Happy Returns (Lucy)

[Dominique Chevalier]

The Chevaliers were used to buying presents for pissed off women. It was a long family tradition, one that both Dom's father and his uncle Seb had given he and his brother advice about many times. What was appropriate for apologies, for making amends, for getting someone to stay the night and still feel special even if they didn't call.

This wasn't like that. Firstly, it was a birthday thing. Secondly, the idea of buying Lucy flowers or a diamond necklace or a bottle of expensive perfume would seem too... intimate, not to mention gross. She'd see through that in a second.

Instead, he'd found something he thought she might actually find interesting, had it wrapped in gold and blue paper with a plain envelope for the card and left it outside her room. He wasn't about to trust Sawyer with it, and asking Carter... wasn't really an option. Still, he had no desire to see Lucy, and even less to see her in her bedroom.

Having just dropped the present off, Dom had headed straight back to his own room and closed the door behind him before pulling out his laptop and checking on emails from his dad. He needed something else to think about, quickly, but he didn't doubt his own ability to shove the matter far into the back of his mind, and wall it away with stone.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Lucy's birthday was always low key. She didn't really like turning the day into a whole thing - it was bad enough having to field skype calls at four in the morning, which was evidently the equivalent to a convenient time for her parents.

She'd had fun the day before with Rowan, celebrating both their birthdays without making a big deal about it. They drank. They reminisced. They made a lot of jokes about each other. It was good. And she'd even managed to keep her story about the unfortunate incident in the dark room a secret. She did feel bad, not telling him about it. But that was one thing she just wasn't ready to handle yet.

But the day was a new day, and things seemed to be as normal as they always would be. Before she stepped out of the dorm, she shrugged a brown parka over her shoulders, wrapped a faded blue scarf around her neck and hauled a grey beanie - accented with a few accidental splatters of paint - onto her head. The cold was still something she struggled with, frustrating as that was. With the door open, Lucy took her first step, and nearly pressed the sole of her combat boot square on a small, wrapped thing on the ground. Stopping herself, the eldest Serrano slowly knelt down to inspect it, almost too cautiously given what it clearly was. She looked up, glancing either was. Was this a joke?

After a spare moment, she did pick the thing up. She took the time to really inspect the outside. The details in the wrapping. Hell, even the choice in colour.

She didn't bother unwrapping it. Rather, the rugged-up Australian focused her detective skills on the card. She sat down in the hallway beside her door, her back against the wall as she expertly opened the envelop, wrapped in the distracting fact that the whole exterior of this present was perfection.

He wouldn't... Would he?

Lucy dragged herself up to her feet again and walked the very short distance between her room and his. She knocked with precision and a real sense of pressure. Like she was going to kick that door down if someone didn't answer soon. When he finally did, and she'd waited until he did (impatiently knocking all the while) she held it up under his nose with one hand; "Is this yours?"

A simply hello had never been her style.

[Dominique Chevalier]

It took Dom a little longer then it should have to open his door, true. He shut his laptop mid conversation and got up, tugging down at the dark shirt he was wearing open over a singlet before taking a private moment to rub the back of his neck. Finally, the door opened, and he looked from Lucy to the parcel in her hands with a flat expression.

"It's yours," he said. "That's sort of the point of birthday presents, Serrano."

Was he surprised that she'd taken it as something to approach him about? Perhaps, but he wasn't about to let her know that. "You haven't even unwrapped it yet," he added, leaning on the door handle. "Do you think it's going to blow up in your face or something? Have you checked to see if it ticks?"

Despite the cavalier attitude Dom oh so naturally presented, his hands were stiff by his sides as he stepped back in case Lucy wanted to come in. Last time she'd been in his room... On second thoughts- his hand stayed on the edge of the door, fingers digging into the unyielding wood.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

There was a stark contrast between them. As Lucy looked down to give him the once over, she quickly noticed he looked positively comfortable in the simplest of clothes. In comparison she looked like she was going to traverse a snow storm.

Her expression was a little dumbfounded. She didn't even interrupt as he kept talking. Did he not get where they left things? He was joking around like he'd never said anything. Like he hadn't practically decimated the friendship they had with that little admittance of his.

And hers. Well, shit.

