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She'd drawn the short straw.
Her coworkers had lumped her with the task of clearing out the stragglers so they could close. By straglers they usualy meant Kook assholes with unhappy marriages to go home to. Tonight, however, that meant the Cameron boy brooding in the corner, six drinks deep and ignoring every social cue that the staff wanted him to leave.
The upturned chairs. The sweeping of the floor. The subtle offering of the cheque. None of it had had an impact and luckily, or unluckily, for Sofia she was the only server he hadn't had a run-in with yet so she had to deal with him.
There was something pensive about him sitting alone on the furthest corner of the deck staring out at the ocean, drink in hand, for hours on end. He wasn't causing a scene. He wasn't bothering the customers or getting dragged out by Topper. He didn't disappear off to a club or a house party. He stayed there, alone. He was quiet. Uncharacterstically still.
The Pelican sat in this weird grey zone of the island. Sailing was still mostly a Kook sport and the menu wasn't exactly cheap but a few Pogues could still afford to dine there. A level of decorum and class was expected. Kooks could exist there simply by breathing where as Pogues dressed up to the nines and saved a weeks wages just to get in the door. It was a melting pot. Mingling was normal, business deals were made, drinks were sent across to pretty girls' tables, maybe that's why his quiet isolation in the corner was so inticing. It pulled her in like the First Girl creeping through a dark creaking house in a slasher film. Deeper and deeper. Curiouser and curiouser.
"We're closing up"
"Yeah yeah!" he waved her off "Give me a minute"
She bit her tongue and kept her smile bright and her hands politely clasped in front of her. "I'm afraid i can only buy you about five. See those people over there." she was relieved when he actually turned away from the horizon and looked. "They're dying to go home and you're the last one here."
But that relief was short-lived, he shrugged with a nonchalant pout and turned right back to what he was doing. "I'll leave when I'm ready." There was a bite to his words this time, like he was aalready on the offensive. This was going to be harder than she thought. No wonder noone else wanted to deal with him.
"I'm not here to fight you."
"You want me to leave. I want to stay. What'd you call that?"
"A negotiation " she pulled up a seat without asking . "Something tells me you don't like being bossed around"
No response.
"Bad day?" she tried again.
He huffed a scoffed laugh, his lips curling slightly at the thought. "Bad year"
"So..." Sofia shrugged and pulled a paper bag out from the hem off her skirt and offered it to him. His face scrunched in baffled confusion and a speck of disgust, like drinking in public was beneath him or perhaps hiding it felt stupid. A beach. A club. The Boneyard, were all fine for him, sure, but not this. Of course he didn't care, Kooks never got caught. Pogues always did. "Why don't we walk and talk about it"
"I don't need help "
Sofia grimaced at the jab. He really was blocking her at every turn. The conversation was a kindness, a compromise, and he was treating it like an insult. She smothered that frustration in a perched brow and knowing smile. Two could play hard ball. "Yeah...but you want to keep your drink"
Those sharp blue eyes, now hazy, red and unfocused, fell on the green glass for a moment. He stared, deep in thought like the drunken cogs were trying their best to turn in his brain. With a thoughtful pout he relented and flopped an expectant open hand on the table. "Give it to me"
She faught the urge to smile in victory and nodded to herself. Progress. She handed him the bag and waved her coworkers over to clear his table.
The Pelican Yatch Club wasn't as nice as The Island Club but it was public, insanely public and today he needed to be seen. Seen, but not bothered. At the club who knew how many of his dad's friends would sling their arms around their shoulders or give him a wide berth and a snooty stare. The exclusivity of the club used to be a balm but now it felt like a hand around his throat. A crowd he'd never belong in. Especially if Wardtook it all away from him now, right when he just starting to get somewhere.
At the Pelican he could blend. He could be seen by a thousand faces in a night and have a thousand witnesses when Ward asked where he'd been when Barry took the cross. He could do all that without lifting a finger, without ever having to talk to anyone. As far as everyone knew his dad was dead and the Cameron family was in tatters and he needed his space. So they gave it to him.
