2019-07-10 - 77 F-cks

Ruiz switches on his own phone's 'flashlight' as he trudges deeper into the treeline, a flick of his eyes canopy-ward as something rustles and takes wing. It doesn't slow his pace, though his shoulders are threaded with a subtle tension as he presses on. Up the incline they'd scaled that night, his hands grasp at roots to make the last few feet of it. He moves fairly quickly, only slightly exerted by the time he reaches the top. There's the log, and.. no Sutton. Then her message pings his phone, and he switches apps to read it, and frowns slightly. Quick glance around before he composes a reply.

Sutton looks down at her phone. Can you be more specific? "Are you fucking kidding me?" She taps in an answer, looking down at her lit screen, utterly destroying what's left of her night vision, not that it's helping much at all. She resumes walking, and this time she gives it a little something extra, singing, loudly, Carly Simon's You're so Vain.

~ You walked into the party like ~
~ You were walking onto a yacht ~
~ Your hat strategically dipped below one eye ~
~ Your scarf, it was apricot ~

She pauses to slide down an incline, then hop at the bottom before she falls over a root. Then the song really gets loud. Lucky for Ruiz, it's entirely on key. She loses it a little on the timing when she almost falls over a tree root she didn't see.

Ruiz looks around briefly while he waits for Sutton's reply. The air is dense and fragrant in here, and the shadows have shadows; he squints into them like he's hunting for a flicker of movement. A glimmer of moonlight off a shape that wasn't there a moment ago. Predator and prey, or just a cop on the lookout for a friend. Then the strain to a familiar song filters out from deeper in the treeline, somewhere back the way he came. Back where the trail split after it crossed that little bridge, and he turns and skids back down the incline, phone light coming out again as he skirts the edges of the underbrush.

When she gets to the chorus, Sutton gets louder. She seems to enjoy that one, too. And the girl can really belt. She also sounds like she's getting closer, which means she's walking along against advice to stay put and wait him out. At least the wildlife has probably bolted. She arrives at a footbridge and pauses on it to dust off the knees of her jeans.

The breeze picks up, sweeping the scent of sharp, sweet pine through the area. The paramedic jams her phone into her pocket and lets the moonlight, out from behind a cloud again, lead the way away from the water.

He can't quite spot her yet, but that voice is like a beacon; she reaches the chorus, and he fine tunes his approach accordingly, picking his way over roots and through underbrush. And eventually, the light from his phone picks out movement between the trees. His pace quickens, twigs and long grass snapped underfoot as he homes in on her position.

The buzz of her pocket has her fishing her phone one. She snorts a laugh which interrupts her belting, "Don't you, Don't you, Don't you?" She types back a reply, making her way down the path. She brings the volume down a few notches, carrying on to a fork in the path, where she pauses. In theory, she should go left and it'll open out of the tree line into the clearing by the road. If she remembers right.

Ruiz scowls slightly at the message that pops up on his phone, and he narrates silently, mouth moving along with his thumb as he sends a reply. Blowing an irritated breath out of his nose, he continues down the trail with his eyes trained on that flicker of movement he caught earlier, triangulated roughly to where he expects it to be now. His phone's light is swept left, right, and then he turns and steps backwards a pace or two for good measure while illuminating the trail behind him. Just in the off chance he's been followed.

Sutton's phone pings and lights not thirty-five feet away from him, where she's stopped to lean against a tree and wait. Suddenly, her face is just there in the dark, pale and luminous. She seems finished with the singing, at least. Small favors right? "Oh for fuck's sake. I don't want a coupon for half price pizza." Must be getting those email offers at an inconvenient time.

Ruiz pivots, takes two steps, and Sutton is right fucking there, lounging against a tree trunk mumbling about half price pizza. To his credit, he doesn't lose his shit. But he does drop his phone with a soft thud as it hits dirt and sends its bright light every which way before landing face down. He crouches, swoops it up, and stalks in closer until maybe two or three feet separate them. "Are you fucking serious? I told you not to move. What the fuck are you even doing out here in the middle of the night?" He lifts his hand and jabs a single finger at her face, inches away. "And don't you tell me you wanted tacos."

"I have to say, fucking around in the woods being chased my a man is usually way more fun than this." Sutton's sense of humor knows no appropriate time to shut the fuck up. She doesn't start, so she must have heard him coming, or seen the light before. She puts her phone into her pocket and watches him drop, scoop up his phone, then come on in to get pissy with her. "You took too fucking long. Of course I moved." She shoves herself up off the tree and takes a step into his space, halving the distance. "Unless you brought tacos, in which case, sure. Either way: get your finger out of my face."

"Eso es una mierda y lo sabes," retorts the Mexican in rapid-fire Spanish, backing down not an inch when Sutton ups the ante with the personal space infraction war they've got going on. "I was sleeping," answers her accusation of why he 'took so fucking long'. "You woke me up. You needed help. I came out here to help you." He does, eventually, get his finger out of her face. Once he's good and ready. "Now, are you going to come with me, or are we going to stand here and argue about it for the next hour?"

"You weren't sleeping. You answered too fast." Sutton's reply comes fast. "Thanks for coming." She clips that shortly and then asks, hands held wide. "Now that you've walked through half the woods, which, okay, you didn't have to do. On the other hand, I think we both know this isn't about me being in the woods. I could have found my own way out of the fucking woods eventually." In case he didn't get it, she adds, "This isn't about the fucking woods." She moves to step past him, without using her phone to light the way. "So, you know, mierda. Some of the nuance is lost in Spanish, so let me repeat: bullshit." It takes some effort to hold onto anger when someone's doing something nice for you, but now that he's actually found her and she's no longer on the trail alone, it bubbles back up.

He doesn't move immediately, when Sutton makes to slide past him. He doesn't fall into step with her, and doesn't speak right away. There's just a slight rustle in the dark, and his hand snakes around her upper arm and closes around it hard. Uncomfortably so. He tugs her in toward him, and his voice is brought close to her ear without quite touching it. "You. Are full. Of fucking. Shit." Just that. His voice, a low growl in the shadows; her smaller frame pulled right up against his jacket-clad bulk. His breath smells minty, like he'd brushed his teeth not terribly long ago.

