Also posted on AO3 under the same username. I don't own From Dusk Till Dawn or any of its characters.
This happened at the spur of the moment one night, was forgotten for about two months, and recently found/completed. Post-finale domestic fluff. I would have written more ~sex~ but my muse for it is kind of broken at the moment. I hope you enjoy this just the same.
"Explain to me again why this is something we have to do together," Seth whines, watching her from across the counter.
"Because," Kate explains, tying the strings of her new apron around her waist. "It'll be fun."
"Fun. Uh huh," he says slowly. "So, it's not something we have to do."
"There are plenty of fun things we don't have to do anymore," she insinuates.
That shuts him up.
She walks over to him and kisses him chastely on the lips and then slips an apron of his own over his head. It hangs off his body loosely. "We can't always eat take out, Seth. And besides, it's practically a rite of passage. You move into a new place, you cook your first meal together."
"How many boyfriends have you lived with, exactly? I've lived with women before. Never in my life has this come up."
"Woman, Seth," she corrects him. "You lived with one woman. And look at the way that ended."
Seth scoffs. "Not cooking shit together was the least of our problems, Kate. I can sure as hell tell you that much."
"I'm not saying the two events were at all correlated," she shrugs, teasing him, "but that doesn't mean they weren't."
He shakes his head and leans against the counter, eyeballing the recipe she had pulled up on her phone. For a moment, everything she knows about him falls away; he is just a man standing in the kitchen of his new home with his girlfriend, and there isn't a cloud of doubt in her mind that this is the way things are supposed to be.
It is strange, falling into a life like this with someone like Seth. And Richie, for that matter. Nothing would ever be normal for a girl and two thieves. Or simple. She's long since accepted that, but she isn't even sure that would be a life she even wants anymore.
"Alright, step one seems easy enough. Boil a large pot of generously salted water. Do you think you can handle that?" Kate glances at him.
He rolls his eyes. "Oh, boy. I don't know. I hope I don't fuck it up."
"Could we give the language a rest for one night?"
"No," he replies curtly, but proceeds to follow her instructions without further delay.
It's her turn to roll her eyes now. She returns her attention to the recipe on her phone. "When you're done with that, saute the garlic."
She begins to whisk the egg yolk with the heavy cream that the instructions called for, watching Seth carefully as he adds the chopped clove of garlic to the butter in the pan. He isn't really the domestic type, and she's admittedly afraid he would mess something up.
After she's done whisking, she adds her mixture to Seth's pan and turns the heat down to the lowest setting.
"You're done here for now," she tells him. "Do you want to take care of the pasta or the chicken?"
"You know I don't care."
"Fine. You take do the pasta, then," she answers, sliding him her phone. She figures it would be less likely for him to mess up pasta. "Follow those instructions exactly. I'll work on the chicken."
She busies herself with her own task on the available surface toward the end of the counter, casting a glance over her shoulder at Seth, who is putting way too much fettuccine into the boiling pot.
"That is way too much pasta for two people, Seth."
He dismisses her. "I'm hungry."
There is no way he's that hungry, but Seth is way too stubborn to admit to doing anything wrong. It's the same thing as admitting defeat, he once told her. Of course, then he'd been referring to a disagreement with his brother over the best way to dealing with the authorities, but with Seth, these rules tend to apply universally.
Kate sighs but decides not to say anything. If he didn't do things his way, he didn't do them at all. And she understands - she's not so different herself in that regard. She finishes seasoning the slices of chicken and puts the meat onto the skillet.
"So, we just stand around and wait now?"
"More or less."
"For how long?"
"How should I know? Until whenever it's finished, I guess."
"Kate," he sighs. She almost wants to laugh at his annoyance. Whatever it was he was going to say to her, he wisely decides against it and shakes his head instead. "Goddamn you."
"I hope you don't think us living together means I'm cooking every night."
"Of course not," he agrees. "We'll still have take out sometimes."
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. "You're useless."
He gives her that smirk she hates and she returns her attention to the chicken, lifting the side of one of them to monitor how it is coming along. The color is slowly starting to darken, so it looks as though they're on the right track.
"Hey. The garlic thing we made doesn't look right," Seth comments, peering over the pan. Kate reappears at his side and inspects the sauce.
Surely enough, the consistency seems wrong. She can't place what it is, exactly; she's no expert, but there's no way this is how it's supposed to look.
"Ah, man!" she furrows her brow and puts her hands on her hips. "We must have went wrong somewhere."
"You mean besides starting?"
"Not funny."
"Kate, it's hardly ruined. Relax. I'll start it over from scratch."
"Seth-"
"Go. Sit. Before I change my mind. I mean it."
She does as she's told, but watches him from the island counter in the center of their kitchen, where she's sitting on a stool.
Seth starts by sauteing the garlic again, and then sets that aside to begin whisking the cream. There is a lot of precision in the way he adds the heavy cream to the egg yolk, his eyes focused on the task in front of them, like the way they get when he's cleaning out one of his guns. Kate tries to hide the fact that she's smiling - there is something strangely endearing about the level of intensity he brings to something so domestic.
He must feel her eyes on him, because he turns his head in her direction. "You taking notes, princess?"
"Oh, am I supposed to be learning something?"
He turns his back to her and starts up the stove again, bringing the sauce to a low simmer. "How to not fuck up a simple sauce, for starters." He moves to check on the chicken, turning each slice over. "On top of thinking about how much you wish this apron was the only thing I was wearing right now."
