notes: also on ao3.

WANTED: Person To Ruin Thanksgiving Dinner

Female looking for someone to come ruin her family Thanksgiving Dinner. Age and gender don't matter. Must be capable of driving. Should be comfortable with lying/posing as my SO.

Free meal as payment.

Kate Fuller is mad.

She is mad at her mama for leaving her so early, for being called back to Heaven too soon. She is mad at her daddy for falling off of the wagon head first and leaving the congregation. And she is mad at herself for thinking that God and hard work would be able to pull him out of his funk, would be able to keep her patchwork mess of a family together.

That hasn't worked.

Maybe, if she acts out enough, she can make him care again.

Which is exactly how the ad came about.

When she sees him, the first thing she thinks to herself is, Forgive me Lord for what I am about to do.

Because he is Sin. He is sin, and he is ambling toward her to the sound of his car purring in the background, and Good Lord what has she gotten herself into.

But does she regret putting that ad up on Craigslist? No.

Well, maybe a little.

"Kate?" he asks, stopping a few feet away from her, hands in the pockets of his slacks.

The second thing she thinks, This might be the best idea I have ever had.

"Are you a serial killer?" It's blunt. Simple. She can't keep the tremble out of her voice at the word killer.

He looks at her like she's lost it and maybe, maybe she has lost her mind. Here she is, after all, on Thanksgiving in a parking lot with a man who answered an ad she put on Craigslist, of all places.

"I guess that depends on if you're Kate." When she doesn't budge, he changes his answer. "No, Miley, I'm not."

She has to take his word for it; besides, it's not like there's an axe anywhere that she can see. He doesn't have a sign around his neck that says, 'Hey! I'm a serial killer!'

"You must be Seth," is all she says.

"Can I see your ID?"

"What? Why?"

"Because you look like you're twelve, princess." It's stated even more bluntly than her serial killer question, and she knows her dress isn't helping anything.

She knew her dress would be a bad idea. It's a relic, okay, one of the last nice dresses she got for church when her mama was still alive. It's pale pink, little white and darker pink flowers on it, and the skirts drops down past her knees, and if she spins it billows out around her. The three-quarter sleeves are hidden beneath her white cardigan, the one she bleached with careful consideration the day before.

With a huff, she shoves her hand into her clutch and pulls out her ID, handing it to the man before her.

"Kadence Fuller?" he asks after a minute.

"It's Kate," she bites out, because it is. Just Kate.

"Okay, princess." And he hands back her ID like it's no big deal at all, that she's nearly nineteen and looks twelve, that she put an ad up on Craigslist looking for someone who had nothing to on Thanksgiving and wanted to help ruin it for her family.

It is no big deal, she realizes as she shoves her ID back into her clutch, because he's the idiot who took her up on her offer.

"Let's go ruin Thanksgiving," he says, sticking out his hand.

She grips his hand and they shake on it, and she thinks, This must be what shaking hands with the Devil is like.

His car is old, black as the night and quiet as she walks up to it, letting herself in on the passenger side. She doesn't know much about cars, but she did see the word Mercury on the back.

And she knows that a car like this is sure to make her daddy smell trouble.

"Where did-"

"Doesn't matter," she says, cutting him off. "Make it as bad and terrible as possible." Tells him to take a right.

"What does your dad do?"

The million dollar question. "Drink himself into a stupor. Before that, he was the preacher."

"And your mom?"

A beat, and then, "My mama's dead."

They're fifteen minutes late to dinner, and Kate enters the house like a hurricane.

"Oh my gosh," she exclaims loudly, Seth closing the door behind them. "Are we late?"

She knows full well that they are late, and tardiness had never been appreciated when her daddy was still a pastor. She also knows that everyone's at the dining room table, waiting for her to arrive from "grabbing a friend."

They're halfway through grace when she and Seth come stumbling into the dining room, her hair a little mussed to make it look like she was doing something inappropriate.

Her hand finds Seth's, and she grabs it lightly, trying not to let the nerves in her stomach dictate her physical actions.

Handholding was sure to get a rise out of her father. His little Katie-cakes, holding hands with an older man who didn't appear to get the entire memo that the fifties mob life was over.

But Seth, it seems, has other, better ideas. His arm snakes around her body, hand firmly planting itself on her butt and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

Even Kyle had never grabbed her like this, in the back of the church just after her mama died.

Scott's eyes are the size the dinner plate in front of him, and she knows she's doing this right.

There's a plate set for her, and another one next to her for Seth, and she tumbles into her chair immediately, putting as much distance between her and her daddy as she can. She doesn't apologize for being late, and Uncle Eli starts saying grace again.