When he grabs hold of her arm, Sutton immediately pushes her weight into the pull. She does get pulled up against his body, but he is in turn slammed back against tree trunk there, and it probably isn't comfortable. It's not like trees are bouncy. "It feels to me like you're the one who wants to fight about it." She doesn't tell him to get go of her arm, but there's definitely potential for violence in her frame. "I want to know what you're hiding from me and you're going to tell me."

It's smart of her, using the momentum against him. He's bigger than her by a fair bit, but that isn't going to stop him from careening into the broad side of that tree. It's greeted with a thud of his body contacting it with a decent amount of force, and a low grunt of breath being knocked out of him. He does not, in fact, release her arm; if anything, his grip tightens. A little past the point of vaguely uncomfortable now, and well within the realm of Not Enjoyable. Unless, of course, she's into pain. "Te equivocas. I have not meant to hide things from you." A beat. "My timing may not have been the best." No kidding. But then, when is it ever a good time to mention that you might just be good friends with a girl's dead twin brother?

Yes, it hurts, the grip on her arm. And if he holds it much longer, it's going to leave a spectacular bruise. Does she give a shit? No. Does she now tell him to let go of her fucking arm? No, no she does not. My timing may not have been the best. "Really? Do you fucking think?" Her voice rises a little. Just a little. "What exactly do you mean to do?" Her body is a line of tension. Two months ago, Sutton would have slammed him harder into that tree, but time on her ass has left her with a bit less strength than usual.

Well, she could have tried. The cop seems pretty good with his hands, though, and moves like he's had training. His grip does not let up, and his dark eyes bore into her slightly warmer-toned gaze across the mere inches that continue to separate them. The diffuse moonlight picks out the fine lines and creases in his weathered face, as well as the dark scruff of his beard. He doesn't speak for a long moment, and then he grunts at her, "Walk." And shoves her forward and away from him. Probably with a colourful bruise to show for herself. Assuming she starts moving, he drops into step right behind her, prowling along like an animal hot on her trail.

Sutton's boots slide a little on the underbrush, her body flung away from Ruiz's. She smells like chocolate and floral shampoo, a little wine still. "Good choice." She says this like he was a hair from meeting her bad side. She does take a few steps away, the tension in her shoulders tight. The fire in her chest hasn't dissipated, and she makes it a few yards before she turns on him, her arm still throbbing, and meets his stalking, all together too-close prowl with a thrown punch. She'll probably regret it as soon as it lands, but for a moment it feels really good to hit someone.

Drinking. She's been drinking, then. Which shouldn't come as a surprise, and really, maybe it doesn't. He's probably still contemplating this when she turns on him and takes that swing. And she's quicker than he gave her credit for; her fist cracks him across the jaw, hard enough to return the favour and leave him with a pretty little bruise come morning. His footing falters, boots digging into the mud as he stumbles a pace, two, then bodies right the fuck into Sutton and tries to wrench that arm behind her back, and shove her up face first against the broad flank of one of those old growth cedars marking the trail. "Conozco tu dolor. Lo sé como la palma de mi mano. Lo vivo cada dia."

Sutton has the moment of satisfaction of a crack of contact and watching him drop back a couple of steps. Some petty part of her brain considers it a handy revenge from being grabbed and jerked around earlier. She regrets it, a couple of heartbeats after, not because he answers her with shove into a tree and a twist of her arm, subduing her handily and hard. She regrets it because it hurts. Even when you hit someone properly it hurts bare-fisted. Every fucking time. There's an oof of air from her body as she's slammed into the tree, and a hiss when he presses against that arm pulled behind her back. The bark is rough through her tee, jacket open, and against her cheek. She sucks in a breath and says, "Why are you fucking with me. Why —" Her voice fails. She takes two hard breaths. "How did you know I'm Harry?"

Her words are greeted by silence, at first. Not a true silence; the rush of water from somewhere below them, the movement of creatures in the underbrush and hum of insects. The wind through the canopy above, and the rasp of the Mexican's breathing, close to Sutton's ear. "Fuck." It's muttered softly. "You hit hard." His free hand is touched to his jaw where her fist cracked him, then laid flat against the tree beside where he's got her smaller frame all but pinned. "I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you." And then it comes out in a rush, his voice cracking a little around the edges, "I knew your brother. I knew Eli. He was my partner for three months, back in Seattle. He talked about you." A breath, two. Harsh, short pants. "When I first met you, I thought.. you looked familiar. I wanted to say something sooner, but I did not know what to say. There was never a good time." He ducks his head, each breath pulling in the scent of her. Chocolate and something floral in her hair. "Lo siento." That's softer. His grip eases up slightly, but isn't relinquished.

There's the scrape of her belt buckle against the tree, chipping off little bits of bark that fall to the forest floor. She's still struggling, but he has a good grip, and she's not going anywhere. She's not fighting for her life, just fighting. She slows a little when he speaks into her eat. You hit hard. Fuck yes she does. She's about to say something smart or rude when he rushes through the words and gets to the I knew your brother part. That... takes the wind out of her sails. Her entire body tenses, and then she just stops fighting.

"What..." Like she didn't hear him. She heard him. She doesn't even pull free when his grip loosens. What. Of all the things she expected him to say, somehow that wasn't one she was ready for. When she speaks again, her voice is low and harsh, barely audible, "What the fuck." Last time she said that to him, it was definitely loud and angry, and this time it's pained. She almost loses her footing. "You let me tell you how he died." She didn't give him all of the details, of course, but maybe he knows them anyway.

"I was on a call at the time. A fucking domestic." Some guy's fight with his boyfriend that escalated into a situation with a weapon, and one of their panicked neighbours called the cops. "I heard it all go down over the radio." He swallows, fingers tightening in her sleeve. "I was listening while dispatch tried to talk his partner through it. I was listening while he died, and I was at his fucking funeral, and it rained and it fucking rained while they put him in the ground." Except he didn't stay there, did he? There's a tension that creeps into him as he gives her these last few, soft words; pity and accusation play tug-of-war in the tenor of his rough murmur: "And I know what you did."

Sutton's breathing is a little fast, but she holds it together through the first half. The domestic, the radio. Hearing it all on the radio. She heard half of that on the radio, too. She came off the fire channel and hopped on the police band the second she heard officer down and they caught the rollout. A new dispatcher fucked up and never should have send her rig to that intersection, but he didn't have the numbers and names locked into his head. He didn't even know a Sutton was on duty to send to PO Sutton bleeding out on a Seattle Street.

