[Sarah & Heather] All that glitters is not gold

[brandnamegenes]

Ty and Gael would be the first ones to tell her to just fly back to New York. What had been an emergency trip after Gael's accident had stretched into weeks spent at the Kagan hotel in Malibu, with Sarah putting a lot of miles on her rental car driving between L.A. and San Diego - first checking on Gael, then checking in on Ty.

Hell, by this point Ty would probably throw a party if she did finally tell him she was getting on a plane. She had this suspicion that she was being kind of...suffocating. But she couldn't help it, either. It was easier to accept that she couldn't do anything for Gael, but with Ty - she'd done this herself. For all that she'd had their parents fluttering over her, plus Dr. O'Neill, she'd come to the conclusion over the years that she'd done this mostly herself. Logically, she was the best person to understand just what was going on in Ty's head.

Except, really...a lot of the time it was like they were back in high school, starting that cycle of picking, screaming, and not speaking, followed by the second cycle of making up and the tentative good relationship they'd managed once they'd grown up and gone their separate ways. Inevitably, it repeated itself. It had several times in the weeks she'd been there, and yet she still hadn't gone back.

When she finally did, she dropped into Gael's hotel room to let him know. She texted Ty, because she knew he'd be at the house - but somehow she forgot about warning Heather.

Comments

[blindopinion]

Sarah was like a puppy, or a kitten, with a new toy when it came to worrying about people. It was endearing, adorable, and yes...suffocating when directed toward a person. Heather, herself, didn't really have to suffer through it most of the time. It was the advantage of being not only cute, but very much sane. Plus, her parents were in Brooklyn so it wasn't as if there people to worry about her close by. Should the need arise.

Still, Heather worried about Sarah most of the time. Well, in moments like this. She'd gotten better with the day to day worries, when she'd realized that it wasn't helpful and just stressed everyone out. However, things like best friends being seriously hurt and people coming back from the dead, and brothers....brothers.

Ty probably worried everyone more than Heather could possibly worry about Sarah on her own.

Sighing, Heather shook her head to clear it as she stuck her chopsticks back into her to-go box of lo main noodles and leaned back on the couch. Watching the tv she barely heard the door open, and wouldn't have even thought twice about it if the dog hadn't stood up and run at the door. And after a brief panic, Heather focused on Sarah's face with a bit of confusion and then a smile.

"Hey, baby. I didn't know you were coming home..." She did look, however, very much as if she needed a hug. And a hug was what she got.

[brandnamegenes]

One of these days, Dr. McBride told her, she was going to learn how to chill out. Sarah kind of liked that her therapist put it that way instead of something like, someday she'd learn how to control her unspecified anxiety disorder, which would have just made her feel even more fucked up. That, she didn't need any help with.

"I forgot to text," Sarah said against Heather's hair before she leaned back. "Ty and I were making each other homicidal, so I figured I'd better get out before one of us had to call our parents with the bad news." She really wished Ollie wasn't floating in the middle of the Pacific, though. He was almost as good at defusing the two of them as Izak was.

"Sorry," she added after a second, rolling her suitcase up against a wall out of the way and leaning down to scratch Tasha's ears. "I should have called more."

[blindopinion]

"It's okay." The texting thing. Heather figured that it was one of those small things at the end of the day, that either people lived with or...didn't. Sarah was home now, and what ever didn't or didn't happen was not going to be helped with a discussion.

"Oh, love." She said, smoothing Sarah's hair back before taking what she could of the other woman's things and tucking them away. She pulled Sarah deeper into the condo, and down onto the couch. "Is he that bad?" She supposed she ought to break it to Sarah that Ty had, apparently, split from San Diego before his sister had left L.A.

It would have been clear that things were 'that bad' with the simple news that Ty had willingly gone to Chicago.

[brandnamegenes]

"Eeeh." It wasn't a word, really, more a hybrid between a sigh and a groan. "He's either lying through his teeth and talking about how fine he is, or picking a fight to avoid talking about how not fine he is. Mostly with me, but I swear one day his contractor nearly quit, and his contractor's his partner." That was a different kind of self-destructive than Ty usually was. "Add in the guilt spiral over Carlos, and....yeah."

She flopped on the couch and kicked off her heels before pushing her hands through her hair. "He's that bad. In contrast, Gael may never walk again and he's still on cloud nine." That probably wouldn't last forever, though. The euphoria was bound to wear off eventually, and even she could see that Carlos Sanchez wasn't entirely the same. He looked hollow sometimes, drawn in, the way she sometimes felt and remembered feeling a lot more often.

"The Kagan family drama is too depressing to talk about," she said finally, even though she could have probably gone on for hours. "How are things here?"

[blindopinion]

"Things will...work out for them." Both of them, Heather thought. The boys were all stronger than anyone gave them credit for, sometimes. And Ty, well. He wouldn't spiral like Sarah had. That should have been more worrisome than it was, but Heather imagined people wouldn't let him spin out. Not...quite. "And besides, I got a message a bit ago. Ty is in Chicago, so...there is that. You're dads won't let him go too crazy."

Or so one could hope, because Heather didn't think Sarah was going to handle losing Ty nearly as well as she'd sworn she would for years. It was just a given that they loved each other more than either would admit.

"Oh, it's pretty boring here. We've got a new collection going up in the gallery. And I'm going to be leading the first tours until we can properly train the kiddos on it." Or, rather, she thought it was more or less to let Heather flex her art history muscles.

[brandnamegenes]

She gave Heather a sidelong look, raising her brows a little bit. "Chicago? On purpose?" Ty had avoided it since Ollie stopped bothering to play nice with their dad. Not that you could blame that on Ollie; Elisha had picked him out to be the target of all his parenting frustrations. She would have worried about Heather, but picking on Heather would be like picking on a kitten, honestly. "That'll be interesting," was all she said, though.

