smoke break, please. sebastien / jacinta

sebastien salazar

The two of them are practically strangers, Sebastien can't pin point the thoughts in Jacinta's head. He hasn't been able to for years- practically ever, he hardly knows the woman. At one point, they were family, she was his sister and she tore a sword through a girl's head and never came home; he hadn't understood. That was the entire point, right, you win, you come back, but yet she left again and here she is. Sebastien's almost offended with how disgruntled she looks, walking out of her head and her hair messy in a scream. 

He was almost jealous with how little she had to present anymore around the district, around what used to be her family. It was a burnt mural and the blackened ash rubbing off into his hands, he can't see how it is so freeing. So relaxing, to be on the outside. To live in the village without a care, without family. Mentally mourning and physically he stood straight, taller than the sister he no longer had, and wondered what it must be like. 

To not care. 

To shrug off Valentino Salazar. 

She's already high, Jacinta says, and he can tell. Surprised he didn't smell it, he just figured it was the scent of Pryce seeping out her skin- and that's about as much as he wants to think about skin. There's nothing in that house but second hand fake gold, the Pyrce siblings and Angel, and Elena and her newest hobby, it must be exciting to bend yourself under that low bar of expectations. Be the one who stands out for all the wrong reasons, he can hardly hold the laugh back as Jacinta walks inside of the lighter. 

It's so hard to accept them when all they've ever done is leave him, go on to somehow lower things and he still wasn't enough. Sebastien visualizes the household, the way they lounge like pets smoking around the house, Mackenzie with his shirt off, how is that better? How is that better for Elena of all people; he can slightly understand it for Jacinta, that's a girl made up of nothing but stupid ideas. Conditioned to set herself up just to overcome it, to exercise the ability of surviving. Maybe that's why she cares so little -- she's still trying to die. 

Maybe it's all just the danger aspect, she comes back outside the house with the blunt between her lips and Sebastien takes the lighter after her. Flicking the flames just to keep his hands busy and his mouth shut, watching as she drifts further away before handing him a spare cigarette. It's almost fascinating, the way Jacinta changes every time they see each other. One minute she's eight and his sister, then she's seventeen and the golden girl of the district, and then she's twenty four and she can't stand to bear it all. As if she's the one who didn't choose it all. 

Sebastien blames her, completely. 

He feels lonely in his own skin, stuck on the porch with Jacinta and she apologizes for standing him up for Mackenzie, as if it doesn't feel like an insult. Time and time again she's chosen anybody but him, but the Salazars, and he doesn't understand how he's still upset over it. Twenty two years old and he's never let go the feeling of a desperate child, clinging to his two older sisters, begging them not to leave. He just wants to understand it all, but he lights the cigarette regardless. As if choosing to ignore it, will it away. 

"It's fine," as if he has never told a lie, fine in the way that he should have expected it. Grown to learn it by now, get it through his skull that he should be comfortable being alone. Cold wind can never disappoint, not if you grow around it, and he feels the warmth of the cigarette in his lungs, the way it hugs the organs like family should. He starts to believe he's touch starved after it all, and wonders if money can sell that feeling away. 

If not, then what's the point of this all, right? He can't ask about Mackenzie, because she wouldn't answer truthfully -- he has to tell Valentino either way. In a way, he has to accept he'll never know Jacinta, just the way a cigarette burns between the two of them.

"So what's his house like? I try not to go around there," said, with the cigarette between his teeth.

The questions he wants to ask behind them, stuck in his throat.