Work Text:
Simone doesn’t come to the funeral.
It’s fine, Devon decides two weeks later as she clears out her parents’ room. She’d be a little more pissed if she was drinking, but four years sober and she’s mature enough to accept that her sister doesn’t give a shit about their Dad. She hasn’t made peace with it, exactly, but – fact of life, right? Dad sucked, and now Simone’s sucking right back.
Yeah, it still stings when Simone brushes off Devon’s requests to be there for her. But Devon let her go, alright? She’s been letting her baby sister live her own fuckass life. Devon walked her down the aisle at Cliff House, right into Bluebeard’s smarmy smile, and bit her tongue when the officiant called Simone the new-ly Mrs. Kell. Literally. There was blood.
Devon is getting her shit together, staying sober, finding out who she is without someone to take care of, blah blah blah. She told Simone when their Dad died, of course, and gave her the funeral date. But she also took it like a champ when Simone gave condolences in that tight, overly chirpy rich-girl voice. When she said that she and her arthritic sugar daddy would be in fucking Saint Tropez or wherever the fuck. Devon was nice. Devon was understanding. Devon looked forward to the condolences card that Simone’s assistant would send over.
Clearly, Devon is handling this like an adult.
Things could be worse, she reasons, swiping Dad’s millions of meds into a trash bag before she can think about it long enough to get sentimental. Sweat is plastering the strands slipping out of her ponytail onto her neck, her forehead, hot hot hot because the A/C is nonexistent in this ancient childhood shithole. It’s not helping with the anger, the grief, the screaming itch that can only be scratched by an ice cold Labatt Blue. But still, things could be worse. At least Simone picked up the phone.
After that first stay on Port Haven, Devon had sort of assumed that Simone would disappear on her again. She seemed eager to drown herself in coastal decor and custom Lilly Pulitzer, to cut total contact with their past. The engagement announcement felt like the final nail in her coffin; death by Mrs. Kell.
Devon was wrong, though. It’s not like they’re racking up any phone bills, but Simone keeps in touch. Devon gave her away at the altar in front of all her rich new toadies; there are Christmas cards in some drawer in her apartment; they have bi-monthly phone calls where Simone invites Devon to the Italian countryside and Devon digs her fingernails into her palms until she bleeds. Typical sister stuff, probably.
Not reaching out now, though…
Devon doesn’t even care that Simone doesn’t give a shit about Dad. Out of everyone in the world, she probably has the most right to piss on his grave. But even if Devon hadn’t texted sirens, she needed– no, not needed, wanted her sister here for this. For her. Not to help her pick out the coffin or pay for the plot next to Mom, but to get her out of the bed in the aftermath.
She’s not going to make Simone drop her vacation plans with her evil ass, pervert ass husband. But it would be nice if she called.
Devon sighs, trying to cut off her spiral, and hefts the trash bag over her shoulder. It sticks to her skin immediately, the plastic rustle deafening under the lazily spinning overhead fan. She swipes at her damp face, pausing to breathe before lugging this crap downstairs and outside. The back of her hand comes away wetter than she expected, which means she’s crying again. Fucking perfect.
She shakes it off, adult, mature, dealing, and hauls herself downstairs. The bulky trash bag has her half-falling down the stairs, and she flops down onto the bottom step to catch her breath. She’s been walking around like a hunchbacked ninety year old the past few days, exhausted under the impossibly heavy weight of her own bones. If she doesn’t push through, she’ll give in and sleep until she dies. Or drinks.
Devon is still sitting there, head between her knees, trash bag leaning against her side so that the corners of the books her dad never touched poke between her ribs, when someone knocks on the front door.
Devon’s first thought is that she’s already forgotten ordering takeout. Her second thought is that it’s probably Mrs. S from two doors down, here with another casserole. By the time she’s scraped together the energy to recognize that she should probably stop thinking about this and stand up, the knocking starts up again and doesn’t stop.