She takes a harsh, sharp breath at the last. And that's when she pulls hard on her arm to try to break his grasp on her, and wrench her body away from the tree.

It did rain. It rained at the funeral and soaked everyone. She didn't bring an umbrella and almost knocked out the marine who tried to hold one for her graveside. She stood there in the rain in head to toe dark blue, lips slowly turning blue in the frigid rain.

Sutton takes a shaky breath tries to speak, but her voice cracks. "Don't —"

He heard it all go down, of course. All of it. Every excruciating detail, including his buddy's sister being dispatched on code 3 to the scene. And he didn't have the authority at the time to do a damned thing about it, even if he wasn't tangled up in a shitshow of a domestic.

There's a tremor in him, a gathering of tension like he's going to fight her attempt to get free. But in the end, he doesn't. His larger frame eases back just enough to give her the space to shake him off and pull away, though there's still a lurksome, brutish aspect in his eyes, and a restrained violence in his shoulders. And she has to know that's a gun tucked into the small of his back. One has to wonder where and what he'd be now, if he didn't wind up a cop. One has to wonder.

He starts to say something. His mouth opens, but then that word from Sutton: Don't. And there's a twitch of his lips like he hadn't meant to, but ended up baring his teeth at her. "Walk," is repeated instead, dark eyes on hers.

There's a fine line between peacekeeper and something else, and people cross the line easily, and they do it all the time, some with violence against themselves — some with violence against others. Sometimes it's called out, but sometimes it's covered up.

Yes, Sutton breaks free of that hold, and it's largely because he let go. She pulls away from him by several steps, booted feet heavy on the trail. She rolls the shoulder of the arm he had pinned, and it's obvious from the tension in her shoulders that she'd probably be obliged to pop him again if he touched her right now. She faces him for a while, hazel eyes black in this low light. Her hands flex and then she forces them open. She turns away without a word and begins to walk. Some part of her thinks she must be going crazy. Elias is every-fucking-where.

"You have no right." She can hear it in his tone. I know what you did, he said a moment ago. It doesn't matter that she's judged herself for letting the gunman die. He likely would have died anyway, given his wounds, but she refused him treatment. Refused to move, utterly failed to function in her capacity as a paramedic in the face of losing her twin brother on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday.

Near the trailhead, she slows. "Are you the one who likes to fuck blondes out back of seedy bars when you're drunk, or the one with the dead wife?" She's upset, but the sharpness in her tone isn't judgment, though it could easily be mistaken for that. She could have phrased that more delicately. Could have. Did not. At least she didn't say the dead wife and kid.

Ruiz doesn't move, doesn't chase, doesn't break eye contact as Sutton backs away from him. He lurks there, breath in and breath out, a subtle rise and fall in his shoulders in time with it; his profile is fuzzy-jawed and feral in the dark. Once she's backed up enough to be able to turn and pace off without fear of reprisal, he resumes his prowl, a yard or two behind her. Boots heavy on the trail, and the cadence of his steps shifts slightly whenever he encounters an obstruction in the path.

There's a shift in his breathing when the words 'dead wife' are mentioned, but it's unlikely she'll notice. He doesn't answer the question either, because she knows full well that he's both of those men. Eli might've laughed when he mentioned the former, even if he didn't find it funny. Because what do you say about a man with a dead wife and child? What do you say to that?

The trail eventually opens up, stars visible through gaps in the canopy; the stream bed to their right, water tickling over smooth rocks. The parking lot's almost in view now too, about a quarter of a mile out.

There's enough silence after the question that she likely knows for sure now the answer to that one. "The thing you should know, Javi, about the Sutton twins." She resumes her previous pace once she takes that last turn before the break in the trees. She also doesn't look at Ruiz, like she trusts him at her back, or she's reckless enough to have stopped paying very close attention to his body language. "You tell one of us, you tell both of us." Again with the present tense. It's like the woman doesn't accept the fact that her brother's dead despite literally watching the life leave his body.

Like she didn't ride with his body in the ambulance all the way to the hospital, walking through the honor guard with his gurney into the ER, flatly refusing to allow anyone to touch her or clean her up as she stood in the public waiting room with blood on her face. She didn't speak for three days after the funeral. Course she could have obliterated all of those memories with copious amounts of alcohol.

Five yards from the break in the trees, she says, "I'm going to try to forgive you." If she's like her brother in that regard, good luck.

She can choose to trust him at her back, or she can choose not to. But he is, at the end of the day, a cop and an ex-marine, with a gun and very good aim. And these woods are known to harbour wolves, amongst other things. "Si." His voice is pitched just loud enough to be audible, but no more. "Yo se esto." He knows this. He knows how close they were, how much Eli talked about his sister. "Harry and I are going to drive down to Vegas this weekend, you want to come? She's been asking to meet you." Next time. Maybe next time. Until Eli wound up taking two bullets to the chest and bleeding out on the street, and there was no next time.

Does Sutton know it was De la Vega who held the door for her at the hospital? The cop in full regalia she whispered thank you to and didn't quite meet his eyes.

"I don't need your forgiveness," is what he tells her as he pulls up behind the paramedic; nearly close enough to touch, and yet he doesn't. What she might need to forgive him for, he doesn't even ask. He does however inform her that, "I'll give you a ride home."

"I don't give a fuck whether you need it or not."

Sutton says that sharply, and with the exact intonation her brother used, probably many times, when he offered Ruiz a ride home from a bar after work, or dinner at a diner, or any number of things. Despite their attitudes, tendency toward physicality, endless pranking, and general sarcasm, the Suttons are a breed of people deeply grounded in community and reaching out to help those who need hand.

Which makes the living Sutton's self-isolation in a weird little town that much more out of character. "Yeah, fine." To the ride home. Such shitty manners. She crosses the road after a short trek to it, boots audible and quick across the pavement of the two-lanes. The parking lot is empty of all but the familiar truck. Every time they walk this path, they seem to be doing their best not to look at each other.

And like he had on the last trip they took through here, the man seems to accept this fact without argument; this misalignment of their stars. This woman who is necessarily part of his life, bound together by a dead man, though she might wish very much it were otherwise.

