Archive of Our Own

They drive south all that first day.

She notices the puncture wounds on Seth’s neck just above his collar about five minutes in and gasps, shrinking back against the door.

“What?” Seth asks a little irritably, taking his eyes off the road to glance over at her.

“Your neck,” she motions.

Seth grimaces and reaches up to touch the wounds gingerly.  

“Yeah,” he sighs.  

He looks over at her again.  

“I’m fine.  Kate, I’m fine,” he repeats when Kate stares at him skeptically.

“How do you-”

“Look, the sun’s shining and I’m not barbecuing, am I, genius?  Huh?”  He sticks his tongue out at her.  “Not fuckin’ forked,” he mutters.

Kate stares at him another moment, bug-eyed, but he glares stubbornly at the road ahead so she leaves it alone.

_

“Where are we going?” Kate asks another hour or so in.

“Right now?  To whatever taqueria looks like it won’t give us dysentery.  Then some place we can lay low and get some sleep.”

Kate thinks about asking “then what?” and she opens her mouth around the words before closing it again.  She leans her head back against the headrest and lets her eyes slip closed.  Seth is quiet now, for once, and she isn’t sure whether she’s glad of it or not.  Isn’t sure she really wants to feel alone in her head.  Seth rouses her later, she has no idea how long, but the sun is directly overhead and he’s pulled over at a stripmall next to a gas station.

“That place looks okay,” Seth says in greeting, nodding to a restaurant on one end of the stripmall.

“At this point I hardly care, I’m starving,” Kate sighs.

They sit at one of the little tables outside with a paper bag filled with tacos between them and a six pack of Coke in glass bottles.  

“Do you think we’ll run into more?”  Kate asks when they’ve each wolfed their first few tacos and are starting to slow down.  “Culebras I mean?”

Seth shrugs around a bite.  “Maybe not if we stay away from places like the goddamn Titty Twister.”

Kate frowns and takes a drink of her soda.  “Does that mean you have an idea of where to go?”

“I gotta get away from the border, there’s too much chance of getting caught in cartel crossfire, and that’s if we can keep the Rangers and the fuckin’ nine lords a-leaping off our backs.”

Kate snorts out a laugh in spite of herself but then sobers quickly, watching as Seth tucks back into his next taco, realizing all over again that this is it.  This is where she is and Seth is the only person she - comparatively - knows.  She wonders if none of it had happened - and she’s not even sure really how far back she would have to go to truly get to the beginning of this branch in her path - if she and her dad and Scott would be sitting on the beach right now, or at this same taqueria.  She wonders if anyone in a hundred, a thousand, years could ever guess where she ended up and who she ended up with.

After they eat they drive again until eventually Seth pulls into a motel.  It’s almost evening and the sun is blazing toward the horizon.  He tells Kate to wait in the car while he gets a room, and she concedes to staying near the car, getting out to take a few steps on stiff sore legs.  

He squints at her leaning against the side of the car when he comes out, twitchily motioning at her with the keys in one hand.

“Thought I told you to stay in the car.”

Kate widens her eyes at him for a moment, glancing around at the silent parking lot, but they both drop it and she gets back in the car for the short ride to their room on the far side of the complex.  She pauses just inside the doorway and he turns back from where he’s dropping his battered jacket on the end of the single queen-size bed and eyes her warily with a small shrug.

“They didn’t have any open with two beds.  You wanna keep driving?”

“No,” she says softly, and closes the door behind her.

The room is slightly dingier and less welcoming than the room she’d stayed in with her dad and Scott, and just the thought of that, of the fact of it and how far from that room she is in miles alone makes her drop to the edge of the bed heavily.  She braces her hands on her knees and then slips down, elbows on her knees and running her hands over her face as a few tears squeeze out of her eyes.  

She guesses she’s in shock, probably will be for a while, and finds she’s okay with that right now.  It feels safer to stay in this semi-fog than to accept the full weight of the last forty-eight hours.  Around this time two days ago she was desperate to find out the truth about the night her mama died while she sat by a motel pool.  Suddenly she wants nothing more than to dip back into that water and float, silent and weightless.  But she doesn’t have her swimsuit.  She hadn’t bothered to grab her bag from the RV before she got in the car with Seth and that seems so stupid now, what had she been thinking?

That her daddy was dead and her brother was undead and she was alone in Mexico with the keys to an RV, its contents, and nothing else.  

Seth had looked like salvation in that moment.  Maybe it’s weird how much she doesn’t question it, but she knows, deeply, that he was her best option.  Maybe she could have climbed onto the back of that motorcycle with Ranger Gonzales and gone back to the States, but the thought of being there, anywhere back there, sounded worse than staying in Mexico alone.  And going with Seth felt safer than anything else.  For a given definition of safe.

Her eyes feel gritty and she knows a sunburn is setting in over her forehead, nose, cheeks, and chest.  She wants to peel off her grimy clothes and wash the dirt and blood from her hair, but even as she eyes the bathroom door she can feel herself listing to the side, exhaustion battering hard at her from the inside out, and she doesn't have anything clean to change into anyway.  Instead she scoots back on the bed, across from where Seth is now sitting with his back to her, and pulls the threadbare bedspread down and out of the way before laying on top of the sheet and curling on her side facing him.

He glances over his shoulder at her before he pivots and lays down on his back, letting out a hoarse groan.

“Fuck.  There is no way this bed is really this comfortable.”

“Anything’s better than the car,” Kate murmurs.

“I like that car,” Seth says quickly.

“It’s nice,” Kate agrees.  “It’s cool.”

“Damn right it’s cool,” he mutters, rolling over to his stomach and tucking his hands under the pillow.

Kate smiles tiredly and lets her eyes slip closed, rocked to sleep by the barely-there sway of the mattress with Seth’s breathing.

_

“You’re gonna ask the guy behind the counter for help, smile pretty, get him to follow you, and keep him away and distracted for two minutes.”

“That’s all?”

“‘S all I need,” Seth answers with a cocky little grin.

Kate rolls her eyes but nods and takes a deep breath.  It’s sweltering, the sun unrelenting and there’s barely any hint of a breeze.  They’ve been sitting outside at another taqueria for an hour, Kate facing Seth and Seth facing the gas station and convenience store across the road that they’re going to rob.  Seth had gone in to pay for gas after they’d checked out of the hotel that morning and came out charged and almost jittery, nearly dragging Kate out of the car by the arm once he parked across the street and started telling her the plan.  It would be simple, he’d assured.  The store itself was bigger and in better repair than many they saw along the way but there was only one scrawny young guy working and the register was old so Seth could open it easily.  All he needed was for Kate to get the cashier away while he did it.  Simple and fast and enough money to pick up changes of clothes and get them their next few meals and tanks of gas.

“Okay,” Kate nods and breathes again, still a little shaky.  

Part of her is excited, buoyed along by Seth’s determination and adrenaline.  Part of her is sickened, terrified, ready to run until she can’t even see the buildings over her shoulder anymore.  But what else do they do?  She’s never existed like this before, with no safety net of an established life with roots and connections and people, lots of people always around and ready to help if there was ever a need her family somehow couldn’t meet.  Now it’s her and Seth and no one else and they have nothing, nothing but the clothes on their backs and a stolen car and she wishes they could drive back to the bar and she could raid the RV for everything she left behind and pretend for a while longer that she still has a shred of something familiar left.  

She thinks of Ranger Gonzalez’s phone number on a scrap of paper in her jeans pocket, the one thing she’d brought with her.  She thinks of calling him, begging him to come get her and take her back to Bethel, or even just across the border.  Thinks of trying to somehow force the tatters of her previous life back into wholeness.  But she looks down at her hands on the table and she knows she can’t.  After everything she’s gone through, everything she’s lost, that home was taken from her too.  She’d be going back to an empty house, an empty country, to a lifetime of lies about her dead-and-gone family.  Nothing will ever be familiar the way it was before and nothing that she’s lost will ever come back the way it was.

There’s nothing left from before except herself and whatever she’ll become now.

“Hey,” Seth says, shaking her out of her thoughts.  “Kate.  I need to know.  Are you up for this?”

She stares at him a second, blinking back into the moment before she nods slowly at first and then quicker, more sure.

“I can do it.  I have to, right?”