The noise of it pushes Devon forwards – bang bang bang bang, and then someone calling, “Devon! I know you’re in there! Open up!”
Devon stops a foot away from the door, because there’s no way. There’s not a chance in hell Simone is here, on their parents’ doorstep, demanding to be let in like she’s coming home late from a high school kegger. Devon must be cracking for real, to be imagining her sister’s voice so clearly.
She steels herself and opens the door, just to prove to herself that there’s nobody there, and finds her kid sister.
Simone still doesn’t look like herself, of course. Her hair is unnaturally perfect, her tan pristine despite the skin picking habit she couldn’t break between the ages of twelve and twenty-three. Even her clothes scream WRONG, especially against this run down Buffalo backdrop. She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt like she’s shooting for normal, but they fit her too perfectly to be anything but designer.
For the first time in four years, though, Simone is halfway there.
Her head is ducked down slightly, as if she’s trying to hide her face. Her shoulders are thrown back, her posture rigid as ever, but her hands are fisted against her thighs. The car parked awkwardly on the street behind her is shiny, but clearly self-driven. If there are security guards around, they’re stealthy enough for a massive raise. And she’s here. In Buffalo.
“Simone?” Devon blinks.
Her sister’s grimace is probably supposed to be a smile. She keeps her eyes fixed on Devon’s face, like she’s afraid to glance at the hallway behind her.
“We need to talk.”
Simone doesn’t say anything about Dad. She settles with her knuckles white around the steering wheel and instructs Devon to navigate to her apartment. Devon should probably be pissed off at her for breezing in like this, offering no explanations, demanding that Devon drop whatever is less important than obeying Mrs. Kell’s every whim. She’s too lagging to be angry, though, still in the uhhh phase of seeing Simone in Buffalo for the first time in ten years. What the fuck is she doing here?
“Left,” Devon says, staring at her sister like she can still read the answers on her face.
The car jerks left at the last second, completely without a turn signal, and Simone winces at the horn blaring behind her. She doesn’t let up on the gas, though.
“I thought you were in France,” Devon blurts out.
Simone frowns, the expression pulling strangely at her flawless new face.
“Ecuador,” she says, her voice clipped, “Peter has business in Manhattan, and then we’ll visit some friends in Japan–”
“Some friends in Japan,” Devon interrupts, fury flaring through her shock, “Are you shitting me? You can visit some friends in Japan, but you wouldn’t even – how long have you been in New York?”
Now Simone looks more like herself; angry, defensive, her eyebrows pulled tight together.
“Devon, please, it’s not like we’re here for pleasure. I’ve never been busier in my life.”
“You’ve never been– Dad died, Simone, and I’ve been doing everything here, alright – take a right up there – and that’s, that’s fine, you know, but you can’t just come in out of nowhere and make me drop everything and–”
A bitter laugh rips out of Simone, stunning Devon back into silence. Her sister’s shaking shoulders are the complete opposite of her prim, put-together image.
“I knew you would be like this,” Simone shakes her head, her lips twisted into a sick smile.
“Like what?”
“Like you,” she snaps, words breaking just slightly, “God, Devon, this isn’t about you. I’m not here to– Look, I’m…I need help, alright? Happy?”
Simone needs help. From Devon. And for the first time in four years, she just admitted to it.
“No, I’m not–”
Devon bites back whatever she was about to say next, takes in a breath so deep Dr. Richards would be proud, and forces on her big sister voice. Her gentle, guardian of a traumatized middle schooler, big sister voice.
“Okay,” she says, “Okay. Is it…Is it about Peter? Is everything alright with you guys?”
Simone finally tears her eyes away from the road to look at her, mouth open like Devon just took a shit on her million dollar dinner table.