He says nothing further as they step off the trail and into the gravel lot, and past the bear-safe bins intended for park litter that people dump their household garbage in fairly regularly anyway. He trudges on ahead toward the driver's side of his truck and pops the locks, and swings inside to nudge the passenger door open. Cans of epoxy and weathercoating, and what looks like a planter pot are stacked onto the tiny excuse for a back seat. He'll wait, eyes forward, for Sutton to climb in, and then key the ignition and put the truck into gear.

Sutton's feelings on the matter are a mystery, though as she climbs into the truck, she glances into the backseat, pulls the door shut, and reaches for her seatbelt. She walked off a lot of frustration earlier, but it just keeps coming for her like somebody's on a cosmic mission to drive her back down into a wine bottle. Once seated, she blows out a long breath, and presses her back into the upholstery, crossing her legs. She stares out the window for a while, and doesn't speak until after the truck's in gear. "How's your jaw?"

Sutton in general is a mystery to him. When she isn't drunk texting him about winemergencies. Though how she managed to accidentally send that to him of all people, is a bit of a mystery in itself.

He tugs his seatbelt on as he swings the truck out of the lot. And once they're on the highway, he reaches over to kill the radio, which was playing some sort of gospel-inspired rock with a catchy beat. Hands on the steering wheel then, eyes forward, he answers Sutton's question a good three and a half minutes after she asked it with, "Está bien. He tenido peores." He seems to remember the way to her house, as he doesn't ask for directions and appears to be following the right route.

Sometimes emojis go awry, ok.

There's a chance she sent that to perhaps two people before she got the one it was intended for, and none of those conversations went well (or at all), though only the one with Ruiz nearly ended in her setting her kitchen on fire. Luckily, she's trained for these things and scorch marks actually come off without too much effort so long as the paint doesn't have enough exposure to heat to bubble.

"Yeah, I've heard." Sutton's reply is short in coming once he finally answers her. Though she rarely responds in Spanish, it's quite clear from the ease with which she replies that she understands it very well. Elias was a hair from fluent, so there's a chance she is too.

She falls silent for a while, but isn't still. She reaches up to curl a strand of hair around her finger, curls it tightly, then lets it go. She does this a few times, seems to realize she's doing it, and drops her hand to her lap. She brushes her palms down her thighs and then goes still. "I apologize for bringing up your wife."

Young People Problems. Is what he'd probably call that, if she managed to get him drunk enough to admit it. In the absence of alcohol to loosen his tongue though, Sutton's got to deal with the cop's utter silence while he drives her home. And given a few of those questionable left turns and aggressive lane changes, alcohol is the last thing he needs right now.

"Mm," is his non-reply on the heels of her acknowledgement. Bright flashes of street light across his profile, and it picks out all the lines and the weariness and makes him seem every inch the man approaching fifty. He's probably already figured out that she understands his language, and it isn't commented on at the moment. The wife thing, though, gets a glance; the first one since they stared each other down in the woods. He meets her eyes for a moment, then rolls his jaw and looks back to the windshield as they turn onto her street. "Está bien," he says again, like a stuck record. And then, "Where should I drop you off?"

There's a good chance Sutton has some idea that might be he sentiment. He didn't know what most of her emojis meant, after all.

El diablo. For instance.

"You can pull through to the gate and wave this at the box." Sutton hands over a key card that grants gate access with proximity to the reader. She holds it scissored between index and middle finger, in the space between them. She nods to the lit entryway of Building A. "In front of the building is good."

It's possible he'll never forgive her for feeling the need to translate that to him. El fucking diablo, indeed.

The key card is plucked from Sutton's fingers as they pull up to the gate, and he rolls down his window enough to be able to lean out and swipe it a couple of times in front of the metal box with faded, nigh incomprehensible instructions detailed on the side. There's a click, and the gate opens, allowing him to pull through. He has to squint a little to find the nameplate for Building A; and then he overshoots it, and puts the truck in reverse with a softly muttered expletive in Spanish.

Eventually, they're sitting outside her building while the engine idles, and his hands rest at the top of the steering wheel. "You're sure you'll be all right?" The evening did start, after all, with her asking him what to do about liars. And while he's not entirely sure how much alcohol she's consumed, he's fairly certain it's somewhere in the realm of not an insignificant amount.

Sutton sits there for a moment. One can see her thinking about cracking on his driving after that overshoot and reverse right there. She does glances over. She watches him for a moment, even as they sit in front of her building where doorman, possibly Andre or Carson or Alexi or whoever, waits for her to approach so he may open and hold the door.

"No, I'm definitely not, but I will be. I don't have lot of choice, do I?"

Her alcohol consumption is definitely sitting in the range of not insignificant and is likely to go up once she's in the building again. "I hate it when I give my trust to someone and it blows up in my fucking face." The expletives exist there as punctuation rather than sharp points of vehemence. Casual f-bombs at their best. "And then I feel like an asshole for knowing it was a bad idea and doing it anyway."

"I have a bottle of wine to finish. It's... what it is."

He's oblivious to the doorman, and probably also to whatever uncharitable thoughts are going through Sutton's head in regards to his driving. He's said a lot of things tonight, not all of them kind. Not most of them, quite honestly. His hand lifts to scrape knuckles through the scruff at his cheek; the sound is sharp and bristly in the dark and quiet between them. Then he breathes a sigh as he turns the key in the ignition, and the truck shudders and goes still.

"Vamonos. I will walk you inside." He sounds resigned, but not upset. She's his good buddy's 'little' sister, after all. She's out here alone, and she thought to contact him of all people; it seems like the least he can do. Hand on his door, he pauses a moment before nudging it open and swinging out. The worst she can do is refuse. Or crack him across the jaw again. Or that.

She watches the man think on that. Sutton probably should have expected that when she didn't answer with a 'yes, I'm fine' really. She regards the man for a moment then nods, reaching for her door to push it open. She undoes her seatbelt and slips out, shoving the door behind her. She nods to the doorman as they approach, and he holds the door open for them both. She nods her thanks and makes her way in, through the lobby, and up to the elevator where the punches the button.

"Do you want a glass of wine or are you walking me to my door because of the exciting murder-in-the-building speculation?" She got the rundown on the events of that night from several different sources, apparently. "Everyone's nervous." She jabs the button again despite the fact that the elevator is on its way.