Seth winces slightly, and shrugs.  “Less potential for mess with two.”

She sees it for what it is then, that Seth is out of his element too even if it’s not as far for him.  She doesn’t know what became of Richie at the Twister - all she knows is that he’s not here with them.  Seth had walked out of that building exactly as alone as Kate had stepped out of the RV.  But Seth is used to working in a team with a partner and now he’s lost that in addition to a brother, however it happened, whether it’s permanent or not.  Maybe he could do it on his own, maybe it wouldn’t even be that hard, but she realizes he’s asking her because on some level he wants her to occupy a small part of that vacancy for him.  

She nods firmly.

“I can do it.  I can help.  When do we go?”

Seth eyes her as he tips the last of his bottled water into his mouth and swallows.  He sets it down on the table and throws her a forced enthusiastic expression.

“Right now, darlin’.  You got- you ready?”

Kate rubs her hands on her jeans quickly and gets up with Seth, nodding.  They stand still for a moment, staring at each other across the table, both waiting, until Seth blows out a breath and cracks his neck.

“Screwed on tight,” he mutters as he clears their plates.

“What?”

“Nothing.  We go over separately, you go in ahead of me, I’ll watch and come in when you’ve got the cashier in place.”

“Okay.  What if-”

“Just stick to the plan, we’ll be in and out, it’s gonna be fine.  All you gotta do is be cute, distract a boy for two minutes.  That’s all you gotta think about.  Probably do that everyday without even trying.”

Something hits her about the way he says that last part, in passing and under his breath, almost not even addressed to her, and makes her shift on her feet, her palms now fully sweaty no matter how much she presses them against her filthy jeans.  She shakes it off and persists.

“Seth.  If something goes wrong.”

He purses his lips.  “Then you run.  You leave, get in the car, and go.”

She starts to protest, a slight shake of her head, but Seth holds her gaze and shakes his head back at her, raising his eyebrows until she stops.  

“You run,” he repeats softly.  She nods finally.  “Come on then,” he adds.  “Showtime.”

She tries to smooth her hair out a little, to straighten her filthy sweat-stained clothes, tries to summon up some feelings she has - had - for Kyle to put her in the mindset, to make this believable.  To look pretty and distract a boy.  She feels years older than the girl who blushed at text message Psalms and felt daring and brash for sticking her tongue in Kyle’s mouth while everyone else was in the church parking lot leaving after a picnic.  She’s a shell now and all that sweetness life used to give her had gotten scooped out and eaten even though she’d never been cut open on those altars.  It still feels like it’s all gone, just dregs coating her insides and making her feel a little sick as she contemplates what they’re about to do.

But she forces it, hikes up some semblance of pep as she crosses the small weedy parking lot and and takes in as many details about the building as she can on the way.  There’s a sign for “Baño” with an arrow at the far right side of the building and the windows are filled with hand-drawn signs advertising sales.  She opens the door to the store and looks around quickly, finding the counter and register to her left, plastering a smile on her face as she hurries over.

“Do you by any chance have a bathroom key?  Baño?”  She makes an unlocking motion with her hand.

The boy behind the counter is just that, a boy, probably barely her age.  He’s tall and skinny, his t-shirt a little too big and faded.  He smiles at her when he hands over the key attached to a foot-long piece of wood as a theft deterrent.  Kate glances over it quickly then looks back up and smiling for a moment longer than she needs to before backing away towards the doors again with a soft “gracias.”

Seth’s eyes bug out when she comes out the front doors a moment later and walks right by him.

“Kate!” he hisses, “What the f-”

“Just wait,” she snaps back in a whisper, not breaking stride as she heads around the corner.  She measures the wood in her hands as she goes, her nose wrinkling involuntarily at how old and dirty it looks.

She keys into the bathroom quietly and is grateful she’d taken a deep breath of outside air and held it when she sees state of the bathroom itself.  She holds the door open with one foot and aims carefully before bashing the ancient rusty lock with the end of the piece of wood.  It takes two tries before the lock bends and sticks in an unlocked position when she tries it.  The impact makes a few splinters in the wood and she breaks one off and kneels down to push the now-loose deadbolt in place and wiggle the sliver of wood in until the deadbolt is stuck fast and she can snap the remaining wood off flush with the edge of the door.  When she tests it the door swings freely back and forth on its hinges, refusing to stay shut on its own and she stands, satisfied, pausing only when she looks up and sees Seth leaning around the corner watching her wide-eyed.  He raises his eyebrows.

“Damn.”

“Go around the back so he doesn’t see you,” she says quietly as she hurries by again.  She tucks the wood under her arm to hide the splintered end and puts an urgent little hop in her step as she goes back inside the store and jogs over to the counter.

“Excuse me?  Excusa?  The door is broken, um, the lock?  La puerta?  It won’t stay closed and,” she smiles sheepishly, gesturing a little, “I guess I’m too short, I can’t really hold the door closed while I go, so . . . could you hold it closed for me?  Um, cierra la puerta?”

The boy pauses, looking at the register and back to her, and then fruitlessly around the empty store, and Kate hops in place a few times for good measure.

“Perdón, estoy solo, yo no tengo que-” he starts, but Kate cuts him off pleadingly.

“Por favor?  Please?  I’ll be so quick, I promise, like Speedy Gonzalez, I swear.  I mean,” she gestures around the store, “no one’s even here, right?”  She grins and bounces a little closer, adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “Nuestro secreta.”

It takes three more seconds of him deliberating and Kate doing her little hop-dance but he comes around the counter and she hops in relief this time, glad she can hide all her nervous energy under her guise of having to pee.  Seth is nowhere to be seen when she comes back out the doors with the cashier on her heels, giggling as she rounds the corner and shoves the bathroom door shut in his face before he can question her about the lock.  Inside she sets the wood down on the sink and then shuffles around, silently counting in her head, forcing herself to stay focused on using up time.

“You’re like my knight in shining armour y’know?” she calls after a minute.  The door thumps a little and the boy calls, “Que?” in return.

“I don’t know the word, um . . .” she rattles her belt buckle for good measure, closes her eyes and pictures Seth confidently cleaning out the register, silent and precise.  “Mi héroe?”

She hears the boy laugh and shuffles her feet some more before tugging a scratchy length of thin toilet paper off the roll and tossing it in the dirty bowl of the toilet, opting to flush with her foot rather than touch the handle.

“Really,” she calls over the rush of water in the ancient sink, “I’m gonna tell all my friends to stop here anytime they’re in town.  Are you on Yelp?  Do they have that here?”

She hopes it’s been two minutes.  She hopes two minutes was really enough time.  She knocks on the door, remembering a moment too late to grab the piece of wood with the key again.  When she turns around the boy is leaning on the open door, seeming unconcerned about the years of grime built up on the chippy painted wood.  She smiles shyly.

“Muchas gracias.”

“De nada, princesa.”

She blanches at the pet name but forces herself to smile back even as she’s swallowing away a huge lump in her throat.  She keeps the piece of wood tucked under her arm, one hand curled around the other end and ready to swing it if needed as they head back to the store and the boy opens the door for her, letting her through first.  She glances quickly over and sees Seth still behind the counter, and before she can turn back, before she can react in any significant way there’s a bony arm locked around her, squeezing at the base of her throat and another arm snaps out straight in front of her with a pistol in its shaking hand, pointed straight at Seth.  Kate screams, the sound ripping through her throat as the wood with the key clatters to the dusty tile floor, and she’s barely opening her eyes again from the shock of being grabbed and yanked out of step when an explosion rips through her ear drum and she knows someone’s shot.

Everything is half-silent, then ringing starts in her ear on one side and it feels like that whole side of her head is numb, numb and yet warm, something sliding down her cheek and clouding her vision and she’s dangling to balance on her feet, swaying and faltering without another body to hold her up until suddenly there is one hustling her towards the doors again.

“Go!  Run!”

She pushes through the door and out into the scorching light and heat, running for the car parked at one of the gas pumps, blinded by sudden tears and whatever it is that covers the side of her face and there’s a hand locked around hers, so tight it hurts, and the arm that’s attached to it has a tattoo trailing over the wrist.

