seas_open | Entries tagged with les

Whatever is responsible for this, April doesn't notice when it happens.

She and Caden have been back in town for a few days now and she knows he'll need to go back again in the next little while, but she plans on staying here. Not because she hadn't enjoyed her time in California, but given how much she's banked on Coop's generosity when it comes to her job -- the first legitimate job she's ever had and currently her only source of income -- she really thinks it's a good idea she stay and actually work a little.

She's unpacked, she's settled back in her apartment, and she spends a few days just settling back into town. It's a strange thing to feel, settled in any way, but she does. And she isn't entirely sure what she thinks of it, whether she likes it or hates it, but she's allowing herself to exist in this state, to give it a chance instead of rebuffing it as soon as she feels something out of the ordinary.

Whenever she uses her powers in Siren Cove, she does it almost without thinking. There are times she uses them to get what she wants, times when she's irritated and makes someone do something for her, but none of it is truly harmful in any way. Though it seems someone disagrees.

She's in a coffee shop, she's in a hurry, and she needs to get to the front of the line quickly, so she taps the guy in front of her on the shoulder, gives him a smile and asks him in a gentle, melodic voice if he'd mind letting her go ahead of him. In response he only rolls his eyes and turns away from her.

For the rest of the day she tries it on everyone she meets. She asks people easy favours, she suggests things for them to do, and while some people help her just out of the kindness of their heart, most just ignore her suggestions, and that's never happened to her before. She has never met anyone immune to her powers.

By the end of the day she's so furious she's trembling and she stands near the boardwalk, unsure of what to do or where to go. She needs to see Caden, she needs to tell him something is wrong, but she needs to see her father, too. Maybe he'll be able to track down whoever is responsible for this.

Staring out at the ocean, her jaw clenched tight enough to hurt, April finds the only thing she wants to do is scream.

Her ankle still hurts.

That's the first thing April registers when she opens her eyes in her bed at home and she winces a little, throwing back the covers to look at it. It's still swollen and she can't put much weight on it, but she gets up anyway and limps to the bathroom where she brushes her hair, washes off the rest of last night's makeup and brushes her teeth before going to the kitchen.

It's not until after she starts her coffee maker that she realizes the power is back on. She checks her phone to find both reception and a message from Les that makes her smile. Apparently they had both needed rescuing the night before and had both been unable to come through as the hero.

She sends him a text -- I'm okay. Survived the night. Come by when you can. I'll pretend to make you breakfast by ordering something in. then settles down on the couch to drink her coffee. Her conversation with Caden from the night before is still fresh in her mind and she smiles a little. Once Les is here, she'll see how he's feeling, then maybe ask him what his thoughts on Caden are.

They haven't really talked about it.

Between telling Corrine, whatever reaction she'd had -- April doesn't know, but she gets the feeling she should be glad she was out of the room at the time -- and Lara getting rid of those sirens who had been on her ass, it's been a rough week. Her apartment is still a disaster and she doesn't feel comfortable living there anymore anyway. She'll have to clean it up before she'll be able to sublet the place, but for the time being all she wants to do is forget it exists. She's quit the job at the lawyer's office, although she isn't entirely sure why. It could have been a distraction, but the time had come for her to go back and she just couldn't bring herself to do it. She's staying with Les for now, but she sincerely feels like she needs to find her own place soon and she isn't entirely sure why.

It's been a strange week and she and Les haven't talked much about what they're doing or what's been going on and she thinks they should, but at the same time she isn't really sure she wants to.

For now she's camped out on his couch in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, a computer perched on her knees as she scrolls through apartment listings in town. She'd picked up the laptop after her place had been trashed, knowing she needed something to call her own, something more than just the things she had in her purse, knowing it would be necessary to find herself a new place to live.

So she's on his couch with the computer, looking at listings, but she's really not entirely paying attention. She's watching Les, too, and faint smile curving her lips as he moves around the place and she wants to tell him to relax, to come sit down with her, but at the same time she's enjoying just looking.

Her apartment is a disaster.

