sinclair’s assistant...?” she repeated, dangerously low, scratching out a positive that she had in fact heard him correctly before looking up at the rest of the bar.
“Unexpected early close, folks! Sorry, sorry... I know, but your last drinks’er on me. C’mon, time to go.” Then above the din of confusion and disappointment, Justice looked straight at Gus, and pointed at the bar. “You. Stay.”
Gus could only blink and quietly drink his beer in response to that. In a very uncomfortable silence, he watched people file out, and once the very last patron grumbled their way out of The Cellar, he raised his eyebrows a little at Justice.
“We probably could’ve gone in back to talk,” he said in a neutral voice. What in the hell was this about?
Meanwhile, Justice was way too wound tight to concentrate on anything besides a three-step pacing routine behind the bar. With her cigarette completely forgotten in the ashtray and her hands set on her hips like they’d been soldered there, when he spoke she only shook her head. A cold and completely humorless laugh cut out from the back of her throat.
“Oh no. Not for what I got to say,” she said, humming a dangerous sort of tension in every muscle.
“Let me... Let me make sure I’ve got this perfectly straight,” she continued, stopping right in front of him and pinning him with her gaze. “You got an anonymous tip - I’m guessing about prostitution again? And you go in to investigate - On. Duty. - and fuck the goddamned owner’s Second, who was throwing herself at you?”
Gus’s expression twisted from guarded neutrality to annoyance very quickly, and he stood as well, beer forgotten on the bar.
“Hey, hey, whoa,” he said, “I didn’t come here to get a goddamn lecture, Justice. I’m a grown man, and I’m aware of the decisions I made. What the hell is your problem?”
He scowled at her and glanced at the door, pretty set on leaving himself. Sure, he’d been a bit of an idiot, but it wasn’t the grand conspiracy she was pointing out.
A flicker of honest shock crossed her eyes, but it was very quickly replaced by something hotter.
“...are you fucking blind?!” She gestured at herself with both hands, and then him in turn. “I am trying to be the best ‘guy friend’ I can and point out a few things you seem to be missing, Angus. You’re the fucking Sheriff. Isn’t this the same damned corrupted business you’ve been trying to bring down for two years?”
“Friends generally don’t treat friends like they’re idiots, Justice,” he snapped back. This had gotten heated fast, and he was honestly still a little shocked that it had, “I just said I’m aware of the decision I made - I didn’t say it was a good decision, but what’s done is done. It’s not like I took a bribe or snorted coke off of Bastian’s dick, for fuck’s sake.”
Gus wasn’t in the mood to justify himself to... well... Justice. He had the situation pretty well reasoned out, and he’d just wanted to be a little goddamn happy about getting laid. It was pretty hard to explain to a woman what it was like to have a perfect ten licking your ear. He wasn’t infallible.
Everyone expected him to be, was the problem.
Every argument out of his mouth only twisted her tighter. Justice felt like her blood was boiling, and she went back to stiffly pacing. She swiped both palms over her face once, hard, as a desperate measure for control, but it didn’t work.
“You’re a smart guy, Gus,” she said honestly, though every syllable was sharp as rusted knives. “But you can’t seem to get the hang of seeing what’s right in front of your face.” Seething, she put her hands back on her hips and stared at him from across the bar. It was a good barrier between them. “If I hadn’t opened the shit-box on you right now, you would’a kept grinnin’ an’ thumpin’ your chest about the end of your ‘dry spell’ until one little call goes through. Maybe to you, maybe to the newspaper, who the fuck knows, but it’d be the complete end of it all - and you know it.”
“Oh, bullshit, Justice,” Gus scowled, shaking his head, “The Sheriff before me was a fucking alcoholic and he got re-elected until the cows came home. Would it be a scandal? Of course it goddamn would. It wouldn’t be Armageddon, though, Jesus Christ. And I was keeping my damn voice down, anyway. I wasn’t thumping my chest. I- no, you know what? I don’t need this shit. Not from you, Coop.”
He started to grab his gloves and beanie from out of the deep pockets of his heavy coat.
“Screwing a chick at Brimstone was not my greatest decision,” he said, taking a deep breath and speaking more calmly, “And there could definitely be blow back. For all I know, Bastian taped the damn thing and when it’s time for elections he’ll put it on YouTube. Right now, though? I can’t do anything about it. It’s done, nobody goddamn died, nobody got hurt, and I was feeling all right about myself for the first time in long while. If you want to hear me say I was stupid, fine: I was stupid. It’s still not worth all of this.”
Gus waved a hand around, illustrating their argument in a roundabout way.
Justice was silent for a moment; her chest lifting and falling in hard, measured breaths. She just stared at him for one rare moment of complete and unguarded hurt before the door threatened to shut again. But she didn’t let it - not this time. His actions had pushed her up to the line of no return. It could’ve been a second or two, or an hour for all it felt like, before she spoke again. This time, low and strained.
“What is it you want from me?” she asked, exasperatedly lifting and dropping her arms at her sides. Her tone was desperate and pleading. “I’ve been there every time you needed an ear, or a laugh, or more beers than I can count. For as long as I’ve known you, I’ve been trying to help you, in any, and every way I can - because I want to, because I think you’re a good man who’s gotten one too many shafts in life. Who could fucking use someone with a little goddamned loyalty without putting anything else on the table for you to worry about. So yeah, I’m gonna flip my shit when my best friend puts everything he’s worked so hard on in the line of fire.”
