Work Text:
"I love the way that you rage like a river,
but I hate that I'm drowning in your sea."
Unbelievable - Connell Cruise
“I can’t think of a single reason why this is a bad idea,” Seth insisted, putting the car into park.
“Oh, really? Because I can think of at least three right now. And I’m sure, given time, I can probably come up with more.”
“Yeah, well. You think too much. That’s your problem.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “And you don’t think at all. You get one idea, and you obsess over it until it becomes the only thing you can focus on.”
He let out a sigh of defeat. “So, what do you suggest, then? Huh? I don’t see you contributing any winning ideas.”
Kate thought for a moment, arms crossed and lips pursed as she studied the building, a small panaderia , from a safe distance away. Her entire face changed when she really focused on something. There was less softness. She almost looked older.
It was a lot like having Richard back, in some ways. Not that they were very similar. His brother’s talents were insurmountable; Seth knew there was no replacing him, regardless of any resentment he may have felt, so he would never dare to try. But what Kate lacked in his level of expertise, she made up for in her own ways. For starters, she took up less room and didn’t make a fucking mess every chance she got. She was a hell of a lot less conspicuous. No one expected a girl her size to be capable of anything, and she was good at laying low. And perhaps most importantly, she was stable and didn’t go around killing people.
That didn’t mean she didn’t come with her own challenges.
His patience, already at a low, was beginning to physically wear on him. “Goddamn it, Kate. We don’t have all fucking night.”
“How about you just follow my lead for once?” she said, stepping out of the car without turning to look at him. If he wasn’t so incredibly put off by her tonight, he would be impressed with this sudden bout of confidence.
He stumbled out of the driver’s side, slamming the door behind him.
“Oh, no. I don’t fucking think so!” he caught up and stood before her, blocking her from walking any further ahead. “Either clue me in or you’re not going to be a part of this.”
“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “Have fun en la cárcel!”
She was already facing the car with her back to him when he grabbed her arm, turning her body to face his. Not long ago, he would not have caved. It was rare that he even let himself give into Richard; not once had he given into Kate’s protests. And it wasn’t even that her input wasn’t valuable or anything - she managed to take him by surprise, impressively, more often than he could have expected. No, it was just because that’s who Seth was by nature; stubborn, untrusting, impatient.
“Fine,” he said with a drawn out sigh. “I will hear your way out. If it’s honestly better than mine, we’ll do it.”
The way her lips twitched into forming a smile was not lost on him (and it killed him a little, because excitement over a fucking petty theft was not something a girl like her should ever feel).
“Well, for starters. We don’t wait it out in the car like sitting ducks. We go in now.”
“Too risky. With Harpo and Chico Marx standing guard,” he referred to the two men they knew were standing just inside the entrance, shaking his head. “Better that we wait until they’re closed and break in. The old-fashioned way.”
Kate crossed her arms and shifted her position, so that she was mostly facing Seth, but turning toward the old building. “Not necessarily.”
His annoyance was running high now. “I must be a fucking moron because I have no idea what you’re getting at, and you’re dumber than I am.”
She snapped her attention back to him, a bright shade of offense painting her face. “Dumber than you? Do you really want to pull at that thread?” she waved him off, as though to say now wasn’t the time to get into this. “Let me finish talking.”
He rolled his eyes but allowed her to continue, watching her face as she spoke.
“So,” she spoke more firmly, “as I was saying... You’ve failed to account for the other Marx brother. The mustached one with the eyebrows.”
“Groucho.”
“Whatever his name was.”
“It’s Groucho,” he assured her. “What about him?”
“Do you see what I mean? You are so focused on your own plans or whatever that you don’t pay attention , Seth. There’s a third guy here. Crazy eyebrows and mustache. He came out a few times in the past hour, stood in the alley. Once to smoke. Another time to take a phone call. Every time he’s come outside, he’s left the door propped open with something. And he literally just walked out a second before I got out of the car.”
“The door is open?!”
He stopped talking abruptly then, the sound of another person’s footprints approaching where they had been standing. Without even thinking about it, he wrapped his arms around Kate and pulled her toward him, his back leaning on the hood of the car.
He didn’t dare to look in her eyes, but knew she must have looked as shocked by the sudden contact as he was stirred by the oncoming passerby.
Luckily for them, their company happened to be another couple out on a midnight stroll. The woman, possibly in her mid-30s, casted a glance in their direction, but looked away quickly as if there were nothing to see.
Seth’s hands were on the small of Kate’s back, and with her face as close to his chest as it was, he smell the scent of the cheap hotel shampoo in her hair. For some reason, it smelled a whole hell of a lot better on her than it did on him.
Once the couple was out of sight (and earshot), they separated themselves from one another. Seth’s hand lingered on Kate’s arm for a beat too long, and for the first time, her eyes met his. He let go immediately, his hand accidentally brushing hers as he did so.
He cleared his throat, and then continued on with their business as though nothing had just happened. “If the door is open, what the hell are we just standing around talking for? Let’s fucking go.”