Ruiz's hands are jammed into his jacket's pockets as he trails Sutton to the door of her building. Andre or Carson or Alexei or whoever the hell he is, is given a tight smile. Probably the guy's seen him here recently, in an official capacity, on the night the cops showed up to secure that crime scene. Once they're inside, his voice somewhere off to her left. Low, tone somewhere between amused and irritated: "Siempre eres tan sarcástico, o esto es estrictamente para mi beneficio?"

Standing there waiting for the elevator to show up, he couldn't look more out of place in his faded Seattle PD tee shirt, ratty jeans and haphazardly laced hiking boots. His jacket has the ring of genuine biker leathers, though nobody's ever seen him ride one, and his dark eyes are furtive as he scans the adjoining hallways and points of egress. For what, who the fuck knows.

There's a moment before Sutton actually turns to look at Ruiz. She does so when the doors open, looking him in the eye. Her gaze sweeps down his body, and then she turns to move into the elevator. She hits the button for 5 and then moves to the back to lean against it, turning to face the doors from the inside. She crosses her arms and her legs at the ankles, tipped back. She stares at the Seattle PD logo on his tee.

"What do you think?"

Funny. Sutton walks around these halls in a faded Seattle FD shirt, paint-stained shorts, and no shoes. Probably anyone seeing Ruiz in the company of Sutton, who's ever seen her do a late-night snack machine run, would smirk to see them together. "It's going to take me a while to get used to you."

Sutton's scrutiny, however brief and tinged with.. annoyance? Resignation? Her scrutiny is suffered by the older cop with a patience usually attributed to mangy old dogs who've stopped giving a fuck. Eyes on the brunette, he trails her inside the elevator after a beat, and takes up a position perpendicular to the woman. Hands still shoved into his jacket. Eyes on her, then eyes on the floor display above the doors as they close. He starts to say something, either in response to her continued snark, or the comment halfway approaching actual conversation. He opens his mouth, and then closes it. And slouches there instead, and looks anywhere but her face.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

"I'm not going anywhere," is what finally comes out, right before the doors open to the 5th floor. He puts his arm across it, and waits for Sutton to go first.

There's a smirk from Sutton, and she moves to make her way out of the elevator after shoving off the wall. A closer look at her in the light would reveal some debris on her jeans, a grass stain on one knee, and some dirt on the ass like she either took a few falls out there, or wasn't too careful about where she sat down. Given the terrain at night, maybe a little of both. She seems fine, and no longer makes an effort to favor her back. "That's..." Good, bad? She doesn't finish the sentence.

There are a couple of tiny twigs in her hair.

She glances over at Ruiz, again taking in his profile, like she's trying to remember if she's seen him before. She must have, at some point, given their joint years of service to the city of Seattle. Once out in the corridor, she turns toward her apartment, and takes the few doors down until she arrives at 503. "Shoes off inside the door if you're coming in." She opens the door and steps inside, holding it open.

Her apartment is, as all the apartments on this floor, spacious, furnished with dove-grey furniture, a wide couch in front of a coffee table in the middle of with room with some armchairs in a seating nook, the large sliding glass door to the balcony beyond. There's a pile of boxes in one corner, clearly not yet moved all the way in. The floors are hardwood. The walls a cool white (recently repainted). Baskets of freshly folded laundry rest on either side of the couch. On the coffee table is a man's jacket, off the rack, and a pile of strange items beside it.

He was a little younger, depending on when their paths crossed. A little fresher off the loss of his family. Drowning a little more in random sex with strangers. He wore his hair a little shorter, and his beard a little longer.

And Sutton was a whole lot blonder.

Shoes off if he's coming in. He pauses a moment like he might refuse. Bid her good night, his duty as his buddy's sister's guardian fulfilled with the walk to her apartment door. But he does come in, and he does take his shoes off. One and then the other, the jacket stays put as his eyes rove over her place and catalogue the various accoutrements that make it hers. The pile of boxes, the folded-yet-not-put-away laundry. The man's jacket, and the pile of knick knacks. He shadows the younger woman a tight smile, and then looks toward her hair for some reason.

The attempt at warmth is gone by the time he tells her, "I'm sorry for all of this. I had meant to say something sooner. Or not at all."

Sutton crouches a few steps inside the door to unlace and then kick off her shoes. She pulls off her jacket, hanging the latter at the hooks by the door. Her GHFD jacket hangs there too. She turns around to look at Ruiz, now standing there in her GHFD tee and her cargo pants she wears on duty. She came home and didn't even change after work. "You're feeling out of place right now. I get that."

"You did a thing you're maybe not proud of. I get that too."

"I would have never forgiven you if you didn't say and I found out." How would she find out? Who knows. Does not matter. "The only reason I do now it because..." She shakes her head, hands coming up to almost shoulder height, palms up. "Fuck. I guess Eli liked you. So... you're probably not a total shithead." She turns toward the kitchen. "World needs more not-shitheads."

Halfway to the kitchen, she asks, "Tea?"

He'll tell her later about the twigs in her hair. Maybe. If he lasts that long in one piece. For the time being, the Mexican is spending more time ogling apartment than paramedic; though ogling it in the way someone very paranoid does. Like he's looking for ways that someone might get in. Someone uninvited. The deadbolt is turned in the door, should Sutton have neglected to do so, and he eventually prowls out of the entryway and into the apartment proper; the bigger man makes barely a sound, owing to socked feet on hardwood. "Black, if you have it." Yes, at this time of night. Either he shuns sleep, or has a duty shift to get to in a few hours.

"I don't think that he always liked me," is offered as he takes a lean against the counter, hands still jammed in his jacket's pockets. Eyes tracing the line of Sutton's shoulders as she hunts for tea. "But we worked well together. And we understood one another." He's about to say more, when another voice disrupts his train of thought. A voice he's far too familiar with, and it draws his eyes, slowly. His profile, and then a turn of his head until they're face to face, gazing at each other across the living area. There's no question at all that he sees him.

What the fuck, indeed.

A good ten, twenty seconds pass before the captain has the wherewithall to utter, softly, "Eli."

