Disclaimer: Not mine. Title and a lot of the inspiration comes from the song "Grapevine Fires" by Death Cab for Cutie. Further inspiration comes from the novel and movie White Oleander.
A/N: It seems like, as of lately, I have been unable to talk myself out of writing random stories. This is one such random story. I've been listening to a lot of Death Cab for Cutie today and this was born out of that. I do not live in L.A. and have never even been there. Most of what I know about the city and the events described in this particular story comes from Wikipedia and the rest comes from re-reading passages of White Oleander. I'm sorry if I badly messed anything up; call it dramatic license I guess. This story is meant to fit in the same timeline as my other Beca and Jesse in L.A. stories. And this strangely random story is for Megan; thanks, as always, doll.
"The Northern Sky Looked Like the End of Days"
Fire season made everyone in the city edgy and anxious and the tension in the air was almost as palpable as the heat and the smoke that was always visible miles away. A constant warning that anything might happen. In the weeks and months claimed by the fires it seemed like a fight could happen anytime and they often did and when threats of violence became actual violence, people just blamed it on the heat and the smoke and moved on. It always made Jesse feel like the end of the world was quickly approaching and all they could do was close the windows and turn the fans on high and just wait to see if the end was going to come.
There were days when it was literarily too hot to be outside and it felt like everything in the city ground to a halt. L.A. seemed to have a constant pulse of its own, a thrumming energy that never ceased and only aided to the heat in the air that kept people indoors or in bars or clawing to get out of the city. Those who could often did. Those who couldn't just watched the smoke and watched the news and watched as the ice cubes in their ice water melted and condensation sweated down the side of their glasses.
Jesse loved and hated fire season with equal passion. They'd been in L.A. for six years and each year it only seemed to get worse. Of course he figured this was all in his head because he now knew what to expect and found himself dreading it. He hated the heat and the irritability and the way that the regular routine of life was disrupted and could be further disrupted at any moment. He hated the smell of the air, how it seemed to burn his lungs and sear him from the inside out.
But he loved the effect that the fires had on Beca. She seemed almost made for this time of year, like she had been born from the fires themselves and somehow came packaged in the body of a beautiful woman by mistake. Jesse would never say any of this out loud to Beca for fear of physical retaliation but that doesn't mean that he can't think it. That doesn't mean that he can't watch her and think how it's almost impossible but she looks even more beautiful now than usual, like her skin is glowing and her eyes are shifting and changing like the thick smoke on the horizon.
Beca is laying on top of the twisted covers of their bed, wearing nothing more than a sports bra and a pair of his boxers and her skin is beaded with sweat. Her eyes are heavy-lidded and dark with the heat and the laziness that it brings and her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun. It's too hot to even think about touching but god-damn Jesse wants to. He doesn't need the heat and the winds to make him crazy. He has Beca.
She notices him watching and gives him a lazy smile and crooks her finger at him. He comes to lay down beside her but they keep a respectful distance between them. The sheets are perpetually damp and twisted during this time and the apartment is always humming with the sound of the fans and the air conditioner. The heat discourages touching but not closeness and Jesse watches her as she absently twists her wedding band around her finger.
Neither of them have to work for the next few days. Fire season makes everyone lazy and despondent, including their respective bosses and Jesse is forever grateful that his boss has a second home in the Colorado mountains and gets out of the city during this time of year. He can't imagine going outside. Beca fans herself with her hand but it does little more than stir hot air around and Jesse reaches up and takes her hand and presses his lips to her skin and tastes the sweat there. Beca hums and closes her eyes and neither of them move for what feels like hours.
Finally Beca gets up and goes into the bathroom, turning on the shower and keeping the water as cold as it will go. Unfortunately not even that feels cold enough, as though even the water in the pipes is not immune from the fires in the distance. She leaves her scant amount of clothing in a heap on the bathmat and stands underneath the water and enjoys the sensation of the feel of goose bumps on her skin. The water washes away the sweat on her skin but does nothing for the heat that she still feels inside her, the shiftlessness, the need to do something and the inability to move.
Beca isn't surprised when she hears the bathroom door creak open and Jesse pushes the shower curtain aside with one hand as he tugs off his tee-shirt and pushes down his shorts and boxers with the other. He gets into the shower and she pulls him to her and their lips meet and here is the only place where it seems okay to kiss and touch because the water keeps the heat at bay temporarily. They have mastered the mechanics of making love against the shower wall.
Beca feels even more languid and heavy than she did before her shower when she steps out again. She wraps a towel around herself but makes no effort to dress herself again. It's just too hot.
Jesse goes into the kitchen wearing nothing more than his boxers and feeling himself start to sweat already. This is unreasonable. He's not going to survive another fire season in the city. He genuinely feels like it's possible to burn up from the inside out. It's how it feels when he's with Beca but this is a lot less fun.
