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intheorangebedroom · 4 days ago

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Tonight you belong to me, chapter 6

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. Time's up.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 Additional ��: self-harm, suicidal thoughts

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange bedroom besties 🧡 Thank you for your patience, I appreciate you all SO DAMN MUCH. See you in the end note 🧡 @frannyzooey you're a warrior and I'll go all gothic on you: I will keep loving you long after I'm dead, long after I'm gone, long after love ceases to exist. Thank you for your invaluable help 🧡

Word count: 14.5k

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Chapter 6: Never Let Me Go

Benny bends forward with a huff, and drops the bulky card box he’s carrying next to a pyramid of similar boxes, all labelled “LIVING-ROOM” in black Sharpie. It hits the hardwood floor with a loud thud that resonates in the empty room.

“Fuck me, that’s heavy. Okay. I think that was the last one,” he pants, lifting his baseball cap and wiping his sweat-damp forehead on his shoulder.

“That went fast,” William observes. His brother whips around to face him with a scowl.

“That’s because you took the bags labelled ‘clothes’ and you let me haul up all those fucking books! Fish, what the fuck do you have so many books for, man?” he adds, as Frankie steps into the room, two solid oak planks propped over his shoulder.

“To read,” Frankie answers absent-mindedly, setting down the wood against a wall.

Silence falls over the small square room as the two brothers exchange another wary glance. Frankie doesn’t notice. He hasn’t noticed much since morning, too focused on the task at hand, too caught up in his head.

“What’s this for?” Will asks patiently, pointing at the wood.

“Shelves. For the books. I left the old ones to Lupe.”

“You mean there’s more books over there?” Benny snarls. Will glowers at him, and the younger man pouts, adding in a softer tone, “You know you could save yourself some money and trouble and get shelves from Ikea or somethin’.”

“Nah, I don’t like these things, they’re full of solvents. You’re just breathing toxic shit. Don’t want that for my kid.”

Don’t want that for Lee.

Frankie straightens up and takes a quick look around him. The room is small, yes, but luminous. Clean, and well ventilated, which had been selling arguments. The house itself is no frill, a bit soulless even, but functional. There’s a separate dining-room he plans on converting into a playroom for Lua. Maybe a TV room or an office, when she’s older. The kitchen came equipped and is large enough for a table and four chairs. There are two bedrooms upstairs and, most importantly, a spacious basement where he can work wood.

The front lawn is fine, but the backyard will require a lot of work, the previous owners seemingly having had no interest in tending to it.

It’s good enough for his kid and him, but will it be good enough for you?

He assumes you could afford two houses like this one with what you make in a year. He assumes you live downtown, in one of those lanky glass towers that cast their haughty shadow over the harbor.

He assumes you hate it.

And maybe you hate it enough to break your cage open and leave. Maybe someday soon, your Russian literature will sit next to his engineering books on those shelves he’s going to build for you.

“You got more wood like this at the other house?”

Will’s voice brings him back to the square room. To all the things that remain to be done. To the urgent necessity of furnishing the house so it’s habitable for a two-year-old. A tiny bed with tiny linens, rainbows, stars and suns. Rails to secure the stairs, a shower curtain, drapes and rugs. Safety outlet plug covers.

And the question he has yet to ask you.

“Yea, in the garage. But I can take care of it later.”

“No, let’s get to it, buddy. We can wrap up everything today so you don’t have to go back.”

Benny swipes the hem of his Kiss t-shirt over his face and nods, walking toward the front door. Will’s gaze follows his brother’s tall silhouette before it returns to Frankie, steely eyes of blue openly trained on his face.

The allusion is not lost on Frankie. This house is a mere couple of blocks away from the one he shared with Lupe. He’s not keen on the idea. If it was up to him, if he moved through life alone, he would have already crossed three or four state lines, at the very least. Head north, and maybe west. Closer to his sister.

But he’s not alone. He’s a father. Living nearby makes the everyday logistics of co-parenting that much easier. Daycare, then school. Family doctor, friends and sleepovers. Lua will be able to walk between her two parents’ homes. That’s not exactly a functioning family, but for now, it’s the best he can provide.

“I’m doing what I can, here, you know?” Frankie murmurs, dipping his head under the brim of his hat.

“I know. I know you’re doing what’s best for them.”

Will runs a palm over his nape and winces, hand flying to his left flank.

Frankie has noticed him clutching his side every so often. He can’t tell if it’s pain or remembrance. He’s never encountered anyone with the Millers' capacity to endure physical injuries. Only he knows first hand that guilt-tainted wounds are another deal entirely.

“You okay there, man?” Frankie frowns.

“Oh yeah. Golden.”

“We can take a break. Finish after lunch. There’s beer in the fridge and–”

“Let’s get to it, Fish,” Will insists, patting Frankie’s arm as he walks past him.

Frankie firmly believes that no one over thirty should ever, under any circumstance, ask their friends to help them move. Which resulted in him calling the Millers on very short notice. He had decided early on to leave all shared belongings to Lupe, thus hadn’t anticipated there would be so many things left to move. It seems to him that, until three years ago, his entire life could fit in a single rucksack.

When he saw the two brothers stepping out of Will’s truck this morning, it felt as if a formidable weight had been lifted off his chest. He’d woken at the crack of dawn, setting all the bags and boxes on the front lawn, to spare Lupe the ordeal of having his friends trampling all over her carpet. Not that she’d said anything. She’d gotten up shortly after him, preparing a large pot of coffee, placing a fresh box of donuts on the kitchen table.

“You’re a good man, Francisco,” she’d told him back in early April, when he’d asked her if he should move out, if she wanted him to. “And you’re always going to be the father of my child. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. We’re just not a good match, I guess. You know that, right?”

“I know,” he’d said, holding her gaze. “I just– I want you to know I’m sorry. And grateful. I’m grateful for you, Lupe.”

She hadn’t answered. Lupe was made of heavy silences and sharp thoughts. A perceptive gaze in a movie star's face. She’d pushed away from the kitchen counter, and reached out for his shoulder, giving him a strong squeeze. A gesture that meant, you’ll be alright.

He’ll be alright. That much he knows. When he wakes up every morning between sheets that bear your luminous scent, when your mug is drying on the dish rack next to his and when your clothes are hanging in the closet next to his clothes. Then he’ll be alright.

He cannot wait for you to meet his kid. It’s a childlike anticipation, a fantasy, really. The only thought that keeps him going. That enables him to ward off the crippling dread spreading black and murky inside of him.

When you came back to him with that fresh wound on your forehead, a clock got set off in the back of his head. A distant ticking, at first, stifled by what you hadn’t yet extinguished of his rage and regrets. But every week since, the timer has been growing louder, pulsating faster in his temple like a swollen vein, ominous, threatening, he needs to get you out of there. Out of there, out of your cage, away from this man.

This pain rooted in his chest whenever he thinks of you, that piercing ache has become a hindrance, he can’t keep a clear mind, that one obsessive thought obstructing everything else, he needs to get you out of there. Keep you by his side, where he can make sure you’re safe.

Every Saturday morning, when he parts from you, reluctant and exhausted, the fear that you’ll get caught cheating clenches his hands into vengeful fists.

Cheating is a filthy fucking word that feels all kinds of wrong to describe what you share and everything you mean to him. Bitterly, he remembers how he tried to scare you off, that first night at the motel. Everything he’s done to keep you at arm’s length, letting you believe he belonged to another woman. How he failed and fell hard, beyond the point of no return, how he was doomed to fail from the very first look you exchanged.

How does he fix it, now? Does he step into the motel next Friday and flat-out ask you to move in with him? No preamble, no casual dating, none of that bullshit? Would you get scared? Would you trust him? Would you laugh in his face, reject what he’s offering? Does he get you into the truck and drive away with you into the sunset, like he’s dreamed of doing since the first time he took you for a ride, five months ago?

Will you forgive him? You’ve trusted him so far. Can he push it a little further?

How much more time can he afford to waste, before your safety is seriously at stake?

He needs to get you out of there.

—

There’s a latch on the left side of the window frame, concealed in the sleek aluminum panel. It’s difficult to find, to say the least. Purposely, you suppose.

The pads of your fingers run over the cool metal until you feel a tiny groove in the flat surface. With a satisfied hum, you slide a fingernail into the ridge and lever it up. It’s thin and sharp and it bites into the soft flesh of your thumb.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to open the windows?” Adrian’s voice comes in from behind you, and you whip around like a cartoon thief caught red-handed, catching your balance with the flat of your palm on the glass panel. “There’s no need for it. And It messes up the thermostat.”

His tone is reprimanding. It makes your toes curl.

He’s been gone the entire weekend. Since Friday morning, as far as you can tell. His bespoke, royal-blue suit looks slept in. It probably is. Somehow, even when you’d been buzzing with gin and numbed out on pills, you’ve always maintained enough clarity to notice these kinds of details. To pay attention to him.

Tonight, you’re entirely sober. Like you’ve been for weeks. And you have no trouble seeing the white collar of his shirt smeared with lipstick, the faintest trace of a flaming red pigment. You nearly scoff at the cliché. The flap house motel, the lipstick stain. So much for 2010 Bay Citizen’s power couple.

There’s an unkept air to his general demeanor. The dip of his collarbone peeks out from his unbuttoned shirt, his pale skin is flushed. His hair tousled, fairer without the matting pomade he normally applies to sleek it back, loose strands falling on his forehead, casting a shadow over his brow.

He looks different. A younger, rougher version of himself. He looks handsome. It strikes you, with a sense of guilt to the realisation, like something you’re supposed to know but forgot everything about.

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“So you thought you’d open the window?” he asks flatly, breaking eye contact to take off his jacket and drape it over the Stark chair.

“I need fresh air. Real air. It’s too stuffy in here,” you mumble. You sound like a scolded teenager. You hate it.

“Is that literal?” he snarls, throwing you a glance over his shoulder, sliding his undone tie off his neck.

You sink your teeth into your cheek, strong enough to taste blood. You pivot toward the window. The soft pad of your thumb finds the latch and you swiftly lift it, ignoring the bite of the metal. The window frame cracks open. The dried out joints part with a crunching sound.

It’s a mundane sequence of actions. Insignificant, inconsequential. Nothing like following a stranger to a dark, deserted parking lot behind a bar. But inside you, the wild creature stirs, awakened by what you’ve set in motion. You don’t know it yet. But it’s too late to back down.

A briny evening draft rushes in, carrying the bustling city’s noises on its tail, distant traffic, siren’s wails, fracturing the seal of your glass cage.

When you turn back to face him, a smirk is forming on Adrian’s thin lips, one that can only be interpreted as an expression of condescension for your poor attempt at rebellion.

The notion riles you up.

“Actually, it’s not stuffy, it’s suffocating. But you wouldn’t know, you haven’t been here in three days.”

The air stills between you. It’s tangible, ironically, despite the open window. His expression freezes mid-smirk, and your eyes quickly scan his face. That long ingrained apprehension in the back of your brain, desperately, frantically trying to set off all the alarms, but something within you won’t let it. Something new. Something brazen.

Adrian straightens up. For a fleeting second, his expression shifts, unclear, undecided, as though he’s still making up his mind on how to deal with you.

And then, his face settles.

“Well, that’s rich, coming from the woman who’s been deserting her home every Friday night for over half a year.” His lips purse in disdain around the word woman.

It’s rage. That something new and brazen inside you is rage. It’s white-hot, and it’s growing fast, too fast for you to even try to contain it. It fills up your brain, smothering your inner voice and muffling the blaring alarms, overpowering everything else. You can feel it swell inside your chest, powered by the wild creature between your lungs. It takes up so much space between your rib cage, you can barely breathe, and yet you embrace the sensation. It’s not discomfort. It’s strength.

“Another thing you wouldn’t know, since you’re out all night playing poker.” In turn, you scoff at the word, at the lie, at the hypocrisy of this long-overdue squaring up.

His eyes narrow on your face before he delivers the next blow.

“Maybe I had you followed. Maybe I know exactly where, and with whom, you spend your Friday nights. Have you thought of that, babe?“

Blood rushes down to your feet as you break in an instant sweat. Prickling scalp, nape and armpits. The sheer idea is unbearable. This life, or whatever’s left of it, colliding, trespassing on your time with Frankie. At your back, the weak breeze wafts in, and your eyes clench off the vision of the fourteen-story void.

The sound of Adrian’s delighted snigger jerks you out of the intrusive thought. Your eyes are wide open again.

“I don’t think you care enough about the details of my whereabouts to spend money on a PI,” you start, lifting your chin as if your heart isn’t thumping in your throat. “In fact, I think it suits you just fine that I haven’t been on your ass about your whereabouts.”

There’s the faintest hint of a wince altering his smug expression at your profanity, but the words keep pouring out of you.

“Most of all, I think that if you really had me followed, you wouldn’t have missed the chance to ruin whatever you think this is for me. Like you do with everything I–”

“Ruin whatever…? Oh, I’m the one ruining things?” he cuts in, lunging toward you in a movement so sudden you recoil against the open window frame. “When you’re the one who’s single-handedly destroyed our relationship with your fucking pills and your fucking depression? And now you’re having an affair with God knows who! I hope you haven’t been dumb enough to pick him among our circle of friends. And I fucking hope to God it is a man. Maybe you’re a degenerate, just like your sister.”

You hit the mark. He doesn’t really care, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but his blatant lack of interest still hurts. After all those years, it still makes you bleed. The pain is washed over by anger, and the cruelty of his grossly redacted and biased narrative of your history. Doubt and guilt tighten your throat.

He’s taken a step back. Hands on his hips, he’s seemingly waiting for you to counter. After a few dragging seconds, when he’s satisfied that he has silenced you for good, he faces away, and begins to unbutton his shirt.

“I— You’re— you’re so fucking unfair,” you stutter, deflating, miserable.

“I’m going to shower. Make sure that window’s closed by the time I get out of the bathroom.”

“I’m leaving.”

The words rise from between the folds of your existence, overdue, evident, irreversible. They slip through your lips, and panic pervades your body at a molecular level.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Adrian retorts with an audible smirk, sliding his shirt off his lean frame, “the Grants are coming over for dinner. That’s the only reason I came home.”

Tim Grant is Adrian’s most valuable client after your father. He’s in politics, in some office or other, you know you should know. His wife Cheryl is a flawless, sculptural blond. A Stanford graduate who has mothered five children. She’s three years younger than you.

You need to get out of here.

You are rooted to the tiled floor, vaguely aware of the lingering taste of blood on your tongue, and your right hand pinching your thigh.

“I’m leaving you,” you clarify.

Adrian turns around and pauses. He looks at you. Looks at you for what feels like the first time in months. At last, you caught his attention.

The alarms are bellowing inside your skull. You have nowhere to go. Ava is over a thousand miles away, everyone you know is primarily Adrian’s friend, and there’s no way you’re going back to your parents.

Beyond the window, the indigo dusk is shifting to blue. The breeze is soothing. It’s Sunday, April 26th, 6.52 pm. You’re standing on the threshold.

“You’re what?” he asks in a thin voice.

“I’m leaving you.”

Something flashes across his face, something you’ve never seen before. This is uncharted territory, for the both of you. He scrunches his brow, narrowed eyes flickering between yours. Lifting both hands, palms outstretched toward you, he speaks in a slow voice, detaching each word.

“Alright, okay, I get it. You’re angry. You can leave the window—”

“I don’t care about the window, Adrian, I am leaving you.”

“Lee, this is not the fucking time for this, the Grants will be here in half an hour and the catering–”

“I don’t give a shit about the Grants!” you burst out.

Adrian’s hands fall limply to his side, his eyebrows jumping to his hairline. He licks his lips, an attempt to regain some countenance.

“Okay,” he concedes in a strained tone, “I guess we’re doing this. Where do you go every Friday? Who are you fucking?”

“Now, you care? Now, you want to know? When I’m halfway through the goddamn door? I gave you ten years of my life, Adrian! Ten years! I loved you! I gave you everything!”

“You loved me?” he yells back, pocking a finger to his chest. “You gave me everything? Are you fucking serious? You are never here, Lee. You’re checked out, 24/7. Is that what you call love? Let me laugh! You never ask me any question about work, you never once came golfing with me. You can’t even pretend to care!”

“You are so fucking unfair! Tell me, how does it feel, to treat me like you do?”

“I am not unfair, Lee, I am realistic! Yes, maybe you loved me, but as soon as shit got real between us, you fucking checked out! An eight-year-long engagement? Really? Is that your idea of giving me everything? I am the laughingstock of everyone at the firm! You want to know how it feels? How it feels when I see your face closing off every time I try talking to you? You don’t know how to love, Lee. You know nothing about love. Unrealistic expectations, that’s all you got. Dreams. Childish fantasies. You’re heartless. Remote. Fucking hollow. Completely unfit for reality.”

The walls ring out with his acid rant. He stands before you panting, unmasked, with his shaking frame and his unfiltered anger, with his truth and his raw pain openly displayed. With his hurt and his loss and regrets. It’s vertiginous, unbearable. Your body recoils into the glass panels, tears spilling down your face.

He straightens up, and takes in a quivering breath, a pointed but vain effort to recompose his face.

“Now would you please be so kind as to clean up, and instruct the maid to set the dinner table before catering gets here?”

