shine like gold

grimacing as he chanced a look at the couch, trying to judge its leg’s sturdiness, sasha bit down on the inside of his cheek - nope. it wasn’t that they couldn’t afford a new couch, but a broken one would be ammo for a certain blonde to use against them when she came by to spoil her granddaughter.

first thought? no, your brother can’t afford to lose any more brain cells, he’s killed enough of them as it is … but he kept his mouth shut instead. all too aware that the waters were still a little too choppy to rock the boat. things were going to be shit enough to deal with without him cracking off twisted jokes at each turn.

leaning over her shoulder, sasha plucked the cuffs from charlee’s hands, dipping his head to press a kiss to the top of her head,

 ’ let him sleep it off — go talk to your folks, if he wakes up, i’ve got it covered, how does that sound? ’

‘ that sounds like you love me a lot and i owe you big time. ’ charlee gives up the cuffs without a fight and grabs her keys instead. 

she’s going through the mental math, trying to determine if it’s worth it to call andrei and will, trying to remember the last time the three of the them were even in the same room together. they won’t come. not with any great speed, anyway. but they still deserve the phone call. she can make the calls from the road, that way she’s warmed up by the time she has to talk it through with her parents. 

‘ i’ll take sophie to yelena’s on the way to my parents’. ’

’ look at my family charlee - of course it’s deeply twisted. ’

at least she was smiling again, even if it had almost earned him a thump to the arm - a bit of brevity never did anyone any harm, and given the shitstorm she now had to deal with thanks to brother dearest, she definitely deserved to laugh before the storm hit. if need be, he’d take a few hours off or put in for a holiday so she didn’t have to be break the news to her folks alone. 

letting go off the cuffs when she swiped them, sasha couldn’t quite get a handle on his curiosity as he looked between the slumbering mass on the couch, to where charlee stood with the cuffs dangling from her hand … unless?

’ — are you seriously cuffing him to the couch? ’

oh, sophie was definitely sleeping at her grandparents’ place tonight.

given their current situation, deeply twisted was probably the best she could ask for. anyone else would have bolted well before this point. instead, here he is cracking jokes. she’s well-practiced in the laugh so you don’t cry approach, but laugh to avoid attempted murder approach is a new one. which is actually a little surprising when you consider their history. 

god help sophie when she was old enough to really understand what she had been born into. 

‘ no...i don’t think that would stop him. i think we would just end up with a broken couch. ’ and if she’s being honest, her brother is nothing if not a bull in a china shop. he had done less damage being dragged half-conscious through the living room than if he had walked through on his own and there’s still one corner of the coffee table that will never be the same. 

did carol and phil know how bad this was getting? of course not … would he tell his father if roman were in the same position? he wanted to say yes, but sasha knew if his brother asked him not to, then he wouldn’t. he’d try his best to try and dig his brother out of a hole without dragging others in on it. he try to fix it between them, to save gossip and embarrassment. but stevie wasn’t his brother, and this wasn’t just a bump in the road.

’ i think you need to talk to your dad, charlee. your mom too - it’s not just on your shoulders to fix. i can talk to him if you want? ’

 as for her other question, sasha looked up over charlee’s head to the slumbering mass that had commandeered his couch, ’ oh, he’ll stick around. ’ if not, sasha would traipse the streets until he found his dear brother-in-law. or if worse came to worse, go ask his mother to tug on one of the threads of her web to find him. that could be plan z.

quirking a brow at her question, sasha leaned back, already knowing he was going to hell, but the words were there before he even managed to get the cuffs off his belt,

 ’ — babe, they’re not the fluffy ones though? ’

her parents...how much did they know? even less than she does, she thinks, because her mother wouldn’t have let it get to this point. they tried hard to keep it under wraps when she and her brothers were growing up, but she has some idea of carol’s own struggles with addiction. if they knew, they would have done something already, right?

and if they didn’t, how would stevie react to her letting the cat out of the bag? they had kept each others’ secrets for decades and the majority of them would go to the grave. the difference this time being that this secret might take him to the grave a whole lot faster. 

