navarro

Jace shouldn’t even be awake right now; or he should at least be bedding down for a good eight hours, not waking up from…six, if he’s lucky. But he’s operating on a diurnal schedule for Rose, and he’s decided it’s whatever if his sleep pattern suffers for it. 

Ugh, why does she need to be right about that? Why can’t she give him a black-and-white answer so he doesn’t have to figure this out for himself? He’s terrible at figuring things out for himself. 

It must be all the pot she smokes, imbues her with infinite wisdom and cryptic advice–he needs to get on her level, and maybe he’ll understand it. 

“Thanks for that,” a long, drawn out sigh, “but would you be mad, if you were me? I feel like I can’t…trust him? Like what else has he just never thought I needed to know?”

Heavy talk for like ten am, but it hurts like nothing else. And he’s never been more grateful for Rose’s steady, gentle presence in his life. 

“I’m sorry. Forget it. Can you hand me my coffee?”

Rose isn’t quite ready to forget it.  He asked a question, and he deserves an answer for it.  That being said, she has to eat half of her sandwich before she’s ready to answer.  During the thinking process, she goes ahead and hands him his coffee.   

“I think I’d be a little mad, I guess.  I know it’s a big thing, but...” She trails off, looking at Jace carefully now, patting his knee.  “But, you know, I remember things that you don’t.  And I remember some things about you sometimes, but I don’t always tell you.  And it’s not because I don’t love you, right?  It’s just sometimes I don’t think you’d want to know, or I don’t think it’s my place to tell you.  Or it might be something that could upset you.  I think this is a big enough deal that he should have told you, yeah, but --- I don’t know.  Maybe I get why he wouldn’t have.”

Jace wakes up very slowly and unwillingly, feeling every stiff joint when he turns over to look at her. Rose’s couch is possibly one of the worst places he’s ever slept, and now every joint, muscle, and bone in his body regrets not opting for the floor instead. But at least he slept, sort of. 

“This breakfast that you’ve made smells delicious,” greasy food doesn’t cure sadness, but it’s a start, “Thanks.”

He takes a few mournful bites of his McMuffin, still practically molded to the couch and thinking unhelpfully about how pathetic his life is. Can’t even sleep alone in his apartment where he pays rent. 

“Tell me I shouldn’t call him today.”

Rose sits down on the floor in front of the couch, leaning her head on Jace’s leg as she hands him his coffee while working through a truly impressive mouthful of hashbrowns.  She rubs her eyes now; waking up at five thirty in the morning for no reason means that now she’s fucking exhausted.  Thank God she has the day off.  

For a few seconds, she just chews slower so she doesn’t have to answer Jace right away.  She loves her cousin more than just about anything in the whole damn world, but she can’t really relate to this problem.  Personally, she thinks that if she loved someone the way Jace loves Ash, she’d have already called them.  But the flip side is that because she doesn’t love anyone like Jace, she can’t get her feelings hurt quite the same way.  

Leo hears the knock from her parents’ bedroom, where she’s poring over some old legal documents–in vain, she’s coming to realize, because her parents remain exactly as boring and legitimate in her findings as she’s always known them to be. Two high-profile psychiatrists with old family money, hiking on the weekends and bi-weekly charitable donations. There’s a framed picture of them hugging a chimpanzee in a button-up, for crying out loud. 

Why were they killed? Mountain lions are solitary, with a mediocre sense of smell; if her birth parents had any enemies, she doubts they’d know where to look for her, if they even knew about her at all. And she’s no detective, so that’s where her trail of suspicion ends. 

But the knock does nothing to ease her, makes her pulse jump for just a moment. It’s like a phone call when you’re watching a horror movie, alone. 

It’s the knowledge that there are very few asses she can’t kick allowing her to pad down the stairs, shamelessly still in what passes for pajamas: an over-sized t-shirt she stole from the laundromat, plaid boxers from god knows where. 

“Rosie, hey–”

It should be weird, but Leo doesn’t care. Rose is always welcome, especially after that wild time they had at the bar. The boys really did grow up nicely, even though her plans to go home with both of them fizzled out. 

“Of course, I was just–doing nothing. What’s up?”

Well...well, shucks.  God, she’s got a nice smile.  Rose clears her throat and goes ahead and invites herself into the house.  It’s still cold in the evenings, and she’s not particularly well dressed for the weather.  Besides, it’s not like she’s good at normal social behavior on any given day.  

“I know I’m probably --- like, way overstepping my boundaries here, but...” She gives a little hiss to Luna when the snake squirms where she’s wrapped up around her right arm.  Luna knows Rose isn’t just going to put her down to let her roam a strange house.   “Sorry.  You mentioned what happened to your parents, and I thought it sounded weird, so I started looking into it.  And obviously I ran into a lot of the same roadblocks I’m gonna guess the police did.”

rose jimmies open the door to her own apartment again, eyeing where jace is still asleep on her couch.  she puts down the two very large coffees on her counter and reaches into the paper bag.   she pulls out a wrapped egg mcmuffin (he doesn’t deserve the sausage one yet) and lobs it directly at his head.