But his vulnerability lingers in his voice and your crying intensifies, your chest convulsing under the weight of your sobs, of his words, of all your mistakes, and you slump down onto the cold hard floor, weeping uncontrollably.

“I’m– I’m sorry,” you blubber, “I’m so sorry, Adrian.”

He sniffles, taken aback. Standing awkwardly, he wipes his nose with the back of his hand and takes a tentative step closer.

“Babe, come on. Don’t cry. I’m sorry. Go get cleaned up, we’ll talk about this later.”

But you can’t stop crying, your life is folding in on you, all of your certitudes, your broken heart and your grievances exposed, ugly and distorted, through a drastically different lens.

“I’m so sorry, Adrian. I– I loved you wrong. I wasted– wasted your time,” you sob.

“Shh no, come on,” he coos, crouching down beside you, brushing the hair from your face in a gesture so gentle it only makes you cry harder, hot tears scalding your eyelids, “I’m sorry I lost it. I’m tired. Let’s not talk about this now.”

All you want is to reach out and wrap your arms around him. Hold him tight, stop shaking. Go back to the start, take away the pain you’ve caused. But there’s no going back, and your hands are clenched around your shins, pressing your knees into your chest.

“I’m not the one you need. I failed you. I’m not the woman you need and I tried to be and I led you on– and I wasted your years and— and mine, I’m so sorry, Adrian.”

“Babe, stop crying,” he pleads again, panic skirting his tone, “I’m sorry I lashed out. Fuck, I know I can be an asshole sometimes. We can work this out, we always work things out.”

His clear-blue eyes shine with unshed tears. Everything inside you hurts. Everything inside you bleeds.

“I should have done this sooner. I was so scared. I’m such a fucking coward, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t leave, Lee,” he rasps. “We can– Please. Stay.”

—

You stay, inexplicably. You stay to host the Grants.

Adrian lets you use the shower first, guiding you to the en-suite bathroom, his arm wound around your waist. You keep crying under the hot stream of water, unable to control your sobbing, choking on the hot steam with every shaking gulp of air you take in.

And perhaps it’s the only way you’ll ever get out of here. Dead, chocked up on grief.

You let the water run while you step out of the cubicle. Adrian stores the double-edge blades for his razor above the sink, inside the cabinet behind the backlit mirror. The sharp metal slices a shallow cut in the pad of your ring finger when you grab one. You adjust your grip, splay your hand at the top of your thigh, and slash the blade through your tender flesh, underneath the old scar Frankie likes to tease with his thumb.

Trembling hand, straight line. The pain is searing, your relief immediate. Back in the shower, the blood runs down your leg in crimson rivulets, and your crying finally ebbs.

In the bedroom, you swallow an anxiolytic, then another. The tablets catch at your throat going down, burning your esophagus like shame and failure.

You’re no longer a person, not really, not anymore. You’re the sum of your pains and discomforts. You’re that cut on your thigh and those pills in your throat. You're the black mascara that coats your eyelashes and burns your eyelids, you’re the red lipstick that dries out your lips. Fragments of you, held together by the snug material of a dress that you hate, a gift from Adrian, the figment of someone else’s desire.

When the doorbell rings, your hair is still wet.

The dinner is an awkward mess. Adrian looks shell shocked, powerless to summon his usual charming persona. His answers are monosyllabic, incoherent. To you, it’s a complete blur. You drink fast, and too much, hanging your dazed gaze on Cheryl’s double row of natural pearls. Every time you shift in your seat, a sharp pain stings your thigh. You smile through it.

The poorly executed charade goes on for about an hour before the Grants make a hasty exit.

Tethered by a thinning thread of lucidity, you go straight to your bedroom, Adrian on your heels. He watches you from the threshold as you heave your shabby college suitcase onto the bed, his pale face twisted, clouded eyes, pinched lips. You try to avert your gaze, you need to hurry, to gather your brains, gather your things.

But your eyes flicker back up to him. One last look. One last tear. You stare at each other in silence for a brief moment, until a draft closes the bedroom window with a muted bang. Adrian slides his hands in his pockets, turns around, and walks away. A few seconds later, the front door opens and slams shuts behind him.

Your heart trips and plummets. Somewhere far away, long ago, a small voice implores you to run after him. To beg for his forgiveness. To mend your faded dreams.

Completely unfit for reality.

Nausea lurches in your stomach, and you lower your head to the empty suitcase stretched open across the bed. You need to get out of here.

But what are you supposed to pack? The apartment is filled with reminders of what you’ve destroyed. Photo albums, art, trinkets and souvenirs, Christmas presents, birthday gifts. It’s like slicing through ten years of your life, ten years of yourself, of the person you’ve been and never again will be. Letting that woman die and disappear. What do you need to take and what do you choose to leave?

Completely unfit for reality.

Fighting a sense of urgency, your vision getting more unfocused by the minute, you go through the nightstand and dresser. Prescription pills in rattling tubes, a little box of old Polaroids and Ava’s maternity hospital bracelet, your e-reader and random books, two chargers coiled on the floor like resting snakes… You throw everything indistinctly into the suitcase. It swallows your belongings like a chasm, like a crevice, like a monster with unhinged jaws.

Staggering to the walk-in closet, you slide some clothes off their hangers and shelves, throwing them blinding behind you. With precarious balance, you rise on your tiptoe to retrieve a leather-bound edition of Anna Karenina hidden on the upper shelf. A gift from your Russian lit professor for your graduation, with an inscription etched in his distinguished cursive on the cover page. Something about you being a promising young woman. You haven’t looked at it in years.

Completely unfit for reality.

You pull out a travelling bag, and stuff the book inside it, along with some shoes, and in the bathroom, cosmetics and lotions.

When you try to change out of the dress, blood has glued the fabric to your skin. You have to rip it off like a band-aid, like a life-threatening habit. The slit starts bleeding again.

The suitcase’s tired wheels swivel with a loud squeak over the tiled floor of the corridor. The bag keeps sliding off your shoulder. It’s all too cumbersome for you to drag, heavy like your spinning head, swaying like your vision.

In the living-room, the city’s night lights twinkle and dance behind the floor-to-ceiling windows. You search the room in the semi darkness for something else, something more. Your laptop perhaps, before you realize it’s in your office. Do you need a laptop? You probably do.

Completely unfit for reality.

You grab your I ❤️ NY bag and drop the apartment’s keys on the console by the door. Propelled by the creature in your chest, by decades of silence, by an obscure promise for peace, you leave.

You are in no condition to drive, but you don’t need to be. Your drowsy body’s on autopilot, and the traffic on the 589 northbound is fluid.

You pull up in front of the motel a mere 54 minutes later, and stagger over to the office, where the young clerk with his blond hair in a bun is hunched over his phone.

The suitcase refuses to roll over the gravel. One of the wheels folds and breaks off. You have to walk back to the reception and ask the young man to help you carry everything to the room. Your voice is slurring. You rummage in your bag for some cash to give him, only to find him already gone when you triumphantly pull out a tenner from your wallet.

You don’t fold the dirty bedspread. You don’t clean up your face or brush your teeth, you don’t undress. You kick off your sneakers, and slip under the sheets, Adrian’s words ringing out in your ears. The truth they carry deafening, inescapable.

You’re unfit for life. For reality. You went out of your way to create a relationship with a stranger, exempt of responsibility, of commitment, of any kind of difficulty. So you could revel in the illusion of a bond, of something greater than you. So you could romanticize a hope, without having to materialize its promises.

You cry yourself to sleep.

—

Buried at the bottom of your bag, your iPhone chimes for a solid 14 minutes before you can crack open an eyelid. Your hangover is vicious. It’s a wildfire raging inside your brain. It’s your body thrown off a cliff.

Cautiously, you sit up on the edge of the bed, brain sloshing inside your skull, nausea lapping up at your esophagus. The harsh denim of your jeans rubs over the slit on your thigh, abrading the cut. A brownish stain of dried blood smears the fabric, and you scoff, thinking you didn’t pack any band-aid.

The prospect of dragging your body under the shower and putting on clean clothes feels like medieval torture, but presenting yourself at the office reeking of alcohol and in yesterday’s blood-stained jeans is not an option. Not a satisfaction you’ll grant your father, anyway, and the thought gives you strength.

In the bathroom’s black-edged mirror, your reflection is haggard. Downright cadaverous.

You’re sick a first time, emptying the content of your stomach crouched over the chirped porcelain bowl of the toilet, and then a second time, in the parking lot, after gulping down a tepid coffee from the vending machine in the reception. With the tip of your shoe, you scuff the gravel over the small mess and get in your car, not in the least ready to face the morning traffic, your father, or the rest of your life. But proceeding anyway.

When you step out of the elevator, your father’s senior secretary is waiting for you in the lobby. Adrian has made some phone calls. Kaytee ogles the scene from her desk, a petty glee lighting up her dull features.

You follow the older woman to your father’s office, unfazed, obedient. Absent-mindedly watching her restricted gait, encased between her pencil skirt and 5 inches heels.

Richard is calm. An impassive look on his handsome face concealing all thoughts and emotions, the sleeves of his Armani shirt rolled-up to his elbow. He lets you speak first, he listens in silence.

I’m resigning with immediate effect, the words come out of your mouth easy, and you, too, listen to them.

You expect to be chastised. Scolded like a rebellious teenager. Sent back to your desk with a mention etched in red on your permanent record and a slap on your hands. You brace yourself for the usual words, his favorite weapons, designed and crafted to humiliate and defeat.

Instead, he reasons. He bargains. Calling you a valuable partner. A genuine asset for the company, he says, with irreplaceable experience and unique expertise.

Shadows shift across the glass surface of his desk. His cellphone buzzes, and remains unanswered as he keeps talking, his attention focused on you for longer than it’s ever been. What would your trajectory have been, if he’d paid attention to you from the beginning? If you’d heard his praises as a child?

What did Adrian say? How did he sound?

After a while, it’s your turn to speak. At the first mention of your shares, Richard’s posture and demeanor switches instantly. Before long, you know you’re never getting this money Ava has instructed you to fight for.

You don’t argue, you know better. You’ve witnessed firsthand his power of nuisance. His sense of entitlement and his twisted passion for meticulous revenge. But your father’s ire escalates, until he’s standing next to you, pulling you up your seat by your arm and manhandling you toward the double glass doors.

You wonder how far he’ll go, if he’ll make this public, if he’ll risk the scandal. You soon find out. You’re a rag doll in his hold, as he drags you toward the elevator, seething and sputtering threats.

“You have dishonored me, the name I gave you, your family. You’ve been nothing but pointless ever since you were born. Don’t ever try to come back here. I don’t care if you’re starving.”

As you stumble inside the cabin of the mirror-lined elevator, you realize you never got to retrieve your laptop. You turn to face your father and, looking straight at him, you cover your ears.

Before the doors close with a cheerful ding, you see his face distorted by wrath, turning a violent shade of purple.

—

“What do you mean, the room is taken? Taken by whom?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I cannot disclose that kind of information.”

Raul’s affected attempt at hotelier’s etiquette has Frankie scoffing into the receiver. Or is it Joachim? No, you’d said his name was Raul.

“Wait, it’s taken now, but is it booked on Friday? I just need it on Friday. Why did you give them that room, anyway? I’m pretty sure you got plenty of vacancies.”

The real question is, why is he behaving like an ass to this poor man who’s only trying to do his job properly? Why is he getting so nervous over this? How does it matter if you’re not in room number 2, this week?

“I don’t know if the room will be available on Friday, sir. I am afraid the lady hasn’t specified a date for the end of her stay.”

Frankie’s spine grows rigid. Like a bucket of ice is being poured over his head in slow motion. That ominous ticking fires in the back of his head, so rapid and loud it might fracture his skull open.

“What lady?” he rasps, his throat suddenly parched. “Who’s in there? Is it the– Is it the woman who comes in every week? With me?”

Raul doesn’t answer, and his silence tells Frankie everything he needs to know.

“Alright, thanks,” he snaps, hanging up and throwing the phone on the desk.

An hour and a half later, he’s pulling up into the motel’s parking lot. Lupe has been gracious enough to agree to pick up Lua from day-care, even though Monday is his day, so he’s got the rest of the afternoon to sort this out.

This is foolish, though. He, is foolish. Your car is not even here. He’s probably overreacting.

The thing is, his gut instinct tells him he’s not. It’s a potent, familiar dread, one that sets all his senses on alert. One he’s sworn himself never to ignore again, after Tom’s death. It’s that vision he had on Christmas evening. Your lonely silhouette sitting by the window on the edge of the bed. It’s that pull in his chest. That ache in his flesh.

He gets out of the truck swiftly, with a quick glance at the reception office, and walks straight to room number 2. The place looks even shittier in the bright midday sun. The contours of the low building are pressed flat by the blinding light and the heat. The lime wall between room 2 and 3 is streaked with deep, long winding cracks. The paint on the porch’s poles is chipped, coming off the sun-baked wood in large, crispy flakes. The hanging lights are covered in rust, the base of the railing in mold.

Once more, guilt squeezes his chest tight at the thought that he’s made you come here, week after week. That you docilely agreed to it, and never said a word. That you kept coming back. Back to this place. Back to him, too.

The door is locked. He rattles the doorknob harder, more to shake off his own frustration than to achieve anything else. The yellow curtains are drawn, and no matter how hard he squints, he can’t see jack shit beyond them.

He’s probably overreacting.

What if he picked the lock? Just to make sure you’re not in here?

“Jesus,” he sighs, running a palm over his face, “the fuck is wrong with me?”

He stands in front of the door a while longer, head hung, hands propped on his hips, so still he can feel the sweat beading on his nape. Eventually, he lifts his cap and combs his fingers through his hair, then turns around and steps down the porch.

He’s halfway to his truck when your sedan appears at the end of the road.

—

On the drive back to the motel, you roll both front windows down, and let the warm breeze blow your hair in every direction.

Yesterday, the pain was all encompassing. So sharp and piercing, you wanted to cease existing. Now, thoughts and images come and go, carried by the draft from the opened window. Kaytee moving into your office, and your employment prospects, nonexistent in the Bay Area. Your forgotten laptop. The talk you need to have with Ava. Your financial situation.

Everything seems distant, another woman’s problems. You are numb. Remote. Hollow.

The tears will come back, though. When you ask yourself if this tragicomic public humiliation was your final interaction with your father. If the formal lunch you shared with your mother last Thursday was the last time you’ll ever see her, the last time you’ll hug her frail figure. When you realize you won’t see Agatha grow up.

You will reject the pain. The sense of loss. Of isolation. But it’ll sweep you away anyway.

The fact that you have voluntarily orphaned yourself.

You will choke on your grief.

“I need to start making plans,” you inform the empty cab with an even tone.

Or you could simply hide away in the motel for the rest of your life. Waiting for Frankie, Friday after Friday.

Frankie.

A strangled gasp ricochets inside your throat. You push the thought of him away, bury it deep between the folds.

Completely unfit for reality.

But when you turn into the parking lot, the red truck immediately pops into view, stationed in front of your room. Frankie’s standing a few yards away from it, eyes trained on you through the windshield.

Your body tenses up, a lump grows inside your throat, your grip on the steering-wheel white-knuckled as you maneuver to park.

When you kill the engine, Frankie walks up to your door. There’s a suspended beat, as he motions to grab the handle. But he seems to reconsider, taking a step back and waiting for you to get out.

Raw nerves and flayed skin, you exit the car.

“Are you okay?” he asks when you’re standing in front of him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Lee, are you okay?” he repeats, detaching each word, his large hands coming to frame your face.

Shaded by the brim of his hat, his dark eyes skip nervously over your features. You know what you look like, puffy eyes, ashen face, and you squirm nervously in his hold.

“I’m okay. I’m fine. I didn’t fall again,” you add with an empty chuckle, trying to pull away from his grip, evade his scrutiny.

“Jesus fuck, Lee,” he sighs, shaking his head.

Your spine grows stiff, but his hand is already cradling the back of your head, drawing you in. Hunched around you, he presses your rigid, reluctant form into his chest, into his heat, breathing you in. Face tucked into the curve of his neck, you stand awkwardly still between his arms, terrified of your body’s reaction should you let go and relent, should you lose yourself in the reassurance of his solid figure, of his soothing embrace, of his comforting scent.

Eventually, you wrap your arms around his torso, skimming your hands over the soft, cottony fabric of his shirt.

“Why are you here?” you ask again, your voice muffled against his collarbone.

“I called to book the room,” he starts, talking into your hair, “and this Raul guy said it was taken. By a woman.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I don’t know. I just knew.”

Clenching your eyes shut, you ball his t-shirt in your fists.

“Listen, Lee, I can help you. With whatever it is that’s going on. I can help you. Let me help you.”

“I know. I know you can. But I… I think I need to help me.”

Prove yourself, and that collective we, that you can make decisions, be resourceful, be resilient. Other than through silence and disappearance and pills. Stand on your own. Face reality. Deal with it.

You feel the working of this throat against your temple. His hands span your back, spreading warmth in their trail, finding purchase on your waist with a vice grip, as if to make sure you’re really here.

“I understand.” The deep, velvety roundness of his voice envelops you. “Would you tell me if you needed my help?”