Though the thought alone is certainly tempting, she chooses to ignore his suggestive comment and pushes the image to the back of her mind. "And how do we know it wasn't your sauteeing that ruined it?"
"Because," he says, teasing, "I am incapable of messing anything up."
Kate can't help but laugh. "Ah. Of course."
Seth crosses over to where she is sitting, rounding the corner of the island counter and then wraps his arms around her waist from behind. His breath is warm behind her ear.
"I know you're determined to finishing this meal and all," he says, keeping his voice low. "But I could be more determined to making you finish."
Though a rush of heat rushes to her face, Kate eases herself out of his embrace and shoves his face away with the palm of her hand. She rises to her feet and Seth is left leaning against the counter, watching her, annoyed.
"Let's see how good your sauce is first, pal." She lifts the lid on the simmering pot of fettucine. "The pasta is finished. Looks good."
"Thanks," he says, as though dumping a box of pasta into a boiling pot of water is a task worthy of credit or praise.
"And the chicken is almost done, too. So we're mostly just waiting on the sauce."
She is still a little bit flustered from Seth's… approach to her at the counter. And she knows he can tell she is by the look on his face.
How someone with a face that stupid could have this kind of influence over her senses, she doesn't think she'll ever understand.
"Shut up," she snaps, turning her back to him.
"What did I say?" he asks and she can tell without looking at him that he's got that smirk on his face again.
"Set the table, Gecko."
They sit down to a meal that is surprisingly a lot more enjoyable than it looks. Kate finds the sauce Seth salvaged to be particularly delicious.
"My compliments to the sous chef," she raises her glass and tilts it in his direction.
Seth rolls his eyes, but she notices the subtle way the corners of his mouth twitch upward.
She still can't believe how normal this is; how the last few years of their lives together could even lead to something like this. All of that grief and loss, blood and mayhem has lead to something that means something. While her faith has certainly wavered and changed, she has never been so sure of God.
After dinner, Seth clears the table while Kate loads the dishes into their new dishwasher. They move like a well-oiled machine, like this is something they've done a million times before.
She places the last plate on the rack and closes the door, and as she turns the machine on, she feels Seth's arms wrap around her waist, his face burying into her shoulder. She wordlessly turns toward him and sinks into his embrace.
It doesn't take long for his hands to move from the small of her back downward, cupping around her ass. He presses his lips against the smooth skin of her neck, lets them linger there, before lifting his head and giving the same attention to her lips.
One of his hands runs through her hair now; her hands busy themselves beneath the hem of his shirt.
For some reason, the image of Seth in just his apron from earlier reenters her mind; vast expanses lean muscle and tan skin, beneath the almost strategically-placed flimsy green fabric. Her entire body flushes with heat and she silently curses him for even saying anything about it. She tugs on his shirt and pulls away from him, peering into his eyes hungrily.
Without a moment's hesitation, he lifts her into his embrace, cradling her body in his arms while her legs wrap themselves around his torso. His heart beats wildly against his rib cage, syncopating with hers. Her lips crash onto his, and she could feel Seth stumble a little beneath her.
"Fuck," he laughs against her mouth, then brings his teeth down to tug at her bottom lip. He eases her back into the dining area, and edges her onto the table, using it for extra support. His fingers run across the skin on the small of her back before starting to pull at her top, lifting it upward.
Tossing her shirt across the room, he rushes to discard his own, and then breathlessly finds her lips again, brushing his tongue against her mouth before entering.
They spend a moment like this, exploring each others bodies, and kissing like they're each other's source of oxygen. Kate only stops him when his fingers dip below the waistband of her jeans.
"There's no way," she speaks between breaths, "we are doing this here. Where we eat."
"I mean, what I have in mind would still constitute as eating," he grins, and for once that smug expression does something to her beyond inciting anger. He presses another kiss to the corner of her mouth, and then proceeds to carry her across the room into the adjoined living area, laying her gently on the couch.
His attention returns to her pants, and he wastes no time getting them off. Her underwear is the next to go.
She bites down on her lip as his hands grip the sides of her hips, and he kisses the inside of her thighs. Heat floods through her body again, this time pooling at her core, and she surrenders her body completely to his.
The rising sun wakes her in the morning, its persistent light creeping in through the bedroom windows they haven't bothered to get curtains for yet. She makes a mental note to get around to doing that today.
Seth is still asleep beside her; he's always been a much heavier sleeper. His arm is draped around her hips, his face pressed against the side of her arm. She lifts her free hand and runs it through his thick, dark hair.
She lays with him like this until he wakes, long black lashes fluttering against his cheekbone before opening to greet her.
He smiles, and judging by his expression, she can tell he's reliving the previous night's highlights. Kate feels herself beginning to blush at the memory herself, but slaps his hand away when she feels it start to sweep across her pelvic bone.
She smiles, pressing a quick kiss to his lips before sitting up to slip on one of his shirts. She does up the buttons lazily and rises to her feet, letting the loose-fitting fabric overpower her small frame.
"Breakfast?" she asks, casting a quick glance at him over her shoulder, before sauntering barefoot out into the hall and walking toward the kitchen.
He groans loud enough to be heard, but she also hears the creak of heavy footsteps on hardwood floors, and the way he wastes no time to follow her lead.