Kate groaned and began to follow him, and he could tell that she was fighting back the urge to yell at him. Her anger was one of those storm-in-a-bottle experiments from grade school; not entirely threatening, but swift and sudden and you could always see as it was happening beneath the exterior.
“Because you wouldn’t just follow my lead. You literally asked me to explain myself!”
“You could have just said there was an open door in the alleyway. You didn’t need to go into a whole expository rant about it. Especially since we’ve got limited time.”
They were walking side-by-side, in pace with each other - cautious to keep their voices down in order to maintain their stealth. Seth took the lead, naturally, because that’s what he always did, no matter who he was with, but he didn’t fail to catch her mutter something about men under her breath.
He scanned their surroundings once they entered the alley where the second entrance was located, a reassurance that they were in the clear.
“Let me go in first,” he whispered to her, fingers clasping around the gun holstered to his hip. “See if we’ve got any more of the Marx Brothers waiting for us inside.”
Kate nodded in the darkness, keeping a close eye on the opening of the alley behind them, and Seth ventured on. No one else seemed to be in the dimly lit room, but that didn’t mean they were totally safe. He turned and quickly signaled for Kate to join him. She quietly obeyed.
He signaled for her to keep watch by the door, where she would hopefully be safest if they needed to make a quick getaway, given Groucho didn’t get back before that.
It didn’t take Seth very long to spot the safe, thankfully. Their last score had been a bust mostly because of how long it had taken them to find the cash. This was turning out to be almost too easy, which only heightened Seth’s alertness. The last time he got too confident about a score, people wound up dead. And the time before that, he managed to land himself in prison.
With crime, more than anything else, you learned what worked and what didn’t from experience, something he was trying to get Kate to understand. A gut instinct was important, and she had that in spades, but instinct on its own was a signal fire for trouble.
He glanced over at where she was standing, a gun of her own carefully held in her small hands, pointed down toward the ground. Shet must have felt his eyes on her, because her own green ones met his, and she offered a nervous half-smile.
For some reason, he found this slightly reassuring.
He returned his attention to the safe and exhaled hard. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t secretly wish Richard was still there every time he so much as thought of a safe. It was just another thing no one knew quite how to handle like his brother.
Still, it wasn’t like he was totally incompetent without Richard. He could do this on his own, no problem.
“Alright, Seth,” he told himself under his breath. “Do not fuck this up.”
Popping the lock open wasn’t much of an issue, but it took him a moment to figure it out. The thing was a lot older than what he’d been used to lately, but that was to be anticipated when dealing with small-time dealers in an even smaller town; especially a group whose business was done in the back of an old bakery. Fucking amateurs.
He grabbed hold of a few wads of cash before realizing Kate was still in possession of the knapsack. She must have realized this just as soon as he did, because she tossed it in his direction almost instantly.
Seth began emptying the safe when he realized something else was inside; a small leather-bound journal with a familiar symbol embossed on the front. Curiously, he flipped through the first two pages, and all rushed to him. This was all culebra bullshit.
“Fuck,” he muttered, slamming the broken safe shut and tossing the bag to Kate as quickly as possible. He didn’t know what these people had to do with culebras, but he'd had enough of fucking snakes for one lifetime and wasn’t going to stick around to find out. “Get to the car now.”
She stared at him for a moment, confused, but realization set in and she followed his orders, rushing out the side door with the bag in her hands. She disappeared out of his eye line for less than a second, before backing into the room slowly.
“Someone is out there,” she whispered, eyes blown wide in terror.
“Shit! Did they see you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Seth’s mind raced as he scanned the room for any other possible exits, but the echoing sound of foot prints lead him to grabbing Kate by the arm with more force than intended, and pulling her into a dark corner, where they hid behind a large extending metal cabinet.
She was practically on top of him for a second time that evening, but this time he could actually feel her pulse throbbing from where his hand was holding her wrist, the beat of it identical to the pounding of his heart against his chest.
He wished he had some sort of way to get a clear view into the rest of the room, feeling like he was at a blind disadvantage. But he convinced himself if he couldn’t see them, they probably couldn’t see him, either.
Eyes see eyes , and all that.
Seth didn’t understand a whole lote of Spanish, but a stream of words he knew weren’t pleasant flew across the room. The broken safe had been spotted. It was only a matter of time before they were, too.
Kate looked up at him, her eyes illuminated by the faded light coming in from the small window behind Seth’s head.
“I have an idea,” she spoke in a low whisper. A chair slammed against the wall as the man’s angry voice called out to his partners. “It’s pretty dumb, but…” she motioned her head towards the window behind him, and he tried to figure out what it was she wanted to do.
It was pretty high up, but she was small enough to fit through it if he gave her a boost, but getting down on the outside would probably be tough.
And who knows what the hell was waiting for them outside now. There was no way she was risking her life for a couple of thousands. He couldn’t leave her safety up to chance.
But she was adamant, possibly the one person in the world as persistent as he was (if not more so), and was already trying to hoist herself up on his shoulders, failing and crashing on top of his chest.
She winced, but luckily the impact had made very little sound.
