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There are bruises on Kate’s legs and arms, all varying in size and shades of blues and deep purples. He winces every time he looks at them, wracked with guilt and remorse. Two feelings he's familiar with, but had always been good at pushing back. Demons he had always been able to ignore.
Until Kate.
Now there are emotional consequences to everything he does, every move he makes. That doesn't always stop him from doing the wrong thing, of course, but he isn't strong enough to ignore the way it weighs on him anymore.
She's asleep in the passenger seat beside him as he drives, and he thinks he’ll drive as far as the tank of gas will get them. It's been a rough day. Maybe longer than that. Days and nights all blur together now, and time is relative anyway.
He's relieved she's asleep, knowing well there is little they could say to each other that could make anything better right now. And she could use the rest. She deserves it.
She stirs and wakes slowly at some point in the night. It's so dark out, Seth can barely see the road in front of them.
“We're not going to stop some place for the night?” she asks, voice hoarse with sleep. “What time is it?”
He shrugs. “I'm in the mood to drive.”
“You must be exhausted though. That was a hell of a tumble we took back there.”
He winces again. We. He wishes that was the case right now. Seth got off easy. Kate, on the other hand… the last time she was in so much danger, they were underground, surrounded by vampires and snakes and everything else that goes bump in the night.
He is beginning to believe that even though they have found their way back into daylight, into the realm of the living, the presence of danger had never really left her side. Now it’s almost like he is the thing that goes bump in the night, a constant threat to her safety.
Still. There's no way to know what would have happened to her had he turned her away when she offered him her company.
There is no way to know if he had saved her from something worse, something wicked, or if he had become that something instead.
The gas needle is beginning to teeter toward empty now, and Seth decides to stop at the next motel they see, just emerging in the distance up ahead. The last thing they need is to be forced to walk miles to find gas in the middle of the night.
Kate is still veering in and out of sleep, so Seth books them a room by himself. He’s thankful that they still have a room with double beds left; the last time they found a room this hour of the night, they’d only had a few singles, and he didn’t miss the look a woman in the lobby shot him when she watched a grown man order a room with a single bed with Kate by his side.
Not that he really cares what strangers think, of course. But it wasn’t fun having to share space with Kate, either. She takes up very little room, but her presence is overbearing.
Maybe it’s just been too long since Seth had really spent so much time with a woman. He doesn’t like to think about what kind of man that makes him, to even so much as consider Kate that way.
He also doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the idea that she even wants to be by his side, even if it is just out of reluctance or desperation or whatever.
She stirs a bit when he opens the door to the passenger’s seat, but doesn’t wake completely.
“Kate,” he whispers, gently shaking her shoulder. “I got us a room, princess. Wake up.”
Seth leans over her lap and unbuckles her seatbelt and her arm instinctively wraps around one of his shoulders, her head resting on his arm.
He sighs, kind of strangely bothered - for some reason - by their proximity, but scoops her into his embrace and cradles the sleeping girl in his arms. She feels even smaller in his arms, somehow, and he feels as though he could break her if he isn’t careful enough.
Minutes later, he reaches the door to their room for the night, finding difficulty in getting the door to open with Kate still asleep in his arms. Once inside, he gently lays her down on the bed furthest from the door (without really realizing, they have managed to fall into a habit where Seth sleeps closest to the door, usually with a gun underneath the pillow).
A wave of something like exhaustion and relief washes over him as he takes a seat on the edge of the other bed; he’s been completely completely unaware of how tired he he really was up until now.
The events of the day catch up to him now and replay in his mind without any distractions to busy himself with. He is disappointed that it doesn’t all blur together; that he can clearly remember walking into the bank, being caught off-guard by the fact that an off-duty police officer had been one of the patrons waiting in line, barely escaping the hysteria that ensued. Kate, while they’d been trying to make their exit, was tackled down by a woman nearly twice her size who decided she was ballsy enough to fight back, and he almost gets himself shot in his attempt to pull the bitch off her.
He glances over at Kate again, who is facing him but still asleep. With a heavy sigh, he falls back onto the bed, arms spread out, and tries to will himself to sleep.
After what feels like an hour, Seth glances at the outdated clock radio on the bedside table, disappointed to find that it has only actually been ten minutes.
This is going to be a long night.
“Seth,” he hears his name spoken from the other bed. He thinks for a moment that she’s talking in her sleep again, as she has done in the past, but turns his head in her direction when she speaks again. “Seth? You awake?”