Then they’re in the car and the doors are thumping closed and she’s jostled by movement, the car speeding away and air rushing past and far away there’s a voice swearing and a hand jabbing at buttons on the dashboard in the periphery of her vision.  It gets dark, the roof of the convertible unfurling and closing over them as they wait at a stop sign and then they’re roaring on again and Kate’s head is pounding, almost screeching with aftershocks.  It feels like only a moment later when the car swerves and then stops abruptly and shaking hands are on her arms turning her and Seth is there.

“Seth.”  

Her voice doesn’t sound right, too far away and quiet like she’s barely whispering and she tries again and this time it’s loud, a frantic yell in the quiet even though she’s looking right at him.  

“Seth?”

“Whoa, okay, okay, you’re okay, alright?  I’m here, we’re out, I’m right here.  Kate?”

His hand is rubbing at her cheek and then he swipes it over his jacket before doing it again and there’s something slick on his hand, bright red when his palm comes toward her again and a glob of grayish pink stuck to his jacket where he’d wiped it.

“It’s not yours, you’re okay, we’re out, it’s done.”

“You shot him.”

“He had a gun on me, Kate.  He had- he had you, I had to-”

Hands stretch out in front of her again, her hands, and they look small and foreign as they press against Seth’s chest and the fingers curl into the fabric of his jacket.

“You did good, you did so good, I just wasn’t fast enough-” he says, and suddenly his voice sounds as shaky as she feels, great rattling tremors knocking at them both from the inside out and it won’t stop, won’t let her go, and then Seth is pulling her in until her clammy forehead knocks into his.

They stay there, Seth’s hands heavy on her shoulders and Kate’s fisted so tightly in his jacket that her bones ache with it.  She pulls a breath in and holds it, lets it out long and slow.  She closes her eyes and sees only Seth’s gaze as he’d aimed just up and to the left and fired.

“Are you okay?” she asks when she can find her voice again.

Seth almost laughs and nods, his motion nudging her head as well before he pulls away slowly.  

“Thought . . .” he shakes his head and pulls away with a squeeze to the back of her neck before letting go.  He leans back in his seat and scrubs one hand over his own face.  “For a split second I thought my aim was off.  Thought I hit you.  I thought-”

Kate closes her eyes briefly as she leans back into her seat.  

“No, I’m okay.”

Seth nods, and when she focuses on him again it feels like she’s finally come back into the world.  He looks tired even through the remaining jitters.  It’s still hot and she’s drenched in sweat, suddenly aware of all her limbs again and that she’s not wearing her seatbelt.  The car is pulled behind what looks like a dilapidated billboard and there’s a bird chirping somewhere, tall scrubby grass rustling in the breeze that’s picked up at some point.  She presses her hands to her face for a moment, fingertips against her eyes, and then she swipes her hands over her face, not looking at her palms before she sets them back down on her knees.

“Did we get the money?”

Seth does laugh at that, weak and hoarse but there, and when he reaches down and produces a plastic shopping bag from the floor of the car and tosses it into her lap she catches it awkwardly.  She doesn’t know the currency well enough to count it at a glance but there’s a decent pile there.  A laugh bubbles up from her throat but she chokes on it, the breeze blowing a sticky strand of her hair across her vision through the open window and reminding her of the splattered mess along one side of her head.  She wraps the money back up in the bag and holds it tightly in her lap.

“Baby, we got the money,” Seth says, and she can hear the smile in his voice as he starts the car again and pulls back onto the road.

_

After the outcome at the convenience store Seth mutters that they’ll have to ditch the car and come up with something resembling a cover, “but first I need a fuckin’ drink.”

It’s barely afternoon and they have a full tank of gas from filling up before the job and Kate sighs and tells Seth to drive a little longer, hold off until they can stop for the night at least.  He grunts in reply but keeps driving.

Kate’s not sure what “a cover” would entail and briefly pictures having to cut her hair short and dye it blonde but she bites her tongue about that idea.  She realizes that her life now will consist of lying to people like her daddy told her she’d never been good at.  The thing was she’d always known he was lying when he said it.  It wasn’t that she was so bad at lying, it was that she rarely chose to lie because she didn’t see much point in it most of the time.  Maybe lying more could have, at some point along the way, changed how everything ended up.  Maybe if she just hadn’t been herself she wouldn’t be where she is.

Kate leans against her seat and watches the road, distracted occasionally by Seth’s fidgeting as he drives.  He checks the rearview mirror more than necessary - compulsively it seems - and taps his fingers on the steering wheel and the gear shift.  She looks at the angles of Seth’s face in the bright sunlight and thinks of sharks cutting through deep water, always moving.  Moving because they can’t stop.  

“Stop fuckin’ staring,” he mutters finally, not bothering to put any force behind it.  

Kate looks ahead again.

_

Kate feels more like herself the more they drive and hours later when they’re running on empty, stomachs rumbling and the sun slipping under the horizon, Seth pulls into another motel.

“Passed that town a little ways back, I’m gonna go look for a place to get some clothes.  Do you wanna . . .?”

Kate looks down at herself and reaches up to run a hand over her hair stuck along one side of her face hardened with dried blood.  She looks over at him pleadingly and he seems pained but offers anyway:

“Alright, write down your sizes or whatever.  I’ll figure it out.”

He motions for the money and Kate fishes in the glove compartment until she comes up with a sharpie and writes everything down on one of the small bills.  She thinks about including specific requests but that seems fussy so she just hopes he doesn’t do too badly and reminds herself that it’s not like she has anyone to try to look presentable to anyway.  Seth going out is better for her than the other options of trying to look semi-normal shopping for clothes while splattered in someone else’s blood, or showering only to put on the same dirty clothes she’s in now and risk the stores being closed by the time they get there anyway.

“I’ll get food too, what do you want?”

Kate sighs gratefully.  “See if there’s pizza?”

Seth nods and motions for the bag to pick out roughly half the bills and hand them to her, taking the rest out too and folding them in a thick stack to stuff into his wallet.

“You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, I can get the room.”

He’s still eyeing her though and Kate sighs.

“It was scary, it . . .” she sighs again and sits back in her seat, staring upwards towards the dusty purpling sky - they’d put the top back down later - and feeling a headache like too much air filling a balloon to bursting behind her eyes.  She just wants to get the room and have it to herself for a little while.

“I don’t blame you,” she continues.  “You did what you had to do in the moment.  I know that.”

Seth nods slowly, looking a little contemplative himself.  They sit there quietly again, breathing in the night, before she speaks again.

“How did you react so fast?  I was so scared I froze, I couldn’t-”

“You gotta switch it off, just make it go away.”

“How?  You just never get scared?”

“I don’t know.  Been doing it too long to explain it.  Just what I’m built for I guess.”

Kate watches him, squinting a little through the rapidly fading half-light as Seth leans forward in the seat, pulling the revolver out of the back of his waistband and handing it over to her.  Kate takes it a little hesitantly and turns it over in her hands carefully.

“Can you use that if you have to?”

She nods slowly.

She feels like leaning across the seats suddenly, reaching for him again like she had before when he’d set his forehead against hers and she’d fallen back into herself with his presence anchoring her back little by little, but she has no idea how she would explain it and it seems strange to reach for him now in the stilted quiet that’s suddenly settled over them.  She lets the gun weigh her hands down and waits for the awkward silence to lift, feeling choked.  It kind of feels like he’s ripped off one of his hands and given it to her and when she glances over at him he’s staring at her holding the gun in a way that tells her he feels the same.  She forces a brisk smile and shoves lightly at his arm.

“Go, I want to get out of these gross clothes.”  

She tries to juggle the gun and money for a moment but she doesn’t have anywhere to put any of it and Seth sighs and hands over his jacket for her to wrap around and conceal both before she gets out, not glancing back as she walks up to the little office.

Kate doesn’t hesitate to get straight in the shower as soon as she locks the door behind her.  She left Seth’s jacket on the end of the bed - she hadn’t asked for two beds at the front desk and hadn’t really thought of it until she was walking across the dark parking lot to the room and she carefully pushes away the thought of it becoming a habit to share a bed with Seth as she strips off her clothes in the tiny bathroom.  She does briefly wonder if she should have waited for him to get back first but just getting her dirt, sweat, and blood caked clothes off feels so much better immediately that she ignores the slight worry.  Seth had waited in the car while she’d gotten the room and she’d given him the extra key before he left so she knows he can find her when he gets back.  She locks the bathroom door behind her and wraps the gun in a towel and balances it on a corner of the tub behind the plastic shower curtain so she can get to it if she has to without water-logging it.  While she waits for the water to heat up she takes off her necklace and sets it carefully on the counter, stares at herself in the mirror and tries feebly to comb some of the deep knots out of her hair with her fingers, wincing at how matted it’s gotten in places.  She gives up, kicks her dirty clothes out of the way, and steps into the shower.  