‘ i’ll call them. i just want to have some kind of a plan before i bring them into it. ’ hopefully, it would minimize the arguing and give her something to fall back on during the disappointed silences. and if it lets her stall a little so stevie’s awake to take some of the heat, well then that sounds like payback for drooling on her couch. ‘ he’s probably too far gone for a scared straight experience, so there goes plan a... ’

her apology had a nugget of guilt settling in his chest in a heartbeat - wasn’t her fuck up to apologise for. she hadn’t called him up and put the idea of crashing on the couch in his head, sure she hadn’t turned him away neither, but sasha knew he probably would have done the same thing in her place. and that was what frustrated him more than anything - it wasn’t the first time stevie had pulled this shit, and it wouldn’t be the last unless something drastic changed. how many stories like this found their end in the station? a midnight-knock on the door with the worst news possible … because that’s exactly where this was going.

’ he can’t keep this up char. ’  looking down to where she had his wrist caught, sasha bit down on the inside of his cheek and carefully extricated his wrist from her grasp, ’ sophie’s getting older … it’s not okay for her to think this is okay. ’ he had a hold of her wrist this time, voice losing its edge when he pointed back in to where stevie was passed out on the couch.

’ i know you just want to help him, but help for him right now is rehab - it’s not fair on you either. ’

andrei came and went as the wind blew, will was firmly planted in d.c. and could dodge calls better than anyone she had ever seen if he was inclined to. but stevie was always around, for better or worse. she loves the better, doesn’t even always mind the slightly bad because it’s where they spent a lot of time growing up. it’s the worse that has her worried. this could blow back on all of them. it seems like sophie picks up more from them every day. what would she pick up from stevie? if his parole officer made the right connections, it could get sasha in deep shit. 

and how long before it beat even him? would it really be protecting him if she just made it easier for him to keep going like this? she knows the answer--has known for longer than she wants to admit. it still scares the shit out of her. 

‘ i know. ’ her free hand rises to rub at her eyes. ‘ so, what do i do from here? throw him in the back of my car and put him in some clinic before he’s sober enough to fight it, or wait it out and hope he’s willing to stick around to have the conversation?”

he wasn’t sure what he was more pissed off about - the fact that he wasn’t getting a clear answer, or the fact that he now had to go eat his words and tell his mother that she’d been right all along.

the second one. definitely the latter … raking a hand over his face, sasha pinched the bridge of his nose to try and ward off the starts of a migraine; if he’d wanted to deal with passed out drug addicts, he would have stayed in work. but that kind of comment would make him the bad person in this tug of war. 

’ and how’s isabel going to drag his sorry ass out of here? ’ he’d struggle to lift stevie … drag, no problem there, but this wasn’t fair on isabel either. she’d apologise on his behalf and sasha didn’t want that. blowing out a breath, he let his hands swing loose and wide, turning on the spot to shoot the oblivious lump on his couch a glare before turning back to charlee,

 ’ you call isabel, tell her he can sleep it off here. i’ll call yelena and ask her to pick up sophie … and he’s getting a bucket of water over his head as a wake up call.’

it’s the hand to the face that immediately telegraphs the message that a mistake has been made. she might be fooling herself about how bad this was, about how bad stevie had gotten, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out and a cop would spot it a mile out. no amount of sibling solidarity was going to smooth this over. and it’s not like he’s wrong. 

okay, his bad on that one - stevie, not andrei. still meant the same questions were in play. why was he here, how long was he here for, did he cause shit somewhere? oh wow, her answer didn’t fill him with ease neither. shifting his weight from one foot to the other, sasha folded his arms across his chest, he shook his head a little, trying to rid himself of that little voice that tried to tell him that maybe yelena had been right …

’ if you wanted me to ignore the whole list of wrong you just said - you should have started with sex, not food, ’ a smile across his face that was too sweet to be wholesome and he side-stepped to block her attempt to go around him,

 ’ charlee - kicked out or got lost? there’s a whole sea of questions between those two options, but it’s the whole not coherent thing that’s making me think maybe i should see if sophie wants to sleep at her grandparents. ’

‘ now you tell me. ’ charlee laughs despite herself, rocking on her heels when he steps in front of her. god, there should be an extra strength painkiller specifically for explaining your family’s actions. 