"What're you doing?" Lucy asked, her voice low as she looked down either side of the hallway. "Why're you giving me things? I thought we weren't-"

She stopped herself. Assumptions were dangerous, particularly when dealing with a Chevalier.

[Dominique Chevalier]

"Weren't what?" Dom asked flatly, and then raised his pale eyebrows. He had a few ideas on where she had been going with that, and liked none of them. "It's just a birthday present." As Lucy was looking down the hall, checking the coast was clear or something, he took the opportunity to just look at her face for a bit.

"Would it make you feel better if I told you I'd already bought it?" he finally said, hooking one thumb into the pocket of his fitted jeans. "And that it's not something that I have any desire to keep?"

He did not say if this was true or not, merely if it would make her feel better.

If Lucy thought he was just going to disappear after what happened at the retreat, hide and lick his wounds in private, she did not know him at all.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Lucy resisted the overwhelming urge to snap at him. It was like he was testing her. Or toying with her, or something. But she had no proof.

Proof. Funny that she'd think of that at a time like this.

"I don't know. Fuck." She replied in earnest. She was acutely aware of what he was doing. Offering answers without actually giving answers. He and his brother did that all the time. Hell, she did that all the time. And she'd just given a readable response.

Damn.

She instinctively unbuttoned the parka she was wearing and stripped it off, feeling suddenly hot underneath his watchful eye. "I'm not going in there." She announced, indicating with a nod of her head past him and into his room.

"I seriously can't be around you right now. I just-" Lucy looked back down to the present. Now she was a little worried what would happen if she opened it. What was it? "I thought we weren't friends. You made that pretty clear before everything happened. So what're you doing?"

[Dominique Chevalier]

He made no attempt to hide looking at her as she pulled a layer off. Dom shrugged, leaning against the door frame. "Your choice," he said flatly, "I was just trying to be polite." She was off-balance, and she was showing it too. Had the stupid gift really thrown her that much?

She couldn't be around him, and yet here she was at his door. Keeping that thought to himself, the blond boy just waited for her to finish, arms crossed loosely over his chest. He was tempted to rip the gift out of her hands, tear off the paper and expose what was really just a stupid book. He'd only thought she would even like it because of the excitement she'd shown when a new tattoo parlour had opened in Pilot Ridge.

He had seen the thing, and had two thoughts; 'Lucy would like this' and 'I could give this to Lucy'. It wasn't jewellery or flowers or a handbag or any of the other traditional gifts for women that needed no thought.

"I don't want to be your friend," he agreed, emphasising the final word bitterly. "I want you."He didn't answer the final question, because he had no answer. She was too close. "Just throw it out then," he finally said. "Here, I'll do it for you." Reaching forward, he tried to grasp hold of the pretty papered present.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

It was a real rarity - to feel so uncomfortable around the twin that Lucy physically told him he couldn't be there. The wheels in her mind were turning faster than her mouth would allow.

Despite the intention behind his words, Lucy still thought they stung. She felt overcome with a sense of bitterness - like the more he said it, the more he thought it was an inevitability. The way he stood without difficulty added weight to the theory. Dom must have thought, in Lucy's forming opinion, that he already had her.

"No." She said flatly, curling her arms around the book. The thought that he might touch her sent warning flares through her whole system.

Clenching her jaw briefly, she took a moment before exhaling a somewhat short handed, frustrated sigh. She looked back towards him, her dark eyes offering a steely expression that wouldn't dare give the guy anything legitimate to go off. He could be cold like a stone. She could threaten to scorch him, or leave it be.

"If I'm gonna be with someone," Lucy started, this time refusing to tiptoe around the fact. He used the words first, clear as the blue in his eyes and the white of his hair, It was difficult, to keep a straight face. To feel unbridled rage and frustration without expressing it. "They're not gonna be afraid to be my friend. They're gonna want to talk to me."

She almost succeeded, too. "To see me. Face to face. Not leave empty fucking gestures on my doorstep."

[Dominique Chevalier]

For a moment, as Dom did stare at Lucy, face to face as she'd said. As she wanted. "I'm not afraid to be your friend," Dom said carefully, taking time with his words as he kept his voice steady. Nothing felt particularly steady at that moment, but she was keeping the book and he chose that to concentrate on. "But we're face to face now, and friendship is not what I am thinking about,"

He said it flatly, no innuendo or snide looks, just the truth. She was frustrated and angry, just as she'd been in the forrest, and just like then she was getting close, but not close enough.

