posting this thanks to Mary, who beta'ed this and has been an incredible friend to me 3
title inspired by the song sacrilege by yeah yeah yeahs which is very sethkate imo
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Seth didn't know exactly how he found himself in that unfamiliar office in the middle of the day. Richie had taken to Jed's like he was born for it and Seth had stayed quietly in the background—a place he had never been comfortable being, that had always been Richie—but he found himself being unable to do anything else. He gave orders, kept Richie's feet firmly on the ground while his brother played boss, but kept to himself otherwise.
It felt good, in a way, to see his brother look so sure of himself, to see Richie feeling comfortable in his own skin for the first time in ever. Still, it was hard to miss that there was sadness and regret buried deep beneath his brother's Hugh-Hefner-robe-wearing exterior. In the week that they had taken over Jacknife Jed's, Seth had time to see the cracks in his brother's armor and to feel his own shock wearing off. That morning seemed to have been his breaking point.
It was something simple, really, that managed to bring him to his knees. Something that he had never expected could take his breath away and send him to the kind of panic attack he hadn't had since he was a teeenager.
Mornings at Jed's were like the middle of the night everywhere else. There was a certain kind of quiet that took over the compound, like everything was still and Seth could take a few moments to himself. He started making a point to have breakfast by himself in the kitchen while everyone else was asleep.
They still didn't have much in their kitchen. Malvado hadn't actually stayed where they chose to operate from and the employees had only deemed necessary to keep a coffee maker there, but they've been slowly building it up instead of using the bar's kitchen which was frankly annoying to do when they had to cross the parking lot from their bedrooms to get a beer. The fridge and stove were the first to arrive and now they actually had plates and fucking cuttlery, it was starting to feel not exactly like home but definitely more like they weren't staying in an old warehouse for a couple of days. They had the option of using Malvado's underground facilities at Jed's but had ultimately agreed that they would feel safer working from the warehouse behind it instead.
Then he saw the toaster.
It was this ugly bright red, which probably meant Richard had been the one to get it; a clunky piece of metal right in the middle of the stainless steel countertop that had already been there before them. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make Seth's carefully constructed defences crumble like they had never been there in the first place.
He had tried so hard, just so fucking hard to not think about her ever since that night. He had gone back to the blood well with Richie and Scott but there had been no body, only a bloodstained white sheet stuck to the wooden boards. The sight of that blood, Kate's blood, had sent him straight to the nearest bottle of whiskey and his brother had been right there with him. The next day, there had been no more mention of her and Seth had pushed everything deep down.
And then the godamn fucking toaster.
The tilt of her jaw and the amused little smile as she said, "Not funny."
Her hand in his after a nightmare.
The way her hair caught the sunlight after a dip in a shitty motel pool.
The quiet sigh she always let out before forcing herself to get out of bed.
The hurt, the anger, the guilt of it all but also the reluctant almost shy happiness he hadn't allowed himself to feel, but was undeniable all the same. The partnership they had, the heartache.
The fucking heartache.
Quite literally, his chest felt so constricted Seth had to remind himself that he could actually breathe and that Kate hadn't taken away his ability of doing so when she left. No, this time she hadn't left. She was taken.
Seth stumbled back to his office. It wasn't exactly an office yet but there were two desks and a kind of decently stocked bar and that's all Richie and him needed. Seth didn't think twice about uncapping the whiskey and downing a few desperate gulps before coming back for air. His throat burned but he wasn't sure it was really from the booze and as he blinked at the bare wall in front of him he didn't even have enough strength to pretend he wasn't blinking away tears.
He didn't know exactly how long he stood there, drinking himself stupid, but by the time the bottle was almost gone it had gotten a little easier to breathe without the fear of having his chest explode with the pain of it all. It wasn't enough, though.
Looking at the bottle reminded him of the few times he had shared a drink with her, the way she would giggle and wipe away a drop of whiskey from the corner of her mouth. It was almost like she was right there with him—it felt so real for a moment that he could hear her small laugh, could smell her in the air like the afterscent she left on his pillow from spending the night there after a particularly horrible nightmare. Seth put the bottle down.
In a mindless haze, he reached for the small key in his pocket and unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk with clumsy fingers. Inside there were only two things: Kate's cross—the one Richie had seen Scott take and then throw as far as he could in a fit of rage, and then had gone to collect—and his drug kit.
It seemed almost sacrilegious to put those two items side by side but Seth didn't care. After Richie had silently passed the necklace to him when they'd been drunk that first night, it had taken residence in Seth's drawer, which Richie had adamantly kept away from. Besides, it felt like a sick sort of comparison to Kate herself. She was everything good, his moral compass, a godamn fucking angel with soft hands and bright eyes, but she also had darkness inside of her and she hadn't been one to shy away from it.