"Course I do." Sutton's reply is brief. She picks up the kettle and runs it under the filtered water tap, the tucks it into its cradle and flicks the lever for it to heat. It takes about two minutes for two cups. She sorts through a nearby tea basket and comes up with two bags of double-strength chai, then tiptoes to grab down some mugs from the cabinet. There's a turn of her wrist to check the time, which would be late, and then she fishes a small carton of cream out of the fridge. Seems she's going to have some tea as well.

"No, you're right. He didn't." Her reply comes without hesitation. "He thought you were an ass." Thump goes the cabinet door. "You must grow on people." Sugar coat it a little why don't you, Sutton.

The paramedic reacts not at all to the tirade, like she didn't even hear it.

There's a long moment of industrious silence from her. "What?"

Sutton's speaking to him, but her voice has become background noise. Like sound heard through a thick pane of glass; distant, the details smudged, a burble of sound more than words. His eyes leave Elias for as long as it takes to slide over his sister, slow. Like he's watching her through a dream. Putting the water on to boil, checking the time, fetching the cream. And she suddenly seems so small and vulnerable. And so very, very familiar. How could this have not hit him immediately? The two of them side by side..

"You look like shit." It's in response to Sutton's query, or it's in response to Eli's shade. Because they both know who's the bigger ass, when he puts his mind to it. The captain's looking right at his ex-partner when he says it, though he could mean Sutton, with the twigs in her hair and grass stains on her knees. "If you want to wash up. I'll wait out here." His voice is quiet, a little gravel around the edges.

There's a lengthy pause from Sutton in the kitchen. She glances over. "What?" Did he just say what she thinks he just said? "Well fuck you very much." She doesn't say that with much venom, so much as a response that's colorful and half a warning. Thin ice, bud, sayeth the tone. "You can pour your own damn water." Kettle's not ready yet.

She reaches up to pull her hair off of her neck, and promptly finds at least two small twigs. "Goddamn it." She isn't usually this potty mouthed. Or is she? It's strange, with the two of them in the same room, it's almost like hearing an echo, except Eli's voice is deeper. And usually much more accusatory. The woman strides across the apartment, grabbing two items off the top of the laundry as she goes, "Pour my water too. I like a four minute steep. Time it." Not a request.

Sutton disappears down the hall pulling off her tee as she goes, not seeming to care who sees her bra or her back. The hallway is lined with dozens of photo frames all the way down, almost floor to ceiling, hung in blond wood frames salon style. She hangs a right at the end of the hall, into the master bedroom, most likely. The door remains open.

Normally she probably would have told him to fuck off and carried on about her business, but there's something... that makes her feel like she needs to leave the room. Like it would be a good idea. Maybe she's starting to hear her brother a little more clearly in her subconscious.

He's familiar enough with that tone. He's used that tone, and it very rarely holds venom. By the time he's that upset, he's generally moved past words and onto more potent things. Pour my water too. He's familiar, too, with the bossiness and the demands. Not from her, but it seems to be a theme in his life lately. He doesn't argue it, probably because she doesn't argue his suggestion of a shower. He does, however, watch her go. Watches that tee shirt slide off her back and down her arms, and then pushes off the counter once the kettle starts to whistle.

"I think she has better taste than that." It's not a yes or a no, to the question of whether he's fucking her. And it isn't, strangely, self-deprecating. Ruiz pours the water into both cups with a soft tickle against porcelain, gives each tea bag a little dunk to saturate it properly, then lets his dark eyes rove back to his friend. "Ella esta sola. Ella esta a la deriva, y ella necesita un amigo." His tongue slides across his lower lip slowly. "She does not see you." Well no shit, Sherlock.

Muffled, from down the hall: "Jesus christ." Sutton must have finally got a good look in a well-lit mirror at the state of her hair, jeans, and a smear of mud dried to crusty dirt along her throat. She fell a few times out there in the mud.

Shortly, the shower turns on with a wwwshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Well. He did say she looked like shit. Though the jury's still out on precisely whom he was referring to there.

"You made yourself clear the first time." The first time being that rainy Wednesday, back in Seattle, when Sutton's plans for lunch fell through and the three of them were supposed to try out the new sandwich place on Pike. Ruiz got called in and had to bail, but not before making a comment about the 'smoking hot blonde' who'd just walked in. Stop looking at my sister, he'd said. Laughter from the older cop, coffee collected, ass checked out once more for good measure before he ducked out into the rain.

"Some Brit?" That gets his attention, while the commentary on Harry's taste for older men when drunk is either ignored completely or filed away in that rolodex of his. "Does he have a name?" Two minutes on the tea. He checks the expiration date on the carton of cream, and goes hunting for sugar as well. Strangely calm about carrying on a conversation with the ghost of his good friend. Maybe he's suffering from a different sort of denial.

Ruiz's head turns slightly toward the bedroom, which must have an attached bathroom, given that's the direction Sutton vanished in. He listens for a moment to make sure the water's still running, and at around four minutes, give or take a minute, he pulls out the teabags and drops them into a dish that takes a bit of time to rummage for. "Is he a liar, by any chance?" The question seems casual; the sentiment is not. His jaw is tight, and there's a tension in his big shoulders that Elias may be familiar with. He clearly gives a shit. About her.

"And what makes you think she'll fucking listen to me?" Cream added to Sutton's cup, sugar to his, he finally turns to regard his friend eye to eye again. "She only just found out tonight that I knew you. I do not think I am in her good books right now, mi amigo."

Three sugars. Ruiz's hand pauses, then returns to the carton of sugar. Three teasponsful are portioned into her cup, and at some point later.. much later. It's going to occur to him that he was taking orders from a dead man. The tea is stirred; hers, and then his, and the spoon tossed into the sink with a dull clank.

He looks back up at his friend. And he watches him for a long, long while after the shower's shut off. He's still watching him when his ex-partner looks back up and meets his eyes. Hazel to hazel, though the Mexican's are a muddier shade that tends toward either dark green or gunmetal grey depending on his mood, and the available light. Is he good? Is he drinking less? Sleeping more? Fucking less blondes he barely knows? "I'm thinking about retiring," is what he says. Who knows. Maybe because Eli's the one person who isn't going to try to talk him out of it, or be able to tell much of anyone else who matters.

There's more though. "Te he extrañado," is said quite softly, and with a slight crease between the older cop's brows. As if it hadn't quite occurred to him, prior to this moment, just how much.