Her body feels familiar but somehow not as she washes with the thin bar of soap, scratchy white washcloth growing dingy over and over again even as she rinses and wrings it out before going back to scrubbing methodically.

When she wets her hair she gets a whiff of chlorine from the Dew Drop Inn’s pool, wants to laugh at how that familiar clean smell still clung through all the gore, wants to find it comforting that something else stuck besides the iron, earth, sweat and rot-scents that set in since then.  She can’t even keep track of how many people’s and monster’s blood could be washing down the drain in traces as she lathers in the two-in-one almond-cherry shampoo and conditioner once, twice, again, until the bottle is empty and her eyes sting.  Part of her wants to cry, wants some deep sense of release, but it doesn’t come.  She feels blank and empty and heavy, sluggish in the fog of steam as she finally turns off the water and wrings out her hair then rubs out the remaining loose droplets before wrapping the towel around herself and stepping out of the tub.  There was a little bottle of lotion along with the shampoo and she pours it out onto her hands and slathers it everywhere, wincing at the sting of sunburn over her face, chest, and shoulders and her chapped lips.  

She hears the outer door to the room open and close, a pause, then Seth’s voice calling her name.  She answers “in here,” and realizes abruptly she’s in only a smallish towel, but then Seth is knocking on the door and she hears the rustle of a shopping bag and him clearing his throat.  She unlocks and opens the door at first just a crack, then wider and Seth quickly averts his eyes as he hands the bag through to her, giving her a wide-eyed look when she adds, “wait,” and turns to set the bag down and retrieve the gun.  She hands it over and glances up at him in time to see his eyes jumping back to hers before their hands withdraw quickly and she nearly slams the door shut again.

She starts going through the shopping bag and finds a toothbrush and toothpaste on top along with a stick of generic women’s deodorant, then underneath are two t-shirts, one light gray and one dark purple, a pair of jeans, a pack of socks, and at the bottom a five-pack of underwear and two bras, all in the right sizes.  It’s bizarre knowing he picked it all, sends a ripple of embarrassed hyperawareness from deep in her stomach all the way up her throat as she thinks of Seth standing in the aisles at the big box store they’d seen the lights of as they’d passed through to the outskirts of the smallish town toward the hotel.  She wonders briefly, caught between utterly mortified and something else hot and prideful, if he’d actually looked at the patterns before choosing the pack of bikini-cut underwear with flowers, stripes, and pastel checks as she pulls on a pair.  

She swallows down the sudden confusing swell of it all as she finishes dressing, puts on deodorant, and brushes her teeth, willing away the dark pink covering her cheeks and throat before she has to face him.  She clutches the bag to her chest and avoids Seth’s eyes when he looks up.

“Thank you,” she murmurs as she sets the bag down on top of the dresser across from the bed.

“Yeah, is it all okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s good.”

“There was a pizza place, you’re not allergic to anything are you?”

“Just shellfish,” she says, shaking her head as she sinks gratefully down on the end of the bed and pulls a piece out of the box.  

She pulls her feet up and crosses her legs, closing her eyes and humming happily around a cheesy bite, nodding distractedly when Seth confirms she’s done in the bathroom.  He disappears inside with his own bag and Kate buries herself in the pizza and soda he’d brought back, forcing herself to stop when she’s had two sodas and half the pizza.  She hadn’t felt hungry most of the day after the convenience store but being full of greasy comfort food makes her feel more normal and grounded than anything else, even finally getting to bathe.  By the time Seth emerges from the bathroom with his hair slightly spiky and water still glistening on his neck above his plain black t-shirt she’s tired but antsy in the plain tv-less room.  He sits down on the bed and grabs another piece of pizza for himself, not seeming to mind it’s barely room-temperature.

“Are you still going out?” she asks, stifling a yawn, and Seth nods.  

“There’s a place just down the road.  Lock the door behind me.”

Kate pauses.  

“I want to go with.”

Seth eyes her a little incredulously but she doesn’t give him a chance to protest more than that, and when he can see she’s steeling herself he sighs and shrugs.

“Suit yourself.  Don’t be surprised if they don’t let you in.  Might not be shitty enough to not care.”

Kate ignores the discouragement with a roll of her eyes and gets up to grab a pair of socks and her boots.

“Did you actually eat all this?” Seth asks as he gets another piece of pizza, nodding to the half-empty box.

“I was hungry,” she says defensively.

“Long as you don’t drink like you eat.  I can’t afford that.”

“I don’t drink, I’m not old enough,” she answers.

“Never stopped me.”

“That’s not exactly shocking.”

She can feel him squinting at her as she leans down to tie the laces of her boots.

“You took that shot at the Twister,” he recalls.

Kate glances over her shoulder and widens her eyes a little as she sits up.  “You kind of made us, remember?”

Seth shrugs and looks contemplative as he chews.  “We were toasting to a mission accomplished.”

She rolls her eyes and turns on the bed to face him.  “Is that why we had to make confessions too?”

Seth holds her gaze for a long moment, a dark look of interest passing over his face.  “Still embarrassed you didn’t have more to tell, Fuller?”

She’s not exactly sure how they suddenly got here, to where she’s narrowing her eyes at his grin and clenching her teeth around a curse at his arrogance.  “What makes you think I don’t?”

He raises and eyebrow and his grin widens, but all he does is take a sloppy bite of pizza and chew around a smirk, like he knows she really doesn’t have more to tell in that category, like he knows and thinks it’s just adorable and it makes her bristle with annoyance.

“Can you finish so we can go please?” she asks, getting up and brushing her hands over her jeans before she realizes she has nothing to collect, nothing to put in her pockets to bring with except their room key.

“Hold your horses, little lady,” he replies mildly, and she turns around and leans against the dresser, folding her arms and watching as he pulls on a pair of clean socks and then his own boots.  

He looks different in jeans and a t-shirt, almost startlingly so, but he still slides the gun into the back of his waistband after he puts his wallet and room key in his back pocket.

“Will they let you in with that?” she asks warily at the door, waiting for him as he snags another piece of pizza from the box.

“If they don’t it’s the wrong fuckin’ bar,” he mutters.

She locks the door behind them and he ushers her along with a hand at her back as they start off toward the road, walking in tandem through the roadside brush in the cooler dark of full night.

The bar is tiny and nameless, set by itself alongside the road a quarter of a mile away from the hotel in the opposite direction of the cluster of stores and houses that make up the nearby town.  They walk in mostly companionable silence even after their bickering, the night quiet except for soft wind and insects and their steps tromping through the brush and gravel, uneven rhythms interrupted occasionally when their shoulders bump together.  There’s no one watching the door at the bar when they get there, Seth poking his head in first and then holding it open for her behind him, hand hovering at her back and staying this time as he surveys the place quickly on their way to the bar.  There are three small tables besides the bar itself, and four patrons plus the bartender.  Music plays from an ancient-looking jukebox in one corner and the only decoration are the cracks in the walls and some tattered poster advertisements for various liquors and beers.

Seth orders a shot of whiskey and a beer, pinning Kate with an expectant look until she chews on her lip and nods, deciding she can always ask for water instead.  Seth taps the bartop and holds up two fingers to the bartender when he looks over.  Seth glances behind him at the room before turning back and leaning his forearms on the bar, quiet until they’re served and he holds his shot glass up for a cheers before knocking it back and sliding it across the bar for another.

Kate tries to sip hers first and then gives up, tipping it back and barely managing to tamp down the spluttering cough that wells up in her throat at the unpleasant burn as she swallows.  Her eyes water anyway and she holds and hand over her mouth for a moment, breathing through her nose and willing away a gag.  She can feel Seth watching her but she ignores him until she feels a little more composed, setting her glass down carefully to one side far enough away from the bartender that she doesn’t think he’ll get the idea she wants it refilled.  She picks up the sweating beer bottle in front of her and sips, not trying to hide her grimace but still able to get it down a little easier than the whiskey.  She does glance over at Seth then and he’s watching her, holds up what must be his third shot with raised eyebrows and clinking it against her bottle before throwing it back and then setting the glass down upside down on the bar and picking up his own beer.