It's even worse than it had been the night she'd found Les here and as April picks her way through shattered glass and broken furniture, she realizes they'd probably spent the rest of the night searching through her things, hoping to find something they could sell in order to get their money. It makes her furious, even though she hadn't been particularly attached to any of the things they'd destroyed. Her entire life is in the bag she currently has over one shoulder, but these were still her things. They didn't belong to her mother, she hasn't even seen her mother in twenty-five years and yet she's somehow still fucking up April's life.

"Jesus," she murmurs when she walks into the bedroom and sees the state of it. Her bed has been destroyed, the mattress shredded, her pillows torn apart. She can understand looking for money there, but what she doesn't understand is the way they've completely ruined her wardrobe as well. It doesn't matter, they're only clothes, but they've been ripped to shreds. A lot of anger went into this and she knows for certain at the sight of it that this has never been about the money. Not entirely.

Even if she paid them off -- which she won't, mostly because she's too stubborn -- it wouldn't matter. These men want to hurt her mother and since her mother is dead, they'll settle for hurting her.

She's relieved she isn't here alone and though she still feels like she's treading on ground laced with landmines when it comes to Les and Corrine, she reaches for his hand anyway. She threads her fingers with his and turns to look at him and Lara. Since Les had asked Lara to help, April has felt strangely safe. She doesn't know what to make of that either, but she is glad they're both here.

"We have about ten minutes before they're supposed to meet us," she says, gently kicking aside a shredded pair of jeans with the toe of her boot. "I thought it might be enough to just have you send them away, but..." She looks at Lara. "They're dangerous. Do whatever you have to."

Because she won't put Les in danger again. She can run if it becomes necessary, but she won't let him get hurt.

If there's one thing April doesn't often admit to, it's that she's nervous.

The past several weeks have been exceptional, though, and now she finds herself waiting with Les at his place for Corrine's arrival so that she can tell the woman that they're related. There's a part of her that still doesn't want to say anything, that feels like nothing good can come of this, but Corrine will find out sooner or later. Les knows and Bach knows, and April hadn't asked Bach not to say anything. Besides, Les know and she knows how close he and Corrine are that asking him to keep it a secret is something she can't quite bring herself to do. And even if she was able to ask, she doubts he'd agree to it anyway.

It feels a little bit like everything is unraveling and she's always been in such firm control of her life that this makes her uncomfortable. It makes her want to leave Siren Cove, but at this point she's fairly certain that if she does, she won't make it very far, not with those three sirens looking for their money. She still hasn't decided what to do about them, but she's trying not to think about it right now. Not when she's supposed to be focusing on what she's supposed to say to Corrine.

"I'm not looking forward to this," she admits to Les, looking down at her mother's letter. It had been in her purse at the time the sirens had attacked and she's not sure if she's grateful for that or not. It doesn't really prove anything, it's still just her mother's word, but it's all she has. She's wondering if she shouldn't just let Corrine read the letter and watch everything unfold from there.

It isn't her dream job, but it's enough that April can get by without looking like she's pulling money out of nowhere and that's all she really needs. She's assisting a self-employed lawyer around his office, which, as jobs go, really isn't all that bad. He's relatively quiet, the work is easy, and when he looks at her in a way she doesn't like -- which he has twice already -- all April has to do is suggest to him in a soft voice that he doesn't think of her like that.

But it's a job and she needs one. The only problem is that tonight, when she's supposed to be meeting Les at her place for their date, she's been kept late. There's a client still in the lawyer's office when she glances at her phone and realizes there's no way she's going to make it to her apartment before Les, so she texts him and tells him if that's the sort of thing he can do, that he should feel free to magic her door open. She doesn't leave keys lying around under welcome mats like she knows some people do, but she also doesn't have anything in her apartment worth stealing. There's nothing she's attached to in there at all.

So she tells Les to go ahead, wait inside, she'll be there in twenty minutes. By the time she gets her things packed up and is actually outside her apartment, it's more like half an hour and she's angry with herself. She's angry with her boss for keeping her late and she's upset that she's made Les wait, all of which are new feelings.