           ‘ sophie’s fine. ’ frustration turns her tone sharper than she means, making her wince. it’s a fair question and if she wasn’t so irritated at her own lack of answers, it probably wouldn’t bother her. ‘ he isn’t staying. he told me when i brought him in that isabel would come get him. ’ and then he had promptly passed out, leaving her to wrestle his limp form the rest of the way to the couch.

andrei. leaning forward onto the balls of his feet, sasha craned his neck to peer into the living room … okay. well, that sounded like half a story if ever he’d heard one.

‘ and why, pre tell, would he be sleeping on the sidewalk and not in his own place? don’t get me wrong, he’s welcome - i just need to know if he’s in trouble or not. ’

     yikes. ' ok, i think you’re imagining the wrong brother. it’s stevie, so he’s here because he either got kicked out of wherever he was staying or he got lost. as far as i know, he isn’t in anymore trouble than the obvious...but he hasn’t exactly been coherent. ’

      they really are so fucking alike. 

( kody is almost six and his favourite thing is her falling asleep on the couch with him, some stupid animal show on mute in the background and ellie kissing them both goodnight. he likes to know she’s really real. that she exists and she isn’t going anywhere. that they really did figure it out and they really did have a precious little girl. )  

        ❛  totally did that too.   ❜   he says with a smile, nodding in shared anxiousness.     ❛  it’ll go away then, is what i’m taking away from that. ellie says i worry too much but. y’know, how could i not?  ❜   

          ‘ it’ll go away. ’ it’s a reassurance meant for both of them. she doesn’t clarify that some aspects linger for her, or that it’s a slow process. even though she doesn’t check on her daughter every night anymore, she still catches herself wanting to hold on tighter than necessary. that too has gotten better and she thinks sasha is good for her. he doesn’t act like it all might blow up any moment so it makes it feel more real. more concrete. 

   ❛  i keep waiting for it to disappear. for something to go wrong, or for me to mess it up again.  ❜        he drops his voice, keeps it between them closely because… well. they’re so much more alike than anybody really pays attention to; she hid it better - he helped her hide it, sometimes - but there are moments where their lives have overlapped in uncomfortable ways, in places you wouldn’t expect siblings to find common ground. does this kind of thing come by osmosis? why did it skip andrei and will? were they just harbouring different demons? 

( because it’s always been charlee and stevie. they’ve always been the weak links in the chain. )

         ❛  do you feel that way, too?  ❜   

       before stevie had really hit his stride, she had been the problem child. always on the verge of trouble and absolutely unrepentant. her guilt hadn’t kicked in until much later, when she had stayed away from home close to three months just to save herself from explaining a broken wrist. for a long time, it felt like mistakes were how the big decisions in her life got made. so having things level out? it was like waking up every morning waiting for the big one. 

         ❛  for real, though, i do not envy you. also isn’t it super weird that your mother in law is my wife’s step-grandmother? that’s fucking weird, right?  ❜     oh god it makes his head hurt just to think about it too much.         ❛  this is… not what i expected. you know? i just. i thought i’d be dead by now. instead, i’ve got a kid and a life and ellie and it’s just.  ❜    

      ❛  thank god.  ❜     he clinks his glass against hers and laughs when kody falls over a plantpot, ellie yelling from the barbecue to walk it off, sweetie!     ❛  i’m glad you’re not running off to russia to hunt the mob anymore, gotta admit.  ❜ 

      he points deliberately at the three girls running wild through a sprinkler system roman has helped sasha set up.       ❛  that happened. you and ridley jumped ahead of all of us and we all god super responsible. even yelena is chilled out.  ❜     holds up his glass of lemonade and orange juice.          ❛  sober happened. such a boner killer, man.  ❜    (except he smiles when he says it.)

           ❛  ow!  ❜     total exaggeration, he hasn’t been really hurt in years. but he makes a show and hopes she feels bad, even going to far as to slap her back playfully.     ❛  you know, looking at those two almost makes me nostalgic for the ragers we used to throw. i miss college charlee.  ❜