He gets a glass of water that's ninety percent ice cubes and clicks on the TV but doesn't sit down on the couch because he can't stand the idea of being around that much fabric. The cat, Cinder, is already stretched out on the cushions and she lets out a low growl when he comes over. Even Cinder is annoyed by the heat and the fires.
As usual, the local news station is running coverage of the fires and is currently showing aerial footage of the fires burning outside of the city. The air is thick with smoke and Jesse can almost feel the heat through the screen. It's frightening how they burn so out of control, a force of nature that refuses to be tamed. All they can do is sit back and wait to see if fires will be content to just burn up the brush and farmland.
The newscaster seems pessimistic that this will be the case. He is cautioning Los Angeles residents and residents of the surrounding counties to be ready to evacuate at any moment. The fires are getting closer, spread by the winds that blow smoke and cinder and heat through the city at upwards of thirty miles an hour. Yes there are things that Jesse loves about fire season. This is not one of them.
Jesse goes back into the bedroom and finds Beca still in her towel and back in her usual place on the bed. Her damp hair is fanned out across the pillow behind her and she reminds him of a Grecian princess from an old story: self-contained and full of her own fire.
"The news says it's going to get bad." Jesse tells her as he hands her his half-finished glass of water. The ice cubes are mostly melted now. "We might have to evacuate."
Beca makes a noncommittal noise as she finishes the water in one swallow. "Where would we even go?" It doesn't quite sound like a question that she expects an answer to so Jesse just shrugs. They've made it through the fires before without trouble; she finds little interest in mass hysteria.
Jesse opens the blinds and looks out at the city. The same dark smoke he just saw on the television is visible through the window, twisting and darkening the sky. Like the end of the world.
They leave the TV on in the bedroom and let the hours pass by filled by footage of the fires and the tired and hopeless firemen working to somehow stifle the blaze. They speak very little and Beca feels herself grow sweaty and wilt all over again. She thinks about the snow and a breeze that won't cook her in her skin. These thoughts only make her feel worse.
Jesse runs his fingers along the curves of her wrist and knuckles and along the tattoos on her wrist and shoulder. He leans over to kiss the beads of sweat from her clavicle and the side of her neck but doesn't move to do more than that.
Beca feels like she's watching the impending apocalypse live on the news; the reporters make it seem as though the city is about to burn down around them and the world as they know it will cease to exist. It's foolish to stay, they are saying. Beca can't find it in herself to want to go.
"What if we did have to leave?" Beca questions without looking away from the end of the world footage on the television. "What would you take with you?"
Jesse smiles at her. "Everything. Every movie and every single thing in the house. Even the dishes."
Beca rolls her eyes. "Weirdo." She mumbles. "I'm serious." She nudges his leg with her foot.
"I don't know, I guess I haven't thought about it." Jesse says with a shrug. "I guess it depends on how much time we had."
"It's not that dramatic." Beca remarks with another roll of her eyes. She looks at him and she looks at the TV and just shakes her head. "It's just nature."
Jesse shrugs again. "What would you take?"
Beca thinks. She knows what she would take: her computer, her music, her cat. Him. She likes the idea of being able to leave it all behind, to be the Beca Mitchell she was years ago with little to keep her in one place. "I don't know." She says instead because she doesn't want to admit this idea out loud. The idea of letting everything else burn. It's just the fires talking, the heat.
The city is never truly dark, even more so during fire season because the fires steadily burning their way through the mountains and acres of farmland cast a glow over everything. They fall asleep anyway to the sounds of the humming air conditioner and the murmur of the television they both forgot to shut off.
Jesse's not sure how much time has gone by when he jerks awake, roused by the sound of someone banging on the apartment door. He fumbles his way through the dark apartment and pulls open the door before remembering that he's still wearing nothing more than boxers. Though he's seen people out on the streets in a lot less during this time of year.
Their across the hall neighbor, Peter, is standing on the other side and he looks tired and worn-out and worried all at once. "The radio is saying we should get out of town." He tells Jesse, apparently unbothered by his attire or lack thereof. "I just wanted to make sure that you heard."
Jesse nods without really comprehending. He's still half asleep and is having a hard time following the thread of this conversation. "Okay, yeah, thanks." Peter nods and turns to head back to his apartment.
After Jesse closes the door, he picks up the remote and tries to turn on the TV but it remains dark and mute. He tries to flick on the lights in the living room but they are equally unresponsive. There's no power. And that's when Jesse realizes exactly why Peter came to wake him up in the middle of the night.
Jesse shakes Beca awake and tells her to get dressed and get some things together because they have to leave. She looks at him quizzically, pushing her sleep tangled hair away from her face. "Really?"
"Yes, really." Jesse says with a little smile. "Let's go." He pulls her out of bed and smacks her on the butt in an attempt to get her moving. She's not much of a morning or, in this case, middle of the night, person.
Beca walks over toward the closet and tries to turn on the light. "There's no power." She looks back at Jesse like he is somehow personally responsible for this.