April loves to keep people waiting. It exerts a certain level of dominance, but now, as she walks toward her building, her heels clicking on the sidewalk as she digs her keys out of her purse, she only feels bad.

The envelope arrives on her doorstep through registered mail as April is on her way out and she signs for the thick envelope with a frown. She can't imagine who would be mailing anything to her, not when she's kept herself so distanced from nearly everyone she has ever met. Her name is on the front, however, and her address in Siren Cove is neatly printed on a white sticker, though under that she can see there are at least three other stickers. Her guess is that each sticker has a previous address written on it and she has to wonder who has been keeping such close tabs on her that they've been able to track her through her last three locations.

She's wanted on charges in at least two states and she makes herself difficult to find for that reason alone. The charges are minor, she doubts she'll ever be interesting enough for any police to follow her across state lines or really pursue her, but she's still done her best to make sure she stays out of jail for that little bit of money she's convinced people to give her. It's not stealing, she thinks, if the person in question wants her to have the cash.

But if the police haven't bothered to find her, she's not sure who has and it isn't until she reaches the boardwalk that she opens the envelope. The return address is a law office in Canada and she wonders if it has something to do with the foster homes as she slips her nail under the flap and opens it.

The contents don't make sense at first. Several legal documents mention Melanie Ross, a name she doesn't recognize, and there's a copy of the woman's will folded carefully around a letter. Whoever she is, she's clearly dead, and April imagines she must be some distant relative, someone she's never even heard of until she opens the letter and sees her name written across the top in a slanting, delicate scrawl.

The letter is from her mother.

Her dead mother.

April scans the will quickly, catches sight of her name, and she feels her stomach turn. There's nothing in the world she wants from this woman with her addictions and her inability to care for her children. The letter makes no mention of the sister April knows she has, the woman somewhere out there in the world who is only a year older than she is, the only decent memory she has of the very brief time she spent in her mother's care. There are other names, though. The names of other women, other places her father had visited.

It reads like some kind of tell-all and the more April reads, the more disgusted she feels until she reaches a familiar name and she feels like her heart stops in her chest. Flynn. Another woman in the long line of women her father had been with, another woman her own mother had apparently kept track of and April shakes her head, torn between fascination at this revelation and disgust at her mother's obsession with the things her philandering father had done.

If this is true, it means part of the family she's told herself she's not looking for is right here in Siren Cove.

April stands up abruptly from the bench and walks down the beach until she's at the guest house on Corrine's property. She doesn't know what she's doing, if she wants to see Corrine or Les and she stands there on the beach for a moment, indecisive in a way she usually isn't. Then she turns abruptly, yanking her sundress over her head as she walks straight into the ocean. She needs to swim. She needs to really be herself for a little while.

[The swimming part is mostly for Les to catch April in her siren form, so everyone else can catch her on the boardwalk with the envelope she doesn't know what to make of. :D]

April honestly isn't sure why she's here.

Les had said something about dinner and before she could even think about what she was saying, she had found herself agreeing and now she's here, uncertain, on unsteady ground, and neither of these are things she likes being. It's not a date, she doesn't go on dates, she simply does what she needs to do in order to get by, but befriending a witch she'd met first in a bar and then on the beach has little to do with just getting by. She doesn't need him in any way to get the things she wants.

But she's here anyway and she doesn't entirely understand why.

She'd put on a simple green dress and a pair of sandals, left her hair loose around her shoulders. She's left her taser at home, too, because she can't imagine Les doing anything that would require her needing it, which is stupid. It's how people get into trouble, by assuming they know things about a person they've spent barely any time with at all, but she's confident in her decision at the same time, just one more conflicting thought in a long line of conflicting thoughts.

It isn't even that she's here simply because she wants to sleep with him -- though she wouldn't say no. If that was all she wanted, she's certain there are less difficult ways to go about it. In short, there isn't much she understands about Les or about what she's doing.

But she's here anyway and she fixes the hem of her dress before knocking on the door of the guest house.