You nod, your cheek brushing the pebbled skin of his neck.

“I promise.”

His heart beats strong and steady against your breasts. You lean into the slow, pulsating rhythm, into his life force.

“I need to talk to you,” you start, and his hold on you tightens. “Can we go inside your truck?”

“Sure,” he answers, but he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t move, and you grow anxious, afraid you’ll lose courage, and the momentum will fall to a halt.

Completely unfit for reality.

“Okay, let’s go,” he finally says, and you lead the way, walking in short strides toward the passenger side of the vehicle.

Once you’re both seated, Frankie turns on the ignition. The AC immediately kicks in. In the harsh, unforgiving daylight, the dashboard is not black, but a faded shade of anthracite gray.

When you turn to face him, he’s already looking at you, the dark pools of his eyes boring into you, searching.

“I left,” you say in a flat tone, your voice as hollow as your chest feels. “I left Adrian. My fiancé. And I felt my father. The company, I mean. I quit.”

He registers the news, the crease in his brow deepening, lips slightly parting.

“Okay,’ he nods. “How did it go?”

“It… I don’t know. It went? I’m not sure if they realize I’m never coming back. Adrian especially. Well, my father too, actually. Although he made it clear that he never wants to see me again. I don’t know. Maybe I’m mistaken. I really torched those bridges,” you shrug.

A myriad of fleeting expressions animate Frankie’s features, too fast for your overwrought brain to read into any of them, before they settle into the familiar frown.

He swallows hard, before he asks, “How are you feeling?”

In turn, you furrow your brow, searching the abyss inside your chest.

“You know the movie, The Dragon Tattoo Girl? Or whatever it’s called? The one with the James Bond actor?”

He lifts a puzzled eyebrow, but nods for you to keep going.

“You know toward the end, when they’re in London and they go tell this woman that her brother is dead, the killer guy. Her abuser, basically. They go back to the car to monitor her computer activity, and she’s just… shopping online?”

“Yea?”

“That’s how I feel.”

He huffs, and you don't know how to interpret his reaction.

“It doesn’t change anything. For you, I mean. My sister’s in New York, she got away some time ago and I–”

“Lee,” he cuts in, his hand flying to grab yours, but you recoil from his touch, “I told you, you can ask me for anything. Anything you want. Anything you need.”

His gaze pierces through you, soft sad eyes, cold hard stare, and you can’t withhold it any longer. You face away, turning to the brass number 2 hanging upside down on the wooden door. Behind it, there's a travel bag and a beat-up suitcase with a broken wheel that contain all of your belongings.

You’re thirty-five years old. You only just broke free, and everything you want is in this cab.

This man, his past, the burden of his sins. The strength and resilience weaved within the fabric of him, his tender touch, too, and the promise of his future. The sense of safety he provides you, unlike anything you’ve ever known in all your years.

His solid body’s thrumming next to yours, steady vibrations caressing your skin. The air between you ripples as if it were liquid. It’s the only thing you can feel. The first thing you’ve felt since you woke up this morning.

His words come back to you, from so many Fridays ago, pained and yearning, Are you real? You never questioned the realness of him. You gave yourself blindly to the reality of this. This inescapable and electrifying living thing between you. It’s not the reason behind your emancipation. But it has propelled you toward it.

Was it all just a dream?

“Do you sometimes think…” you trail off, hesitant. You’re still not looking at him. The heel of your palm comes to rest over your denim, over the thin wound that brings you relief. You press down on it. You wince. “I don’t know how to ask you this.”

His voice rumbles with tension. “Just shoot it straight.”

“Do you sometimes think you’ve replaced cocaine with— with me? With this? Whatever this is?”

You risk a glance in his direction and watch him take the blow, eyes lowering to his hands. He releases a deep sigh, cocking his chin.

“Aren’t you scared you’ve replaced an addiction with another?” you continue. “What if… what if I’ve traded my pills for you?”

His eyes flick up to yours. He stares at you in silence for a while. When he moves, it’s to take off his hat. He props it on the dashboard, assuring its balance, before his gaze returns to you, and you brace yourself, chewing on your cheek.

“Yea, it’s… It’s a valid question. Can’t say I haven’t thought about it. At the beginning, at least. But the answer’s no. I don’t think I’ve traded cocaine for you. I like the man I am when I’m with you. You make me want to be happy. You make me feel good. Coke never made me feel good. It was a means to escape… pretty much everything. I don’t want to escape anymore. I don’t need it. I don’t think I can ever unlearn what you taught me.”

Frankie pauses, letting his words settle over your tense, motionless body. You grit your teeth, your jaw aching.

He breathes in deep. His voice drops to a murmur, low, but firm.

“I love you, Lee. I was never in love with drugs. I don’t think I was ever in love, not really. Not the way I’m in love with you.”

Your body shudders, tears rising like high water inside your throat, face flushing. All of your suppressed emotions come back rushing. Guilt and fear, remorse, rage and resentment. Hope and elation, too. They tumble inside you like boulders falling off a mountain, in a formidable landslide.

“You can’t love me,” you say in a choked up voice.

“Why is that?”

“Because I don’t know if I can be loved. I don't know if I know how to love back.”

“That’s bullshit,” Frankie grunts.

“It’s not,” you retort, aggressively brushing a rogue tear from your cheek with the flat of your palm, angered by the confidence of his statement. “You don’t know– I’m faulty, Frankie. I’m fucked up. Defective. I can’t handle reality.”

“How about you stop talking about yourself like you’re a machine? Nobody can handle a shitty reality they feel trapped in, Lee. Nobody. Just look at me,” he adds with a shrug.

His words open a floodgate, more tears spilling out of you, streaming down your face in scalding rivulets.

“But what will happen when you don’t love me anymore?”

“That’s never gonna happen. I can promise you that much.”

“No, that’s bullshit!” you spit out. “Everything passes! Everything ends! Everything, and you know it!”

“Not this. This never ends.”

His assertive tone, his steady demeanor, your stupid, uncontrollable tears, everything sets off your temper. Yet, something throbs inside you, longing and want, stronger than your rage, pulling you toward his still, solid body. His gaze pins you down, not like a dead butterfly in a glass frame, but like a benevolent shadow stretching over you, seeping through your flesh to wrap around your heart and protect it, keep it safe.

You push back against it, back into the door, the handle biting into your spine, covering your mess of a face with trembling hands.

“I know what my track record looks like,” he says. “But I’m asking you to trust me. My love for you has no end.”

The seat bench creaks under his weight as he moves closer to you.

“C’mere, baby.”

His hand circles your arm, pulling with gentle little tugs until you give in and let him tuck you into his side, his arms keeping you firmly pressed against him. His scent engulfs you, his quiet strength, the rumble of his voice felt through your chest as he hums quietly into the crown of your head, Don’t be scared, you got this, I got you.

Surrendering, you allow yourself to cry, weeping loudly into his shirt, full-body sobs quaking your frame. You might break apart in a million scattered pieces, should he let go of you, but you’re not scared, you got this, he got you, resolute, unyielding, and you weep until the tears run dry, until your rib cage is too sore to heave, until the convulsing of your throat is reduced to a silent tremor.

Releasing his hold, he guides you over his lap to sit you between his legs, and you burrow into him like a small child, eyes drifting close, finally resting.

—

Around the truck, the sky has gradually changed. The crushing, white-hot afternoon light slowly gave way to a fuzzy, faded coral atmosphere.

Frankie’s lost track of the time. His arm is numb, his shoulder sore, but he’s not moving. He won’t risk disturbing you. Your breathing comes in deep and regular, you might be sleeping.

From orange to pink to indigo, the day dies out into the night.

It’s almost dark when you quietly call his name, and he can hear the toll grief has taken on you in the rasping of your voice.

“Is it okay for you to be here?” you ask. “Are you going to leave?”

The questions send chills down his spine. Now is the time to tell you. Now or never. It’s been years since he’s known such a fear.

“No, it’s fine.” He marks a pause, then takes a leap. “What did you mean, earlier, when you said it doesn’t change anything for me?”

Releasing his shirt, your fingers splay over his chest, and with an apparent effort, you push away so you can look at him. In the dim dusk light, he can hardly distinguish your expression.

“I meant just that. I didn’t leave Adrian on your account. I’m not expecting you to do the same for me. I’m not going to ask you to divorce your wife and abandon your child.”

He runs a palm over his face, sighing heavily.

“I’m not married, Lee. I never married Lua’s mother, and we split up a little over a year ago. Right after that… after that bullshit mission I told you about.”

Your silence is unbearable. His heart thumps painfully in his throat.

“We kept living together. Until a week ago. Lua’s still young, it was more convenient. I owed them that much.”

You’re still silent, your mind probably working over the implications, measuring the extent of his betrayal, when he’s asked you mere moments ago to put all your faith in him.

“Why did you never tell me?”

Sweat prickles over this nape.

“It was easier at first. I could keep you– keep you at a distance. I was scared.”

“Scared of me?”

Your eyes glimmer in the darkness of the cab, boring intently into his. He’s reminded of that very first night at the bar, when they bore into his back. When he swiveled on his stool and your gazes met for the first time. When your lives collided. He thinks about how much your eyes have come into focus, since.

“Scared of what you made me feel,” he breathes.

“What did I make you feel?”

“Like I’m worthy of you. What I saw on your face when you looked at me… I didn’t want it, but I also didn’t want to lose it. I didn’t want to risk changing anything. I’m sorry, Lee. I’m so fucking sorry.”

He straightens up imperceptibly, moving to touch you, but you lean back into the steering wheel.

“What did you see on my face?”

The words come out of him in a husky murmur.

“You were burning inside. Burning with life. And you wanted me.”

Everything stands still.

Slowly, your hand goes up to his cheek. It rests there, light and soft. A cool and soothing touch. Like it’s always been. Your thumb strokes his scruff, and he leans into your palm, exhaling painfully.

“I still want you, Frankie,” you whisper, leaning forward, your lips meeting his lips.

—

You step out of the truck feeling drained, acutely aware of every aching bone and tissue in your body. Frankie by your side, watching over your balance, you walk back to your car to get the room’s key. The brown diamond-shaped keychain fits in your palm with a homely feeling.

The room has been made. The artificial perfume of the industrial detergent blends with the musty scent woven into the curtains and rug.

Frankie swallows you in his embrace as soon as the door closes behind you. His mouth slanted over yours, his face pressed into your face, his kisses are deep, needy, desperate, and so are yours. His arms wound up tight around your waist, you cling onto his broad frame.

With infinite care, with measured movements, he starts undressing you. You’re docile, pliant like a sleepy child, giving in to the solace of his touch, relenting to the safety of his devotion.

Kneeling at your feet, he slowly slides down your jeans, revealing the mess on your thigh. Clumps of rusty-colored blood are caked around the flushed, raised skin. The sight stops him. Your heart cowers, your breathing suspended as he stares at your self-inflicted wound.

His left palm skims your leg upward, until the small cut is framed between his thumb and index. When he looks up, you can’t tell if the tears gleaming in his eyes are anger or sadness. You cup his face, so many words stuck inside your chest. So many fears, so many regrets.

Soon, you’re crushed under his weight, spread around his breadth, ankles locked over the small of his back as he fucks his love into you, his hands hooked over your shoulders. His skin rubbing against yours, long, languid, thorough strokes splitting you open. The painful ecstasy only he can give you, when he buries himself deep inside you, his forehead pressed to yours. Healing all of your wounds.

He’s breathing you, his heart thumping inside your rib cage, I love you, Lee, I love you, but your words still won’t come out, so you nod, and he knows. Your nails sink into his back, and you pray that he knows.

For the first time ever, you sleep in his arms throughout the night. His chest to your back, a thin shin of sweat between your two bodies. His steady breathing fanning the hair on your nape. You wake up together, on a Tuesday morning.

Stirring out of sleep, he pulls you flush against him. His plush lips trace a wet path of open-mouth kisses along your neck, exploring the expanse of your skin, drawing ephemeral patterns, warm and unhurried. Softly humming, he tastes you, licking your sweat, inhaling your scent, nuzzling the edge of your jaw and nibbling your earlobe, his cock hardening against your cheeks, his calloused hands kneading the soft swell of your belly.

His mouth rounds over the slope of your shoulder, and he sucks in sharply. You jerk between his restraining hold, his tongue peaking out to ease the blooming bruise.

You lift a sleep-heavy eyelids and the morning light hits your iris. Dust particles suspended in the golden sunbeams, the musty smell from the sun-warm curtains carried in the air. His teeth sink in sharp at the base of your neck, a low growl rumbling from his chest, primal and possessive, and it dawns on you. What he’s doing.

The realization thrums along your nerve-endings, courses through your veins, it blooms wild and spreading inside your chest. He is yours. He was always yours. He was never running away from something, not really. He was running to you.

He chose you, remote and aloof. A bottomless well of craved affection, lonely scars, lost ideals, and he filled you. Imprinted on you his want and his need, his trust and reverence, in all the ways you let him.

You summoned him. He found you. He appeared.

You push back into him, granting him access to the line of your throat, and his bite sinks in deeper. Your fingers card through his hair, heart bursting, body like a fever, arousal pooling slick and sticky between your hips.

He fucks you slow. Shallow thrusts, the fat head of his cock teasing your entrance, inching further inside your heat with each dragging stroke. His arm banded across your chest and his hand between your folds, he commands your pleasure, flooding all your senses, until you cry out his name, until he comes with you, until your bodies are spent.

You shower together, and drive to a nearby diner for breakfast. Sitting in a red pleather booth, you drink strong filter coffee and devour thick, buttery pancakes, Frankie’s spend trickling down your panties as you watch him shovel scrambled eggs inside his mouth with a ravenous appetite, his face beaming with a dimpled grin.

Your smile is so wide, your cheeks hurt.

On the way back, he stops by a CVS to get plasters, gauze and an antiseptic ointment. In the room, kneeled between your thighs, he lets you twirl his curls around your fingers while he dresses your small wound in silence, cautious and meticulous, deft and experienced.

You know you should talk, know you should start making plans, but he carries his heart in his hand, and his touch is soothing, and your want is restless. High after high, your body tenses and breaks, as he fucks your cunt, your ass, your face, fills you up with his come, greedy teeth sunk into your flesh.

After making a few calls, he stays another night, and when he leaves for work on Wednesday morning, you spend several minutes observing your reflection in the bathroom’s black-edged mirror. You look good, if not rested, your skin gleaming with a flattering post-orgasm glow.

You detail the bite marks adorning your skin. They’re everywhere. He hasn’t been gentle. He hasn’t been careful. Some of them still a little sore when you poke a finger into the bruised, tender flesh. The mild pain draws a buzzing, electrical line from your heart to your core. You smile at your reflection. Stop me, you challenge the woman in the mirror. She smirks back at you. She’s so beautiful, so confident, your breath hitches.

Eventually, your current situation resurfaces. Calling Ava sits at the top of your mental checklist. You wait for a couple of hours, until her lunch break, to dial her number. The first ringtones send you into a brief panic. Above the desk, the woman in the mirror is looking at you. You anchor yourself to her image.

When Ava picks up, you tell her what happened in terse words: you broke up with Adrian, then quit. You’re currently staying in an out-of-town motel.

She hollers into the receiver, and you wince with an uncertain smile, holding the phone away from your ear. There are a few cheerful curses as she expresses her pride and surprise, but she quickly gets back on track.

“So when are you coming here? You’re coming here, right? Richard is gonna make sure you never work again over there. You know that, right?”

“Yes, I know,” you concede ruefully.

That’s the part of the conversation you should have planned ahead. But you’re still riding high on the fuck-drunk euphoria of the last two days. She questions you for more details, demanding an elaborate report of the events that you’re not too keen on remembering, nor submitting to her judgment. She left without a word, without a goodbye, unnoticed, unacknowledged. You had to confront not one, but two of them.

It occurs to you that you don’t have to tell. Nothing forces you to. Maybe, for the first time ever, you can curate your own experience. Refuse to give in to peer pressure, however benevolent. Define your own story. Be its main character, and its sole narrator.

“What would I do in New York, anyway? Crash your couch? And then?”

“I told you, Polly has a job for you.”

“No, you said Polly could help me find something. Now she has a job for me? What kind of job?” you frown. “At her practice?”

“No, no. Something in a publishing company one of her clients owns. I don’t know, nothing fancy apparently, but enough to get you started.”

“And what, they’re holding a position for a woman without any qualification and zero experience in their field?”

“If Polly says it’s a sure thing, then it’s a sure thing. Call her. She only mentioned it in passing, we never actually thought you’d fucking leave, Lee! And our couch is very comfortable, I’ll have you know.”

This goddamn collective we.

When you hang up, nothing is decided. Frankie won’t be back until Friday evening. You're going to be on your own to stew over the crossroads for the next two days.

Lost in the liminal sequence.

Ava is right. You could never find a decent job in Tampa. You can’t stay here. You don’t even want to stay. You hate this city, you hate this fucking state. It has been your life-long dream to break-free and get away. The idea of staying inside your father’s radius of influence, within reach of Adrian, gives you the wrong kind of chills.

But New York? Do you really want to live there? The city has always mildly scared you, with its buoyant history and its mythical aura. Too big, too noisy, too stressful. Completely anonymous. It would be so easy for you to drown in there. Forever disappear.