“Don’t drink my ass,” he mutters out the side of his mouth.

“Well I didn’t,” Kate replies, and tips back another swallow of her beer.  She doesn’t like the taste but there’s something bracing about how cold it is and how the carbonation seems sharper on her tongue than soda.

“Alright,” he agrees mildly.

They stay put as one patron leaves and three more come in, Seth eyeing the small group of men having a loud conversation warily before they take the one empty table.  Kate’s nearly done with her beer and she feels buzzed, her mouth tingling and her muscles warm and loose, and Seth is showing signs of it too at the bottom of his second beer.  He keeps watching her, squinting in concentration.

“What?” she almost snaps after a few seconds.

“What was up with you and my brother, in that back room at the Twister?”

The question comes out of left field and Kate swallows and blinks, looking back to her beer for a moment while she thinks.  

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I walked in and you were . . .” he trails off and widens his eyes at her with a raise of one eyebrow, and he takes a drink of his beer as if to punctuate a point.

“What?” she asks again, prompting him for an explanation.

Seth shrugs a little, stalling, but Kate waits him out.

“You thought you’d give him a little action, get him on your side against me,” Seth finishes, like he’s appraising her plan after the fact.

Kate colors and shrugs.  “I had to try something.  I didn’t think you were gonna change your mind about keeping us around.”

“Yeah well.  Here we are, huh?”

Seth gestures around the bar with the beer in his hand and Kate takes a breath and glances around them too.

“Fuck of a lotta good that plan did me,” he mutters, his voice cracking and dying out and Kate lets out a breath and reaches over to lay a hand on his arm.  

He lets it lie for a few moments then shrugs her off gently and concentrates on rotating his bottle back and forth along the bartop sandwiched between his palms.  He orders two more beers without asking her and as he slides the bottle to her she can feel his eyes on her again.  She drains the last of her first bottle.  It’s not his normal look, not the sensation she’s starting to get used to when he’s watching her.  Usually she can feel him figuring out or deciding something about her when he looks at her, measuring and adding to some running tab of information.  Now he’s soft around the edges and almost swaying on the stool next to her.  She cups her hands around the cold wet bottle in front of her and watches him back quietly.

“Richie’s a fucking vampire,” he says suddenly, his voice barely quiet enough not to be heard over the music and the continual loud conversation behind them.

She almost chokes on the drink she’d just taken at the sudden declaration, reaching up to wipe at her lips as she coughs and stares at Seth.  He looks miserable.  Lost.  She swallows again and glances at the bottle, her eyes suddenly feeling swollen and bleary.  She’s not entirely surprised, but the fact of it still billows out like a mushroom cloud in the silence between them.

“Scott is too,” she says.

They stare at each other almost blankly.

“He’s off with that snake bitch stripper,” Seth continues, not ignoring what Kate had revealed but just unable to stop himself.  

Kate nods, acknowledging, before looking back at her fingers trembling around the dripping bottle.

“Scott bit our dad,” she says quietly, her voice shaking.

“Jesus, did he-”

She shakes her head, staring down at the sticky bar top.  She can’t say more than that, can’t push the words out around the knife in her throat but Seth doesn’t ask.  

“Shit,” Seth mutters, muffled by his hand scrubbing over his face.

“Yeah,” she agrees resignedly.

They sit there hunched and silent for several minutes, sipping their beers and staring ahead.

“I gotta get outta here,” Seth mutters finally, swigging the rest of his beer and setting the bottle down with a loud clunk that startles Kate out of her own fog.  

She nods and stares at the beer in front of her for a moment before tipping it back and taking the last several swallows all at once even though her stomach rolls with each one.  Seth motions for the bartender and Kate hears him asking for a bottle of something to go as she grips at the edge of the bar to steady herself, suddenly feeling woozy.

The bartender doesn’t understand at first and there’s some back and forth before Kate interrupts, “para llever,” prompting more back and forth until Seth peels another bill off the small roll in his hand and slides it across the bar and the bartender suddenly stops arguing, handing over an unopened bottle and clearing their empties.

“Alright?” Seth asks as they get up, and Kate nods, still holding onto the bar as she stands, switching to clutching at his sleeve when she sways just slightly upon letting go and taking a step.

“Shit, c’mere,” he mutters, and loops an arm around her waist, holding her against his side firmly as they make their way out of the bar.  

It’s cool outside, far cooler than the days have been, but the chill against her face and in her lungs when she breathes in fresh air doesn’t make Kate feel any more sober, just highlights how tingly and weightless she feels on her feet, even with Seth’s arm tight around her.  She loops one arm around his waist too and lets him match her stride over the uneven terrain alongside the road in the now-pitch black night.

“What is that?” she asks when they’re halfway back to the motel, nodding to the bottle in his other hand.

“Tequila.”

“Aren’t we supposed to have sugar and lime wedges?”

Seth laughs, the sound rough but almost grateful and walking entwined as they are starts to feel more comfortable than necessary.  

“You mean salt?” he asks.

“Oh, I always thought it was sugar when-”

“When what?  Lotta parishioners doin’ body shots back in Bethel?”  

He jostles her a little under his arm and she shoves her weight into him with her shoulder, glad of the shift in their moods.

“In a movie at a sleepover,” she admits.

Seth laughs again, dry and almost mocking.  

“Fuckin’ hell, how old are you anyway?”

“Seventeen.”

“Jailbait,” he sing-songs under his breath.  

Kate rolls her eyes.  Nearby something rustles in a patch of brush and runs away into the black of the desert beside the road and they both jump a little, Seth barking out a startled laugh as they stumble along.

“I think you’re more jailbait than I am,” Kate says.  “I mean I’d get in trouble just being your friend.  And I’m going to turn eighteen eventually and then it won’t even matter.”

“Oh there you go, just rub it in why don’t you,” Seth mutters back, and Kate preens a little in the dark at having gotten the best of him.

“What, did I hurt your feelings?” she taunts.

“You are a mean drunk y’know that?”

“You’re oversensitive,” Kate replies matter of factly, sniffling in the chilled air.

They’re nearing the motel and Kate breaks from his hold around her waist, tugging on his arm.  

“We still need salt and limes, is it too far to walk to town?”

“It’s too far to walk to town with a mean drunk.”

She sighs.  

“But it’s not the same-”

“You don’t even need this,” Seth says, holding up the bottle, “you’re already plastered.  You need to go to bed.”

“You’re not sitting up by yourself to drink alone all night, that’s too sad.”

“Really?  Drinking alone?  That’s your sadness threshold?” he asks incredulously, holding a hand up like he’s measuring.

“You know what I mean,” Kate says softly, nudging at his arm.

“Fine, but your drunk ass is staying here while I go.”

“You can’t drive like this.”

“You’re drunk, I’m buzzed.  It’s a mile round-trip, it’s fine.”

Kate relents, barely, and lets Seth unlock the door to their room and push her over the threshold, telling her to splash some water on her face and handing the gun to her too.

“Check the peephole before you answer the door, okay?”

It sobers her up some and she nods, holding the gun gingerly and leaning against the doorframe before he can close it.

“Be careful,” she reminds him quietly.  

He rolls his eyes.

“Quit being dramatic.”

She watches from the window as he gets in the car and drives off, leaning her forehead against the glass to follow the tail lights as far as she can down the road before she gives up and turns back to the empty room with a sigh.  She drifts over to the bed and sits, setting the gun down carefully next to her as she reaches down to undo the laces of her boots and push them off.  She sits cross-legged on the bed and stares around the room with its peeling off-white paint and ancient mottled brown carpet.  There’s no decoration, not even in the plain white bedding and solid brown bedspread, but it’s cleaner than what Kate remembers of the first room they stayed in.

She realizes she’s fingering the cross at her neck absentmindedly and snatches her hand away.  She groans and shakes her head, trying to will thoughts away but her head isn’t working right, her faculties too languid to catch every dangerous stray thought and put them away where they can’t overwhelm her.  She flops back on the bed on her back, legs unfolding and dangling down the to floor.  She lets her eyes flutter closed and drifts for a bit until there’s a scrape of a key in the lock and she gasps and sits up all at once as Seth opens it and snorts at her.