     “ wake up, i made breakfast. ”  

rose has been trying to keep a respectful distance while she looks into this thing.  it doesn’t seem fair to burden leo with an extra weird investigation into the murder of her own parents.  plus, rose really is bad at talking to leo.  when she’s sober, at least.  

but the fact of the matter is, rose has hit a dead end that she can  think of only one way to get past.  unfortunately it’s going to require leo’s presence and probably a really long-winded explanation.  in the end, leo might just call her nosy and slam the door in her face.  it wouldn’t be out of line.

“Seriously, you should own that place by now. It’s like–what the fuck? You’ve been there a billion years.” 

The patented Navarro charm really comes in handy when you work in the service industry and hate everyone–and then you can just come home and bitch about it with alcohol. They do the family name proud.

Jace snags the bottle from her and takes a healthy swig or two–it’s red wine, practically a vegetable, so it’s fine. 

“But they will. Isn’t the daughter in love with you or something?”

    rose takes the bottle back insistently, drinking deeply.   “ i don’t want to own that place?  you’ve eaten there; that is not going to be my legacy.  when i start my own restaurant, i’m going to need you to be the poster child.   with your beautiful bone structure, ” she adds, tipsy and affectionate.  

“Good to know. I’ll have to be on the lookout for him.”

Poor, poor girl. Leo really shouldn’t be teasing her like this, but she almost can’t help it when Rose’s eyes get all wide, with that hint of pink in her cheeks. Fucking adorable. It’s why she set her sights on her in the first place, way back when. 

“Nah, I’m good. You do you.”

She can’t help but think it’s kind of weird, though, that the Espinosas deaths aren’t the talk of the town. Fairly wealthy pillars of the community and what not, but maybe it’s just that enough bizarre shit happens around these parts that something as banal as a presumed ‘animal attack’ gets swept under the rug. 

Whatever. She wasn’t close to her adopted parents, obviously, but she’s going to look into it. It definitely was not an animal attack, and they didn’t deserve to get mixed up in her bullshit.

Rose makes a quick resolution to look into the death Pretty Lady’s parents, because she hasn’t been doing impressive, witchy things lately.  Maybe there’s some Scooby-Dooing to be done, or maybe Ash would know something about it.  Weird animal attacks are more in his purview than hers.  Though her thoughts do flicker, shamefully, to Ciaran for a moment.  He’s been known to do some eviscerating, and while she trusts that he has good reason behind what he does, she hopes no one gave him reason for this.  

God, does she know too many people that could hypothetically be involved in animal attacks?  What counts as too many?

She makes a quick path back to the kitchen, starting up the coffee machine while she shoots a quick text to Jace 

   [ text ; hyacinth ] 911 !!!!!     [ text ; hyacinth ] WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE GIRL WE ALL MADE OUT W/ IN HS?

With that nonsense sent, she gets a glass of water for Pretty Lady while she’s in the kitchen and quickly puts in an order from table ninety three, pops a french fry in her mouth, and waits for about thirty more seconds before her phone buzzes.  Leona.  She ignores the questions that come with the text for now, heading back to the booth with the water.

     “ Here. ”  And maybe because she’s feeling bad for the bitchy-friendly thing she pulled on a girl who’s parents have just been killed, she clears her throat.  

She absolutely cannot believe this. Of course Rose wouldn’t understand, because Rose was raised in a normal family unit ( as far as she knows ) and had ( has? ) that close group of friends, but–Leo was probably closer to her than Leo has ever been to anybody else in Leo’s fucked up, weird life. 

At least, she fooled around with her more times than she’s ever fooled around with anybody else, which is basically the same thing. You can really see where two decades of therapy and close psychoanalysis have paid off, right? 

And Rose probably doesn’t even remember her name. Ha! 

“Oh, honey, I’ve been just peachy. My parents died, did you hear? Freak animal attack.”

Okay, she needs a glass of water or something so she can maybe pretend she has a mixed drink in her hands after that thoughtless oversharing. 

“What about you? Hot cousin still hot?”

Rose’s eyes go wide, and she mentally kicks herself for not reading a paper or watching the news ever.  God, she’s so fucking disconnected it’s embarrassing.  “ I didn’t hear, ” she says unnecessarily, chewing at the nail of her thumb in her embarrassment.  Rose wants to crawl under a table and die right this very minute.  

“ I’m really sorry about that. ”  Rose makes a little bit of a face when Pretty Rude Lady From Her Past mentions Jace.  

    “ uh --- objectively?  probably hotter, i guess.  you know, being a post-puberty adult and everything. ”

she stands up now, embarrassed and flustered and feeling a little bit guilty.