She giggles all through grace, one of her hands in Seth's and the other in her cousin Jessie's. She's almost ashamed of herself when she hears her Uncle Eli stumble through some of his words, and then cut grace short with a sudden "Amen."

She repeats the word belatedly, a full second after everyone else, and Seth doesn't say it all.

"How did you and Katie-cakes meet?" Her daddy isn't totally plastered yet, which is new.

Or the shock of seeing her with Seth made him sober up pretty quick.

Seth replies, seemingly without having to think about it, "My brother took her hostage during a bank robbery that went south. Threw her in the trunk. When we pulled her out of the trunk thirty miles later, we hit it off."

She quickly has to down some of her cranberry juice in an effort not to choke on her stuffing. She had said terrible, but she hadn't expected that.

The table goes silent, and Seth feels like he is almost too close to her.

"You never told me about that, Katie-cakes," her daddy says as Scott kicks her beneath the table.

"I did tell you, Daddy," she says, fake smile plastered to her face as she kicks Scott back. "About three months ago, after I ran into Burnet for the day?"

He nods, almost like he recalls something that didn't actually happen. Kate knows how he handles alcohol inside and out, has grown used to it since he fell down this hole. He won't recall that she never went to Burnet, even for a day, and that she definitely wasn't back late.

Dinner continues to go downhill, and Kate nearly breaks into hysterical laughter three times because what has she gotten herself into.

The first is when Aunt Em tries to save the dinner conversation, not-so-subtly avoiding discussing that they have an admitted bank robber sitting at the table with his thigh pressed flush to Kate's.

The second is when the pumpkin pie is served, and Kate gets whipped cream on her lips. Seth leans in and kisses her in the dirtiest way she thinks is possible, tongue swiping over her lips and their teeth clattering together. They pull apart when her Uncle Eli and her daddy clear their throats loudly and simultaneously, and Kate is surprised to find that she's practically in Seth's lap by then.

The third is probably the worst.

It happens when they're saying their goodbyes, because Kate has already made arrangements to stay at a friend's house for the night-to make her daddy think she was spending the night with Seth. She's already hugged Aunt Em and Uncle Eli, kissed cousin Jessie on the cheek and whispered to Scott that she'd talk to him in the morning.

They're standing in front of her daddy, a blinding grin on her face that feels so convincing that she's pretty sure it's real.

And Seth's hand is on her boob. Which is weird, thank you very much, because she's the only one who's ever touched her boobs. Even Kyle didn't get to cop a feel, and he had been her only long-term boyfriend.

But she knows that if anything is going to make her daddy boil over, it'll probably be this. All of the little things she and Seth have done tonight, starting with just showing up and completely destroying grace and topping it all off with this overt display.

She doesn't have to wait long, because her daddy walks her and Seth out of the house and onto the front lawn her and Scott used to wrestle on before propriety said it wasn't okay anymore.

"Sir, please step away from my daughter for a moment so I can have a word." Kate knows her daddy means business because a) he didn't call Seth "young man" like he was prone to do and b) his words are only slightly slurred.

"Baby, you don't have to!" The word feels funny coming out of her mouth as her arm tightens around Seth's middle, his hand tightening on her boob. And she likes it, but pushes that thought away. "Daddy, whatever you have to say can be said in front of me."

"No, Katie-cakes, I can't." She's seen him drunk every day since a week after her mama died; she's hauled him into his bed each night and makes sure he fed while she works her fingers to the bone.

Seth, on the other hand, takes a step away from her and towards her father;

Her boob feels a lot colder, all of a sudden.

She hadn't thought this would end in a fist fight.

Her daddy swings first, and Seth fights back immediately, blood dribbling out of his mouth. Kate thought she'd never see her daddy resort to violence, but she didn't think he'd ever quit the congregation either.

This violence grounds her somehow, makes it gritty and real, and she thinks, I am going to Hell for this.

And then Seth knocks her daddy flat on his back and grabs her by the arm and they're running, running toward his car.

She tumbles into the passenger seat of the Mercury, barely getting her feet inside before the door slams shut as Seth hurls the old car into reverse and tears out of the driveway, tires squealing as he speeds away from the house.

As soon as they're around the corner, she's laughing, hands clutching her sides as she leans forward in her seat, head almost hitting the dash.

If her mama could see her now, she would probably shake her head and say, "It's in God's hands."

But if her mama could see her now, she wouldn't have done what she has in the first place.

"I'm sorry my daddy hit you, Seth."

He smiles at her, and in the dusk she can hardly make out the blood on his teeth, or the way his lip is starting to swell.

"Should we do it again on Christmas?"

She grins back. "Of course."