The truth is, there isn’t any place you can see yourself living in, because you don’t want to live anywhere without Frankie.

Only right now, the sheer thought of being despondent on another man rises bile in your stomach. You will never be that woman, ever again.

“Here is fine,” you sigh with a pout, looking at the one-dollar store painting of the Appalachian. “Why can’t I just stay here forever?”

Completely unfit for reality.

Adrian’s words seem to find you everywhere. They followed you all the way here, in your hiding place, plucking at the safety blanket Frankie’s care has swaddled you in. You shudder in the warm, quiet room.

Well, fuck Adrian. Fuck your past. Fuck his words and their condemning truth.

Step by step. That’s how you’ll proceed. You need to secure your financial situation. You need a new laptop. You need to buy underwear to replace the ones you forgot to pack. And you need food.

You get dressed and drive to an Apple Store in town, where the price tags on the MacBooks make your eyes bulge. You’ve truly been living inside a despicably privileged bubble. Guilt makes your skin grow tight.

After running a quick search on your phone, you find a second-hand electronic store, where you purchase a refurbished laptop for a quarter of its original price. You feel stupid for feeling so smart. After all, you’re only experiencing most people’s life. The thought helps you follow through with the rest of your errands, starting with the bank.

When you come back to the motel with your shopping bags and some takeaway Thai, however, the problem of your immediate future remains unsolved.

Deliberately stalling, you start fiddling with the computer. The motel doesn’t have Wi-Fi, but you manage to tether the laptop to your phone. The small victory alleviates your anxious sadness. You settle over the bed, back propped against the pillows, and watch brainless social media content as you eat. A warm breeze wafts in through the cracked-open window. This is good, you think. The life-altering decisions can wait.

Over the next couple of days, you gravitate within a few miles radius of the motel, only going out to buy food and take short walks in the surrounding area. Exploring its vicinity in broad daylight anchors the motel in a reality you are not ready to confront. The fact that it’s always felt like an isolated island is what brought you a sense of safety in the first place.

But being on your own is exhilarating. You can sleep in late without having to put up with the nagging beeping of an alarm-clock that’s not even yours. Choose to shower, or not, skip a meal or eat pancakes for dinner. You can watch Parks and Recreation bloopers all night long and never tune in to a financial show ever again. You can sleep with the window opened and listen to Disintegration fifty times in a row. Your newfound freedom is in every little detail.

When Frankie comes back on Friday evening, carrying a six-pack and a takeaway bag, he finds you bare-faced in your sleeping t-shirt, sitting cross-legged on the dirty carpet, watching SNL Digital Shorts on your good-as-new computer.

He sets the beer and the bag on the desk. An appetizing aroma fills the room. Freshly made burritos from his favorite place.

Silently patting the space next to you, you invite him to join, but he faces away, hiding his soft smile from you. He takes off his hat, then toes off his boots, and your heart somersaults at how far you’ve come since your early rituals.

Walking over to you, he crouches at your side to inspect the bandage on your leg, that you changed every day, per his instructions. Seemingly satisfied with your handiwork, he pivots to sit down, his knees protesting with a resounding POP that makes him grunt, and you're overcome by a powerful wave of fondness. Oblivious to the food and the videos on the screen, you unfold your legs and climb over his lap in a straddle.

“Evening, baby,” he greets you with a round chuckle, soft as velvet, as you lean in for a greedy kiss, prompting him to open with a swipe of your tongue over his plush lips.

He responds in kind, voracious mouth slanting over yours, tongue licking inside you. Your arms wrap around him, fingers burrowing into the plane of his strong back, the heady scent of him, leather and musk, filling your brain with static and your belly with want. His warm hands slide under your shirt, calloused palms roaming the expanse of your naked chest. He swallows your wanton moans, thumbs playing over your peaked nipples and you take, back arching into his chest, nails digging, hips rolling.

His touch gets rougher, his hands a kneading grasp over your soft breasts, over the dip of your waist, the swell of your ass, desire pooling hot at your center as his tongue licks and twirls inside your mouth. Chasing the contact of his growing bulge, you bear down over his harsh denim, and his breathing comes in shorter, fingertips teasing the elastic band of your cotton panties. You exhale heavily through your nose, slick soaking his jeans through the soft fabric.

His lips curve into a grin, thick fingers sliding under your panty-line. He presses into the dip underneath your hips to part your leaking folds with an explicit sound. You push harder into him, into the wall of his chest, forcing him to lean back, your need coiled like a wound spring, angling his face with a harsh tug on his curls to catch his lower lip between your teeth.

“Fuck, okay,” he growls, straightening up with a cinch.

His fingers clutch the swell of your ass and in one swift motion, the room around you swivels, you’re on your back, legs bracketing his waist.

As he unbuckles his belt, your gaze follows the rippling of his lean muscles along his forearms to the shifting bulk of his biceps, lingering on the round of his shoulders and his corded neck, up to his gorgeous face. Tousled hair, kiss-swollen lips, cherry-red, curved in a boyish grin. Black, lust-blown pupils that watch you watch him.

A clear laughter rises from your chest and bubbles in your throat, its music beautiful to your ears, almost alien, long forgotten.

His grin widens, dimpling his face, and he tugs off his shirt, throwing it at random in the room behind him. Your laughter dies in your throat; it steals your breath away, it always does, the sight of his naked chest, towering over you, gleaming golden in the soft hues from the bedside lamps. The dips and planes, the pattern of his freckles, the scars you could trace with eyes closed. The stories they tell, your precious secrets, your treasured knowledge.

A flat press of his palms over your knees, and he spreads your legs open, exposing the wet patch on your underwear to his gaze, and his smile falls, his expression turning wilder, dark and hungry.

“Fucking soaking wet,” he husks, chucking down his jeans, pulling out his stiff length from his boxer briefs, and you squirm over the rough rug with a pleading whimper. Spiting in his hand, he starts stroking himself, eyes trained on your core, deft fingers loosely circling his cock in a slow up-and-down motion. Saliva pools in your mouth, you clench around nothing.

“What’s that t-shirt?” he asks, bending closer to you, slotting his cock between your folds over the slick-drenched fabric of your panties.

“Oh god,” you gasp. “That– what?”

“That t-shirt you’re wearing.”

You can feel the throbbing weight of his sex, feel its heat as it rubs back and forth over your swollen clit, and your mind scrambles.

“From– from college.”

“You’re gonna keep it on,” he tells you, his left hand finding your breast and giving it a tight squeeze through the worn-out material. “You look so young, it’s like I’m fucking you in your dorm.”

The fat head of his cock nudges at your entrance, pushing the soaked fabric in, and your mouth falls open, hips arching into him.

“Like I knew you back then. Like I’ve always known you,” he rasps after a thick swallow. “Like a second chance. You know?”

“I know,” you mouthe with a short nod.

Hooking the tip of his finger, he slides your panties aside, just enough to line himself up, slowly inching inside your heat with a strained groan.

“Shit, baby, you’re tight.”

The stretch is impossible, the size of him blinding, and you hiss and squirm, but his hold on your waist is bruising, keeping you in place as he thrusts inside you inch by inch, thick cock catching at your entrance.

There’s the working of his throat as he gathers saliva in his mouth, and he locks eyes with you, making sure you’re watching, before he lets it slide along his tongue straight onto your cunt. The rough carpet scraps your ass as you writhe against his restraint, against the terrifying notion that he always knows just what it is that you want, that he always makes sure you get it.

“You wanted it, now you gotta take it. You’re gonna take it like a good girl.”

“Yes, Frankie,” you breathe out, nodding again, surrendering, bucking your hips into him.

“Oh yea, good girl, that’s it,” he coos. “Gonna stretch that pretty little cunt on my cock, until you come all over it,” he says, moving inside you, “until you beg me to stop–”

“I’ll never beg you to stop,” you breathe out, brows furrowed, sweat beading at your temples as you take his first shallow, labored strokes.

“Wanna bet?” he asks, drawing your legs over his lap with a sudden tug, deepening his thrusts at a blinding angle.

You thrash your head, back arching off the carpet, a guttural sound vibrating in your throat as he starts fucking into you at a steady pace, his cock dragging along your walls, leaving you no choice but to accommodate his girth.

With a small grunt, he thrusts in deeper, the round head of his cock grinding against your center and your fingers scrabble frantically, flying to his chest and clawing at the meat of his muscles.

“That perfect fucking cunt,” he says, eyes trained on where he disappears into you, “you feel so fucking good, Lee. You’re so beautiful. Say it.”

“I’m beautiful,” you say in a warped voice.

“You’re fucking perfect. Say it, Lee,” he husks, drilling inside you faster, with undiluted strength, clutching your waist and sliding you over his cock so you meet him thrust for thrust.

“Oh god, Frankie,” you beg, after all, taking hold of his wrists, a desperate attempt to slow down his merciless pace.

Leaning forward, he covers you with his broad frame, crushing you into the rug, spine undulating as he thoroughly wrecks you, unrelenting, his speed escalating.

The heady musk of his scent fills your nostrils, so thick you can taste it. His hot breath scalds the shell of your ear, brutal shockwaves radiating from your center with each of his strokes, each of his words.

“Be a good girl, and say it,” he pants, “say you’re perfect.”

—

You’re mine, Lee Abbott.

Celadon green, and a pale shade of yellow. He knows your scent will haunt him long after you’ve left him. You’re a part of him now. He made you so. You’ll forever be woven into his flesh, into his very soul.

You’re mine. Lee Abbott.

He never speaks those words out loud. He’ll sooner die than compromise or be a hindrance to your newfound independence.

But god, you’re his. Your entire body bears the mark of his desperate plea. Bite marks on the swell of your hips, the round of your ass, the curve of your neck. Heart shaped flecks of crimson, blossoming underneath the surface of your thin skin along the line of your throat, your collarbone, and the weight of your tits.

Every night, he covers you in his sweat and his spit, before he fills you up with his come.

I love you, he said instead, that first night, and you never replied. In a few days, you’ll be gone, and it might very well kill him, but he will let you go.

And maybe, from the start, he was more yours than you ever were his. A part of him knew it. The part that tried resisting your pull. The part that compelled him to run away from you that very first night.

Two weeks. Two weeks, and you’ll go north. Live with your sister in New York. Start over.

There was this talk, over cold burritos and warm beer. He ate with reluctance, desirous to keep your taste on his tongue. Forever preserve the flavor of your orgasm that he lapped from your folds.

That talk that tore his bleeding heart right out of his chest, when you hinted you might have to leave town. You couldn’t explain, you said. Couldn’t make sense of it. You said, I just want to stay here in this room, with you. I don’t want anything to change.

But it made sense to him. You had to leave, put physical distance between yourself and those who’d wounded you continuously throughout the years, so you could rebuild your life, rebuild yourself. And you needed to be on your own to do this the right way. Once more, he reveled in your courage. He admired your strength.

He hadn’t measured the extent of his hatred for this man until you pronounced his name. Adrian. Your fiancé. This shit stain. Ever since you broke free, he’s had violent dreams about him. A faceless, lanky silhouette, he beats him to a pulp until his knuckles burst over the man’s skull. He wakes up feeling blood spilling warm and gooey between his fingers.

The local newspapers continue to allude to your departure from your father’s company. Short, carefully redacted articles downplaying the event with meticulously curated talking points. Typical PR damage control bullshit.

He looks them up, and never mentions them, of course, but every so often, when he arrives from work, he finds you hunched over your laptop, brow furrowed, bloodshot eyes. Quickly shutting the computer close as soon as he approaches. You’re preparing the after, you say. Scouting for jobs, apartments, and once more, he chooses to believe you.

But then, you cry at night. Silently heaving next to him, your face buried into the pillow to muffle the sound of your heavy sobbing. He pulls you into him, into his chest, wrapping his body around your shaking frame. Chin tucked over the crown of your head. Humming into your hair. You seem so frail, so vulnerable in his hold, and he wishes to absorb your loss, annihilate the pain, rip it from you and make it disappear.

I got you, Lee. Don’t be afraid, you’ll get through this.

Can you hear him, then? Do you believe his words of reassurance? You fall asleep with your hands clutching his shoulders, exhausted, the wrong kind of spent.

You need to go. And he’ll let you leave. Your needs are his needs. They dictate his life. He’ll be right here, waiting for you on the other side.

He said, This never ends, and he meant every word.

But the fucking pain.

Constantly ripping through his chest, it’s in everything he does, tainting your last days together. In every look at your gorgeous face, in every kiss, every stroke, every embrace. It’s there when he marvels at the graceful ways in which you move, at your recovering appetite, at your patience with him when you let him dress your wound that’s long healed.

It’s in the blissful domestic routine you two have so naturally fallen into. It’s in his every thought, at work, with his kid, with you. When he comes to you at night, in this shithole that feels more like home than his new house does.

And whenever he opens his mouth, he fears he’ll betray himself. The words are always there, in the back of his throat, ready to pour out of him. I want you to meet my daughter. I want you to move in with me. I’ll provide for you. You can be whoever you want. Stay. Stay with me.

You’re mine, Lee.

Two weeks isn’t enough. Two lifetimes wouldn’t be.

—

The small cantina is crammed, swarming with boisterous kids and their harassed parents. A continuous clamor hangs over you like a lead lid, you don’t think you’d be able to hear your own voice if you were able to speak.

Frankie’s head is dipped, his face half concealed behind the brim of his trucker hat, his broad frame hunched over his tray. He hasn’t touched much of his food, and you have yet to start on yours. When you left the motel, a quick lunch had sounded like a good idea. A welcome distraction from the impending separation.

Now, it feels like moving through a bad dream, like running away in slow motion from an ineluctable disaster.

Inside your palm lingers the ghost sensation of the room’s keychain. You balled your fist around it before checking out at the reception. You raked your brain for an excuse to keep it, and found none.

Two weeks ago, you’d thought leaving was the right thing to do. He said he understood your decision. He said, I’ll wait for you.

And when you booked the flight, the date, however close, seemed surreal. Somewhere in the distant future, intangible. As the day drew near, you did what you do best. You refused to acknowledge the reality of it, eluding the prospect, reasoning with yourself that you were merely preserving your last moments with Frankie.

Now, the take-off only a couple of hours away, your luggage stored in the truck’s tailgate, you can’t shake the feeling that this is a terrible mistake. You don’t care about rebuilding your life. You don’t give a damn about having a job, about emancipating, about being an independent woman. You want to build a home with him. You want to become his wife, to raise his daughter. You want to be his forever.

You’re going to be sick, is what’s going to happen.

“Should we go?”

You meet his shadowed eyes, fighting the tears that fill up yours, and nod in agreement.

Outside the cantina, the heat hits you like a brick wall. Thoughts rush to your head, about the New York winters, the harsh, icy winds, the snow. The clothes you’ll have to buy. Wool sweaters, boots, a coat. Familiarize yourself with the subway. Those dark, underground tunnels. The ramifications of what this new life entails are overwhelming.

You look up at Frankie and there is no cold hard stare. Only his soft sad eyes, and the gentle caress of their mahogany light, and the pleading arch of his brow. You’re hanging off a cliff, suspended over the abyss, grasping at the dirt, like the wild creature in your rib cage, trying to claw its way out and back to him, where it belongs. Where you belong.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

“Okay, I’ll call a cab,” you say into your bag, looking for your phone, heart thumping in your throat, tears prickling your nose.

Frankie sighs, a constrained, pained rasp of a breath. He props his hands on his hips, cocking his leg to the side, and the heel of his boot scuffs over the asphalt.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the airport?”

The swelling lump in the back of your throat won’t let you talk, so you shake your head no.

“I can drive you all the way there, if you want. New York, I mean. We could… we could make a detour. Through the Appalachian. See that ugly painting in the real.”

His attempt at a cocky smile fails to reach his eyes.

A first tear spills out from the corner of your eyes. A fat, angry droplet that rolls down your cheek to hang on the edge of your jaw.

“Hey now, don’t cry. C’mere.”

Your bag falls to the floor when you crash into the solid warmth of his chest. Winding his strong arms around you, he cups the back of your head in a gentle, careful cradle, lifting you up in his hold.

His cap falls to the ground when you thread your fingers through his hair. You burrow into his neck, into him. You want to live inside his body, meld with his bloodstream, wrap around his heart, become his heartbeat.

He breathes you in, the plush press of his lips a warm caress on your temple, and more tears flow out of you.

“I wish you could come with me.”

“I know, baby. I wish I could come with you.”

“I would—” you start with a sob, “I would love her like a mother. I could. I know I could.”

“I know you would. Of course, you would. Hey, look at me,” he says, putting you down and pulling away just a notch, cupping your wet face with both hands. “This is not over. It can never be over. It’s just the beginning. The beginning of something different.”

Eyes fluttering shut, you tilt your head to the side, his calloused palm grazing your cheek, to place a kiss on the inside of his wrist. Over the small tattoo you never got a chance to ask him about. You inhale him there, musk, leather, safety. You let your head rest between his hands, the same way you placed your life between his lips, many months ago.

“Frankie, I need to ask you something.”

“Anything.”

“Why… That very first night, in the bar. Why did you turn around? What made you look at me?”