"You know why." He knows why. Or he will, if he thinks about it for a hot second. 45 is way too goddamned old for this shit. And, "What's wrong with body shots off 25 year old blondes?" He's probably not joking. In fact, that flippant suggestion comes pretty close to being word for word with a request made one Friday night after a particularly shitty week of work. He tried to reform himself, he really did. Several times. But it was either girls or blow, and one of those was and is incompatible with his job. Ostensibly, anyway.

"We put up with each other's shit," he corrects Eli with a bit of a smile, eyes still on the tall, dark-haired young man who isn't really there, even as he hears Sutton rustling about in her bedroom. "And I'm not going anywhere." Which is exactly what he told the guy's sister about twenty minutes ago. He reaches for his cup, and he takes a sip.

Ruiz remembers that, too. The long procession of broken men that went through that revolving door of Eli's bed. Or coffee shop bathroom. Or.. "I know." Those two words are filled with emotion that's usually lacking in him. Emotion that most never have the opportunity to get so much as a glimpse of. They patrolled together for longer than most do, and they saw their share of shit. And started their share of fires. And it was glorious, except when it wasn't. Except when it was his friend lying on a street corner with two bullets in his chest, and Ruiz on a fucking domestic getting cursed at by a guy with bad tattoos and pants hanging down below his ass crack.

"250, if we are counting," corrects Javier, the rim of the cup brought to his lips again, and perhaps that's a smile hidden behind the sip he takes. The sadness is reflected in him, like a mirror.

There's another muffled sound from the bedroom, and then the slap of bare feet along the hardwood floors before Sutton steps into view down there, her hair wrapped up in a towel. She wears a plain grey tee, old, Seattle FD logo on the upper left chest, PARAMEDIC on the back. It clings to her lightly damp skin. She's clearly not wearing a bra, which has Eli huffing out a long-suffering sigh. Other than that, she wears a pair of dark blue shorts, short, showing off most of her toned, tanned legs.

Sutton walks out right past him and doesn't so much as glance toward Elias. The rich scent of spicy tea has permeated the apartment, and she makes her way into the kitchen, looking over at Ruiz briefly before she beelines for her cup, that is the cup not currently in his hand, and lifts it to take a sip. She was probably ready to make some comment about how she takes her tea, but, hm. Nope, she seems to like it. She sips again, and leans back against the counter.

"This is basically perfect. Have you been creeping on me in the break room?" That would be the PD break room, not the call center break room or the FD kitchen. She has boundary issues, and considering how often she creeps on their donut supply, knowing how she likes her tea wouldn't be all that hard for a cop. If they cared to pay enough attention to notice. "I had half the forest in my hair." No, she didn't. But it probably took a while to pick all the twigs out.

She's insufferable. She must know this. Ruiz certainly does, and if the other cops are being honest with themselves, they might have to admit it too. "How the fuck do you manage to put a negative spin on everything I do?" He's standing there, leaned against the counter with that slouch in his shoulders and squint in his eyes, as Sutton sashays back out and immediately starts sassing him over her tea. He sips, and then posits, "You need to get laid." More of an observation, really, than a positing. A suggestion. An order?

His eyes linger on the obvious lack of a bra going on there, for several beats longer than could be chalked up to idle curiosity, then flick to some point just past the woman's shoulder, and his expression hardens a notch. As if to say, don't.

"Unadulterated talent," comes Sutton's crisp reply, as she sips from the tea.

When he says she needs to get laid, she just sighs heavily. "Dude." She gestures with her tea, which is perhaps the wrong choice as it sloshes a bit onto the floor. Fuck that's hot. Sprinkles spatter her leg. She barely reacts. "I know. Not for fucking lack of trying." Poor, poor hot paramedic girl, living in a ridiculously expensive apartment. No sex for you. "Fuck. That was rude. What the fuck is wrong with you." Now she's verging on mad. Again. Nicely done, Ruiz.

"You come into my apartment. You drink my tea." She sucks in a breath through her nostrils. "And remind me that the only person taking off my panties is me. Thank you. Thank you very much." She salutes him with her cup. "Thanks." Sip.

"Talent is tying knots in cherry stems with your tongue," Ruiz points out somewhat acerbically, sipping his tea again. Still leaning against the counter. Her counter. Her apartment. Her tea. "Maybe you're seeing the wrong men." He sips again, not even a ripple across the surface of his deadpan expression. "Eres muy bienvenido." He lifts a big shoulder, and briefly examines the contents of his cup. "I think it might improve your mood. If you fucked someone. It isn't healthy to go too long without. And you seem wound up tighter than.." Tighter than what, Javier? He grunts something that's not quite audible.

"Who is the Brit?" is what he asks next. Because she's already pissed off, so how much worse can it get?

"I can do that too, ass." And lo, Sutton has gifted Ruiz with a new nickname, though, really, slightly used. There is no way he hasn't heard that one before, probably from another Sutton to boot. "I was only seeing two, and one disappeared, and the other... fuck, well he disappeared too." Twice, actually. She scowls into her tea, thinking about that. "Shut your trap, Tacos." Possibly the you're welcome pushed her a little far.

"Do not give me the dude logic about lack of sex being bad for my health. My body is fine. I have a vibrator." She gestures blandly toward the pile of boxes. "Somewhere in that... mess." None of the boxes are labeled. None. It's going to be a long summer the rate she's going unpacking. "Look, I — tighter than fucking what?"

Who's the Brit? "Who the fuck told you about —" She glances over toward the living room. The only thing on that table that suggests British are those two old ticket stubs on the table. She glances back. "The liar." Her jaw clenches briefly. "Why?"

Shut his trap? Tacos? That actually gets a grin out of the man. Like maybe he has heard that nickname before. That, or it just tickles him. "No," he makes a point of saying as he sets his cup down on the counter. That's right. No. Either Sutton's accustomed to dealing with pushovers, or she's just trying to see how much she can get away with, before he snaps.

"It is not dude logic. It is me making an observation that you seem very.. de maniático." He, on the other hand, appears to be the epitome of relaxed. How much of that is truth, well. For some reason, right as Sutton starts looking tense, he glances over her shoulder again like he expects to find someone.. or something there. Except there's nothing. And a little of the mirth fades out of his eyes.