“Help me up,” she begged. There was a distant sound of more footsteps making their way to the back from the front of the store.
“You’re out of your fucking mind, sweetheart,” he bit back.
“If they find us here, we’re screwed.”
“Not as screwed as you are on your own out there.”
She rolled her eyes and tapped her gun, now tucked safely into the belt of her jeans.
The door to the back of the bakery flew open, slamming against the wall as the two men who had been sitting up front joined the third in the back.
Kate shoved Seth out of her way, careful not to stir any commotion, and stood on top of an old crate that had been sitting there. With a little bit of effort, she was able to get the window to open. Against his better judgment, Seth cursed himself and wrapped his hands around the small of the girl’s waist, pushing her up to give her better access of the window. She swung her body over, and let go instantly. He could just hear the sound of her body hitting the ground outside, flinching at the idea of her getting injured.
Afraid and almost trembling with the guilt of having gone along with her stupid plan, Seth wraps his hands around his gun. He’s ready to step out from behind his hiding spot and shoot his way out, just to get this whole thing over with, when he hears the echo of what he hoped were Kate’s footsteps in the alley outside.
“Señores,” he heard Kate’s voice cry out from the entrance. Her words were as shaky and unsteady as he felt inside. “Vi a un hombre corriendo por aquí. Tenía una pistola. Por favor, ayùdame.”
He could sense their hesitation, undoubtedly suspicious of what a white girl was doing out alone by herself at night, but after she cried out once more, describing a man in a dark blue jacket and begged them for help, all three of them rushed out, convinced Kate was leading them their guy.
Seth emerged from behind the cabinet to find Kate smirking at him with tears in her eyes. Without a word or second thought, both of them bolted up the alley and across the street, where their car was parked about a block and a half away.
They caught the attention of one of the guards, the one Seth thought looked like Chico, and he started firing at them, and before long was joined by his other two partners.
A bullet nearly grazed his arm before he is able to jump into the driver’s seat, adrenaline pulsing through every last inch of his body. He put the car into drive and managed to speed off into the night, but not without another bullet crashing its way in through the back window.
This had been their first successful stint in a while, and even though the score was small, the adrenaline from a job well done was enough to get him high.
“I’ve gotta hand it to you, kid,” he admitted after they had been driving for a little while. “That was good thinking. Stupid, but… nice work.”
She smiled and held the knapsack full of money close to her chest. “I told you. You’re not the only one with good ideas. Plans aren’t everything.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. None of this would have happened if we had stuck to my plan, just so we’re clear.”
“Yeah, exactly. None of this ,” she repeated him, opening the bag to wave a wad of cash in front of Seth’s face. “We could have walked out, empty-handed again.”
He glared at her for a second. “Did you see how easy it was to get into that safe? No fucking way would we have walked away empty-handed.”
“There were literally eight bolts on each door, Seth.”
“Oh, yeah? Literally ?” he mocked her habit of misusing (and overusing) that word.
“Yes,” she replied. “ Literally . I counted eight locks on the front door, you know, during all that fun waiting around we did. And I counted eight on the back door while one of us was taking their sweet ass time loading money from a safe into a bag.Thought you had a few good years left before your mobility started to go, old man.”
He sucked his teeth, ignoring her insult. “Whatever,” he said. “You’re never doing something like that again, just so we’re clear.”
“What?! It worked, didn’t it?”
“It’s too risky.”
“Too risky?” she repeated him, staring ahead in disbelief. “We are literally thieves.”
“What good is a couple of thousand dollars to a dead thief?”
She mumbled something under her breath again, only this time he couldn’t make any of it out.
He tried to compose himself, not wanting to sound as angry when he spoke again. “You did good, Kate. Really. But we are not doing anything like that again. Do you understand?” he asked slowly. “I know what we do isn’t exactly a safe or stable 9-to-5, alright? But I cannot, and will not, put you in that kind of position again. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m not your responsibility,” she muttered, crossing her arms.
He knew that she wasn’t, but also felt that she kind of was.
But it went beyond her just being his responsibility, anyway. It went further than he was willing to really contemplate, or understand.
“I know that,” he said, his dark eyes darting over to her. She was staring outside the passenger window, a furrowed brow pressed against the glass.
He wanted to tell her that it had less to do with that, and more to do with the thought of losing her altogether, forever.
That wasn’t the kind of thing they ever said out loud, though. Of all the things they spat at each other’s faces, the truth, in its purest form, was rarely one of them.
“Fine,” she said, defeated, after some time.
“Fine,” he agreed, and decided to shift the subject, in hopes of lightening the mood. There was no way he was letting their victory be so short-lived. “So, you know, if your face isn’t plastered on a wanted poster across every town in the country by then, you could probably have a future in Mexican cinema.”
She rolled her eyes, but he could see her lips starting to twitch into a smile.
“I’m serious,” he teased. “You know how much I love a good performance. That was some Oscar-worthy shit back there. You ever do any church theater back in that little bumfuck town of yours?”
“Shut up, Seth,” she shook her head, slapping his arm with the back of her hand. “Just drive.”