Except, apparently, this one determined little Pogue.
He couldn't remember half the shit he said to her on their way out of the Club and down the marina but he ranted and she let him. He lost track of time before he realized she'd somehow led him a tiny stretch of sand in the middle of the rows of docks and shops and built up waterfront. He'd never seen the beach before in his life but she sighed as if she came here every day and plopped down onto the sand in her pristine white uniform like it was nothing. Like she didn't care if it got dirty.
"I thought we were walking?"
"I've been on my feet all day" she reminded, slipping out of her white sneakers and socks and letting her bare feet sink into the cool sand with a relieved sigh. "Sit. It's nice"
He grumbled something about ruining his shorts, sipping his still half full bottle as the brown paper rustled and crinkled in his tight grip. The sand was cold and rough through his shorts and against the palm he was leaning back on. It wasn't as pleasant as she'd promised. "Why are you doing this?" It came out more like an accusation than an actual question. It was bizzare behaviour. He would've thought she wouldn't want to be within three feet of him unless she was paid to be there.
"It was the easiest way to get you out of there" she shrugged and turned back to the water. He watched the rugged strands of her bangs get knocked about in the breeze, that soft thick brown hair that looked so tough and hard edged and yet was malleable and delicate.
"What?" he scowled into his next sip, bristling at the thought of needing to be handled like some kid or crazy in a straight jacket. "The path of least resistance or some shit?"
"Yeah. You're on the wall"
"There's a wall?"
"Mhm. Do not enter and Proceed with caution . You're teetering on the edge"
"So you know me?"
"I know everyone " she corrected but something shifted in her face and her nonchalance seemed to drain away. Her lip quirked a rufeul little hint of a smile and she tugged her knees to her chest and ducked her head slightly as her voice dipped "that's the job"
His eyes narrowed and the thought tumbled out "You hate it here"
He saw the shock register on her face for the briefest of moments and he knew he was right. She stared at him with wide brown eyes and tight mouth. Moonlight making the white of her eyes glow and the rises and falls of her face glisten from the slant of her cheek bone to the hint of her clavicle tucked inside her shirt. He stored that fact about her away for later. Next time he needed to talk his way out of a bill or a fake ID. But then as quickly as it came it was gone. Those wide brown eyes narrowed and she shoved him, hard, with a stuttered laugh. "This isn't about me! This is about you drinking alone to 2am!"
He laughed openly and let his body move with her hand, swinging away and the ricocheting back to her side again. "Nah! I do that on the regular!"
"That's deeply concerning!" she retorted but her eyes were smiling. He almost caught the hint of a blush in the dim light as she tucked a hair behind her ear. "So...you decided to come back?" she looped back around to their former conversation.
"Hm?" he frowned at her mid-sip.
"Your step-mom moved away but you wanted to stay here?" she recapped for him and he remembered the cover story he'd told. A dead Dad. Unbearable grief. An overbearing maternal fig ure. It was a good sob story really. Probably enough to get into her good books, if not further.
"Right, yeah. I did"
"Why?" Why would anyone choose to live here? Why would anyone choose to leave their family?
He took a moment to really grapple with that question. Why dig his heels in after it had stung so much to have Ward send him away? "I want to build something"
The cross had been a taste. A foreshadowing of a life he could build, with Sarah out the way and Barry in his pocket. He could prove Ward wrong. He could do his own thing. Build his own empire.
"Really?" That got her attention and in his peripheral, he saw her turn to him properly now as his eyes stayed focused on picking the sand out of his nail beds as his hands twitched. "Instead of coasting?"
Ward's words circled in his mind and tugged on his nerve endings. All this time he'd wanted him to step up, to do something, and now when he finally had it didn't mean jack shit. He was on to the next thing. The next big break. This atonement shit. This new clean slate. He didn't want a clean slate. Living alone on some backwater island with Ward and Rose, miles away from the comforts and induglences (and vices) of home felt like a living hell. Wheezie, he could stand though. Maybe for five minutes. "Yeah..."
