This is a Seth/Kate fic. Disclaimer I own nothing of Dusk till Dawn.
After Seth and Kate parted ways, Kate had headed straight back to Bethel part of her naively hoping that Scott would be there, but of course he wasn't. If she was honest with herself she knew he wouldn't be but it was the only direction she knew where to go. She had contacted Gonzalez before she had gotten back to ask him to help her to sort out a vague story about her family and what happened to them in Mexico. He was glad to help and had even been kind enough to offer her a place to stay but she decided to try finish out high-school in Bethel and who knows maybe she would even do college? After the all the shit she had just been through she could still live a normal life, right?
Kate soon realised that fantasy was nice in theory, but here sitting in a classroom surrounded by all the people who were once fond friends and easy acquaintances and she felt completely empty and painfully bored. She had no idea how to be a normal teenager anymore and her former friends seemingly had no idea how to interact with her either. Some of them had tried at first and she had tried so hard to meet them half way, but they didn't or couldn't understand how hard it was for her to just to be there. Soon they stopped trying and she was surprised when she felt relieved just to not to have to try so hard anymore. She didn't blame them and she knew most of them were still good people and maybe that was exactly the problem, she was no longer a good person. She didn't think she was bad per se but she was certainly something far more ambiguous and at best in between now. She doubted anyone here would have believed her capable of the things she had done and certainly no one would believe what she had lived through. She wondered sometimes as she sat in that classroom looking around at the familiar faces, how many people would have believed the preacher's daughter would have willingly shacked up with a known criminal for three months. It had never crossed a line but she would surely burn in hell for all the fantasies she had the entire time she shared a bed with Seth, and how much worse they had gotten since they parted ways.
Mostly she just felt lonely and being here just made everything feel so much worse. Not a day passed where she wasn't constantly reminded of her parents and Scott. Seth though, in a lot of ways was her worst torture, as every morning when she woke, for a moment she would swear she could feel him beside her in the bed. Her world would feel whole and complete for that brief blissful moment. Then she would look over and the lack of him would crush her a little and she always looked, even now and it had been nearly four months. It was bordering on pathetic and she knew it, but it mocked her every morning none the less. There were times too, where she would swear she could smell him. Now she couldn't even bear to wear the clothes from Mexico outside at all. At night though she would curl up with his crappy tank top that she had stolen from him to use as a sleep top so long ago. She regretted that she had pushed so hard on finding Scott especially since she was still no closer to finding Scott and now so very far away from Seth.
Since she had been so reluctant to talk about her time away people had created their own theories and stories. Stories of how the Fuller family had been kidnapped and held hostage, or that she had been sex trafficked, or maybe that she had snapped and killed her family. Stories of drug abuse and cartels all circled around her. As a result of all the wonderful theories people largely avoided her now, her peers at least. Their only interactions with her now were their mutters to each other as she walked down the hall at school or by them in church. Older people looked at her with a mixture of pity and suspicion, but at least they were polite and kind.
She talked to Gonzalez at least once a week and kept him apprised of her life, mostly it was her bitching about how lonely she was. It hadn't taken her long to decide she would leave Bethel as soon as school was done and had already made plans to sell the house to cover the mortgage and take the rest. One day she hoped she would find Scott and be able to give him his share. The school had already been instructed to send her diploma on to Gonzalez and in the end she never bothered with applications to colleges because she was going back on the road after all this was done. With great effort she muddled through her final term, completed her SAT's and satisfied all the requirements of graduation. She was done, so done.
On her final day of school, she walked out the door and for the first time she felt hopeful because tomorrow she was hitting the road. For her last night in Bethel she decided to head to the diner in her own version of a celebration. It wasn't much compared to the wild parties her classmates had planned but she liked the diner. She grimaced though, when she walked in to find a large table of her classmates in there already, getting something to eat before their night of debauchery no doubt. It wasn't exactly the celebration she had hoped for but she had survived worse. She bypassed them and headed straight to the restroom, ignoring their stares and nasty comments that had become common place for her now. She had survived worse she reminded herself again. It had almost become an internal chant for her now, not for much longer though.
She washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror, tomorrow she would be on the road. She was already packed, none of these people mattered anymore. She took a breath before heading out and made an effort to avoid looking over at her classmates and in doing so her eyes fell on him immediately. Her breath caught as she took him in, his crisp black suit and his deep dark eyes, his hair and beard now well-groomed. He looked so good and as his stare met hers and it stopped her in her tracks. She heard the girls from the table beside her swoon over Seth and he was definitely swoon worthy. He was also an asshole, an arrogant, self-absorbed, protective, considerate, loving asshole. An asshole she had been hopelessly in love with now for so long. Seeing him on front of her now was a sweet but perfect agony.