“Wakey wakey, sunshine.”  

He holds up a shopping bag and she bounces herself all the way up onto the bed and pulls her legs up to cross under her.  Seth sets the bag on the dresser and fiddles with things for a minute with his back to her, turning eventually and holding up the bottle of tequila in one hand and a shaker of salt plus a plastic cup of lime wedges in the other.  There’s pocket knife between his teeth that he removes and wipes on his jeans after handing Kate the bottle as he sits on the bed himself.

“Alright, lights, camera, action, kid.  You ready to learn?”

“Is it that complicated?”

“You thought it was sugar,” he retorts, grabbing the gun from her and leaning over to set it on the bedside table.

“Okay, teach me.”

He motions for the bottle and opens it then hands Kate a lime wedge.  

“Lick your hand, here,” he demonstrates, putting his mouth to the web between his thumb and forefinger and then dumps a little salt on the same spot, waiting for Kate to imitate him before he raises the bottle.  “Salt, shot, lime, yeah?”

He sucks the salt off his hand, takes a shot straight from the bottle, then sucks the lime between his teeth as he hands Kate the bottle.  She doesn’t juggle all the elements quite as smoothly as he did but she manages.  The tequila burns and makes her cough but it does seem to have some flavor other than acid and fire and the salt and lime are a distraction, making her mouth water and pucker kind of pleasantly at the end.

“Atta girl,” he says when she hands the bottle back and he raises it in a toast to her before drinking again, not bothering with the salt or lime this time.

Kate motions for the bottle again and slicks her tongue along her inner wrist this time before holding it out to Seth for the salt and he obliges, watching as she licks up the salt and then takes a larger swallow of liquor.

“Slow down,” he murmurs as she bites into the lime and she glares at him from the corner of her eye.

“What for?”

“Don’t wanna get sick.”

“I don’t wanna remember anymore tonight,” she counters, motioning for the bottle again just as Seth is taking it back but he holds it and just watches her stubbornly until she meets his eyes again.  

She’d drank once before the Twister, a sip of beer at a party on a dare, but she’d never been really drunk.  She understands the appeal now.  Her body is too stubbornly solid and real, her mind too busy replaying the Twister and its tunnels and the effects of her moderate buzz aren’t doing much to lift it.  She shakes her head and toys with the salt shaker in her lap.

“My dad  . . . he didn’t just get bit,” she says quietly.

“Did he turn?”

“No,” she shakes her head again, still staring down as she pours a little hill of salt out onto her palm.

“Kate?”

“I did it.  Right before.”

“Goddammit,” Seth whispers, angry and defeated.

“He’s dead,” she cries quietly.  She looks up then, forgetting the salt in her hand resting limp palm up on her knee.  “And Scott’s . . . I don’t even know where he is.  Do you think he’s with Richie?”

“I don’t know,” Seth reaches up to press the heels of his hands against his eyes.  “I don’t fuckin’ know anything.”

“I wish I didn’t - god, I just.  I don’t want to remember it anymore right now.”

Seth nods and hands her the bottle again and she sniffles miserably, setting the salt shaker in the triangle made by her folded legs.  She still has the little pile of salt in her other palm and Seth brings his wrist up to his mouth and licks, holds it out for her to pour some of the salt over it, letting whatever doesn’t stick sprinkle to the floor.  He picks up a lime wedge and Kate holds his offered wrist and licks up the sticky trail of salt before drinking from the bottle, one glug and then he replaces one hand with the other, holding the lime wedge between his thumb and forefinger for her to take in her teeth.  They stare at eachother as she chews once and sucks in the sour juice, her eyes watering with tears not from sadness this time.  She hands the bottle back to him when he reaches for it, draws the flats of her fingers through the wetness under her eyes and licks her tacky lips as he takes his own drink.  She watches his throat move as he swallows, his lips around the neck of the bottle.

“This isn’t how they did it in the movie,” she says quietly.

Now Seth’s eyes slide to hers and he holds her gaze as he tips his head back straight and pins her with a slightly disapproving look.

“This look like a movie to you?”

Kate feels like she’s floating somewhere above the bed, lifted out of her tingling liquor-heavy body as she shakes her hair back from her neck slowly, reaches up and licks her fingers, letting spit slide out and wet them liberally before spreading them along the side of her neck over her pulse point.  She’s bleary-eyed and moving without thought.

“Kate.”

She picks up the salt shaker and leans back, tipping her chin up and sprinkling salt on the cooling smear.  She glances down to pick up a lime wedge and holds it up, staring at Seth challengingly.

“Your turn.”

There’s a long moment, silent and rattling with energy.  Seth stares, mouth pouted around a frown, brows pulled together and down over his eyes, swaying a little even as his lips part.  Suddenly he mutters, “fuck,” leans across the space between them and licks up Kate’s neck, lips open and sucking with his whole mouth to get every grain of salt, one hand closing briefly on her upper arm to steady her before moving her away as he takes a swig of tequila and then lowers his head to bite the lime out of her fingers.  He lets her go and sits back, reaching up and tearing the lime from between his teeth, watching her almost spitefully as he tosses the lime peel and fumbles for the bottle cap.

“You done now?” he asks, his voice a little hoarse.

Kate is numb and speechless for a long moment, can feel the hot gather of tears behind her eyes and the cool slick on her neck and she nods, eyes on her lap, in answer.  Seth gathers up the stray lime peels, the cup, the bottle, and holds his hand out for the salt shaker which she gives him without protest.  He piles it all on the dresser before closing the bathroom door behind him and she flinches at the sound and presses her hands to her face, fingers still sticky with lime juice.  Her head is a messy too-vibrant fog and she wants to crawl under the covers and under the bed, into the ground beneath and never have to look at anyone again, much less Seth when he comes back out.  It feels like a storm bottled in her chest, stifled and only louder and stronger for it, shame and sadness and loss reaching out from the twisting center and tearing her apart the longer she keeps it in but she can’t let anything else out.  Her liquor-drowned head has already let her do too much.

The bathroom door opens and Kate steels herself and quickly runs her fingers through her hair, trying not to sniffle while still keeping her head down.  She can feel him standing there, paused in front of her, and she concentrates on his socked feet on the carpet.  She wants to apologize, wants to tell him it’s his fault, wants to ask him why he let her drink at all, wants to skip to anywhere past this moment and never ever have to think about it again.  His hand brushes her shoulder and lingers, his thumb sweeping up along the neckline of her t-shirt.

“Should get some sleep now,” he says quietly.

It just makes it all worse even as relief cuts through her at how gentle his voice is, with no trace of irritation or accusation.  He’s letting her off the hook she’d hung them from, lifting a fraction of the fear churning in her gut that something delicate has been broken, lost, stained.  She forces herself to nod back, again, just nodding because it’s all she can manage, and she swipes her hands over her face again.  Seth’s hand falls away from her shoulder when she gets up to go to the bathroom herself where she refuses to meet her own eyes in the mirror, just pees and washes her hands, rubs her wet fingers over her swollen eyes and turns away to flip off the light before opening the door.

The lamp on her side of the bed is on and Seth is laying on his back on top of the covers, eyes closed and one hand resting on his stomach.  She watches his face carefully as she approaches and turns the light off before she lays down too, on her side with her knees curled up to her chest.    She hears the slight shift when Seth turns his head toward her.

“Trash can’s on your side,” he says, voice already sleep-scratchy through the dark.   “Don’t throw up on me,” he adds.

Kate sighs out a pained laugh and tucks her face further into the pillow.  Everything sits on her chest and rolls behind her eyes, loud and immediate and incomprehensible.  She can feel tears building up again but they won’t fall so she just closes her eyes, entirely spent.  After a few quiet moments they both shift, Kate stretching her legs out and Seth moving on his side of the bed and she reaches out to curl a hand over his arm.  Her head’s spinning a little and she may be reeling and confused and embarrassed but he’s still there.  He’s all that’s there.  He makes a little cracked sound of assent and she feels the slow release of his breath in the quiet of the room and the brush of his fingers warm over her own when he reaches up and lays his hand over hers.