The kit wasn't the same one he had during Mexico, which Sonja had thrown out the first chance she had. No, this one was new, Seth had bought it just a few nights ago. At the time he didn't exactly understand why he had done it, despite the craving for it going away and then coming back every once in a while, he had been absolutely certain he never wanted to go through withdrawal again. Maybe a part of him had known he would need it, maybe his subconscious knew it was only a matter of time before Kate's death became too much.
Seth went through the motions of prepping the hit without thinking about it. All he felt, all he could concentrate on was how much everything hurt and how much he didn't want to feel anymore. It wasn't his body craving the chemicals, it was his mind craving the silent bliss of not feeling.
Seth tapped his arm, a familiar routine of trying to find a vein, but either because of the booze or because he had grown unused to it, he couldn't. He put the needle down, the sound of it smacking against the bottle echoing as he fumbled for the tourniquet to wrap around his bicep.
He could hear her crying.
It was, to his greatest regret, a sound he had been familiar with and it made him reach for the needle faster than his alcohol drenched brain could process. Seth pressed it to a bulging vein but only held it there for a few long moments as Kate cried. The tip scratched his skin before he dropped the needle. His hands were shaking too much and he couldn't help but think that usually… usually she would be the one to pick up the needle and help him finish the job.
When he looked back up, Kate was there.
She was exactly as he remembered her on one of their good days. The white sundress she had only worn once falling to the top of her thighs, the red bikini peeking through its spaghetti straps. She had bought it all in a cheap gas station one morning and forced him to stop at the first motel she saw that had a pool to spend the afternoon there. He had been twitchy about being so close to the border but they had spent the previous couple of days stuck in the Corvette so he let her waste the day by the pool until he had come across an American family at a small restaurant he had stopped for food. Seth had booked it back to the motel to find Kate floating on her back.
He hadn't let her stop for anything, just pulled her arm until she got out of the pool and guided her back to the car with his hand fighting to find purchase on her wet shoulder. He had expected her to snap at him while they sped down dusty backroads but Kate had only laughed. She had given him shit for everything later and insisted he owed her for making her leave behind the first dress she had worn in forever but she hadn't been mad. Hearing her laugh had made that day be one of the first that felt light after the Twister.
She wasn't laughing now.
There were silent tears streaming down her cheeks, her mascara smudged beneath her eyes and her brows knitted unhappily. Seth drank in the sight of her, something coming loose inside his chest at the same time that his heart dropped somewhere near his feet.
"You're not real," he whispered.
Kate didn't reply, didn't even react in any way other than the tears that continued to come. But still, her green eyes stared right into his, and she didn't go away. Seth wished she would. He wished she never left.
The sudden rage that overcame him wasn't entirely unfamiliar, but it still took his breath away, consumed his body in the flames that he sometimes wished had taken him. It wasn't exactly anger, or rather, it was more than that. It was grief, swallowing him whole and drowning everything that made Seth Seth. He threw the whiskey bottle at her, the sound of it breaking on the wall behind his desk not quite covering the sound of his knees crashing on the floor.
Seth cried.
He wept like a fucking baby, like he hadn't done ever since his mother had left him. He cried until his head hurt, until he couldn't really smell the spilled whiskey and couldn't see the blank wall where Kate's ghost had stood. And that's how Richie found him.
Seth had no idea how long his brother had called for him, only realizing Richie was there with him when he felt a hand on the back of his neck guiding his head to rest on a fluffy robe. Richie didn't say anything and neither did Seth despite all the words he had clogging up his throat.
I miss her, he wanted to say.
I wish it had been me instead, he couldn't help but think.
Yet he stayed silent. Until maybe a few minutes later, when he muttered, "'m gonna throw up."
His brother never mentioned that night with him. Ever. Even when Seth pulled him aside the day after to reassure him that he had thrown the smack away, Richie only replied with a quiet, "Okay," and a stiff nod while he avoided his eyes. They didn't talk about it and the urge to shoot up never came again.
He still saw her from time to time, mostly when he was close to blackout drunk and never as clearly as he had seen her that first night. Kate was always wearing something from one of their good days and she was never crying. She only watched him quietly as he fought with himself to keep her in the corner of his eyes instead of staring at what everyone else would think was nothing.
Six months later when he was in Santanico's fighting ring, he saw her again. For a few beats he thought it was another hallucination, and it was enough time for the other guy to knock him down, but she was still there when he looked up.