“Yeah,” he responds. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. I just…” she doesn’t finish her sentence, but for some reason he understands what she’s trying to say.
She’s tired, aching, frustrated. A thousand other things on top of that. He knows because he’s there too.
“Go back to sleep, kid.”
She sits up and looks at him, her legs dangling off the side of the bed, the bruises on her leg looking blacker in the dim orange streetlight creeping in from the window.
“I’ve slept too much. I need to go for a walk.”
He darts up now. “No, you’re not. It’s late. You need to rest. It’s been a long day.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?”
“Watch TV or something,” he shrugs and tosses her the remote.
She rolls her eyes at him but turns it on anyway, absently flipping through channels before landing on a Spanish-dubbed version of some old romantic comedy Seth doesn’t recognize.
Kate turns to him after a few minutes of watching television in silence. There is something in her eyes he doesn’t recognize, something strange he can’t describe. He stares at her for a moment too long; she breaks away first and her gaze drops to the floor.
Something comes over him then, a feeling he can’t place or name. It’s not the first time, but it’s the first time he allows himself to acknowledge it.
He has always pushed the idea of Kate as anything more than a girl to the back of his mind, but it feels like the more time he spends with her, the more they endure, the older she gets… all of it starts to shift, and everything starts to change.
He is a bastard for even thinking it. The last thing a girl like Kate needs is someone like him. She deserves a lot more than the life she’s living now, and he deserves a hell of a lot less than even the thought of her.
“How are you?” she asks, finally breaking their silence.
“What the hell does it matter how I am?”
She shrugs. “Don’t know. Just does. You okay?”
“Jesus, Kate. I’m fine. You’re the one who was nearly beaten to death.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not.”
“Still. I’m just asking you a question, Seth.”
“I’m fine, Kate,” he responds, his tone matching her annoyance. “Thank you for asking.”
“Good.”
He turns his attention to the movie in time for what he assumes is probably the climax scene; an unrealistically thin woman with shiny blonde hair flings herself into the arms of an equally handsome, broad-shouldered man, and the two of them engage in an impossibly choreographed kiss.
“This used to be, like, my mom’s favorite movie,” Kate recalls fondly.
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Oh, it’s terrible. The cheesiest, most offensive romantic bull I’ve ever seen. But she would watch it any time it was on cable. And it was like, always on.”
He watches the rest of the scene with her quietly, then lets his gaze linger over to her when the credits begin to roll. She’s still staring at the screen listlessly, and for some reason, he feels overwhelmed again.
The idea of going for a walk starts to appeal to him, but after practically scolding Kate for even considering taking one, he realizes that it’s pretty much out of the question, unless he’s ready for her to go off on him and storm away on her own.
“I’m gonna go to the car and grab the other bottle of scotch,” he decides and excuses himself.
He takes his time, using this time away from Kate to shake the weird feeling off him. It’s beginning to get really fucking annoying; he’s not sure if it’s debilitating guilt that he’s feeling or something else, but it’s impossible to be in such close proximity to her at times, and that’s usually when he snaps, says or does something asshole-y that he can’t really take back.
When he gets back to their room, the TV is off and Kate is in the bathroom. He takes a glass from the small table in the corner of the room and pours himself a drink. He downs it, savoring the heat as it creeps down his throat, and then pours himself another.
Kate steps out into the bedroom then and walks toward him, pulling out a seat for herself.
“I’ll have what you’re having,” she says casually, as though it’s a common occurrence for her to join him for a drink.
He arches an eyebrow, but doesn’t hesitate to pour her a shot in a spare glass.
She stares at it, blinks, and then holds the glass to her lips, wincing as the liquor burns her mouth.
“How do you get used to that?” she asks, making a face.
“Like anything else,” he replies with a smirk.
She pushes her glass toward him. “One more.”
“Are you sure?”
“Another,” she persists.
He obliges and then pours himself his third, clinking their glasses together. It gets a smile out of her.
“I think I’ll try getting some sleep now,” he says after finishing his drink, standing as he crosses the room over to his bed.
Kate doesn’t say anything but follows his lead, pushing her chair into the table.
They are both standing in the space between their beds with their backs turned, just inches from each other. His head is spinning, mostly from the alcohol starting to affect his system, but a little bit from the closeness of her, and he fights back the urge to find a reason to touch her.
The clock radio tells him it’s just past one in the morning now - a full hour has gone by since he’s last checked.
He doesn’t see himself getting to sleep anytime soon, but he’s glad the day is finally over. For whatever it’s worth, anyway.