_

They check out the next morning, but before they get far they stop for breakfast at a diner with an American-style pancake special advertised alongside huevos rancheros and pan de yema on the sign outside.

Seth seems distracted as they eat, mostly staring past Kate’s shoulder and she’s at once grateful that he’s not trying to make conversation and terrified, through the dull ache of her hangover, that whatever comfort they may have begun to take in each other’s company is spoiled now.  Seth gets up halfway through the meal, only muttering, “stay put,” to Kate as he passes by and she frowns and tries to subtly glance over her shoulder to figure out what he’s doing but he’s just out of her peripheral vision.  She gives it a minute, sips her coffee, and when there’s a crash of plates from the kitchen she takes the opportunity to turn and look.  

Seth’s at the counter on a stool next to a man in a rumpled-looking suit, talking quietly.

Kate frowns and turns back around to wait.  A few minutes later Seth comes back and sets back into his breakfast without a word.  Kate stares at him hard, waiting until he looks up at her, eyebrows raised in question.

“What?”

She widens her eyes at him, raising her brows back, and holds her hands up in question.

“He knows where we can trade the car.”

“How did you even know to ask him?”

Seth shrugs.  

“Guys like me recognize our own, even down here.  Helps that he’s shit at hiding the pistol in his belt and three cell phones in his pocket.”

Kate’s tempted to turn around again but Seth must see it and he rolls his eyes.  

“Don’t look, I don’t need him getting twitchy now.  Just eat your food alright?”

They finish their breakfast mostly in silence and soon they’re in the car again, Kate surfing radio stations while Seth navigates to a highway and points them southeast.  They stop several miles away at a run-down garage and get a dingy white Honda Civic in trade for the convertible, plus some cash, and passports and Texas driver’s licenses identifying them as Kate and Seth Conlon from Lubbock.  Kate holds up the licenses after inspecting them briefly when Seth tosses them at her in the car.  

“Are we siblings or newlyweds?”

Seth glances over at her, a flash of apprehension on his face before he replaces it with a casual shrug.  

“Whatever the situation calls for.  Here,” he adds, dropping a brown paper bag into her lap.

It’s heavy and Kate startles and unrolls the crumpled top to look inside, pulling out a small snub-nosed pistol with a wood grip that’s emblazoned with a star of Texas.

“What’s this?”

“That is a Deringer .44 magnum Texas Defender, darlin’, and it’s your new best friend.”

Kate turns the pistol over in her hands; it’s stocky and heavy when she tries gripping it with her finger off the trigger.  

“Uses the same ammo as mine so we’ll have less to carry,” Seth adds, watching her carefully from the driver’s seat as she peeks back into the bag and sees the boxes of extra rounds.

“Thank you,” she says cautiously after a few more moments of inspection.  

She holds it unsurely but the weight of it feels kind of right in her hands too, like it fits.  Seth nods and clears his throat, goes back to shoving his license in his wallet.  

“It’s little and mean, you’ll get along fine.”

Kate smiles and Seth starts the car and cracks his neck.  She hides the gun back in the bag and tucks it behind her feet just under her seat, turning her attention back to her new ID as they start back down the road.

“This says I’m twenty,” she notices.  “And the height is wrong.”

“Well, shit, look older then.  And taller.”

Kate sighs and leans forward to slip the ID into her back pocket, pulling her feet up to brace her heels on the seat.  

“I’m five-three, not five-two,” she corrects, reaching up to fiddle with the radio again.

“I”ll buy you flatter shoes, Jesus.  Good thing nobody else is gonna be that picky,” he grumbles, but there’s no real bite behind it.

_

Seth gets the room at the next hotel and they have one bed.  Kate doesn’t ask if it was out of necessity, but she feels something unknot in her stomach that had been clenched tight as a fist the whole day even though it had seemed like Seth was fine with just letting the previous night go.

First shower rights are negotiated with barely three words between them and Kate grabs a change of clothes from her bag before shutting herself in the bathroom and turning on the hot water.  Her clothes stick to her when she dresses afterwards and the tiny room is stuffy with steam so she opens the door while she stands at the sink.  When she does she catches sight of Seth in the mirror over her shoulder, on the floor by the foot of the bed doing pushups.  

She’d known, objectively, that Seth wasn’t exactly sporting a spare tire under his suit, but now he’s in just a painted-on white tank and boxers and everything is . . . more intense than she’d pictured.  Kate looks back at her own face in the mirror and raises her eyebrows a little at herself before going back to finger-combing through her wet hair.  She tries to ignore Seth’s little grunts of exertion but it’s not really working since they’re the only sound in the room and it seems strangely intimate in a way she hadn’t expected in the midst of still feeling awkward around him after everything the night before.  She turns and leans on the sink, starting to zone out as she watches him.

The travel, even though they’re just driving, is draining, and it doesn’t feel like they have a destination yet.  She wonders if that hangs over Seth like it does her, like the sky is too heavy and pushing down on them, like the wind and the sun are eroding them little by little.  She wonders if the pushups, and now the crunches he’s counting under his breath, help.

He looks up when he finishes, then away again quickly.  He doesn’t look embarrassed and she’s not sure if she should feel guilty or not but he doesn’t seem annoyed when he asks if she’s done in the bathroom.  She nods and they switch, passing close by outside the doorway so she can feel the heat from exertion rolling off him and just catch the scent of his sweat.  She can’t tell if he sees the red blush crawling over her cheeks before the bathroom door closes.

He goes out for food after he’s done and dressed again and they sit side by side on the bed and eat carne asada with rice and beans.

“Alright,” Seth says, clapping his hands together when they’re both done.  “Get your gun, lesson time.”

Kate obliges while Seth grabs two towels from the bathroom and lays them out on the floor in front of the bed.  He sits on the floor and Kate joins him, both of them cross-legged with their backs against the bed behind them.

“If you’re gonna shoot it, you gotta know how it works and how to clean it.  If it’s not clean and loaded right it’s not gonna shoot, alright?”

Kate nods and holds the pistol out to him, but he shakes his head and motions for her to keep it.  He has her turn the gun this way and that, pointing out the name of each component and how to operate it.  Then piece by piece he has her disassemble it, lay each one out on the towel - which she understands the necessity of once all the pieces are there and she realizes how they would have blended in with the dark carpeting.  When it’s all apart he shows her which pieces to wipe down, which need to get oiled if they get dirty, and then he takes a breath.

“Okay,” he says, his voice light but strained.  “Now put it back together.”

Kate works slowly, pausing to look over what she has finished before she selects the next piece, and she manages it with one confirming headshake from Seth when she’s not sure she has the right piece in hand.

“Good, good.  Now do it again.”

Kate sighs and starts disassembling the gun again, laying out the pieces like he’d shown her.

“Who taught you this?” she asks, eyes still on her task.  

There’s a long pause; Seth is taking apart his own gun now, working methodically.

“My old man.”

“Was he a good teacher?”

Seth snorts derisively.  

“Know how to do it don’t I?”

Kate sets her eyes back to her work and frowns a little at all the components laid out on the towel  before picking up the last one she’d put down.

“Were you a good student?”

She can feel that this isn’t something Seth will want to talk about and she’s okay with that, but she wants to ask too, wants him to know it matters to her.  Seth holds his assembled revolver in his hands, fist clenching around the grip and his jaw working tightly when Kate glances sideways at him, her own pistol half-assembled in her hands.

“Hard to tell when you get smacked around either way,” he says finally.  

His voice is low, too even.  

Kate watches him for a long moment as he breaks his gun back down and starts rubbing at part of it with a corner of the towel.  Seth won’t look at her, and his jaw keeps clenching so she lets it go, finishes her gun and sets it down on the towel before pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.  Seth looks over at the completed gun and nods.

“Good,” he says quietly.

“Again?” she asks, just as quietly.

“No,” he shakes his head, “later.”

Kate lays a hand over his, still working on his own gun like he isn’t even aware of what he’s doing.

“Later,” she repeats softly, and gets him to set the revolver down too.  

They crawl up onto the bed and sit side by side against the headboard to flip the TV on and Seth finds a movie.  It’s black and white and in Spanish but it turns out it’s a bank heist and Seth spends the whole thing critiquing the characters’ techniques and grumbling, half at Kate and half in general, what idiots they all are.  She lets herself smile at his indignance, lets the rice and beans soak up the remaining traces of hungover wrongness in her stomach, and when they settle to sleep later, both shower-clean and heavy with exhaustion, it feels like real rest.

