WARNING: THERE ARE MENTIONS OF DRUG USE.

A/N: Is anyone else absolutely ready to sell their souls to Chronos so that August 25 can arrive sooner or is that just me? I know it's only two weeks away, but I AM SO READY. Okay, so there's like, absolutely no plot in this one-shot. It's pretty much just an introspective look at where I think Kate's head and her relationship with Seth will be at once Season 2 premieres. This is my first time writing for these characters and this fandom, so I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts on how I did. This is entirely inspired by the snippets of Season 2 we got from the On Set: Dusk Returns special. The title comes from Zella Day's Shadow Preachers.

scream, burn, touch, learn every part of you

She should be trying on dresses right now.

In another life, one where her parents aren't dead and her brother isn't a monster and her life as a normal teenage girl hasn't come to an abrupt halt, she'd try on dozens upon dozens of dresses. Her mother would stand back and sing her approval, smiling so widely that her eyes would crinkle at the corners. Kate would fret about what color makes her eyes stand out more, about what kind of skirt is best for slow dancing with Kyle, what hairstyle accommodates each dress.

Instead, she's at a run-down restaurant in Mexico, sitting across from a man with high ranking on several intelligence agencies' Most Wanted list, watching him as he practically inhales his order of chicken enchiladas.

What she had told Ranger Gonzalez had been true, because as of this moment, Kate is fine.

A long stretch from happy, sure, but fine.

A year ago, the thought of her situation — orphaned, separated from her brother, living with a thief, knowing that the existence of vampires is more fact than fable — would've caused her to crumble in on herself, but she's starting to pride herself on how well she's handling her life post-Titty Twister. Admittedly, it's not exactly what she would've chosen, and sometimes she wakes up with tear-stricken cheeks and her heart threatening to beat out of her chest, but.

She's handling it.

Seth pretends not to know about her nightmares or her anxiety even though she can see the stiff set of his shoulders whenever she has one of her episodes. He always sleeps with his back turned toward her so that he can face the door, and the rigid line of his posture when she wakes up gasping for air doesn't escape her notice. Kate always keeps her eyes on him, using his presence to chase away the panic bubbling in her throat, and as her breathing slows, his own posture relaxes back into the mattress. She's torn between feeling grateful for his silence and wanting him to acknowledge that she's grappling with PTSD and offer some form of comfort, but even after months by his side, she doesn't peg Seth as someone who will offer up his shoulder to cry on when she needs it. It's not like they're friends.

Are they?

They're certainly something, Kate thinks. One doesn't simply agree to spend the unforeseeable future with another person unless there's some sort of pre-existent bond.

"Are you gonna finish your fries?"

She shakes her head and uses her pinky to slide her tray of forgotten fries in his direction. "Here."

"Thanks, princess," he says, unceremoniously grabbing a fry and popping it in his mouth. Kate looks at the ketchup sitting on the corner of the beard he refuses to shave and snorts. Seth doesn't give any indication that he hears her, too preoccupied with making doe eyes at her soda.

"Stop lusting after my Jarritos and just take it."

He rears back to stretch his arm across the chair next to him, snatching up her drink and taking it with him.

Kate sighs.

"There would be no lusting after your drink if you hadn't taken the last mandarin one before I could get to it. Pretty vindictive of you when you know those are my favorite." He gasps then, placing his hand against his chest. "Have I finally rubbed off on you?"

She smiles at him, sugary sweet. "Let's hope not."

He winks at her before taking a swig from the glass bottle, and for what must be the thousandth time in the past three months, Kate finds herself marveling at how easily she and Seth have developed an intimacy that almost seems too casual for two people who were once on opposite ends of the power spectrum. Really, she used to watch his every move out of the corner of her eye for fear that he'd harm her, and now, she can only fall asleep if he's right there, snoring softly four feet away.

He went from being a man who posed a viable threat to her life to being her...her — what, exactly?

Ally seems like too frigid a word for them when they eat at the same rickety table every night and their toothbrushes sit in the same cup, but even the idea of referring to him as her friend leaves a bad taste in her mouth, like her tongue is rejecting the term before she gets the chance to verbalize it.