It was like holding a magnet to a compass; instead of unswayable direction you just started spinning.

"Are you finding it easy?" he demanded, gesturing towards her with a jerk of one hand, "right now? Is this what you want from your friends?" He could see the rage growing behind her eyes as they glinted at him sharply, felt it growing like magma inside his belly, but the anger was easier and so he let it.

"Because maybe it should have been obvious that by leaving it there, I was trying to avoid this," again, his hand jerked between them, between where he felt the air was growing too warm, "because this is not something that I want to deal with!"

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Lucy felt the weight of his eyes on her with certain significance. His words surprised her; she didn't know any more about this than he did, but was the segregation between friendship and a relationship something to be bridged? She didn't want to admit how her own mind wandered. In this moment, he didn't deserve that right. But damn, his forward nature sent her into a spiral.

She held the book against her chest; proverbial shield that it was.

The Australian clenched her jaw, the tension evident in her muscles as he spoke again. Her eyebrows lowered, her gaze catching his face with an unwavering sense of confidence. His tone might have worked on others, but she wasn't so easily swayed.

"Fucking look at us, Dom." Lucy replied in time, when he was finally finished. It was evident that he didn't want to deal with this. "You're avoiding me, so fucking what? I'm avoiding you too." That much by now was obvious. Her fingers wrapped the edging of the book, feeling the idle printed words threaten to muddle themselves within her own frustration. Instead, the tattoos on her arm turned their gaze towards him. Watching with caution. "But this is not just nothing for me. It's not just a bloody thing you leave behind!"

Catching her breath, Lucy exhaled an exasperated, sharp breath. This was too much. The way he looked at her was too much. "Fuck this." She swore, going so far as to breathe a short, detrimental laugh. "Don't deal with me, then. In the end it's always your fucking choice." Her voice fell flat. She could have killed him for dragging her through this.

Even as she'd spoken so definitively, she still didn't move to leave. The thought that this was all that was left was more destructive than she'd ever imagined it could be.

Look at him.

This time when she exhaled, her shoulders fell - features softening their hardened lines for him.

[Dominique Chevalier]

Even as Lucy's face begun to lose its heat, Dom had already pressed the trigger on his retort, kept locked, loaded and ready to shoot.

"I haven't been the one making the choices here," Dom spat, "I've been the one asking, and you have no idea how much I had to-" no idea how hard that had been, to even admit he wanted to consider such a stupid, impractical, emotional disaster in the making, that he'd managed to ask, and had been told he needed to go.

In the middle of a fucking forest.

The most maddening part of all was he had an awful suspicion that she was right.

Rubbing a hand over his face, Dom took a deep breath as his jaw clenched widely, waiting until it relaxed enough to let him speak. "It's a birthday present, Luce," he said flatly, deflated. "It's not a fucking 'goodbye, we're never talking again' present. It's just a stupid fucking thing you buy for your friends on their birthdays."

His hand slid to grip the edge of the door as he blinked lazily. "But right now, I really need some god damn space."

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

"Don't say I don't know. I know." Lucy replied quickly. Sharply. She felt underlying tension in her jaw. "Just like should you know that choice wasn't-" Lucy stopped, exhaling heavily and sinking her teeth into her lower lip. He wasn't ready to believe her. That she knew how this would have ended.

He probably never would be.

Still, she let the reiteration wash over her. That it was just a present. For her birthday. She might have been wrong, but despite how edged his tone was, she couldn't bring herself to believe him. And damn, she wanted to.

"We're not friends." Lucy replied deftly. Logically. Her voice was devoid of all ill feelings and sentiments in that moment. She was pointing out a flaw in his reasoning - the thing that made her so sure he wasn't done.

Her eyes flicked to the door where he held it, her eyebrows furrowing at the sight. How tightly he held it. When she caught his face again she took a half step away, her fingers gripping the edge of the book as tightly as he held the door.

"Okay."

Lucy turned away, walking the minimal distance before disappearing into her own dorm.