_

“Is it dangerous?” she asks quietly.  

She’s sitting on another motel bed after another week of driving what's beginning to feel like endless circles, watching while Seth puts on his watch.  He’s freshly showered and a new dress shirt and jacket are laid out next to her.  Seth turns from where he’s looking out the window as he puts on his watch.

“No.”

“Then why can’t I come with?”

Seth huffs out a laugh as he pulls the shirt on over his undershirt and buttons it.  The suit he’d picked up isn’t identical to the black one he’d had to call a loss, doesn’t fit quite as well, but Kate can tell part of him likes being in one again, especially when he’s getting ready for a job.

“I don’t need you for this, kid.  You never bring somebody you don’t need for a job, it’s asking for trouble.”

“So what do I do?  Just sit here by myself?”

Seth shrugs amiably.  

“We’ll stop somewhere tomorrow, start spending some of that pretty money Big Papi’s gonna be bringin’ home.”

Kate raises an eyebrow.  

“I’m not calling you that.”

“Aw, come on now darlin’, don’t speak too soon.  This is gonna be bigger than the gas stations, bigger than that sorry excuse for a safe at the last place.  We’re gonna get out of these shitholes.  Could get comfortable.”

“Not if you get yourself killed.”

“Kate.  You don’t need to worry about this.  I’ve got it all under control.  Need I remind you one of us is a professional here?”

Kate sighs heavily and gives Seth a withering stare, which he just smiles at mildly.  He watches her watch his hands as he starts to work on buttoning his cuffs, but after his second try at one Kate reaches up and brushes his hand away.

“Let me,” she sighs and does up the buttons, then slides her fingertips quickly over the visible tails of his tattoo, sweeping up under the cuff.

“Later tonight, I’ll be back,” he says.  “Don’t go out or anything okay?  Just hang out, watch TV, whatever.  I’ll be back before dawn.”

Kate nods, eyes dropping away from Seth’s, and pulls her legs up to cross under her on the bed as he tucks his revolver into his waistband and leaves without another word.  She flips channels for a while and eventually she curls on her side on the bed and tries not to count the minutes.  She knows objectively that they’re running out of money faster than they can replace it with smaller grab-and-go jobs here and there; they had to either go back to the U.S. or start doing something here to get by longer term.  She knows too that with every job, every grab, their chances of getting back over the border dwindle that much more, fake IDs or none.

Something else has been gnawing at her, something way down deep in the back of her brain and in the silence it slowly comes out into her consciousness, a compulsion.  It’s been almost two weeks now since the Twister and she needs to do something.  She goes to her half-unpacked duffle, dresses and cutoff shorts and drug store t-shirts she’s picked up along the way all tangled together as she digs through to the small zippered pouch hanging from one side.  When she opens it she fishes through the pile of wrapped tampons to the bottom where a crumpled piece of paper is jammed in the corner and pulls it out.  She smoothes the paper over her knee as she sits down next to the bedside table on Seth’s side where the phone is and picks up, dialing 9 and then the country code for the U.S. and the string of numbers following.

It’s late but not terribly so and she assumes this is a home number, but she’s still caught for a split second when a woman answers, her “hello?” interrupted by a baby fussing near the receiver.

“Is- is Ranger Gonzalez available?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Um.  My name is Kate, it’s . . . about a case, he said I could call him on this number.”

The woman doesn’t say anything; Kate hears a muffling sound like the phone being pressed to a shoulder and then a few moments later some fumbling and then the Ranger’s deep voice, surprisingly familiar after one night and all these weeks.

She re-introduces herself stiltedly, suddenly feeling strange calling him like this, but when he answers she can hear it all in his voice.  That night is as fresh for him as it is for her, even if he did go back to his old life afterwards.  Everything is still different.

“You alright?” he asks, calmly, but like he might still be on the verge of getting back on that motorcycle to cross the border again.

“Yeah.  I am.  That’s actually why I wanted to call, I just.  I wanted you to know I’m okay for now.  I figured some things out, kind of.  I figured out where to go.”

She didn’t, not really.  She figured out that the destination didn’t concern her right now.  But the end result is the same; she’s okay, not dead, not floundering, but surviving even when it feels like a razor’s edge between that and completely falling apart, and she needed to tell someone that, other than Seth who’s been in it with her the whole time.

“That’s good.”  He sounds tired.  “Good, glad to hear it.  You keep calling okay?  And if you need anything-”

“I will.”

“Okay.  Talk to you soon.”

“Bye.”

The brief phone call, even though there’s something cleansing, something grounding about it, has her feeling fragile and tired and after she tucks the paper back into her duffel she curls up on the bed in the quiet.  It hits her that she didn’t have anyone else to call, not anymore, and it crawls up her throat and sits there like a jagged rock, but it feels good even so just to reach out and find someone there, someone else who’s real and oddly familiar and to whom she doesn’t have to explain why it’s remarkable that she’s even breathing right now.  

That’s all there with Seth, of course, but it’s started to feel like they’re knitting together into a unit, into something insular and un-nameable and there’s confusion there, foggy and dark in equal measures with the roots of intimacy starting to thread through their every interaction.  It’s starting to make the brief infrequent times when they’re not within shouting distance of each other feel strange and raw, she’s been noticing, and right now it’s only adding to her tension.  She doesn’t like the time passing without him there, with him out in the night doing something dangerous, something he’s good at, something he never used to do alone because Richie was there.  She knows she made a poor substitute for his brother in that scenario but it doesn’t make her wish any less that she was there and that desire unsettles her even more until her thoughts are just a winding tangle of worry and fear.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep but finds herself waking up sometime later to the door opening, then a moment later Seth’s crouching next to the bed.

“Kate?” he whispers.

She stirs and opens her eyes, blinking at the bright light at first, barely focusing in time to catch Seth’s smile as he watches her.

“Brought you something,” he says, voice still hushed.  He pulls a thick envelope out of his jacket and tosses it on the bed in front of her.

Kate flinches a little and frowns, but leans up on her elbow to peek inside the envelope stuffed full of large bills.

“How much is it?”

“Enough that we’re not gonna have to stay in another place like this tomorrow.”

Kate lays back down, picking at the edges of the bills with one fingernail.  Seth crawls over her and Kate grumbles as he shakes the bed when he flops down on his back on her other side.  She hears fabric rustling and then Seth is leaning over her again to toss his jacket towards the chair sitting across from the bed on her side.  She sighs loudly as he jostles her and she can hear him grinning as he snags the envelope back before he lays back down.

She lays there for a long time, thinking, relieved and cranky and still wired.  She’s not sure how much time passes before she rolls over to find Seth on his side facing away from her, deeply asleep by the slow steady rhythm of his breathing, but even with Seth there and safe right in front of her she can’t calm herself down.  She should feel better now that he’s back, should feel calm enough to sleep at least but all she can do is stare at his back through the dark, stare and stare like she could slice him open with her eyes and reach in for - something.  Something she can’t touch now, something she doesn’t know how to define to know why she needs it.  

She lays awake until her eyes burn, until she feels delirious with formless repeating worry and finally she finds herself sliding a hand across the sheets to rest palm flat in the middle of Seth’s back, measuring each intake of breath.  She shifts a little closer, the angle awkward even though there’s something centering and grounding about feeling connected to him like that, and Seth groans in his sleep and twists to crack one eye open at her.

“Happened?” he mumbles.

“Nothing, I just . . . I thought you weren’t breathing.”

It’s not even true, she knew he was breathing the whole time, she just felt compelled, like her body wanted to touch his, but she can’t say that.  Seth doesn’t snort at her like she expects, doesn’t bat her away.  He rolls over and slings an arm around her back, dragging her close until her head is buried under his arms against his chest, basically holding her in a headlock against him.

“Wake me again if it stops tickin’,” he grumbles sleepily.  

But there’s something in it.  Something soft and acknowledging.  

She can barely move above the shoulders but she manages to worm her face up so she can breathe and she stays there, locked against him, drowning in his heat and his steady thumping heart like a bass drum in her head.

_____