A breath, eventually, and a glance back to the brunette. "We don't have to talk about it tonight." And then he asks, quite honestly, "Would you like me to leave?"

There's a long pause in which Sutton eyes Ruiz. "Did you just basically call me hysterical?" Her eyes narrow. She stares at him like that for a time, while his expression changes. "You know what, babe, there's about one good use I can think of for your mouth at this juncture." The woman pushes off the counter after another sip of her tea, which she then puts down behind her. "I can't take another round of disappointment this week."

"So." Sutton nods in the direction of the door. "Maybe you should go home and do whatever it is you do there. Before I lose my cool again."

He stares at her, incredulous, for a long while, on the heels of that accusation. He looks genuinely confused, as if he's uncertain how she's made this mental leap and how he came to be the recipient of such intense vexation. Then again, he can be an ass. Even without realising it.

"No. I did not." Call her hysterical. "De maniatico. Tense." There's no suggestion in his expression that he's playing her. He clearly did not mean what she thinks he meant. He also doesn't move from his lean against the counter. Muscle twitches in his shoulders, in his jaw, but he doesn't make to leave with his tail between his legs. Not yet.

"So." He mimics her phrasing. "Let me try again. Would you like me to stay with you the night? Or would you like for me to leave?" Stay with you the night, he says in his odd phrasing. Imprecise. It could mean a variety of things, or nothing at all.

Sutton tips back against the counter in the wake of something he says. Does she realize she had the wrong translation of that word? Is she mollified? Again, her eyes give little away there, although she does seem to be appraising the man again. She reaches behind her for her tea, picking it up by the rim of the cup. She transfers it to her other hand, drinking left-handed, holding it by the handle.

She takes a couple of sips of tea in silence. "Why would you want to stay here?" Sutton is capable of re-assessing even in the wake of whatever that was a moment ago, even considering the ease Ruiz seems to have adopted in her kitchen.

He's quiet again on the heels of her words, at the edges of her silence. Mollified or not, he watches her appraise him with the air of a man not unaccustomed to such. No shrinking back, no standing down. He waits, and then he speaks his truth with an odd tenderness: "Because I care for you." Because, knowing what he knows now makes it an awful lot harder to simply shrug his shoulders and turn his back on her. Because, maybe. Just maybe. He made a promise once upon a time. One he never thought he'd have to keep.

His hands are shoved back into the pockets of that battered leather jacket, and he watches the brunette with her tea. And he waits.

Sutton gazes out into the living room, like she's thinking about something she didn't consider before. Ruiz has had weeks to let it sink in that she's his ex-partner's sister. She only just found out he worked with Eli, and the landscape is changing pretty rapidly, during an already emotional weekend. She has a lot to think about, not the least of which is what to do with the jacket on the coffee table and and half a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge. She rips a paper towel off a roll, and finally bends to mop up her earlier spill.

"I have a lot of anger that's unresolved and I really want to start a fight with you." Sutton can use her words. "And I'm not really sure why." Except that he knew Eli, he's a former Seattle cop, and she can't fucking fight with her brother. "I have a guest room if it'll make you feel better to sleep nearby, but I am a grown ass woman and I have a formidable collection of knives. I'm not worried about the murderer." She should be, but she isn't. "If that's... the reason."

"I would not go so far as to say I am not worried about the murderer." Because he's a cop. And maybe he knows a little more about this case than Sutton does. A little more than he wants to. "But that isn't why I'm offering to stay." He pushes off the counter finally, and out of his lazy lean. His cup is collected, contents finished off. "If you want to fight. We can fight." She's clearly capable of holding her own in a fight, and he's a trained marine, if an old one. With a vicious, vicious temper if the rumours are true.

"Later, though, preferably. I've got a press conference to do tomorrow afternoon, and then a meet and greet with the residents of your lovely little building." Which clearly fills him with delight, given the flat expression on his face. "I will take the guest room. We can talk more in the morning." Or stare at each other awkwardly over coffee. Or, if she's really lucky, he might just be gone by the time she wakes up.

He definitely knows more than she does about the murder, that's for sure. If she knew about the extra weird shit in this town, she'd probably have trouble sleeping. "Okay." She responds to all of that with one word. "The one bruise on your jaw is probably enough. Maybe the beard will cover it." Scuffy as it is. She doesn't say that last part. "Right." The building meeting. Hm. "Well." Sutton finishes most of her tea, then dumps the rest down the sink. She gives her mug a brief rinse, opens the cabinet, and pulls out fresh, long-stemmed wine glass.

"Fresh linens in the en-suite along with towels. Use all the hot water you want." She opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of wine, cork obviously removed once and replaced. It's only about half full. "I'm going to go finish this in my bed. If you want, there's a selection of shit I won't drink under the sink." Half a bottle of tequila, half a bottle of whiskey, and a full bottle of kahlua. She keeps the booze next to the dishwasher tabs. "If you snore and I can hear you across the hall, I will come in and smother you with a pillow."

It's probably not going to cover it; the thing's already turning funny colours, and his fingertips are touched to it in recollection of that slug she gave him. Wouldn't be the first time a Sutton clocked him in the jaw. Nor the second or third. Probably won't be the last, either.

The round two bottle of wine is watched for a moment, then the woman's eyes. Like he's looking for something there, though damned if it's obvious what. "Bueno," he murmurs, lips twitching slightly at the mention of shit she won't drink under the sink. She may not drink it, but odds are, he will. "Dulces sueños, Sutton." He'll wait until she's retreated to her room before raiding her supply of tequila. Fortunately for her, he doesn't snore. But he does drool.

The woman watches right back, her gaze on Ruiz for a long moment. And then she turns, and drags her gaze away a moment later. She's thinking something, but the hell if she's saying it. Unless it's, "I sleep with my balcony door open. Blanket yourself accordingly."

Sutton's answer is to raise her bottle of wine as she walks away, like a torch salute in some kind of drinky relay. Off she goes down the hall, the hall lined with family photos from almost the last 3 decades, most of them with her and Elias, or them with their parents, from the cradle to several photos taken in the second half of last year. In all of them, they look so very happy. (Except the ones where one of them is bleeding and the other looks guilty/gleeful.)

Sutton drools too. NBD.