His face falls. The crease in his brow deepens as he visibly ponders over his answer. The sun backlights his curls with a golden halo. When he speaks, his voice is a low rasp, a round aching husk.

“I’d been searching for you for a long time.”

He thumbs away a stray tear from the apple of your cheek; he scratches his throat.

“Call me when you get to the airport, okay? And when you board. And when you land. Okay?”

A wistful smile lifts the corner of your lips. Looking at him through hanging tears, you say, “I just realized we’ve never ever talked on the phone.”

Frankie breathes in deep, his smile mirroring yours. So beautiful, so strong. So soft. Yours.

“See, baby? We got so many things to look forward to. It’s just the beginning.”

*****

Thank you so much for reading and for your patience 🧡 I hope you liked it. Remember, there's still an epilogue. It will be shorter, so it shouldn't take me too long to birth it, if my brain cooperates 🤞🏻

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absurdthirst · 1 year ago

Text

The Cupid Shuffle {Frankie Morales x F!Reader x Pope x F!OC}

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 5.9k

Warnings: Exhibitionism, voyeurism, bisexual women, mentions of past sexual relationships, little bit of putting on a show for the boys, women making out, mentions of fantasies, oral sex (male and female receiving), partner swapping, unprotected sex, cum eating

Comments: Inviting Pope and his girl over for a low-key Valentine's night movie turns in to something much more.

A/N: Valentine's Day foursome? More likely than you'd think!

Co-written with @storiesofthefandomlovers

**Follow @absurdthirst-writes and turn on notifications to stay up to date on all new fics.

|| MasterList || Frankie Morales MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

“Babe. I was talking to Santi and he’s cool with a movie night tonight. Him and his girl are going to go out tomorrow like us because tonight is always crazy busy. So it’s a quiet one in for Valentine’s Day.” Frankie says as he comes up to you to caress your waist, leaning in to kiss your neck. “You wanna go get some snacks? You know Santi will eat us out of everything if we don’t buy extra.” He jokes and you turn your head to kiss him, smiling against his lips. “What time are they coming over?” You ask and he murmurs, “seven.”

You grin, happy that this is happening. Santiago Garcia, or ‘Pope’ as Frankie calls him, is dating your friend from college. You had been the one to set them up, absolutely in love with your helicopter pilot boyfriend and Pope had always been a flirty, fun time when he was in town. After he’s moved back permanently, you had set them up and the rest is history. “Perfect. A low key night is just what we all need.” You promise, kissing him again

and smirking. “And after, I’ll give you your present.”

Frankie smirks, loving how eager you are and he’s excited to get you in bed after the movie ends and Pope and his girl are gone. “Baby, you’re already my present.” He murmurs, nipping your ear as you lean back against him. “Let’s get everything set up and we need blankets for the movie.”

You decide to have groceries delivered instead of going out, allowing you and Frankie to clean up and get ready to have them over. It’s not necessary, but you set out some of the candles Frankie got you for Christmas and light them, enjoying the romantic glow with the soft blankets strewn around for couples to cuddle under. “This is better than battling the craziness of a restaurant and a movie theater.” You decide, smiling at Frankie. You know that he hates crowded places and is constantly on alert for threats, so it’s easy to accommodate him and do a romantic night in on the busiest day for most fine dining restaurants.

Frankie nods, “it looks great, babe. I prefer this than going out and battling the crowds. We got some movies saved on the tv so we have a few options. You gonna make that dip?” He asks, biting his lower lip with a pleading expression. You nod and he groans, his hands caressing your side, “fuck yes. I can’t wait for that.”

You laugh quietly, swearing that dip is what made Frankie fall for you. Eating your dip at a party to the point where he almost made himself sick. “I’ll go make it now, I’ve got everything I need.”

Frankie playfully smacks your ass and you gasp, making him chuckle. His life was so dark before he met you. You brighten his days, make him believe in a hopeful future. You saved him. He’d be lost without you. “I’ll go get the drinks ready.” He says, making his way to the garage to grab the ice bucket and drinks for the movie marathon you have planned. Pope and his girl will be arriving soon.

The other food arrives and you set the store bought wings out on a tray and pop the pizzas into the oven and dump a bag of cheddar popcorn into a bowl. Just as you are setting it and the dip out, the doorbell rings out. “Oh! They are here!” You squeal, excited to see them.

Frankie heads to the door before you, opening it to greet his best friend and your best friend. You’ve been on quite a few couple dates, enjoying each other’s company during game nights. It’s been a perfect combination so far. “Hermano. Todo día más feo.” Pope teases Frankie as he pats him on the back in a hug and Frankie affectionately rolls his eyes as your best friend steps around the men to greet you.

“Hey!!!!” You and Dara throw your arms around each other and squeeze tight. Always happy to see each other and it’s such a joy to see your friend so happy after having so many shit boyfriends before Pope. You had constantly moaned together that it seems like there weren’t any good men anymore, and now you are both with ones that are completely amazing. If Pope had been kind of a playboy before, he had focused all that flirtatious energy into making sure your friend was head over heels for him. “How are you? I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to call!” You apologize and look at her once you break apart.

She grins at you, “I’ve been so busy with the new job and honestly, going to Pope’s nearly every night. I’m hoping he’s going to ask me to move in soon since I basically live with him by now anyway.” She says, squeezing your hands as she glances over at Pope who is telling Frankie about his latest client in his security business. “We need a brunch to catch up.” Dara giggles and you nod, “yes we do. You want a drink? I got that vodka that you like.” Dara nods and lets you drag her into the kitchen with a smile.

“It going okay with your girl?” Pope asks Frankie who nods, glancing back at the door you disappeared through.

“She’s everything.” He murmurs, a silly smile on his face that Pope understands.

“Sooooooo.” You grin as you pour the vodka and add juice to it for Dara before mixing up one of your own. “Tell me, how is basically living with Pope?” You ask. “You look happy, really happy. And I love that for you.”

Dara grins, her cheeks hurting from how much she’s been smiling, “honestly, he’s so good. In every way.” Her voice lowers slightly, “he flirts like crazy with me and only me. All that attention makes a girl crazy in love.” She confesses and you squeal quietly, the ice cubes in your drink shaking as you bounce a little.

“Love?” You ask and she nods in confirmation.

“Who would’ve thought? Both of us in love? Especially when we were lonely and horny and used to-” Dara is cut off as the boys come into the kitchen to grab their beers, “you ladies ready for an epic movie marathon?” Pope asks, leaning in to kiss Dara on the cheek.

“Let’s do it.” You wink at Frankie and he nods, walking back into the living room to get the movie up on the streaming service. Pope and Dara take a seat on the large sectional, snuggling into each other and Frankie holds his arm out for you to curl into his side.

You fold into his arms easily and pull the cover up over your laps. The snacks are out and you smile over at Dara and Pope as they curl together near you, Dara closest to you. “Let me know when you need another drink.” You murmur to Dara before the movie starts.

The movie is some superhero movie the boys wanted to watch. The next movie is your choice. The explosions are loud and Frankie glances over at Dara and Pope whose eyes are on the screen. His hand slides down from your shoulder until he’s squeezing your breast. Your eyes flick up to his face and he is smirking slightly, knowing you can’t make a noise otherwise the others will know. His hand slides a little lower, brushing past your stomach until he is sliding his hand under the hem of the dress you’re wearing. His fingers trail along your thigh, slow and teasing, and you spread your legs a little for him. Covered by the blanket, his fingers slide higher until they are pressing against your clit through your panties.

Your breath catches and you bite your lip so you don’t moan, not wanting Dara and Pope to know what Frankie is doing to you. You aren’t focusing on the movie, having no clue what is going on as your boyfriend starts to rub tight circles on your clit, teasing you as he touches you. Frankie loves to make you cum and you have no doubt that he will right now, regardless of the other people in the room.

Pope smirks as his hand sneaks under the blanket, teasing his girlfriend as he caresses her through her clothes. She offers him a warning look, knowing that they are in someone else’s home. All thoughts of propriety leave her mind when his finger finds her clit, rubbing through her panties under her shirt. She bites her lip and focuses on the screen, unaware that you are doing the same thing. Frankie can feel how tense you are, trying to control yourself and that urges him on, rubbing your clit a little faster and you put your leg up, acting like you’re getting comfortable when you’re really giving him more access to you.

Pope glances over at the two of you, noting the smug smirk on Frankie’s face and he grins. He knows that look, and with the way you are squirming, you’re doing exactly what he and Dara are doing. He leans in and presses his lips to his girlfriend’s neck. “Dirty girl. Just like your friend.” He whispers playfully, biting her ear.

Dara stiffens slightly until she looks over at you and Frankie, knowing that look on your face. "Looks like you had the same idea as us." She declares and you rip your eyes away from the screen to look at your friend just as she pulls the blanket away from her lap to expose Santi's fingers rubbing her clit under her underwear.

"Jesus." Frankie hisses, his cock already hard against your side as you lean against him. You smirk and pull your blanket off too, watching as Santi continues to rub Dara's clit.

"Damn, baby. What a sight." Santi coos and Frankie doesn't stop his movements. The four of you watch each other, the movie forgotten as you moan softly.

"Wanna have some fun, like old times?" Dara asks, her eyes flicking between you and Frankie.

Frankie’s eyes widen, gaze darting between you and his mouth is hanging open.

“Baby?” You turn to look at him and lean in to kiss the bare spot on his jaw where his whiskers never grow. “Do you want to see me fool around with Dara?” You ask him, turning to look at Pope with a questioning look. You think it would be sexy, but if your boyfriend or Santi isn’t okay with it, you wouldn’t touch her.

Frankie is a little dumbstruck and he nods, looking over at Santi who grins and says “fuck yeah.”

Frankie leans in to kiss you softly, “yes. I want - want whatever you are comfortable with.” He murmurs, pulling his hand from your underwear to give you the freedom to touch Dara how you want.

Dara grins, “like those lonely nights back in college.” She teases, leaning in to cup your cheek after Santi pulls his hand away from her and she leans in to press her lips to yours.

You are familiar with her mouth, accepting the kiss eagerly and curling your hand around the back of her head and sliding your tongue into her mouth. There were plenty of nights that you had done this and more, because you were bored, lonely, curious and finally just enjoying yourself. You hear the way the boys groan beside you but you are enjoying the way you know they are staring at both of you.

Santi reaches down to squeeze his cock through his pants, not noticing Frankie do the same as the two men watch their girlfriends kiss. Every guy’s dream honestly. Frankie caresses your back, squeezing your ass as you slide your tongue against Dara’s until she pulls back with a grin. “I wanna - do you want to switch?” She asks breathlessly, glancing behind you to Frankie.

You know that Dara has always been interested in how Frankie is as a lover and despite him being your boyfriend, you aren’t jealous. This woman has been a lover on and off for years and you have no jealousy. “What do you think, baby?” You ask Frankie, reaching down and pulling her tits out of her shirt and sneezing them. “Do you want to touch Dara like this? Show her how good your tongue is, like I’ve bragged about since the first night we’ve fucked?”

Frankie is torn, wondering for a second if this is a test, but your eyes are dark with lust and he glances at Pope to make sure he’s on the same page. His best friend nods, “as long as I get to see what these blowjobs you rave about are like.” He teases and Frankie smirks, “just you wait, hermano.”

Dara giggles, leaning in to kiss you again. “Any of us have an issue, we say it.” She says, setting the rules as she shuffles around you towards Frankie, reaching down to squeeze his cock through his pants. “You weren’t lying when you said how thick he is.” She says and Frankie blushes slightly.

“I would never lie about that.” You coo as you crawl towards Santiago. “My baby is packing, and he knows how to fuck a girl until her legs are jelly.” You bite your lip as you straddle your friend’s boyfriend. “Just like I’m curious to find out how Santiago fucks you so hard you pass out.” You caress his cheek and lean in, the movie forgotten in the background. “Can I kiss you, handsome?”

Santi nods, his hands immediately finding your waist and he groans when you grind down onto him, leaning in to meet your lips in a kiss. Frankie inhales sharply when Dara reaches down to undo his pants, reaching in to pull his hard cock out.

“Fuck, she wasn’t lying. You are packing. And uncut like Santi. Love that.” She murmurs and grips him, leaning down to take him in her mouth as her eyes focus on his while he watches her.

You look over as Frankie’s head drops back to the couch cushion and he moans loudly. You love the sounds he makes when you are blowing him and now you get to see him from another view. “You want to have a little competition, Dara?” You coo. “See who can get the guy to the brink of cumming the fastest?”

She pulls off of Frankie’s cock, a smirk on her lips as she looks over at you. “You’re on, baby. Let’s blow their minds.” She grins and you peck Santi’s lips as you slide down his body until you are working his pants open. Dara pumps Frankie in her hand and his eyes watch you as you take Pope’s cock out. Jesus, he feels his cock twitch in Dara’s fingers as your eyes meet his.

“Fuck, you weren’t lying when you said he has a beautiful cock.” You hum, pulling the foreskin back and looking at the bead of precum that has built up at the tip. “I can’t wait to hear him moan.”

Santi watches you as you take the head of his cock into your mouth, “mierda.” He curses and looks over at Dara who has taken Frankie back into her mouth with a moan. The men’s eyes flick between their partner and the woman sucking their cock. Groaning as Santi caresses your head and Dara chokes as she tries to take Frankie deeper.

You know Dara knows how to give head so you put everything you’ve got into sucking Santiago’s cock. Wrapping your fingers around the base and pumping while you work him deeper, making sure that you make him wet and keep your palette soft.

“Fuckkkk.” Santi pants as you take him deeper and Jesus, your mouth feels so good. He hisses and Frankie nods, “damn good. So fucking good.” He pants as his hand comes up to grip the back of the sofa, trying to keep himself from thrusting up into Dara’s mouth.

You moan around Santiago’s cock, enjoying the way he throbs and pulses in your mouth when you swallow around him. Reaching down and gently cradling his balls when you let go of his shaft and completely engulf him in your mouth until your nose is pressed against the short hairs at the base of his cock.

“Holllly fuckin’ shitttt.” Pope hisses, his fingers curling in the edge of the sofa cushion and his toes curl as you take him deep. “Fuckkkk.” He exhales shakily, eyes rolling into the back of his head as you blow his mind.

Dara chuckles around Frankie’s cock, knowing how good you are, and she ups her game, bobbing her head a little faster so Frankie hisses at the pace. "Holy shit."

You have to let up, needing to watch Frankie’s eyes roll back in pleasure. You hum around Pope’s cock and reach for his hand, pulling it to the back of your head. Encouraging him to thrust up into your mouth or push your head down. Wanting him to completely lose control.

Pope groans, keeping you still as he thrusts up into you, his cock twitching as he pushes down your throat. Fuck, no wonder Frankie looks dazed whenever he comes back from his lunch break. “She’s good, hermano?” He asks and Pope nods, panting slightly.

You don’t know if Pope plans on cumming down your throat but you don’t let up. Bobbing your head and swallowing around him, keeping the suction tight around his cock as he throbs on your tongue.

He doesn’t want to cum down your throat. He lets out a strangled choke and grabs the back of your neck, dragging you off of his cock and he watches you stay connected to his length with a line of spit. “Holy fuck.” He gasps, trying to calm himself down and he looks over at Dara who is taking Frankie down her throat.

“One day, you need to cum down my throat.” You gasp as you try to catch your breath, grinning up at him before you look over where Dara is still sucking Frankie’s cock. “Fuck they look so sexy, don’t they?” You moan, sinking a hand between your thighs and inside your panties. “I don’t know which one is sexier right now. And I’ve fucked them both.”

Frankie pants, turned on by your statement. He knows your history with Dara, you’ve talked about your sex life and Frankie must admit that he’s jerked off thinking about you and Dara messing around. He hisses when Dara pulls off of his cock, knowing he won’t want to cum, and Pope moves fast to drag you up his body. “Whose cock do you want to sit on?” He asks you with a smirk.

“Weelllllll, I think I want to sit on your cock, baby.” You lean in and press your lips to Santi’s. “I want to hear Dara squeal Frankie’s name while I moan yours.” You are dripping at the idea and reach over to grab your friend’s face and pull her close for another kiss. “Do you want to lick your boyfriend’s cum out of my pussy, baby?” You ask her breathlessly.

She nods, a whimper escaping her lips and she grabs her shirt to pull it over her head. You follow suit with your dress, leaving you both in panties that are soon shoved onto the floor. You straddle Pope, caressing his chest through his t-shirt, feeling his heart thumping in his chest. “Goddamn. You’re gorgeous. Fish is a lucky fucker.” He compliments you, his hands finding your ass to squeeze your cheeks until he slaps them.

“You’re lucky too, hermano.” Frankie groans, stroking his hands up and down Dara’s back before cupping her tits. “Your girlfriend is fucking breathtaking. Too good for your ugly ass.” He jokes, leaning in and biting her shoulder.

Dara whimpers and reaches down to grip Frankie’s cock. You know she has an IUD and is clean. She knows you are the same. She trusts everyone here and she’s excited to have a good time. She’s dripping wet so notching Frankie at her entrance isn’t hard work. He slips into her as she sinks down onto him with a low moan.