“What?” Devon cries, “What? Go left. You just said–”
“Jesus Christ,” Simone splutters around her anger, “Jesus Christ. No, my husband and I are not having problems. You’d love that, wouldn’t you? If I was here to come crying back to Buffalo because Peter dumped me, because how could anyone like him ever love someone like poor, pathetic Simone, who just needs her big sister so much she can’t be happy with anyone else–”
Simone is heaving now, her volume increasing alongside the speedometer. Devon’s hands itch to grab the wheel like she did when she was teaching Simone to drive, but she settles for bracing her hands against the dashboard
“Woah, project-y girl, calm the fuck down!”
Simone distinctly does not calm down. She screeches to a stop in front of Devon’s apartment – she knows the address, Devon realizes just then, she could’ve put it into her GPS the whole time – and whirls on Devon.
“Do you know I organized Manhattan’s largest nonprofit fundraiser of 2028? I outdid the Met Gala. We made more than the New York City Marathon. I’m doing really well. Peter and I, we’re so good, Devon. I’m not that girl anymore, alright? I haven’t been for a long time.”
It stings, like it always does, because that girl was Devon’s baby sister. She’s had years to get used to the idea of her being gone, though, and she doesn’t want to push Simone away now – not when, for the first time since she ousted Michaela Kell, Devon isn’t so sure that she’s a mausoleum of herself. So she shuts the hell up and reaches for Simone’s hand.
“I know,” she murmurs, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…That’s not what I meant. Just, like, why are you here? What do you need?”
That righteous fire fades from Simone’s eyes. She looks – not haggard, obviously, not with that skincare routine. But she’s smaller somehow, angry and afraid and angry that she’s afraid. She breathes out, slow and steady, and lifts her hands off of the steering wheel.
“I’m pregnant.”
Devon will always be proud of herself for not immediately jumping in with congratulations.
It’s not like she expected Simone to be happy about getting pregnant; Simone had never mentioned wanting a puppy, let alone a whole kid, and she used to tell Devon everything. Almost everything. But her skanky oligarch of a husband had mentioned the possibility of one that time they all went out to a Michelin-star restaurant in New York, like two years ago, and he’d seemed pretty excited. Simone’s eyes had tightened a little, and Devon had asked her what she really wanted while Peter went to flag down the valet, and then they had gotten into a very quiet argument about who was more capable of childcare.
So Devon had figured, hey, one more thing Simone was going to give up in order to stay on the pedestal. She’d resolved to buy any potential babies the ugliest Bills jerseys she could find, and then uneasily stuffed that conversation into the brain-drawer labelled “we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.” It was a very full brain-drawer, but she was still able to slam it shut.
Now, though, she’s rethinking Simone’s ability to commit everything to the role.
“Okay,” she said, trying to stay calm, trying to remember that Simone was a married billionaire rather than a high schooler with a bright future, “Um. Alright. And you’re…Do you want to keep it?”
Simone’s exhale was a little shakier this time.
“No. I can’t– No.”
Woah. Maybe she’s not as much of a rich-person zombie as Devon thought.
“Okay,” she says again, “And, uh, what does the big cheese think about all this?”
Simone screws her eyes shut, lets her head drop forward. She isn’t crying, but she shudders once. Her words squeeze unevenly out of a choked throat.
“He’s fine with it. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but he says it’s my choice.”
Oh, bullshit. If Devon has learned anything about this new version of her sister, it’s that her pants are so on fire this whole car should be smoking.
“Uh huh,” Devon says, realizing only after she’s started talking that she should maybe let the lie live, “Which is why you’re in Buffalo. Alone.”
Simone’s lips press together, tight enough to screw with her lipstick, but she doesn’t start yelling. Her shoulder slump, slightly, and she turns to look at Devon straight–on.
“Fine. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t need to know. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
By the time Simone has stepped out and slammed the door behind her, heading towards Devon’s apartment like she owns the whole building, Devon has sorted through most of the bullshit in her head. And, yeah, she’s self aware enough to admit that that was exactly what she wanted to hear. Holy shit. That was Simone.
Devon follows her kid sister into her own apartment without complaint.