Jesse rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I know. Remember those fires and all that wind and the reason we have to leave?"
Beca doesn't bother to acknowledge him as she pulls on a pair of jean shorts and a tank-top over her sports bra. Jesse gets dressed as well and grabs a duffel bag out from under the bed and packs it with a few changes of clothes. In spite of Beca's previous question, he honestly has no idea what to bring. How is he supposed to know what's important? What if the worst case scenario really does happen and everything is gone? What will he wish that he had grabbed?
And, despite her earlier thoughts about walking out empty-handed, Beca suddenly finds herself panicking at the idea of having to leave anything behind. These are her things, this is her home. She wants everything and the memories that come with it. And she knows it's just stuff and that's not where the memories lie but that doesn't make it any easier and Beca finds herself putting her pictures on top of her clothes in her suitcase, trying to force in all the framed memories of her and the Bellas and her and Jesse and her dad and Shelia. She carefully packs her computer but leaves the records and everything else behind.
Jesse wraps Cinder up in a bath towel in an attempt to calm the squirming cat and hands her to Beca while he picks up their bags and leads the way out of the building and to the street where their car is parked. The car and everything else is covered with a thin coating of ash and the air is acrid and the heat is stifling.
Beca holds Cinder tightly when the cat tries to claw her way out of the towel and take off down the street and she's glad that Jesse thought of the towel because otherwise she'd be bleeding and they wouldn't have a cat anymore. She tosses Cinder in the backseat of the car and the cat jumps to the floor and tries to claw her way under Jesse's seat.
They clearly aren't the only people who have finally decided that it's time to evacuate. The streets are thick with traffic and it's hard to hear the radio over the sounds of all the honking and yelling. The heat brings out the worst in people, especially in situations like this.
"Where are we going?" Beca questions as they inch steadily along. She figures that in all those disaster movies and zombie movies (damn Jesse and his always forcing her to watch aforementioned movies) that this is why so many people are always dying. They all get stuck in traffic and are munched on by zombies or obliterated by a super storm or something.
Jesse shrugs. "A hotel I guess. Until it all just…blows over."
Beca glances out the window and even though it's relatively dark out, it's all too easy to see the glow at the horizon and the plumes of smoke that further darken the skies. "Do you think it will? Just blow over?" She questions, looking back at Jesse. He doesn't have much of a response. "What if there's nothing to go back to?"
Jesse smiles at her and reaches over to take her hand. "It doesn't matter. We'll be okay. I mean, we still have the cat so…"
"Yes, the cat. Of course." Beca rolls her eyes at him. "Your furry child."
"Our furry child, Beca." Jesse corrects, patting her on the knee. "Now is not the time to deny your love. This an emergency situation."
Beca rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "You are such a weirdo."
"You know, you've been saying that for years." He remarks. "I think you need some new material." He advises.
Beca gives him a good-natured (but still solid) punch on the shoulder and Jesse pretends that it doesn't hurt. Even though it kinda does. Because he doesn't call her Million Dollar Baby for nothing.
They finally get out of the city and drive until L.A. is no longer visible in the rearview mirror and the thick smoke looks like someone else's problem. They find a hotel that boasts free continental breakfast and HBO and is dangerously close to flipping on the no vacancy sign because of all the refugees. They have to sneak Cinder in because of the no pets policy and the cat promptly hides under the bed and refuses to come out in spite of Jesse's coaxing.
They lay down on top of the covers and Beca lays her head against Jesse's chest and he puts his arm around her waist and even though it's still hot and they both smell like fire and ash neither of them make any move to pull away.
"It'll be okay." Jesse whispers into the darkness of the room and Beca nods against his chest. "I bet it's not even that serious."
Beca nods again but doesn't bother to respond. He's right anyway. It doesn't matter; they'll be okay.
The shrill sound of Jesse's phone ringing disturbs the early-morning silence in the hotel room and Beca rolls over onto her side, groggy and disoriented, while Jesse fumbles for the phone. She looks at the clock and groans; it's barely six in the morning and thanks to their late night exodus, they've only been asleep for about two hours.
Jesse gives her an apologetic smile as he answers his phone. "Hey Mom. Yeah, we're fine." He assures her and Beca makes a face and mimes hanging up the phone but he waves her away. "No, I promise, we're okay. The news is probably making it look worse than it is. Yeah, we did have to leave. Mom, you don't need to get upset!"
Beca decides that it's too early to listen to this conversation. She puts on her shoes and goes outside, wondering what the world will look like now. The sun is rising through the haze of smoke and smog but she can still make out the outline of the city below them. Los Angeles is still standing and seems almost fortified by the smoke and fire.
Eventually Jesse comes outside and stands beside her, putting his arm around her waist. They don't say anything but they don't need to. It still looks like the end of the world but Beca feels confident that it will be all right.
end.