It was at least true that if Ty spiraled there were people around for it. That hadn't so much been the case with Sarah; it was before she'd met Heather, and the only people she'd really known in New York then had been her Kagan cousins. Dad always said they had a long-standing family tradition of ignoring problems.

"Are you going to train the children too?" She asked with a slight smile. Sometimes she felt like Heather didn't really like the gallery all that much and it was just a job. But even Sarah had had a job like that after college, and it was important to Heather that they didn't just live off Sarah so...she didn't say anything about it.

[blindopinion]

"Yeah, well...maybe it'll be a good thing too." Heather said, smiling gently. The twins were a handful when they got along, twice as much when they didn't. Heather always thought it was because they shared too much in common that they butted heads. The less their worlds intertwined, the closer they came to everyone's stereotypical twin relationship. The more than did, the rougher the seas- Ollie came up with that one.

"How are you?" She asked, reaching out to brush some of Sarah's stray hairs out of her eyes. "I mean, California is rough right now, but if I gotta go fight a bear? I will. Me and that bear will brawl it out in Tinseltown." Or something like that.

As for work, Heather just sort of shrugged. "Oh, yeah. Most likely." She said, smiling a little. She didn't really love working at the Gallery. It was okay, yes, but it wasn't....great. She was there to write up the histories on each piece, and research the more 'questionable' ones. And what she found could mean a big sale...or just talking to endless people about the same piece. Over and over.

[brandnamegenes]

"Maybe." God knew that Dad sometimes felt like the only person who really...got it, she thought. Got the way it felt to feel whiplash between boundless energy and creativity and none of that at all. It was just that the relationship between Elisha and Ty...well, as she and Ty had gotten better with each other, it seemed like Ty and Dad had gotten worse. Ollie was a big part of that, though she was pretty sure the same thing would have happened if Ty had met anyone else.

"Me?" She said, giving Heather a sidelong look. "...Fine. I mean, it was a rollercoaster out there, I'm not going to lie, and it made me tired. But some of it was kind of nice. Gael's dads and his sister were there, and I hadn't seen Noelle for years." One of her early girl crushes, not that she was going to mention that to Heather. "We can probably save the bear-fighting for when Ollie gets home. Ty said that's another five months."

California had made her tired, she thought, which was about forty percent of her reason for leaving. The other sixty was on the couch next to her looking unenthused about the gallery in Chelsea. "Have you thought about trying the writing again?" Sarah asked after a moment. Heather had had a photography and art history blog when they'd first met. That was how they'd met, in fact, when she'd caught Heather snapping a picture of her (or a picture that happened to have her in it, if you asked her girlfriend).

[blindopinion]

Heather wasn't really sure if Sarah was 'fine'. Tyler took a lot out of people even in the best of times- his energy just sort of sucked the life out of everyone else, it seemed. Granted, it wasn't and never had been his fault, but- eh. Sarah was like his foil. Or at least, they were something akin to that. Two halves of the same coin, so forth and so on.

And five months was a long time to hold ones breath and wait it out. If it was bad for them, Heather could only imagine what Ollie felt on a boat. In the middle of some ocean. A part of her thought she ought to email him, because Sarah wouldn't. Nor would anyone else, likely. But then...what good would it do? Aside from making Ollie worry more, there wasn't much he could do that far away. So maybe she wouldn't.

"Oh, yeah. Sure...but it wasn't really making much, you know. I barely broke even on the book sales, and I don't know. No one cares about art anymore. The people who buy stuff at the Gallery just care about how much it cost, what it says about their wealth, and if it is a Pollock or a Monet. No one really understands what any of it means, anymore. At least...not the people that can afford it." She was a bit jaded in that way.

[brandnamegenes]

She would have laughed if Heather had ever said that out loud - that Ty could suck the life out of you - because it was kind of true. It was, she figured, a large part of why they hadn't gotten along as teenagers; Ty had had a way of making rejection feel like hatred, and Sarah probably still had a way of lapping that up, hoarding it, and making more of it then there was. It was who they were.

As for Ollie, she wouldn't be surprised if most of his flying years were behind him now. He'd fight it, that was for sure, but she just didn't think he was going to be able to shelve his worries about home for the long term, enough to be away for months at a time. Sarah was pretty sure that's why the only way Dad could still get a rise out of Ollie was playing that card.

"You don't need to tell me," she said, though. "I know. Why do you think I make jewelry?" She'd always been interested in metalworking, and she'd definitely started with jewelry in high school - but she could have gone the fine art route. Dad had kind of wished she had, since she was the only one of the kids who really got that bug from him. "I just wish you had a job that didn't, you know, bore you so much. With maybe a few less people who are trying to match the latest Rothko wannabe to their rug."

[blindopinion]

"Well, at least we'll have a future in interior design." Heather said with a chuckle before she leaned in to kiss Sarah. "But, honestly? I don't know, maybe we'll find some kids to inspire along the way and everything will be great. Or at least, we can have mind blowing sex and pretend the world cares about the art and not just how hot we are." She smirked at that too, kissing Sarah again.

"Did I mention how much I've missed you, by the way? Because it was a lot."

[brandnamegenes]

"We are hot. You've got to admit they aren't wrong about that," Sarah said as she twisted a little on the couch to kiss Heather back. She and Heather didn't land in the tabloids often - it was a personal goal of Sarah's that they didn't - but whenever they did, they definitely made a picture.

"I missed you too," she said in between kisses. "But I think we better show each other how much."