Chapter Text
Sonja, he’s decided, is a saint. Or at least pretty close to one.
“You have a plan for after this?” she asks as he closes the door, perching on the edge of one of the beds, Kate’s bed, and leaning back on one hand.
“I-” he stops, because he doesn’t have an answer. Hadn’t really thought past each moment of next. “Something like that, yeah,” he answers finally on a sigh.
“You’re going to need one,” she says plainly, tilting her head and studying him in a way that doesn’t feel invasive, like she can peel back a layer of his skin and get a glimpse of what lies beneath. Not like Richie, not like Kate.
“You sound like you’ve done this before,” he says, looking away.
“Something like that, yeah,” she echoes, even though it wasn’t a question. Not really. “Enough to know that someone doesn’t get to where you were without a reason. Want to know my guess?”
“Enlighten me.”
“I think it’s about what happened between you and your brother."
The familiar anger flares up, mixing and masking that deep well of pain that likes to catch him off guard. The anger is easier, clenching his jaw and stealing his words, but not his breath. Doesn’t carve its way through his chest and twist his stomach.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“We split,” he all but snaps out.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” she says, not noticing or ignoring his reaction. “When the infamous Gecko Brothers would be no more.”
“Is there a point to this line of questioning?”
She rolls her eyes, but lets it go, allowing the silence to stretch and twist between them for a short moment.
“So,” she beings carefully, “I met your little friend.”
For a split second, Seth pictures the gunman, heart pounding in remembered fear renewing itself.
“You mean Kate?” he clarifies, relief warm in chest as his brain catches up with the facts.
“Yeah. Kate.” She says the name with a hard edge, nearly clipping the first syllable. Seth frowns, flashes of Kate’s crossed arms and hard jaw outside the door playing through his memory. “After the way you talked about her, I was expecting someone... older.” She says the words almost carefully, pushing forward until she rests her elbows on her knees.
“Oh?” His arms cross over his chest, body going loose and tense all at once.
“I thought you might be fucking her,” she says bluntly.
He stares, waiting a deliberate too long beat before saying blandly, “That’d be illegal.”
“Doesn’t answer my question.”
“Didn’t realize there was one,” he shoots back.
“You know what I-”
“Does it fucking matter?”
A part of him gets why she’s asking, gets that it might even be out of some girls-protecting-girls instinct, but the rest of him is snarling that it isn’t anyone’s fucking business, and those it might have been ain’t around to say shit.
But he likes Sonja, or at least he’s grateful to her. She’s been by every day, mopping up his sweat and rubbing his back as he buries his head in the toilet, bringing him soup and crackers and bottles of water.
She lets out a scoffing-snort, hard and dismissing before she gives him a crooked smile. “What’s one more broken law, huh?”
He turns away, too reluctant to deny her accusations even as something like guilt twists through him at the way he used her, pretended to want to fuck her while getting ready to knock her out. Even thought about it, for a brief second, feeling her body pressed against his and realizing just how long it’s been since he got laid.
Didn’t feel right though, hasn’t for a while, and he doesn’t know what to do with that. Never quite been in this situation before. He’s not some kind of Casanova with a string of one-night stands in his past, but he’s not bad with women, not in the slightest, quite the opposite when he puts his mind to it. He learned a long time ago that he has a certain kind of charm that appeals to an above average number of the female population. But his chosen lifestyle hasn’t exactly tumbled him into the beds of hot barmaids and easy waitresses, regardless of what movies like to say. And, if he’s completely honest, he’s not the kind of a guy who cares about notches on a bedpost. (Richie liked to say he’s serial monogamist, but Richard had to die before he got his first girlfriend, so what the hell does he know?)
It’s not like he’s never had a one-night stand, would sometimes decide to end a night of celebration with getting laid and there was the rare drunken hook-up when life got particularly shitty, but most of the time when Seth met a girl he wanted to fuck, he usually found he liked her enough that he’d to stick around the morning after. Make a repeat of the whole thing and see if it turned into something more. Even his short-lived flings were with girls he liked, ending because of circumstances as opposed to some wham-bam goodbye shit that he never got the point of anyway.
“Well,” she says, pushing herself to her feet and stalking towards him, “I told you you’d make it back. Think you’ll go after Richie? Try and patch things up.”
“That ain’t going to happen. OK?” he says firmly, jaw clenching as he fights that instinct desire to flinch away from her words. “Not in a million fucking years.”
“He is your brother.” She says it so simply, like it should mean something to him.
“He’s a piece of shit,” he counters, giving her a glare and hoping she’ll drop it.
“Sorry I brought it up,” she snarks, hands going up in surrender, but thoughts are running through his head, bits of memories from his time detoxing.
“That’s just it,” he says, taking a hard step towards her, body tensing as suspicious anger courses through. “You always bring it up. You’ve been asking me about him since the second we met.”
“Jeez,” she sneers, anger peeking through that maddening calm, “can you be more delusional. And here I thought you were bad high. You talk to Kate this way?” He flinches, thoughts turning to that night not so long ago, driving away and leaving a blood splattered girl on the side of the road.
“Get the fuck out,” he demands, sudden and hard, reaching forward to grab her arm and ushering her to the door, just catching her muttered ‘fucking asshole’ growled back at him before he slams the door in her face.