Fucking rich people. Fucking Simone. Of course she has a key to Devon’s apartment, illegally, despite never having stepped foot in the place. Of course she wrinkles her nose, in a way she probably thinks is subtle, at the dirty dishes in the sink and the crap on the counters. Honestly, Devon is more annoyed at herself for feeling shitty than she is with Simone for judging. Sorry she hasn’t called the maid in lately, Jesus Christ, she’s only been clearing out their dead parents’ place.
Anyway, she loves her apartment. She loves the furniture she scoured through the ReStore for, and the cigarette smell that clings to everything even though she never smokes inside, and the window that won’t open all the way, and the fireplace that her lease prevents her from using. It may not be a penthouse over Central Park, but she fucking earned this place, and it’s all hers.
She doesn’t frantically straighten the blankets on the couch, or hide the SUNY textbooks in her room. She kicks off her shoes and flops down to the couch, pressing her hand to the headache building behind her eyes, and waits for Simone to finish surveying the apartment.
“You’re getting your Bachelor’s?” Simone finally asks, folding herself primly down onto an armchair that smells like old lady.
Devon shrugs, heat rising in her cheeks, and tries to remember what her therapist told her. Don’t undersell your accomplishments.
“It’s no Yale,” she says, “But, you know. Waitressing doesn’t come with a great 401k.”
“That’s amazing. Seriously, I’m really proud of you.”
Devon makes a face at her, trying not to show how pathetically close to tears she is. She’s pretty proud of herself, too, and she didn’t need to make a single person come to get there. But this visit isn’t about her.
“So,” she says, changing the subject before she gets all sappy, “You need to book an appointment?”
One of Simone’s thumbnails sinks into the others’ cuticle; she realizes it at Devon’s pointed look, and lets go.
“No, my assistant already did. Off the record. She,” Simone cringes, “We used your name. I’ll give you the money for it, of course. I’m sorry, is that…Is that alright?”
Well, no, that’s identity theft and possibly insurance fraud. But if Peter Kell’s people ever manage to dig it up, they probably won’t be surprised. Simone’s slut sister getting herself knocked up, then calling her billionaire sister up to bankroll the abortion? Classic.
Devon isn’t as hurt as she should be though, and definitely not as pissed. There’s something warm blooming in a space that’s been empty for years, knowing that this is where Simone turned. That her name is keeping her sister safe, even now, even like this.
The assistant, though…
Devon’s already met a devoted, trusted assistant of Mrs. Kell – and that girl stole her name, her life, at least half of her fashion sense. That girl is sitting in front of her right now.
“Nah, it’s fine. Your assistant, though, huh? You guys close?”
Simone’s thumbnail drives into her skin again.
“It’s not like that,” she scowls, a new edge in her voice, “I don’t go looking for birds with broken wings.”
Something ugly stirs in Devon’s chest, a defensiveness she can’t totally understand flaring. She can’t tell if it’s because of how Simone is talking about Michaela, or if it’s because of the broken wings bit, but she matches her sister’s frown.
“Yeah, I heard you got rid of the birds. What did you swap them out for, a golf course?”
Simone huffs, letting go of her hands to sit up completely straight. She tosses her hair imperiously, suddenly all Mrs. Peter Kell, and Devon almost laughs in her face.
“I did not get rid of the birds. I dispersed them to zoos where they could be rehabilitated by actual experts. And it’s still a wildlife sanctuary, thank you, dedicated towards preserving the native species of the island.”
Oh, what a load of shit. Devon knows she just wanted to get rid of Michaela, of what she did to get where she is. Simone must have hated those birds within weeks, must've remembered how unstable her position was every time she heard them screeching. Devon would bet a million of the dollars she doesn’t have that Simone redesigned every single property her husband owns, and a million more that he’ll be bitching about it five years from now.
Simone sighs again, like she’s trying to control her anger, and stands up smoothly.
“Forget it,” she says, and steamrolls Devon when she tries to stop her, “No, I shouldn’t have come. I knew it would be like this – it’s like you get off on it, sitting in this shithole city and judging me like you know anything about my life anymore. Does it make you feel better about yourself? God, I’m sorry, I’m gonna go.”