"Seth?" she barely gasped out. "Princess" he replied with a small smile and she was gone. She ran to him and melted into his open warm arms. She felt his chin gently rest on her head and she felt safe and warm for the first time in so long. In that moment she felt loved and cared for and not even a little bit lonely, it was all there in his arms, without words, it was all there. Seth had never been good at words, but he always managed to convey so much through his actions that it barely mattered. A few stray tears escaped her eyes staining his expensive shirt. They gripped each other like that for several minutes, before she pulled away and looked deep into his eyes. She could see instantly that he was sober and it almost made her full on cry, big fat happy tears. Her eyes then fell to his lips and a thrum of tension ran between them and suddenly his lips were on hers, soft but intense, he pulled back briefly looking at her before she pulled him back in, their hands tangled in each other's hair. When they pulled away they rested their foreheads together. How she wished so much right now they were somewhere private. "I'm so sorry princess, I fucked up, shouldn't have let you go, I missed you" he rasped out. "Missed you too… Moron" she said with a grin. He grinned back "That's fair… I deserve at least that much".
"You really do" she replied.
"Well nobody calls me on my shit like you princess" he said rubbing his thumb across her cheek wiping away a stray tear. She pulled back smiling "So what's been happening. Is there a job?". She waggled her eyebrows. He laughed "I've created a monster. No, no job, well except stealing you back maybe. Is my girl hankering for a job?". Her eyes twinkled and he gestured around him a question in his eyes.
"Yeah that's a terrific idea, except for the part where everyone knows me here" she whispered quietly "Also I'm a fan of the planning stage too".
"My girl likes foreplay, duly noted" he said and she blushed, he always could make her blush.
He gestured to a booth "Let's grab some food then, you ordered?". "Nope", "Excellent because I have, hope I remembered your order right". She grinned and he got up and took her hand and they walked over to a booth. She could hear the whispered and not so whispered conversations happening about them and she couldn't find it in herself to care anymore as she sat across from him.
A couple minutes later the waitress shuffled over with their food and drinks. She gave Kate a concerned glance and Seth an outright dirty look. Seth just grinned back at the waitress and Kate sweetly looked up at her and thanked her as Seth turned back to her and smirked.
"So, Richard and I are talking again" Seth finally said.
She smiled broadly.
"and Scott is working with us" he continued.
"Really?" she said excitedly.
He reached across grabbing her hand and stroking it "Really sweetheart, he is looking forward to seeing you, but he didn't want to come back here" Seth said gesturing around.
"Yeah, I get that, I really wish I hadn't. I hate it here, its suffocating and nothing is the same for me here anymore... I've seen too much. I have no one here Seth, I feel like I never knew these people at all" she said gesturing over to her classmates who were all still staring intently over.
Seth followed her gesture and something in the way he looked at them, made them all look away.
She smiled "I missed you so much Seth".
"Why? Because I can make a bunch of teenagers uncomfortable, it's not so hard" he said with a grin popping fries into his mouth, grabbing a mouthful of Kate's soda. She rolled her eyes.
"Because you're the only one who understands, what we survived, not just the twister but everything after too. You've seen who I am when everything has been taken away, who I am when the chips are down and my back is against the wall and you accepted me even then when it wasn't good, even when we took chunks out of each other I always knew you cared. Even you leaving me, it hurt, it did and it at the time felt like betrayal but… even then I knew you still cared. I knew you cared more about me than you did about yourself because we both know I would have stayed until the ends of the earth with you no matter how bad the ride got. In truth, I needed the break to be sure that what I was feeling was real and not just some twisted by product of the trauma we suffered together" she looked up at him and saw his intent eyes on hers.
"And?"
"Now I know I love you and I never want to be away from you again" she replied simply.
"Good, because I love you too princess. It's nice knowing I won't have to resort to kidnapping to keep you" He said with the softest smile.
"I had already made plans to leave here once school was done and find you. School finished today and I'm packed and ready to go" she said.
"Yeah I know, I've been talking to Gonzalez, he talked me out of coming here until you were done with school" he said "I would have been here a lot sooner otherwise".
"I will kill him, he knows how miserable I have been all this time" she said a little too loudly, tears suddenly falling again. She brushed them away quickly.
"I do have a gun" Seth said with a cocky grin. She laughed.
"Don't I know it" she said flirtatiously feeling braver now.
Seth blinked at that that before laughing "You been thinking about my gun Kate? You're gonna make me blush".
"I doubt that somehow" she said deadpan.
"He was right though, someone else besides Richard needs a high school diploma just to shut the fucker up", he smiled and she grinned back.
They had finished eating now and Seth threw cash on the table "Ready to go, Partner", she smiled a soft smile and nodded "Ready, partner".
They stood and he took both her hands in one of his and led her out. She was so fucking happy. She could easily ignore all the dirty looks from the wait staff and the hushed comments from her classmates because Bethel wasn't her home anymore, he was, and he had been for a long time now.