Sofia studied his hunched frame for a moment before turning back to the sea with a quite exhale and lifted brows. "Huh..."
"What?" he was back to the offense again, bristled and dark. "You expect something else?"
She let the attitude slide as she heard the slur in his voice and noticed how closed in his limbs were. Barricaded. Taut. Barbed. "It's just not what a trust fund kid would say..."
"Yeah, well I'm not a kid..." he was still snarky and sullen, sulking a little at some imagined assumption he thought she had but she didn't push. "I'm done with that shit..."
"What?" she beamed at the irony of those words from the boy who's dead dad's name was still on his tab. The kid would she'd caught using a fake ID and been the only Pogue stupid enough to call him on it. "All grown up?"
"Mhm. Man of the house now" Thankfully he took her joking in good faith and toasted his last sip of beer to her before downing the lot. There was something intriguing in that spark in his eye as he watched her over his bottle. The silence stretched longer than she'd expected it to.
He looked far too pleased with himself. Smug and sloppy and warm. Drunk and hazy and a lazy confidence that oozed ease and arrogance. He'd made it. He'd toppled the king and claimed his crown and won this hard won independence that she'd struggled her whole life for. It wasn't fair.
He was the man of the house. The only man of the house. Was it worth it? Was that freedom worth that loss? He'd lost his dad...and he was here drinking on a beach with a stranger instead of wrapping himself beneath the wings of a friend. Her heart ached inspite of herself. Surely any person in their right mind would find inheritance a bittersweet experien ce. Surely he had someone to go to.
"What?" he saw her face fall "Dissappointed?"
"I..." her eyes fell away "I can't imagine losing my Dad. Even when things are tough between us. It...." she shrugged at a loss for words and embarrassed at the intimacy they'd slipped into. She saw his smirk vanish but he didn't respond. He simply stared at her with wide bright eyes so intense and for so long that she had to break first and duck away in that prickling silence. "But...I...I " she began to ramble nervously. She'd clearly overstepped " I don't know your family so..."
Before she could fully register what was happening he'd crossed that divide between them and lifted her chin to meet his eye. Her heart caught in her throat. "You're good..." he murmured softly, his eyes focused and sincere for the first time that evening. "We're good" he swallowed thickly as his eyes dropped to where his thumb brushed back and forth against her cheek. "I just..." his tongue ran slow and careful over his bottom lip.
"Haven't talked about him?"
"Y-yeah..." there was a strain to his voice she couldn't place and before she could dissect it a smirk was sneaking onto his face. "You're curious...It's cute. Not bad"
"Oh? I'm curious, am I?" she pushed back on that taunt as if his fingers weren't already tangled in her hair. "About what?"
"Hm" he shrugged off that mystery and she couldn't help but giggle. "Don't know..." his eyes still followed his fingers as the slipped down from hair, grazing her neck and settling on her shoulder. The heat of his lingering presence and his palm against her polo clouded her brain in fog as his thumb stroked up and down up and down.
"You're drunk" it was a feeble excuse and she knew it. He'd had six drinks over a long lazy afternoon and now late into the evening. He'd been fine. She'd seen him do much worse.
"You could've chucked me in a cab but you didn't" his palm on the sand slipping behind her so he could lean closer and his hand on her shoulder slipped down to tug her knees down towards him. "See" his eyes flicked up to hers, smoky and certain, as she let him manuvouer her. "Curious"
She didn't fight him on that. Her nails dug into the sand in order to keep herself up right and her wide brown eyes darted back and forth between his own. When his eyes dipped to her lips a gasp hitched her throat and she allowed herself one self indulgent moment. She let her eyes drop from his so she could straigthen him collar, and feel the warmth of his skin and the hardness of his frame and force out the words. "I'm still on the clock"
He handed her his empty. "There. Now you're done"
She laughed openly with a roll of her eyes but he stayed determined, his hand came back to rest heavy and warm on her thigh and his thumb lifted from the sand to brush the back of her skirt.
"That's not a no..."
"Let's get you that Uber"