Seth knew almost immediately that it was her. The unfamiliar red hair, the heavy makeup she had never used, the clothes that he had never associated with a happy time. It wasn't a hallucination. Seth knew that despite how surreal it sounded, the person who stood in the crowd was Kate Fuller.
Everything after that was a fucked up nightmare.
Six months of grieving Kate had taken a toll on him. Seth worked hard to keep things going, he took care of business when Richie was too busy posturing as the Boss and he kept a tight ship running. He kept swinging, even when he felt like he didn't have much strength, because he had learned many things growing up but giving up wasn't one of them. So he pushed everything down and kept going, but by the time all of the Amaru bullshit had to be dealt with he just didn't have anything else to give.
Standing there at the gates of hell, Seth was done. His brother was gone but he still had Kate, at least for a little while. He had wrestled her out of death himself by force, he had refused to accept she was going to die in that church. His hands didn't shake this time when he found a vein with the needle.
Letting Kate walk through those gates was the hardest thing he had ever done. His brother was gone and if he lost Kate too he would have absolutely fucking nothing to keep him going, he would have done anything to keep her safe. But then she had said it.
In the eyes of the people I love.
Seth knew that in that moment she was acknowledging him as part of her family, he knew that he couldn't take her choice away, not when she was looking at him with that look on her face. Time to let go, partner. Seth did. He let her go. But only because he knew he was right behind her; if there was one thing Seth was certain it was that he was going to Hell when he died and he didn't plan on staying a second longer without his family. There wasn't much of a plan, really—try to save her brother as he went down swinging, then try his best to find her and Richie on the other side.
Only he didn't die.
Not only that, but Richie and Kate came back and Seth's luck finally seemed to have turned around because in the end they were all alive and there. That Kate went with them when it was all over was another kind of miracle.
Months later and Seth still didn't know how his life had turned out this particular brand of okay.
He wasn't doing any more mid level-boss work since the Lords had all died, and despite the fact that sometimes the work was mind numbingly boring, he still spent a lot of his time doing what he really loved—planning for a job and then driving off into the sunset with the two people he cared the most about.
He had taught her some things back in Mexico but it shouldn't have been enough to make her so smooth during their jobs. The kid was a fucking natural, and Seth caught himself sometimes being distracted in the middle of a bank robbery, looking at her in her semi-formal wear. No matter what type of clothes she wore to fit in between the two suits, they were always white. He didn't ask about it, just like he didn't ask about the gloves she wore sometimes even when they weren't on a job.
Kate was far from healed from her ordeal, but as the months passed she got closer to okay and then okay sometimes turned into happy. And that's all Seth ever wanted for her.
It had been a nice day. They had robbed a bank south of Austin and had made it out before the cops even realized what had happened, making it almost all the way down to Port O'Connor where Malvado's operation had a nice safehouse by the beach. They spent the rest of the day counting their loot, checking the news and lounging around the house drinking and talking and laughing like they usually did.
By sunset, Seth's not-so-happy thoughts had returned in full force.
He was leaning on the doorway to their back porch with a beer in hand, watching Kate as she slowly made her way down the steps so she could bury her toes in the sand. She had changed out of her white jumpsuit from that morning into the tiniest cutoffs Seth had ever seen her wear and a green tank top. Her red hair was moving with the breeze coming from the ocean and it almost reached the waistband of her shorts with the way her head was tilted up towards the last rays of sunshine.
She was heartbreakingly beautiful. Kate had always been pretty and the sweetness of her eyes and face had always drawn his attention in a way but now there was a certain kind of sadness to the angle of her eyebrows and the look in her eyes that somehow managed to capture his attention even further. There was confidence in the tilt of her chin, strength in the way her shoulders were never hunched and sharpness in her unbridled laugh but there was also sadness. Seth loved every single part of her.
He would never dare say it out loud to fucking anyone, but he couldn't keep lying to himself. The truth was he couldn't even tell when he had fallen in love with this girl.
The thing that scared him the most, though, wasn't exactly telling her any of it—he was very content living in her shadow, with her as his partner and his brother by his side. Seth didn't need her to love him in a way other than platonic. What scared him in moments like these was the thought of losing her. Again. If anything happened to her, if she left because she was fed up with them or, God fucking damn it, if she died, he now knew that these moments were the ones that would haunt him, her tiny shorts and the faded green tank top, keeping him company in the corner of his eye.
Kate sighed and Seth shook himself from his depressing thoughts. She had moved back up the steps but hadn't stepped any closer to him, her arms around herself and goosebumps on her arms.