He was shaking his head slowly at her as she spoke, but he kept quiet, taking big swallows of Catholic guilt. It didn’t matter if he deserved it or not - right now, it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“I’m not sure how my indiscretions warrant you closing down your bar to shriek paranoid conspiracy theories at me, Justice,” he said, “And while I can understand you’re concerned for my investigation, I dislike your immediate assumption that I had neglected to think of it. How many times do I have to say it? I made a decision with my dick, and I’ll have to pay for it, but that check isn’t going to bounce.”
Gus wiped a hand over his face, feeling suddenly exhausted.
“I’m sorry I came in here and bragged,” he said, “That was a dick move. You’re a guy friend, but you’re not a guy, so yeah. I should’ve thought that one out a little more.”
That, at least, he could apologize for sincerely. The rest, he was making no apologies about. He was a grown man, and he hadn’t done anything explicitly illegal. His behavior was disappointing, he was sure, but nothing that would get him booted out on his ass.
“Don’t you dare,” she said slowly, more anger bubbling in her breathy words than she wanted, but the gloves were off, and she pointed at him with a brief, hard look. “Don’t you dare twist any of this around because I don’t happen to have a dick.” Justice’s nostrils flared with another breath before her gaze dropped from him, reeling it all back in, or at least trying to.
“You’re still so goddamned stuck on the wrong details,” she breathed, seriously loosing steam. “What do I have to do to get you to see the big picture.”
Gus frowned and tilted his head subtly, like a dog hearing a very high pitched sound. Something about her last two statements nibbled on his brain - stuff Marion had said. Turning them over, though, he didn’t see how they applied here. He knew all the details of this situation, and he was more than prepared for the big picture blowback.
What else could he possibly be missing?
“I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree,” he said, mainly to fill the silence. Empty cliches were good for that, “Look, I’ll get out your hair. I don’t think we’re changing each other’s mind on this, so I’ll let you get your customers back.”
He pulled his beanie on and started on his gloves, wracking his brain for some magical cure-all he could say to repair it. He had essentially dropped a Hydrogen bomb on their relationship this time, though. Gus wasn’t so sure there was coming back from it.
There weren’t enough delicious cakes in the world to fix a disagreement like this.
Justice lifted her gaze to him, despondent and at a loss. She could tell him everything at this point, and none of it would matter; it’d just hit that thick brick wall of selective blindness he’d built right behind his eyes. He’d just look at her the way he was looking at her now, but with more inclination to commit her to the psych ward. It had a lot to do with her efforts to keep him at a distance, she was sure about that. And now, he’d just delivered himself up like a pig on a spit, however unaware of it.
“I’m not trying to change your mind,” she finally said in red, raw honesty. I’m trying to save you. The words didn’t come out. They wouldn’t do any good.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do, then,” he said wearily, “It’s been a long one, okay? Maybe we both just need to cool off a little.”
His expression was reproachful and sincere as he took two steps towards the door and paused.
“I’m sorry I upset you, for what it’s worth,” Gus said. Not fucking much, but he meant it. It felt like they were on two wildly different levels about this, but he could not for the life of him figure out where she was coming from. It felt like a flimsy prop to him, like she wasn’t saying everything, and she’d more or less told him that was how it was with her a little while ago, hadn’t she?
Shit, he needed a drink. Looked like he and Mister Daniel’s had a date tonight.
Justice felt her eyes burning and blinked rapidly to fix the problem, but it did practically nothing. They clenched shut for a moment before reopening. She shook her head at the apology, not because she didn’t accept it, but because that wasn’t what she needed from him. Of course, how the hell was he supposed to know what she needed. She’d made it a life’s mission to keep those types of details to herself.
“Wait,” Justice said suddenly before he could get out the door. If everything else was a fall-through, if he decided it was too much on his conscience to come back or ever call her again, she had to at least try something. She waited until they had a hard line of firm, undeniable eye-contact, then went on.
“If you ever take anything I say to heart... just.. Don’t go back.” Justice poured every piece of her into those words. “Don’t do it again.”
Gus just didn’t understand where the fuck she was coming from. Of course he wasn’t going to screw Emilia inside the damned casino again - he knew better than that. Obviously not enough to avoid doing it entirely, to be fair, but he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
He shook his head a little, unsure of how to even answer such a heavy plea. It wasn’t on her, who he slept with. If she didn’t approve, that was her business, but this...
“What happened in the casino won’t happen there again,” he said, shrugging his broad shoulders, “But Justice... I can’t make any promises beyond that. That’s way over the line. You know that, too. I know you do.”
He wasn’t a complete idiot, but she was a pretty sharp cookie. It was why her weird.. desperate plea for lack of better words was throwing him off.
The accusation in his tone stung, and on more levels than she knew what to do with. It was justified, she knew, but at the same time, it wasn’t the way he was thinking. Not mostly. Not where it really counted. Justice huffed under her breath and broke their eye-contact, driving it down to the floor.
You don’t have a clue what I know. More words right on her lips that she bit back hard enough to taste blood. At least he said he wouldn’t go back to the devil’s den, and she knew his house was safe because she’d made it so herself. Maybe her next priority would be the police department, but that was a thought for another time.
There was no snide return about who was talking to who about being over inappropriate lines, either. Justice just didn’t have it in her to keep pouring salt in her own wounds. She just nodded to show she’d heard and understood him, and turned for the kitchen door without saying a word.