Both you and Santi watch, eyes blown with lust as your boyfriend and his girlfriend start to fuck. “Fuck,” you pant as you look back at Pope. “I need you inside me.” You beg, reaching down and gripping his cock. “Will you fuck me, Pope?”

Santi nods, his hands sliding down your back until he’s squeezing your ass again. “Take what you want, bebita.” He orders and you shuffle closer, swiping his cock through your folds a couple of times before you start to sink down onto him.

Frankie groans as he watches you take his friend’s cock. The way your jaw drops and he twitches inside of Dara. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” She murmurs to him, her eyes watching her boyfriend and her best friend.

“Fucking amazing.” Frankie groans, unable to believe this is happening. “You are so tight, hermosa.” He praises, rocking his hips up and slapping her thigh gently. “Never thought I would get to do this.” He huffs, groaning again when she squeezes him hard enough to make him twitch.

You watch Frankie and Dara, clenching around Pope’s cock hard enough that he hisses. “You like watching them, baby? You like watching them fuck each other?” He coos into your ear, biting down on your earlobe. “You’re so fucking wet around me. Always wondered what you’d be like. Frankie said he’d give me a chance with you.”

You moan softly, wishing you had known about those conversations before now. “He has.” You hum, clenching down around him. “How do you like being inside your best friend’s girl?”

“Fucking love it.” Santi groans, smacking your ass with both hands. He hisses your name and rocks you a little faster on top of him. “You enjoying it?” He asks you, leaning in to nip your jaw.

“Yesssssss.” You whimper, closing your eyes and tangling your fingers into Santiago’s hair while you start to bounce on his cock. “Always wondered what it would be like to fuck you. Imagined you and Frankie both railing me. Now I want that and to see you both rail Dara.”

Santi groans at the same time as Frankie, imagining that dirty thought. They have shared women before during time stateside but he loves the idea of sharing you with his friend and his girlfriend more often, watching you all like his own private porno. “Goddamn.” Frankie hisses, cupping Dara’s tits and pinching her nipples to make her gasp.

You giggle quietly and look over at your boyfriend. “You like that idea, baby? Fucking me and Dara with Santi? Being complete sluts for the two of you? I know you would want to have Dara sit on your cock while I sit on your face.”

Frankie groans, cock twitching inside of Dara, “and Pope can fuck her ass.” He smirks, knowing his friend has a big thing for anal.

Dara chuckles, “double? Fuck yes.” She groans, “then I can play with that gorgeous pair of tits and kiss your girl. Keep her satisfied while you suck on her clit like I used to.” Dara smirks until her jaw drops when Frankie thrusts up into her.

“Fuuuuuuck.” Santiago hisses and his hands tighten on your hips. “You never told me that.” He huffs. “I’d have had you telling me all about it while I was making you scream.” He has had quite a few ideas of fucking you and Dara, but to know that you used to eat each other out? It’s sexy as fuck. “I’ll want to see that while I recover enough to fuck her.”

“We can show our boys how to eat pussy, can’t we baby?” Dara winks at you and moans when Frankie thrusts up into her again. “Oh do that again.” She begs, knowing he has found the right angle and Frankie obliges her, keeping her still while he fucks up into her like it’s the last thing he will do.

“He’s so good, isn’t he?” That’s not to say Santi isn’t a good lover and he steals your attention back to him with the next thrust. Making you moan and turn back to crush your lips to his while you start to ride him again in earnest.

Dara watches you kiss Santi and it sends her over the edge, she cries out against Frankie’s shoulder as he thrusts up into her with vigor, grunts escaping his lips as he jackhammers up into her until she is squealing. Shaking against your boyfriend as she cums, soaking him and her nails digging into his shoulders.

Santiago actually stops thrusting into you, although his cock is pulsing harshly, twitching inside you as he watches his girlfriend cum all over Frankie. “Jesus Christ.” He hisses, so turned on by the sight he almost cums himself. “Now it’s your turn.” He promises, kissing you passionately and starting to move when Dara collapses against Frankie’s chest.

Frankie stops thrusting once Dara is worked through her orgasm, wanting to watch you cum on Santi’s cock. He doesn’t want to cum too soon so he strokes Dara’s back as they both watch Santi start to thrust up into you. “That’s it, Bonita. Want you to cum for me.” Santi coos, his hands squeezing your ass to help rock you on top of him.

Your boyfriend encouraging to cum throws you over the edge. Tossing your head back, you cry out in pleasure. “Santi!” Your walls clamp down around his cock and you soak him as your body shakes.

He groans as you clamp down on him, squeezing him tight.

“Holy shit, Fish. Like a goddamn vice.” Pope hisses and works you through it by rocking you on top of him. His cock is throbbing inside of you. “Wanna - don’t wanna cum yet.” He admits and Frankie nods.

“Get on your hands and knees. Both of you.” Frankie orders, smacking Dara’s ass.

It takes a moment for you to move, but when you are on your hands and knees by Dara, you lean in and kiss your friend. “Fuck.” You giggle against her lips. “Isn’t this the fucking dream?” You ask breathlessly, looking over your shoulder at the two men and smirking. “They are both so fucking hot and want to fuck us.”

Dara smirks back, “a girl’s fucking dream, baby. Remember when we used to talk about something like this happening?” She asks and you nod, leaning in to kiss her again, sliding your tongue against yours. The two men groan, slowly jerking their cocks before they shuffle forward, notching themselves at the dripping wet cunts and pushing back in.

You don’t know exactly who is inside you for a moment while you are kissing Dara. Eyes closed and trying to guess because your cunt is already a little abused from the fucking. Until his hands grip your hips and he drills forward hard enough to make you gasp into your friend’s mouth. “Frankie!”

Your boyfriend chuckles as you gasp out his name and he slaps your ass. "Want you to cum for me, hermosa." He demands, knowing he can pull you apart easily. He hisses when you teasingly clench around him.

"That's it baby." Pope groans when Dara grinds back onto him and he thrusts into her, making her moan into your mouth before she sucks on your tongue.

Dara nods, knowing it won't take much. She hisses as she rocks back onto Pope, his fingers rubbing her clit, but when you lean in to kiss her, your fingers pinching your nipple, she's sent over the edge. "Fuck!" She squeals into your mouth as she cums, clamping down on Santi's cock.

Both men groan at the sight of the two of you locked into a kiss when Dara cums. Santiago grips her hips tights to continue fucking her and Frankie moans as his own pace quickens. You know they are loving the sight and you swallow her sounds as she comes apart.

Frankie wants you to follow, his hand squeezing your tit as he rocks into you. “Fuck baby. Want you to cum for me.” He demands, pinching your nipple as Dara pants against your chin.

His cock is shredding against something wonderful inside you and you know you won't last long. You never do when he's hammering into you like it's the last thing he will do. Your body starting to stiffen with each thrust until you let out a loud cry, unable to stop yourself from tumbling over the edge and drawing out your pleasure.

“Fuckkkk.” Frankie groans when you squeeze his cock like a goddamn vice. “That’s it, hermosa. Jesús Christ.” He hisses, trying to hold off from filling you up. He pants your name and caresses your stomach, enjoying the way you soak him.

Dara groans and pushes back against Pope's cock. "Need you to cum, baby." She begs softly. "Both of you. Want to see cum dripping out of both of our cunts."

Pope grunts, jaw clenched as he pounds into your best friend, his nostrils flared as he seeks his orgasm.

Frankie groans, smacking your ass when you clench him, egging him on. “Fuck fuck fuck.” He hisses, pushing deep as he fills your walls with his hot seed in one of the most intense orgasms he’s ever had.

“Fraannnnnnnkie.” You whine his name, rolling your eyes back in pleasure as he paints your walls with his cum, hearing Pope hiss out Dara’s name beside you as he is the last one to cum, his hips stuttering and his entire body jerking in pleasure as he fills her. “Oh god.” You pant, collapsing down onto your cheek and look over your friend and her boyfriend as he slumps over her back and kisses along her spine. “That was amazing.”

Frankie leans over you to kiss you, his tongue sliding against yours and you kiss him back as hungrily. Dara chuckles breathlessly, “now I wanna taste your cum from her pussy.” Dara smirks at you, “wanna sit on my face like we used to?” She asks, biting her lip.

“Fuck yes.” You moan, clenching around Frankie and the thought of her tongue against your cunt. Frankie is amazing at eating your pussy, but Dara was just as good, if not slightly better. “I want to taste Pope’s cum too.”

The two men shuffle from behind you, pulling out slowly, and move to sit on the other side of the sofa, eyes eager. Dara shifts to lay down and she smirks at you, tapping her cheek and you shift to straddle her face, stretching your body over hers so you can push her legs apart, finding her creamy cunt. Dara doesn’t hesitate to lean in, sliding her tongue through your folds with a groan.

It takes a good bit of tilting her hips, but your own tongue quickly follows suit while both men groan around you. Watching as you two sample their cum from their girlfriend’s cunt with an eagerness that borders on feral. You love the saltiness of Santiago mixed with the sweet tang of Dara, licking the mixture from her swollen folds and holding her legs apart when your tongue swipes over her sensitive clit.

“Fuck me.” Frankie murmurs, watching you both writhe and lick and suck. It’s primal and his spent cock rests against his thigh but his stomach twists with arousal at the erotic display.

“Mierda.” Pope murmurs, watching just as intensely.

You love the fact that they are watching, but this is honestly for you and Dara. They have cum and it will be a little while before they can fuck again. You clench around nothing when you hear Frankie groan, and suck a little harder on your friend’s clit.

Dara squeezes your ass, loving the way you rock back onto her tongue. Her hips tilted so you can lick deeper into her pussy. It’s intoxicating and everyone is feeling the intensity of this moment. “That’s it baby. Lick her clit. She likes that.” Frankie coaches you, seeing Dara’s reactions.

You hum, grinning into her folds as you obey Frankie. It’s no hardship, especially since that’s exactly what she likes. You suck her clit into your mouth and give it a series of kitten licks that makes her moan into your cunt.

Dara’s tongue gets faster, anxious to make you cum like you used to. She laps at you, sucking on your clit and swirling her tongue around it while the boys continue to watch with rapture. “Look so good, bebita. Wish I could take a a fucking photo.” Pope groans, watching with dark eyes.

She pulls her lips away from your clit for a moment, making you whine. “Do it.” She moans before she dives back into your cunt. You moan your own agreement and nod. You trust the boys not to share that, and you would love to see how sexy this looks from their perspective.

Pope scrambles to find his pants on the floor, getting his phone and he looks over at Frankie who nods enthusiastically. “Do it, hermano.” He insists and Pope smirks as he takes a photo of you and Dara. “So fucking hot.” He groans softly, taking a couple more.

You whimper when Dara sucks on your clit again, so close to cumming as you rock your hips back. Pushing down onto her tongue. Your hand slides up and you push two fingers inside her, knowing how much she loves to cum around something.

“Fuck.” She cries out against your folds, her lips slick with cum and your arousal, and the boys watch in awe as her thighs start to shake around your head. “Cum for her baby.” Santo orders, his cock twitching in interest.

It only takes another few moments of sucking on her clit and pumping your fingers into her cunt before she is crying out. Her walls clenching down around your fingers and soaking them with her cum.

The boys hiss, watching Dara cum, and Frankie leans forward on his elbows, planting them on his knees as he watches Dara ride her orgasm on your fingers. “Your turn, hermosa.” Frankie rasps and Dara nods, her tongue pushing back inside of you, her chin against your clit as she tries to push you over the edge.

You whine, eyes fluttering closed and your mouth drops open when she flicks her tongue inside you, sending you over the edge. Your entire body bucks and you squeal in pleasure as the waves of bliss crash over you, making you gasp out as you grind back onto her face.

The guys groan, their cocks half hard at the sight in front of them. Pope smirks, biting his lip as he watches you cum. “Beautiful. Fucking beautiful.” He coos to both women.

“Goddamn.” Frankie murmurs, watching Dara work you through it before she shifts to pull her mouth back.

You sit up and shift off of her, smirking at Dara and pulling her in for one last kiss before looking at the boys. “Happy Valentine’s Day, boys.” You hum playfully, making Dara giggle as she clings to you and it might be the best Valentine’s Day that you’ve ever had. Definitely one to repeat.

#pedro pascal #frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x f!reader #frankie morales smut #frankie morales imagine #frankie morales fanfiction #santiago garcia #catfish x reader x pope x ofc #catfish x you x pope x ofc #catfish x f!reader x pope x ofc #Frankie morales x you x Santiago Garcia #triple frontier #santiago garcia x you #santiago garcia x reader #reader x ofc

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pimosworld · 6 months ago

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Someone like you(tba)

Pairing-Ex-fwb Santiago Garcia x ofc, Joel Miller x ofc

Summary- After a tumultuous years-long friends-with-benefits relationship with Santiago, you decide you’ve had enough of the uncertainty and lack of commitment. Seeking stability and genuine affection, you meet Joel Miller and he’ll make it his mission to show you what love is supposed to feel like.

CW-18+, MDNI, NSFW, Angst, Hurt/comfort, Fluff, abandonment issues, healing, longing, smut, a case of don’t know what you had until it’s gone. Joel Miller appreciation, multiple pov between reader, Santiago and Joel.

A/N- Reader has a name and a nickname, hazel or haze, but otherwise is a blank slate, no body descriptions or ethnicity. I don’t have a set number of chapters yet ( please let me know if you would like to be added to the Taglist)

My other wips looking at me like this 👀

#triple frontier au #tlouau #santiago garcia x ofc #joel miller x ofc #joel miller smut #santiago garcia x f!reader #joel miller x f!reader #triple frontier x fem reader #the last of us fanfiction #joel miller fan fiction #joel miller fic #santiago garcia smut #pedro pascal characters #will miller x fem!reader #joel miller tlou #ex fwb Santiago garcia #joel miller fluff #santiago pope garcia angst

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toomanystoriessolittletime · 2 years ago

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Caught

Summary: Santiago inviting you and Frankie for his house warming party over the weekend leaves you to spend some nights at his new place. Getting up in the middle of the night to get some water, leaves you finding Santi and his girlfriend in the kitchen. Unable to look away Frankie finds you and decided to have some fun with you too.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem. reader / Santiago Garcia x OFC

Rating: E

Wordcount: 3.5k

Warnings: established relationship, accidental voyeurism, dub con (just cause people are being watched without their consent but the watched people do not mind in the end) smut (oral; fem receiving, unprotected PiV), fluff, dirty talk (the word slut is used twice)

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You usually weren’t a big fan of being stuck in a car for two hours. But Santiago Garcia did not buy a house to settle down with his girlfriend (soon to be fiance) of two years and invite for a housewarming party every day.

And you were always a fan of spending time with Frankie.

You looked at him from the passenger's seat, one of his hands on the steering wheel, the other one on your thigh. He had the aviators on that you gifted him for his last birthday after he broke the pair he had before. The gray shirt he was wearing was tight around his upper arms and you could see a tiny bit of the tattoo he got earlier this year.

God he was gorgeous.

“See something you like?” he hummed, a smirk sneaking to his lips as he caught you staring, his hand squeezing your thigh.

“See something I love,” you clarified and he smiled, his dimple showing and you swore you could see his cheeks blushing.

You and Frankie have known each other since you were four years old. Growing up as neighbors until he left to join the army made you spend endless summers together.

But you hadn’t started dating until a little over six years ago.

With him joining the army and you eventually going abroad to study you very much lost contact. After you got your degree you moved to Boston for work and only came back to the tiny town you grew up in for family celebrations or holidays.

But then your mother died and you decided it was time to go back home to help your father.

It was on your 26th birthday that Frankie showed up on the doorstep of your childhood home with a box of donuts and a bottle of whiskey, looking like he had been through hell and back. You would only learn much later that he had been.

Your friendship really just picked up where you left off, just with you both legally allowed to drink booze and adult problems.

And feelings that hadn’t been there before.

You remembered that you talked on your birthday until the early morning hours, Frankie telling you little about the army, about the divorce he was going through, about his little girl he wanted to be the best father too, about his drug addiction. Much like you told him about the man you had broken up with before you moved back home because he insisted you stay where you belonged. With him in the city. He didn’t care about your family or your feelings for that matter.

Not that you thought you would marry the guy, but it still hurt to be so wrong in someone you loved.

He told you everything about his little daughter Carina. She was his whole world.

She was also the reason he and his ex-wife had tried to make their marriage work but decided in the end that they were better off as friends.

Carina and you became fast friends, even though you still think it was because of the huge amount of cookies you had baked with her and Frankie the first time he had invited you over to meet her.

You started to spend more time together after that.

You went on drives, you cooked together, you even went on a weekend trip into the woods where you met all his army brothers. It was the most fun trip you ever had been on.

But something changed throughout the months after that. Touches lingered longer. Hugs seemed… tighter and more intimate. And then came his 34th birthday.

His divorce was final, his three year old daughter was staying for the whole weekend and he had decided that it was time to teach her how to swim.

The three of you spend the whole day at the local swimming pool. You brought muffins and sang happy birthday for him with his daughter before he blew out the one candle you had put on one of the muffins.

When you asked him if he made a wish he only nodded at you with a small smile.

It was the perfect day.