Sure, living quarters and inherent protectiveness of each other aside, they get along well enough. He's respectful of her space, they banter and bicker and tease, and whenever she opens her mouth to speak, there's never a moment where she feels like she doesn't have his rapt attention. He lets her use the bathroom first in the mornings and brings her back dinner when he gets something for himself and he's even taken it upon himself to educate her on the art of thievery and weaponry.

(When she'd asked if he was sure, he'd simply grinned and asked "who's your Jedi master?"

Turns out, someone who can steadily hold an entire bank at gunpoint being a Star Wars fan is not out of the realm of possibility.)

However, she can't forget about the role he played in involving her family in his quest to get to El Rey. Sometimes, she looks at him and sees a man without whom she would not have survived. A man she cares about enough to risk her life for, to stand beside and support. Other times, she looks at him and sees the man who unwittingly led her father to his death and her brother to his position under Carlos' wing.

She knows the weight of remorse sits heavy on his shoulders, can see that he sought out drugs in an attempt to escape it, but she's not delusional enough to believe that his guilt stems from the misery he inflicted on her and her family. No, Kate is fully aware that Seth shooting up heroin in their dingy motel room has more to do with self-loathing for inadvertently leading Richie to the very thing he was trying to steer him away from. She doesn't blame him, though. She figures he's allowed to be more sorry about accidentally condemning his brother further because she knows he's sorry for all of it.

If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.
Luke 17:3

She has some reservations about his contrition manifesting itself into heavy drug use, but the one time she tried broaching the subject, Seth blatantly told her that there would be no discussion about how he's choosing to "ignore the fact that my brother is wreaking havoc on who-the-fuck-knows-where with the she-demon," and that had been that.

Besides, it's not like she hasn't done her fair share of sinning since they met, and unlike him, she's not sure she's sorry for all of it. She certainly isn't sorry that she ran that chainsaw through that culebra, she's not sorry that she now knows the precise points on a person's body where she needs to aim if she wants to kill, and while it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing, she's not sorry that she approached a criminal in the hopes that he'd let her tag along. She is no longer righteous enough to act like she's better than him, and there's a freedom that accompanies her new position on equal ground with someone as morally ambiguous as Seth. That freedom was further cemented the day she willingly became his partner in crime.

Through his self-appointed role as Jedi master, he's taught her how to drive stick-shift and how to maneuver weaponry in a way that won't get either of them killed. She took to knives quickly, learning how to throw nearly as good as Seth himself within just a few weeks. Guns, however, are a different story. In terms of accuracy, she's a pretty fair shot, but the weight of them in her hand still makes her tense up, and she hasn't quite learned how to stop from shaking when the pad of her finger settles over the trigger.

(She's only managed to keep her grip steady once, and when Seth congratulated her on a job well done, her mind had flashed back to sitting in her family's RV, trying to keep calm as he held a gun to her brother's head and her brother held a gun to his brother's head — that's why your hand's shaking and mine's steady as a rock: because you're not like me, Scott. And you don't want to be.)

Once she got the hand of what he deemed the basic skills, they started doing small jobs, robbing convenience stores and whatever measly establishment they could find. Enough to pay for their rent, their meals, Seth's drugs. It's not the same as the colossal heists he's used to executing with Richie, she knows, but she thinks he enjoys it well enough. Despite her initial jitters — forgive me Daddy, forgive me Mama, forgive me please — she's found that she quite likes it, too.

It gives her a sort of thrill to play the innocent girl that no one would suspect capable of armed robbery only to watch clerks go still as they see Seth sidle up next to her, cheap ski mask on to hide his face. They set up a nice little routine, she thinks: Seth will grab her shoulders and hold a gun to her head, threaten to shoot unless they fill up her backpack with all the cash they have. (The gun he has to her head is never loaded, but the one he keeps in the waistband of his slacks is.) She'll put on an Oscar-worthy performance and widen her eyes in fear, will beg and plead for the clerk to comply and please don't let him kill me, please. They'll have the money in no time, and Seth will drag her out under the pretense of keeping her hostage. As soon as they're out the door, he'll release her so she can run to start up their getaway car — which is an indubitable downgrade from the car they left the Titty Twister in, but a Corvette convertible doesn't exactly scream low-profile — and they're on the road again, high on the adrenaline of their triumph.