"You should head inside," Seth said, his voice so rough he had to clear his throat before continuing. "It's getting colder, at least grab a jacket, Princess."
Kate didn't acknowledge his words, only stared up at him deep in thought, her green eyes catching the last light as the sun disappeared below the horizon. Seth sighed and stepped forward, leaving his beer on the railing so he could close his warmer hands over her biceps. He rubbed her arms and raised an eyebrow at her in expectation.
"You looked so sad," she whispered and he stopped his motions immediately.
Seth cursed himself for not being more careful, but only sighed in response, squeezing her shoulders once before stepping back and reaching for his beer. She snatched it before he could, taking a long pull from it with her eyebrow raised as if to say, "If you won't answer me, then I'll drink it all."
Seth rolled his eyes and moved past her, shedding his shoes and socks as he went. He was just buzzed enough that he didn't question the sudden urge to feel the sand beneath his feet. He had changed into more comfortable jeans and a t-shirt, and the hems of his pants were getting dirty from the sand, but he didn't mind. He just closed his eyes and enjoyed the last bit of sun on his face before Kate spoke again.
"You know, the first time I saw your feet I blushed so hard I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to put some cold water on my cheeks," she said suddenly.
"What?" Seth turned around so fast he thought he might have pulled a muscle. Kate had sat down on the top step, she was hugging her knees to her chest and looking at him like she deeply regretted saying anything, but she didn't back down, even when he blinked dumbly at her.
"Not like that, you moron!" she said with a frown, though her cheeks were getting pinker by the second. Seth couldn't help but laugh as she exclaimed, "Shut up!"
"No, I'm sorry, go on about my feet, sweetheart," Seth said, stepping closer to her so he could take his beer back. He took a sip and handed the rest of it to her, something unwinding in his chest at the sound of her embarrassed giggles. Kate took a long gulp of the cool beer before letting it drop on the step next to her.
"I just mean that it felt… intimate, I guess." She shrugged one shoulder, somehow managing to look both shy and confident. "Like I was seeing you be vulnerable or something."
Seth propped one leg on the step beneath her, bracing his elbow on the railing so he could lean down closer to her. There was a soft smile on his face that he couldn't hide no matter how hard he tried and his only consolation was that Kate's cheeks were darkening still.
"I get it," he let her off the hook, snorting a bit. "I had that same "oh shit" moment when I walked in on you only wearing a towel a few days in."
"Don't be creepy," she whispered teasingly and Seth rolled his eyes.
"Not like that," he threw her words back at her, a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips briefly. "It's just that I've never realized how… ready you were at all times. It's like you carried yourself like a goddamn soldier on the battlefield, ready for anything thrown your way, you know? Confident and sure of yourself, always. But that day I caught you off-guard and… I guess I just realized how tiny you looked. Made me think of how much I needed to take care of you, to protect you."
There was a beat where they just stayed quiet, neither of them knowing what to say after their small confessions and Seth letting his eyes look anywhere but at hers while feeling her gaze heavy on him.
"What were you thinking?" Kate asked in a small voice. "Before?"
"Kate," Seth sighed again, met her eyes for a brief second before bracing himself to push off the railing so he could put some space between them. Kate stopped him with a hand on the loose fabric of his jeans on his shin.
"What were you thinking, Seth?"
Goddamn it, he couldn't deny her. Not when she was looking up at him with that beautiful, sad face of hers, not when her voice felt so fucking quiet and intimate, especially not with the way he could kind of look down her shirt from where he was standing above her.
Without meaning to, Seth started rambling on like a fucking amateur.
"When you died," he started and had to take a deep breath after saying that dreaded word, "I was in a really bad place. I kept… I had these visions of you. I mean-" and now he was full-on babbling, "I had a vision of you once, but that was because of the heroin and after that one time I never did it again but…" Seth let out a harsh breath and looked up at the darkening night sky so he wouldn't have to look at her. "Every time I saw you, you were wearing something from a day during our time in Mexico where things were good. Or at least not as bad as usual. The days where I could get you to smile. And now… Now sometimes I think during these happy days that if you're gone again, I'll be seeing you in these clothes."
Kate didn't immediately say anything, the only sound between them the waves crashing behind him and the rush of his heart beating in his ears. So Seth kept going, as if he hadn't made a fool of himself enough.
"I don't think I can take losing you again." He muttered it so quietly that it felt like a confession, whispered at the feet of her altar.
Kate stood up slowly, swaying slightly because they were both tipsy by that point, but standing tall and sure, towering slightly above him because of her higher ground. She slowly reached for his hand and pulled him forward until he had to change his position to stand a few steps beneath her. Her hands were cold in his but she wasn't wearing her gloves and Seth could only feel grateful for the feel of her skin. She held his hand between two of hers like he was the one who needed warming up, but Seth didn't mind. He squeezed her back.