Carina fell asleep before Frankie’s truck was even off the car park, making both of you chuckle. You stopped to pick up pizza on your way home, you insisted you pay because after all it was his birthday. When you came out of the pizza place, Frankie was leaning against his car, waiting for you.

You put the pizza on your seat, waiting for him to go back to the car but he didn’t so you leaned next to him against the car, bumping your shoulder towards his.

He took a deep breath before he came to stand in front of you and you still could feel the butterflies in your belly when he looked into your eyes, his fingers brushing over your cheek. They never really went away since that day.

“What did you wish for Frankie?” you had asked and he had smiled softly.

“A birthday kiss,” he whispered. You licked your lips.

“Then come and get it,” you whispered back.

You would never forget this first kiss with him in the parking spot in front of a pizza place in your home town.

That was six years ago and you have only grown closer ever since.

By now not only your family but all friends were asking when you would get married and have children on your own.

Both you and Frankie told them to fuck off on a regular basis but they did not seem to get the hint.

If they knew you had been married for the last three years they would lose their minds. You got married on a beach while you were both on vacation in mexico. The only witness the older man who married you early in the morning at sunrise.

But Frankie and you had a bet going how long it would take for anyone to notice.

When he had asked you to marry him you had gotten him a ring too, so seeing the both of you with rings was not something out of the ordinary.

“Can you believe that he’s going to propose?” you asked Frankie when you entered the town Santi had moved into. He had started his own Security firm here and met Tina, his girlfriend, who owned the flower shop across the street from his office.

You had heard the story a million times, but the thought of Santiago Garcia buying all kinds of flowers on an almost daily basis for a month until he had finally asked her out still made you laugh.

“I couldn’t believe Benny getting married too, so anything is really possible,” Frankie joked and you laughed.

You would be staying at Santi’s place for four nights. The house warming party was in two days and Frankie had agreed to help Santi with the finishing touches of the back porch which left you and Tina mostly laying in the garden, watching your men sweat and work shirtless while offering occasional Lemonade.

You were very thankful the guest bedroom was in the basement when Frankie railed you in the shower after, his hand over your mouth to suppress your moans.

Sex with Frankie was ….

You still couldn’t believe he was the first man who ever made you cum on his cock. He was only satisfied when he made you cum at least twice.

The day before the housewarming party you spend with Tina in the kitchen. Helping her prepare some salads and dips and things for the party on the next day while Frankie and Santi finished the work on the porch and started putting tables and chairs together.

“I’m gonna make dessert when we come back from dinner,” Tina said. You wanted to argue but she waved you off.

“Santi is gonna help me. He has a hand for all things sweet,” she winked and you grinned.

You were very tired after dinner. And maybe a little tipsy.

Frankie and you invited them both to a Chinese restaurant where you ate way too much sushi.

Seeing Santi so in love with Tina was not something you ever thought you’d see. He had been living with Frankie for a while when you got back in contact with Frankie and he had a new girl every week. It went on until he decided to go back to Columbia for work.

You were happy to see him so content and happy with the woman he intended to spend the rest of his life with.

Once back at their home you didn’t fight to help with desert anymore, letting Frankie tuck you into bed where you fell asleep almost immediately, not even waking once Frankie got into bed with you after he had taken a shower.

You woke up hours later in his arms. One of his hand holding one of your breasts like every night. He argued he did it unintentionally but you knew how much he loved your tits.

Checking your phone you saw that it was just after 2 am. Sighing you carefully untangled from Frankie, feeling thirsty. Sadly you hadn’t gotten a new bottle of water before going to bed. You put one of Frankie’s shirts on (apparently Frankie had undressed you to your panties after you pretty much passed out) and opened the door to make your way to the kitchen.

You were climbing up the stairs when you thought you heard a moan. Stopping where you were standing you listened for more noise, taking the rest of the stairs. When you could look through the room, your head just on the ground level you heard another moan and you turned your head towards the noise, eyes widening when you saw what was going on.

Santiago’s house had an open floor plan on the ground floor. When you entered the house you were facing the stairs that lead to the first floor and the basement. The spacious living room lay on the left side, the kitchen on the right side.

The kitchen was huge, having two islands, one you were facing now where Tina was laying on top, her side facing you. Santi on his knees in front of her.

You knew you should turn around and look away but you seemed rooted to the spot.

His arms were wrapped around her thighs, keeping them apart as he went down on her. One of her hands was in his hair, her back arched, her eyes closed, her other hand made into a fist which she pressed against her mouth to keep herself, quite unsuccessfully, quiet.

“Fuck baby keep doing that,” she whispered and you heard Santi hum against her.

You felt yourself getting turned on, your panties dampening with your arousal.

“Fingers… need… fuck give me two fingers,” Tina moaned lowly and you saw Santi bring one of his hands between her legs before she whimpered as two of his finger pushed inside of her.

You closed your eyes, deciding that this is not something you should be watching, before taking a deep breath and turning around to go back down to wake up Frankie so he could fuck you, when you collided with someone. Just so stopping yourself from yelping you looked up, already knowing it was Frankie. You parted your lips to tell him to turn around when he put one of his fingers in front of his lips, his head turning towards the kitchen.

He was completely naked, his cock already half hard.

You gulped, following his line of sight.

He turned his head back towards you and you caught Frankie’s eyes, before he leaned down, his lips against your ear.

“I saw you watching them,” he whispered and you shivered. His hands came to rest on your hips, taking a step down so you couldn’t see into the kitchen anymore he towered over you.

His eyes were now on your friends in the kitchen and you sucked your bottom lip in as you heard Tina moan.

“I think he’s gonna make her cum baby….” Frankie whispered, his eyes now finding yours again. He took a step closer, two fingers hooking into the waistband of your panties to push them all the way down, you stepping out of them, before his hand cupped your pussy.

“Fuck you’re so wet,” his fingers parted your folds, slipping through your wet slit.

You let your head fall back against the wall.

“Fuck I’m gonna cum,” you heard Tina moan and you released a shuddering breath.

“Frankie…” you whispered. He shook his head slowly.

“Shh listen….” he hummed, nodding upstairs and you did. Hearing Santi’s girlfriend fall apart as she tried to keep quiet, her moans echoing through the room.

“Fuck baby you’re so sexy. My little cock slut,” you heard Santi say and Frankie’s eyes found yours.

“Gonna fuck this pussy so good we gonna wake up the whole neighbor hood,” he continued and you felt one of Frankie’s fingers enter you.

You heard a slap and you were dying to see what was happening in the kitchen.

“That turn’ you on? Making Frankie and his girl wake up to find me fucking you in the kitchen?” Santi asked.

“Fuck baby….” she moaned and your lips parted when Frankie pushed another finger inside of you, pumping them slowly, his other hand pushing your shirt up. You helped him, pulling it over your head, throwing it down. He cupped your breast, playing with your nipple.

“You want them to hear what a slut you are for my cock?” you heard Santi ask and Frankie bend down to suck one of your nipples into his mouth. Your hands flew up into his hair.

His lips wandered up your neck, his lips against your ear as he moved his fingers inside of you.

“When I woke up you were gone and I got up to find you and maybe fuck you in the kitchen,” Frankie said and you whimpered, very quietly.

“But then I found you watching my best friend fuck his girlfriend…” he sucked on your earlobe and you let one of your arms fall down, your hand wrapping around his cock. You let your thumb brush over the wet tip of his cock.

“Who would have known my little wife is getting turned on from watching our friends fuck?” he looked at you then, his lips finding yours, swallowing your moan as he added another finger, stretching you out for his cock.

“Fuck me already baby,” you head from upstairs and you pushed Frankie away. He looked at you confused until you knelt down on the stairs, getting on all fours for him. Looking over your shoulder you caught a glance of Santi pumping his cock with his hand and lining himself up to sink into his girlfriend with a satisfied groan. You caught Frankie’s eyes, smirking when you found his hand pumping his cock too.

“Fuck me,” you mouthed and he shook his head in mock disbelief, his chest rising in a silent chuckle.

You heard a long moan from the kitchen and cursing from Santi.

Frankie’s hands were on your ass, parting your cheeks. He spit on his cock, taking a step closer and you felt him notch the head of his cock against your slit.

You could hear Santi and Tina fucking, moaning from both filling the room, skin slapping on skin.

They were doing a shit job at keeping quiet but then again it was their house.

“Can you keep quiet?” Frankie whispered, pushing the tip of his cock inside.

“Can you?” you challenged, looking at him over your shoulder, biting your lip when he thrust his cock into you fully.

“Fuck baby you’re so wet,” Santi moaned and you let your head fall down between your shoulders, squeezing Frankie’s cock.

“If I knew getting caught turned you on so much, I would have fucked you in your shop,” a moan was heard from Tina and finally Frankie began to move.

“Oh shit,” you whispered, feeling his hand groping your hips as he pumped into you with deep thrusts.

He fucked into you, his thick cock stretching you and it felt so fucking good it took all your brainpower to keep yourself quiet. Frankie groaned quietly, giving you a hard thrust that made you moan.

The sounds of Santi fucking his girl were almost porn worthy. And they continued doing a terrible job of keeping quiet and it made you wonder if they might want to get caught.

Frankie fucked you harder and you moaned again, definitely too loud to not be caught. He stopped, his cock deep inside of you, his hands coming to rest on your shoulders as you waited if you had gotten caught.

You didn’t.

You looked at Frankie and he winked at you, before both of his hands wrapped over your mouth. He gave you a quick thrust and your eyes rolled back.

He used his grip as leverage, beginning to pump into you with short hard thrusts. You heard him groan quietly.

“Oh fuck, right there. Baby…. fuck you gonna make me cum,” Tina whimpered and you clenched around Frankie, making him choke on a moan.

You risked a glance towards the kitchen, now being able to see what was going on and fuck these two looked so fucking hot. Frankie kept fucking into you while you saw Santi pump his thick cock into his girlfriend who was still laying on the kitchen island. His hands were on her breasts, groping them and you sighed into Frankie’s hands, closing your eyes.

Frankie took a step up, his feet now next to yours on the stairs. He let go of his grip over your mouth and pushed your upper body down as his cock dove into you. The new angle made him hit your G Spot perfectly and you pressed your lips together, trying to keep quiet.

“Shit I’m gonna cum,” Santi groaned.

“Rub my clit,” Tina moaned and you heard her cry out a long fuck as she came. Santi following her only seconds later.

Frankie pumped harder into you and it was only seconds later that you fell apart, moaning as quiet as possible as he fucked you through your orgasm.

“Shit baby,” Frankie groaned in a whisper. You felt him twitch inside of you, and you clenched around him, squeezing his cock and he groaned, loud, as he spilled inside of you.

You leaned your head down, your arms laying on the stairs, breathing deeply as you still felt Frankie spill inside of you. He leaned down, his chest against your back as he kissed your shoulder.

You turned your head, smiling softly and he kissed you.

“There better not be any cum on the stairs, Fish,” you both heard Santi say and you jumped. Frankie’s arm came up to cover your tits as he pulled you up, both of you finding Santi and Tina looking at you with him still inside of her.

There was an amused grin on his lips and Tina seemed amused.

“No worries. Definitely no cum on your stairs,” you finally said and you all burst out in quiet laughter. Frankie kissed your cheek. You both took some stairs down and he pulled out of you. You felt his cum drip down your thighs and you reached for your panties to clean yourself while Frankie helped you back into your shirt.

Turning around you wrapped your arms around Frankie’s neck and kissed him softly. You heard footsteps behind you and turned your head, finding Santi standing on top of the stairs, wearing his sweatpants.

You sucked your bottom lip in, feeling guilty.

“I’m sorry. I woke up and wanted to get some water and when I walked up I heard you and I just…” Santi waved his hands. You saw Tina come up behind him, hugging him from behind.

“Next time just ask if you could join if you end up fucking,” Santi winked and you made big eyes, looking at Frankie who was still looking at him. You turned your head again, finding them both looking down at you.

Frankie’s hand ran down your back, groping your ass.

“Maybe we will,” he said and you looked at him, finding his eyes. It was like a silent conversation happened in the span of seconds before you turned your head to look at Santi and his girl again.

“Yeah. Maybe we will.”

#my fic #Frankie Morales x fem. reader #Frankie morales #Pedro pascal #Oscar isaac #Santiago Garcia x ofc #santiago garcia #fanficiton #fanfic #fan fiction

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backtothefanfiction · 9 months ago

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All The Good Girls Go To Hell | TF!Boys Mafia AU~ Part ONE

Summary: When Phoenix comes home to find her fiancé banging some other girl, her whole life changes seemingly overnight. Forced to go back and live with her Dad, she's about to be dragged into a life with the men her Dad is indebted to.

Warnings: 18+ ONLY (Mature Content), Dark Mafia Romance Au, setting things on fire, swearing, dead parent, debt, mental health issues, brain tumour, broken family, anger issues (female rage), AFAB OFC, objectification of the female body, pyromania, little bit of theft (smut to come)

Word Count: 3.8K

A/N: I didn't need to have yet another idea for a story. I also didn't need to write it straight away, but I recently read Den of Vipers and figured I could do something better featuring the Triple Frontier boys. I don't know how many parts of this there will be, or how regularly this will ultimately be updated, but I thought I'd share anyway. Smut will come, featuring all four guys this time. This will use an ofc but apart from the hair, there aren't too many descriptors. This will also be written from multiple characters points of view throughout to keep things interesting. Enjoy!

ONE

PHEONIX

My fingers itch as I grip the steering wheel tighter. I should have worn gloves, I say to myself as I drop one hand from the wheel and rub it vigorously against my torn jeans, hoping the friction from the denim will- at the very least- satiate the itch left behind from the lighter fluid long enough for me to get to the next gas station, so I can stop in and wash my hands properly.

It was reckless of me really- the whole damn thing. My brothers taught me better than this, but then again, everyone said I had a temper that was only second to Archie’s in my family- so I’m really not that surprised. People say my Dad used to be equally hot headed before he got remarried to Marina and took over the club, but I’ve still yet to see it- even after all the shit me and my brothers have pulled over the years. It’s like after our Mother died he just gave up. But I don’t blame him. I would too if I lost the love of my life to a fucking disease like that. I had barely known her anyway, so I didn’t really notice all that much when the brain tumor turned her into a “literal monster”, as my older brothers used to so fondly call her when she was on one of her rampages.

I’d always said that my only real memory of her was when she tried to burn down the house by settling alight to the curtains in their bedroom. I remember we all stood out on the front grass as the smoke billowed out of the windows and mixed with the night air. Archie stood on my right holding one of my hands, E.Z stood on my left holding the other. Maybe that’s why I’ve always had a thing for fire myself. Messing about with lighters, setting things on fire- all so I can try and understand that night… At least, that’s what a therapist would probably say.

My Dad tried to make me go to one once, after I ended up burning down the whole science block at my school at 16, but alas, that never happened. Which is why I’m probably still using fire as a coping method after all these years.

My phone is blowing up by the time I reach the nearest gas station. I scan the messages from my brothers over quickly as I pull into the lot.

Deano: Heard what you did, I’d say he fucking deserved it.

Archie: Dad is pissed. Gonna try to calm him down before he does something stupid.

E.Z: Seriously, Phe, again! Dad is gonna be so pissed.

Leo: Just heard about your latest work, props little sis, I think your balls might be even bigger than Dean’s.

Rolling my eyes, I shove my phone in the glove box as it begins to buzz again. Uhh, I really don’t want or need a lecture right now about how I should or should not have acted upon finding my fiance in bed with another woman. Did I over react… by some people’s standards- maybe. But did I also live out every woman’s fantasy of dousing the bed in lighter fluid and striking a match whilst they were still in the bed… yes- yes I did- and do I give two fucks about any repercussions? Absolutely- fucking- not. Because there won’t be. Never have been. My Dad works for some of the most powerful men in the city- and I’m not talking about the Governor or the Mayor. No- someone will send some money over to keep them sweet and in a couple days time, everything will go back to normal.

I scrub at my hands with the shitty cheap soap in the tiny cubicle inside the gas station to the point the giant rock, still on my finger, almost slips off and down the drain. It’s the first time I’ve thought about it. I’ve been wearing it so long, it’s just an extension of my hand at this point. What am I gonna do with it? I mean- it’s worth a fucking fortune. Freddie was fucking loaded after all. None of it fucking his mind you. His Dad was a close business partner for the same guys my Dad worked for. Let’s just say, crime pays and his Dad has made so much money over the years working for Santiago Garcia and his crew, Freddie has never had to lift a single finger, let alone do a days work, to get what he wants.

I grab a handful of shitty paper towels, drying off my hands and the ring, holding it up to the fluorescent bathroom light. Uhhh it wasn’t even my style. I hate diamonds, they’re so basic and boring. Give me a massive fuck off ruby or saphire anyday.

Still unsure what to do with it, I tuck it into the back pocket of my jeans before assessing how I look in the mirror. It’s like waking up from the weirdest dream and not recognising yourself. I look at my blonde hair in the mirror, the plain white t-shirt covering my breasts. I look like one of those young Barbie, trophy wife wannabe types. Where did the color and fun go? He drained it all out of me.

In college, when I met Freddie, I had pink in my hair and always had on something bright. At least my ripped jeans still have some character.