“Stop,” Devon says, throwing herself between her sister and the door, pushing her back like they’re still kids. “Calm the fuck down, Simone, Jesus, I’m sorry, alright? Stop, come on, sit down.”
Eventually she persuades Simone to sit back down, but the quiet between them is more frigid now than it was in the car. Devon is almost floored, once again, by how little she knows what to do. She used to be able to read Simone like a book; to know exactly what would set her off or calm her down, exactly what to say to make her laugh. But, bitchy as she was about it, Simone was right. Devon doesn’t know her life anymore, barely even knows this version of her.
Still. At least Simone is getting upset.
Devon ends up putting on some music and making them dinner. She’s making PB and Js before she realizes what she’s doing, and even though the nostalgia is more likely to piss Simone off than win her any points, she adds some ants on a log onto the side of their plates. She only keeps celery around for her neighbor’s dog at this point, but at least it’s something green. Maybe it’ll be good for Simone to eat something without a single Michelin star.
Simone takes her plate without a word of complaint, although she does stare a little too long at the crusts cut off of Devon’s sandwich, piled up on her plate. She grabs an apple from the big bowl on the counter, makes only one joke about Devon adding fruit into her diet, and eats mostly in silence.
She’ll be here for the night, apparently, and then have the procedure in the morning. She’ll be driving back to Manhattan in three days, which is incredibly fucking stupid, but she won’t let Devon talk her out of it. She’ll be back to being Mrs. Kell, down one future heir.
Even after everything, Devon feels lighter with her here. She won't be working on the house for the next few days, which makes her back feel like crying in relief. She doesn’t ask Simone any more questions about the big cheese, or her new assistant. She asks about Simone’s travels, which is usually enough to keep her babbling for ages, and Simone’s work, which she never talks about over the phone but is happy to elaborate on now.
Eventually, Simone talks anyway. They’re sitting out on the stoop of Devon’s apartment building, so that Devon can smoke and Simone can pretend to enjoy the cool evening air. Simone’s designer pants are getting dirty, but she can afford another pair.
“He started asking about it before we married,” Simone says, staring at the end of Devon’s cigarette, “But I could always brush him off. We have his grandkids around all the time, and he stopped talking about it for a while, so I figured that would be enough. But he’s been bringing it up again and I– I said I’d think about it. And he cancelled my birth control prescription. I didn’t even know he could do that, but he did. Eve – my assistant – she got some pills from her doctor and she’s been sneaking them to me. But there was a week when I didn’t have any, and…”
Devon wraps an arm around her without even thinking about it, tucking her sister into her side. Simone inhales shakily and rests her head against Devon’s shoulder. She’s still so much smaller than her, even as an adult, and Devon always wonders if it’s because of all that time she spent starving. If there’s another world where Simone is a little bit taller.
“Jesus,” she says, and leaves it at that.
Simone laughs wetly into her shirt.
“He’s not controlling, or anything. He’s so good to me, honestly, but he doesn’t understand…I can’t, Devon. I can’t, I can’t be somebody’s mother. I can’t.”
Devon presses a kiss to the top of her head, heartbroken and angry and so, so proud.
“You don’t have to be,” she whispers, “It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”
Simone sniffs and sits up, swiping at her cheeks to stare dully out at the sun setting on the Tim Hortons across the street.
“I thought I’d do anything,” she murmurs.
Thank fucking God you won’t, Devon thinks feverishly. For once, she knows when Simone is saying something she doesn’t want an answer to. Seriously, though. Thank fucking God.
Simone drives herself back into Manhattan three days later, just like she said she would. She’s still bleeding, but she sits straighter than ever. Her makeup is expertly reapplied, her impossibly blonde hair straightened to a knife’s edge. She looks every inch a Kell.
Still. For the first time in four years, Devon lets herself wonder.