"We're both going to die, Seth." She said it so bluntly Seth's eyes snapped back to hers but she didn't stop long enough for him to say anything. "If we have it our way at least, we're both going to die and that's the only certainty we have. The only certainty anyone has ever had, Seth. This is the way things have always been."
"I know, but," Seth tried to interrupt but Kate wouldn't have it.
"You don't need to protect me, okay? We're partners, that means we have each other's backs. I have your back and you have mine." She squeezed his hand tightly and there was something in her eyes that made Seth almost forget to breathe. Kate gave him a tiny smile, one that held so many things Seth didn't know what to make of it, only that it made his heart speed up and, combined with the lack of breathing, left him feeling a little dizzy. "We can't change the end but we can make sure these happy days are as happy as they can be, right?"
Seth was nodding before his brain caught up with him. Fuck, he loved her so much. He would agree with anything she said as long as she kept looking at him like that, kept holding on to his hand like she was.
"Yeah, honey, alright," he managed to say, his voice kind of hoarse. He felt his ears warm when she giggled a bit, like he was a goddamn kid again with his very first crush. He didn't even know it was still possible to feel those fucking butterflies.
"Good," Kate said, her voice final as she smiled slightly at him. "Because I'm going to kiss you now."
"What?" Seth's whole world stopped. It felt like she had pulled out the steps from beneath his feet and taken his breath and any cognitive function along with her. Kate only nodded, her cheeks darkening again, her eyes never wavering from his.
"Yep," she said. "It's okay if you don't want it to mean anything, you know? I mean, I do, but it doesn't matter because a kiss is never a bad thing, right? I guess there are some situations where it could be but not like this, okay? I'm just making this happy day happier and I really do want to kiss you, have wanted for quite a while to be completely honest, and if you want to forget about—"
Seth could see how she was going from confident to uncertain and embarrassed the longer he stood there with his dumb mouth hanging open like a goddamn fish and his eyebrows trying to see if they could merge with his hairline. He snapped out of it suddenly, and without even realizing what was going on, he was reaching forward to kiss her.
Seth didn't kiss Kate like he wanted to, taking his time, being gentle and careful. He kissed her like he knew she wanted to be kissed, like he wasn't afraid to break her, like he knew she was the strongest fucking person on this earth. And she was.
He buried his hands in her hair on the back of her skull, his thumbs tilting her jaw down so he could kiss her better with her standing above him. Seth didn't know who exactly deepened the kiss, maybe it had been him, but it didn't fucking matter because now he knew how Kate Fuller tasted and he could die right there and die the happiest man on fucking earth. He slid his hands down until they found their way to her back pockets so he could pull her closer to him, their chests touching as he went up one step.
Kate's arms were around his neck then, holding him close, as if he would ever willingly part from her ever fucking again. Richie would just have to deal with the fact that their next jobs would have to be handled with Kate hanging off his neck like that. She pulled away slightly, taking a few gasping breaths but he pulled her closer without even opening his eyes, kissing her once more and then another one after just because he could because she really wanted to kiss him. Had for a while now.
When Seth finally managed to break the kiss again before either of them passed out, he was standing on the same step as her, her tiny feet on top of his as he held most of her weight up so he could keep kissing her.
"Oh," Kate gasped slightly, her eyes shining bright even as her pupils were dilated.
Yeah, Seth agreed with that sentiment. He huffed a laugh which she echoed, then breathed her in before diving back in to taste her smile. Truth was, it didn't really matter how it would all end. He had already gotten the happily ever after he wanted, this was fucking El Rey.
His brother safe and happy, Kate's arms around him and the sound of the crashing waves welcoming the dusk and waking them up at dawn.
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after being a lurker since 2015 I finally sat down and wrote something haha I have another one in the works (bigger, it's already 40k words long and still going) that's gonna be a s2 AU but it might take some time for me to finish that one!
I was always very interested in those six months between season 2 and 3, particularly about Seth and Richie and how they dealt with Kate's death. I did some meta on this over on Tumblr (I'm justjstuff over there too, come say hi!) and this is what came out of it! Despite Seth's whole speech about "never going through that again", withdrawal doesn't quite work like that so I wanted to explore this other side of it all. Also! The "Kate visions" are inspired by the vision Kate herself has of Rafa in s2 when she's back at in Bethel.
I hope you guys enjoyed this and if so, please consider dropping me a few words 3