During those glorious post-heist getaways, she's seen a lightness in Seth she didn't know he was capable of. Being someone who seems adamant in carrying out his days wearing a perpetually stoic facial expression, Kate almost feels giddy in knowing that she's seen his eyes shine with a luminescence that dusk couldn't dim. She's seen his lips curve upwards into an honest grin, heard him yell out a cry of victory, exhilaration coloring his face and compelling her to grin back.

Seth chooses this moment in her reverie to glance up at her. "What's on your mind?"

You, she doesn't say.

Instead, "You have ketchup in your beard."

He reaches for the balled-up napkin on the corner of their table and dabs at his face. His eyes narrow in suspicion. "You're not still hung up on what happened in the room, right?"

"You mean when you accused me of overreacting?"

"Hate to break it to you, honey, but making something out of nothing is the definition of overreacting."

She grits her teeth. "I wouldn't call shooting up all the time to escape your problems nothing, Seth." He opens his mouth to respond, but she holds up a hand to cut him off before he goes on a tirade that will inevitably lead to one of them storming out in an enraged huff. "But that's not what I was thinking about. I'm just tired from today, I guess."

Being a smart man, he recognizes that she's giving him an out, and he takes it. "All work and no play makes Kate a dull girl?"

"It does when being an accomplice in a robbery is all I have to commemorate my eighteenth birthday."

"What the fuck?" He pushes back his suit jacket's sleeve to look at his watch. "It's past eleven already. You didn't think mentioning this earlier might've made a difference?"

She shrugs, picking at her chipped nail polish and chipping it further. "It's not like I was expecting you to sing me happy birthday and rent a bouncehouse."

"Well do you want a bouncehouse?"

Her eyebrows hike up. "I don't not want a bouncehouse..."

"So nice to see that being a year older hasn't affected the integrity of your bratty charm," he tells her deadpan. "Is there anything in particular you do want?"

A whirl of images flood her mind at his inquiry: her father standing at the stove, her mother opening her arms to engulf her in a hug, Scott's mischievous smile as he flicks her ear and runs away before she can react. Birthdays were always cause for celebration in the Fuller household, and under normal circumstances, being at home with her family is exactly what she would want.

However, these aren't normal circumstances, and there's no use wishing for what will never happen again.

"A tattoo."

"A tattoo," he echoes, eyebrows furrowed as he mulls over her answer. "That can be arranged. Is tomorrow good?"

Kate blinks in surprise. "Really, just like that? No judgment?"

He sticks another fry in his mouth, sans ketchup this time, and Kate's lips quirk up at the corners. "Far be it for me to judge how you want your inauguration into adulthood to be celebrated. Although I will admit to moderate surprise."

"What, can't wrap your head around a preacher's daughter having a tattoo?"

The question comes out a tad harsher than she'd intended, but she squares her shoulders anyway, ready to defy whatever patronizing claim Seth throws in her direction.

It turns out that her concern was uncalled for because all he says is, "something like that," voice heavy with something she's not sure she wants to decipher. His eyes search hers for a beat before dropping back to his food, and Kate inhales deeply, ignoring the considerably faster palpitations in her chest.

It's not like she doesn't notice, the way he looks at her sometimes.

She's come to realize that everything Seth does is intense, and sidelong glances are no exception. She's caught him a couple of times, peering at her through too-warm brown eyes, concern mingling with an affection that isn't necessarily romantic, but genuine all the same.

It's a rarity, and given their situation, a luxury she can't afford, but every now and then, Kate asks herself whether she would want Seth to look at her like that. Romantically. He's mentioned his ex-wife Vanessa in passing, and each time he does, Kate tries to wrap her head around the image of a domesticated Seth Gecko. A Seth Gecko who would cook breakfast and have a reading nook and wax poetic about how in love he is.

The image never sticks long.

More often than not, she grows irritated with herself for even pondering such a thing. The man is a wanted felon, at least a decade older than her, and he has more demons than she knows how to chase away. He can't cook to save his life, places actions above words, and she's ninety-three percent certain he doesn't even know what a reading nook is.

Seth is sin, and grit, and heat — not exactly Tiger Beat Heartthrob material, which is what Kate is trying to convince herself she'll want once she's ready to entertain the thought of something as trivial as romance again. Despite her best efforts, her brain is having quite a bit of trouble on getting the message. Normally, Kate's a pro at suppressing whatever she doesn't want to waste her energy thinking about, but it seems like her cognitive functions are mush in the face of Seth Gecko and his aversion to sleeves.

She doesn't want to be that girl, the kind that develops a hopeless schoolgirl crush on a man and ends up jeopardizing how they function as a team. She's seen that girl in movies, read about her in novels, and any imbecilic notions about Seth and his stupidly attractive face will only encourage her to become that girl.

He clears his throat behind his closed fist, drawing her eyes to the lines of his hands, which doesn't really help her situation. "Besides, I could do with a touchup and we need passports, so your present is in the public's interest. Three birds with one stone, so to speak."

"My present?"

"While it may be unbeknownst to you, that's usually how birthdays work."

She perches her chin on her hand, rolling her eyes with what she hopes is more vigor than usual. "Ass. And what do you mean, three birds with one stone?"

A pause. Then, "It's possible that my connections here include a tattoo artist who dabbles in forgery."

"Do I want to ask how you know him?"

"Her," he corrects, then shrugs, "and I don't know if you want to ask, but I do know that I'm not going to answer."

"Evasive as always, I see."

"Intrusive as always, I see," he retorts without missing a beat.

She scowls. "You're an absolute joy, you know that?"

"It has not escaped my attention," he replies cheekily, taking another pull from his Jarritos. Kate tries not to look at the column of his throat as he swallows and fails. "Any clue as to what you're gonna get?"

She shakes her head a bit to clear it of its Seth-induced haze. "A snake."

"A snake," he repeats tonelessly, eyes narrowing. "As in, a culebra snake?"

She grins. "And the keen thief senses come out to play."

"Don't be cute," he chides. "And what, pray tell, would possess you to want something so clearly indicative of the shitstorm we barely survived?"

"The same reason you have flames running up your arm," she says, daring to risk hitting a nerve. "It's a reminder."

Seth purses his lips, gaze traveling over every inch of her face until she feels her skin growing warm from his scrutiny.

"Fair enough," he concedes.

While their respective history is comprised of shared experiences that go beyond the Titty Twister, they don't discuss it much.

She knows that Richie killed he and Seth's father under the pretense of saving themselves from a terrible home. He knows the conditions under which her mother died and what it did to the sanctity of her family. Apart from that, all they know about each other's situations is the extent to which it affected them.

Every couple of days, Seth will go through these periods where he keeps to himself. He'll step out onto the porch for a beer or four without offering her an invitation to join him. When he steps back inside, she'll pretend she can't see the way his hands are shaking and ask if he's up for watching old Mexican films with her. It's not much, and she's positive he must be itching to shoot up and forget about everything altogether, but he always says yes.

For her part, she takes to grieving in silence. Her fingers will fiddle with the cross she still wears around her neck, but she'll retreat them hastily once she notices she's doing it at all. Seth already knows about her nightmares and she doesn't want to give him further indication that there are ghosts that still haunt her, so she bites back her tears — over her father, her brother, her mother, even Seth himself — and only releases them under the weak spray of the shower.

Their third night together, Seth questioned the redness in her eyes after she got out, and she blamed it on getting shampoo in her eyes. It was a lie, and she knew he knew it was a lie, but he'd nodded anyway.

He never asked again, after that.

Seth pops the last of his pilfered fries into his mouth and stands to throw his food away in the overflowing trash bin next to the entrance.

"You comin', birthday girl?"

Kate turns in her seat to face where he's standing, leaning against the doorjamb of the restaurant's entrance as he waits for her. He looks like the danger her parents warned her away from when she was young, but all she sees is refuge.

Refuge, she thinks, trying the word out in her head. Maybe that's what he is to me.

Her own form of heroin wrapped up in a 5'10 professional thief.

Unsure as to whether the thought makes her an idiot or simply proves that tolerance is her biggest virtue, Kate wonders what her breaking point is, when it comes to him. What line does he have to cross to get her to cut him loose? To remind her that he's not a good man, and that he's not worthy of her efforts or her concern? Surely, there must be something he can do to send her over the edge, to invalidate her irrational affection for him in a way that the existent red in his ledger hasn't been able to do yet.

Whatever those limits are, she hopes that they're not tested anytime soon.

She stands. "Yeah, I'm coming."

Kate makes her way toward him and doesn't dwell on how her steps never falter.