Exiting out back onto the shop floor, I grab myself a large bag of cheetos and a cherry icee- that's as big as my head- from the machine in the back. As I place the large bag of cheesy puffs on the counter, I take a large sip of my drink, before placing that too on the counter, reaching for a pair of bright yellow heart sunglasses on a display next to the cashier.

“What d’ya think?” I ask the portly man behind the counter, who’s polo shirt doesn’t look or smell like it’s been washed for at least two weeks with its armpit stains and ranch dressing smear on the front.

It’s obvious he’s trying to come across as if he’s not checking out my whole body as he looks at me, but his eyes scan lower than my face, falling on the V neck of my t-shirt and my breasts for a hint too long. I flash him a sickly sweet smile as I take the sunglasses off my face and hook them into my shirt where his eyes seem to linger instead. “How about now?” I ask.

He quickly clears his throat as he looks back to the register. “Uhhh, yes- Yes- I think they suit you, yes.” he rambles and I can’t help but laugh. Men like that were always so predictable.

I reach for the icee taking another sip and try to school my features when I get brain freeze. “With the sunglasses,” he says, “16 bucks.” I sigh, but fish a couple notes out my back pocket and hand them over, just as my eyes land on a lighter covered in black and white harlequin print. My fingers instantly reach for it.

I turn the lighter over and over again in my fingers before flipping the top of it open and striking up a flame, my eyes getting lost in its amber glow as it sways hypnotically back and forth. It instantly takes me back to not 20 minutes ago and Fred and the girl’s screams, as the bed covers went up in flames and they both shot out from underneath them as he screamed about how much of a psycho I was.

The ding of the till draw brings me back to the present and I flick the lighter closed. “Oh, and I’m taking this as payment for you oggling me.” I smile at the balding cashier, as I pocket the lighter and grab my bits off the counter.

I can hear him calling after me, “HEY, COME BACK HERE! YOU NEED TO PAY FOR THAT!” but I just laugh and take another sip of the slush and place the sunglasses back on my head.

As I walk back to my car, I notice a bum, sitting in the shade of the wall at the back corner of the station. As I look at him, I can feel the weight of the ring in my back pocket, dragging me towards him. Hey, the ring might not have changed my life, but it doesn’t mean it can’t change someone else’s life.

“Hey.” I say, lifting the yellow sunglasses on top of my head so I can meet his eyes. “Catch.” I toss him the ring. It sparkles as it hits the afternoon sun and I know from the look on his eyes as it makes contact with his fingers, he feels like he just won the lottery. “Pawn it. Get whatever you want with it, I don’t care.” I say as I begin to turn away from him and back to my car.

“Uh-thank you.” he says at first in shock, “Thank you.” he says again, a little more confidently now.

“Don’t mention it.” I shout back to him as I unlock my car with a chirp and climb back inside.

I open the bag of cheetos, taking one and popping it in my mouth, before dumping them on the passenger seat and reaching to open the glove box, taking my phone back out.

7 more texts from my brothers and 5 missed calls from my Dad; with a final text saying:

DAD: Get your ass home. NOW!

Well, that does it then. I guess I’m going back to the old family home.

I start the engine, shuffling through the radio stations until I find something I like. When I hear the opening riff for Britney Spears’ Toxic, I stop and whack the volume all the way up. My tires screech as I speed out of the forecourt. I sing at the top of my lungs all the way home.

☆

I’m not through the door five seconds when E.Z is trying to usher me back out again. He’s always been the softer one. Third born. The middle child. Always overlooked, but still always trying to appease everyone.

“Dad is pissed.” He says, when he meets me in the foyer. After Mom tried to burn the house down, the place got remodeled. My Dad had to sell his soul to the devil to do it, but it meant we got to stay in our family home. Well, sort of.

The whole left side of the house needed rebuilding, which meant they got to extend it out a bit more. We lost the basketball court the boys liked to play on, but it meant they finally got their own rooms so they didn’t mind.

“I know.” I say to E.Z, waving my phone in his face with one hand, while I take a sip of my icee with the other.

“Give me that.” He says, snatching the drink from my hand, the contents within the straw almost going everywhere as he rips it straight from my mouth. “This is serious Phe, Andy,” Freddie’s dad, “has already been on the phone making threats. You know how important he is for the business. He’s threatening to cut off the club’s supplies.”

“And….” I shrug, before reaching to take back the large cup in his hands. He merely moves it further out of my reach. “Look, I’m sure the guys who own the place have other connections he can use.”

“You sure about that?” My brother presses, raising his eyebrows and looming over me.

“Oh come on, you telling me those four wannabe goodfellas bozos, haven’t got some other dipshit on their payroll to import and export shit for them off record to help keep club costs down.”

E.Z’s face is a picture. Eyes wide, face serious. It’s clear from his expression and his mouth that keeps gaping like a fish as he tries to get a word in, that he thinks I should shut up. “What!?” I hiss at him, but as I’ve been ranting and raving, I haven’t heard the second set of feet that have made their way through the front door into the foyer. E.Z’s face turns pale as he looks behind me to the figure and back.

“Oh no, don’t stop on my account.” A forced casual voice comes from behind me.

I turn my head and follow the voice to one of the most gorgeous men I have ever laid eyes on. All tanned skin and dark curly hair, a smattering of grays mixed in- the only hint to his age. I frown as a familiarity falls over me, but I can’t quite place from where. “I’m sorry- do I know you?”

He slides his fingers into his trouser pockets, his foot tapping slightly as he looks me up and down. “Oh you know, I’m just one of those bozos who’s now having to help clear up your mess.”

Before I have a chance to respond, my Dad and Archie step out of his office at the end of the hall. “PHEONIX!” My Dad’s voice bellows and I blanche, maybe that anger isn’t as far away as I thought.

I turn away from the stranger in his Armani suit by the front door, to my Dad, flashing him my sweetest smile. “Hi, Dadd-”

“Uh- No!” He says, holding up a hand to stop me, “Don’t you dare-” He stops as he spots the other gentleman in the foyer. “Pope.” He says, his demeanor growing lighter as he greets the man who actually owns his ass.

“What kind of name is Pope?” I hiss to E.Z under my breathe, but he just nudges me to shut up.

“David… Archie…” Pope nods his head to the two men. “Shall we talk in your office.” He says, nodding back down the hall behind him.

“Uh- yes. Yes.” My Dad says nervously, turning his body to indicate for him to follow him back, before shooting me a stern look, telling me to behave and that this was far from over.

“Pheonix.” Pope nods to me as he passes, a faint smirk in the corner of his mouth and a look in his eye that I could only describe as fascination. But it quickly disappears again as he turns back to my Dad.

As the door to my Father’s office closes, my brother begins to ferry me towards the stairs. “I’d get up there and stay out of trouble if I were you.” He warns.

I roll my eyes at him before I slip the yellow, heart shaped sunglasses, down over them with annoyance, snatching back my icee, before I stomp upstairs- as usual, out of sight, out of mind.

POPE

“Mr Garcia, I am so sorry for my daughters behavior. I really had thought she’d grown out of this,” David Leacher says, as I sit myself down in one of the leather armchairs in his office. “And I never thought she would do something like this that would put your well balanced business in jeopardy.”

I fain disinterest about the subject, because really, it doesn’t actually bother me all that much at all. Sure Andy is a bit pissed now on behalf of his son, but from what I hear, if you’re gonna go sneaking around behind your soon to be Mrs' back and she finds out, you kinda get what your asking for. To be fair, I gotta give the little lady props; it takes real guts to dump lighter fluid on a guy and strike the match, regardless of the consequences.

“… I just don’t know what to do with her.” David says, slumping back in his chair behind his desk with a large glass of bourbon in his hand.

“And this is why I never got married and had kids.” I say, giving him a tight lipped smirk. There’s an awkward pause between us, the only sound in the room, the ice clinking in David’s glass as he takes another nervous sip, his hand shaking slightly in anticipation, waiting for the slap on the wrist he thinks is about to come. “Look David, I’ll get to the point, Andy wants compensation for the money he’s already forked out for the wedding.” David puts his drink down and begins rubbing his temples as if this whole ordeal is giving him a headache.

He sighs, turning to me, an earnest look in his eye, “Pope,” he says softly- imploringly- “you know I don’t have the money for that-“

“I know.” I say, cutting him off. “That’s why, we’ve decided to franchise Medusa’s. We are going to acquire two more clubs, you’ll get a pay rise and oversee all three venues, to help cover the costs. We get more money coming in through the clubs, you get more money to pay off Andy- everyone’s a winner.”

The look of relief on David’s face is a picture. “Oh thank you, Pope- uh Mr Garcia.” He says, as his whole body seems to let out a very long breath that he had been keeping tight in his body, probably since the first call he got this afternoon about his daughter’s antics. “Thank you, thank you.” He seemingly pants.

“Look Dave, you’re a good guy- a loyal guy-“ I say honestly, “you work hard, you run Medusa’s well. Profits have been up 30% since you took over. I’m not gonna jeopardize that over some silly tiff between a couple kids.”

“No, no… thank you.” He says quietly, acknowledging my words as I continue to speak.

“Whether this had happened or not, we were going to come to you with this proposal this week anyway. Help you pay off your debt to us quicker too- you know.”

“Yes… thank you, Pope. Thank you.”

“Very well then.” I nod to him. “I’ll call Andy, let him know everything is settled.”

“Thank you, Pope, thank you.” He says again.

David is a good man- a loyal man. He runs our most popular club well, but it was a real shame how soft he had gone in his old age. Ever since he lost his wife, he’s never been the same. Then he married that wannabe wag Marina- who does nothing but spend the rest of what little money he has coming in after he repays some of his debt to us- and walks all over him. Back in the day he had really made a name for himself bare knuckle boxing. They used to call him The Reaper because he could knock a man out with a single blow that brought a man close to death; but nowadays he’d barely hit a fly. This was yet another reason I never settled down and did the whole wife and kids thing- it made you soft.

Still didn’t stop his little girl from being as tough as nails and crazy to boot- but when the only female role models you had growing up were a Mother with a brain tumor that made her- to be polite- unhinged; and then Marina, it's no wonder she’s ended up as she has. She bounced around three different boarding schools in her teens. By the third school- after she had burnt down the science block at the second school- we had to write a fairly hefty donation cheque, in order to get her in. Just another number added to David’s bill to be repaid.

Although he had initially approached us looking for work in order to pay off his wife’s medical bills and then to redo the house after she had burnt half of it down, most of the money he’s borrowed from us over the years has been for Phoenix. Frankie, Will and myself have spent many a night around the table with a drink in our hands speculating on why he continues to bail her out and put himself in more debt to protect her. We’ve long come to assume it’s probably because of guilt. That she was robbed of a proper Mother. Cursed to have a weak Father. If she had been my kid, I would have tossed her ass out on the curb a long time ago and told her to deal with her own shit if she wanted to keep behaving the way she has over the years.

To be fair though, after she met Freddie, we thought she’d finally straightened out- or at least she had become Fred’s problem and he was dealing with it. She stopped going to the clubs. Started wearing more grown up clothing that matched her age. Began running with Freddie and his older friends. But I guess it was only a matter of time and you know what they say- a leopard never changes their spots.

I’m halfway to the door, ready to leave, when David stops me. “Umm, Pope.” He says tentatively. I slowly turn myself back to him, ready to hear his request, even though he’s in no place to be making requests right now after I’ve just bailed his ass out for the fifteenth time. “I was just wondering…” he continues hesitantly, “seeing as Phoenix and Freddie are no longer together, she’ll probably need an actual job of her own now…” I can almost feel myself rubbing at my temples, knowing the question that was about to come out of his mouth. It’s the same question that had come when all of his son’s came of age and needed a job… but this time is different- and we both know it.

Phoenix isn’t like her brothers. Where they are able to be mature and step up and follow orders, she most definitely can not. I’ve seen enough of her school reports over the years to know what kind of employee she’d be. When David had asked about getting the boys jobs, it had been a no brainer. Each one of them had a build similar to their father in his hay day, perfect for a bit of muscle and extra protection in the club. But a job in Medusa’s for Phoenix would be behind the bar- and I know for a fact she’d sooner pour herself shots of liquor and dance on that bar than stand back and serve everyone else whilst they had a good time.

I already know I’m going to regret this when I finally climb into my bed at the end of the night, “She gets one chance.” I say. “One chance.” I hold up my index finger to him for emphasis.

“Thank you, Pope. I promise she won’t let you down.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I mutter to myself, my thumb and forefinger rubbing at my eyes in both irritation and exhaustion, as I finally leave the room. I give Archie a brief nod of acknowledgement as he sees me back out to my car.

I'm about to climb back in when he says, "I know you didn't have to do that, but he needed that, you know. He needs that hope that she'll be okay."

I only give him a nod as I look up to the row of upstairs windows and back to him, "We'll see." I say. "We'll see."

-----------------------------------

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#triple frontier x reader #triple frontier fic #santiago pope garcia #santiago garcia x reader #ben miller #ben miller x reader #will ironhead miller #will miller x reader #tf!boys x reader #mafia au #ofc #triple frontier #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales x reader #francisco catfish morales

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frogs-and-oscar-brainrot · 6 months ago

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Guys, where do you find good fanfics? ;-;

I can't find any for a while. Maybe I can't search... Maybe it's because ai is popular now? (not that I don't use it, but I definitely suck at writing human interactions)

Please feed me with Oscar Isaac things ;-; I'm almost over a terrible internship for my university degree and I feel drained from my whole life essence

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artemiseamoon · 1 year ago

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Preview: Is this how it ends? 6

Fic info & warnings

Read on A03

Words: 5,218

A03

Rhea’s eyes fixed on the window as the sun rose on the horizon, golden rays of light cast across the sky like brushstrokes accompanied by oranges and blues.

The heaviness of a long night was now absent from the sky, but no matter how much sunlight streamed through the room, it still felt like midnight.

Rhea barely slept. She kept reliving the afternoon before, what she could have done differently if she kept her anger in check, and how good it felt, even in the context of the situation, to see Frankie’s face, finally. And, she was also worried about Will, she had to make sure he was okay with her own eyes too.

In order to do that, she’d need to gain some trust with Pope, which she might have ruined yesterday. She didn’t regret it, she was pissed, and sick of his games; at the same time, she needed to find a way to control herself so she could get on his good side.

When they got back to the house yesterday, she was locked away in the room, where she’s been since then. She had a small amount of food and some water delivered around 6pm by a guard, but Pope himself was a no show.

Rhea kicked the covers off then sat on the side of the bed, her eyes moving to the Armoire full of dresses and shoes. Even the actual closet had clothes in it he picked for her.

“Stuck in a fucking dollhouse.” she muttered with a frown.

Even the pajamas she wore were selected by him. Rhea got up and started to pace.

“Fine Pope, you want me to play, I’ll play,” she opened the closet and thumbed through the clothes while going over a plan in her head.

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@artemiseamoon-updates

More vibes of this trio aka Rheas phone

#dark! Pope #santiago pope garcia #Santiago Garcia x ofc #Frankie morales x ofc #Frankie morales #will miller #Benny miller #triple frontier fic

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nerdieforpedro · 11 months ago

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Day Six - Santiago Garcia x Amalia (plus size OFC)

Word Count: 406

Warnings: domestic fluff, children, some feelings

Notes: An Oscar Isaac character has joined the spring prompts! I recently read Santiago being a dad in some fics by @reallyrallyauthor who also had the Delta boys being babysitters. I highly recommend them for fluffy and comedy value. Then I kept trying to figure out what to do with flutter. Enjoy!

Main Masterlist / March Spring Prompts 2024 / Writing Challenge

Every spring, Amalia requests that he stop by the Home Depot on his way home from work “when he thinks about it” but Santi is a smart enough man to know what his wife means within the week she told him about it. He’s checking out three of them, feeders for hummingbirds. She prefers a certain kind because it matches the soft yellow of their front and back porches. He always promised himself he was going to paint over the yellow with white or gray - a more neutral color but the bright color had grown on him now.

Unloading the feeders and carrying them to the back was an easy feat for him, maybe not his knees though. His wife Amalia greeted him with a warm smile and took one of the feeders from him, setting it down on a table that was soon joined by the others. “Mr. Garcia, you’re a devious man.” Her hands were on her hips playfully, Santi wouldn’t deny that he is sometimes, well more than sometimes but he just got in. What did he do? His wife tilted her head toward the backyard he had worked on a project with their children and Frankie’s daughters. A small mason jar that had four tubes sticking out of the bottom hung from the large tree that provided about a third of the yard with shade.

Their three children were gathered around watching as an elegant turquoise hummingbird was gathering nectar out of one of the tubs. Small, bright and excited eyes were trained on the bird seeing its wings flutter until they were nearly invisible. They remained quiet so as to not spook the bird and were content to watch, their giggles barely heard by their parents.

“Something Catfish and I put together for the kids. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. I taught Grace how to use the hot glue gun to plop the flower Luis made with Diego.” Amalia’s arm wrapped around Santiago’s waist and she laid her head on his shoulder.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have fussed about getting the feeders. And yes I know I did, I just did it silently.”

“It’s fine. Who knows how long it’s going to last anyway? We’ve got backups now, Mrs. Garcia.” He matched his wife’s playful energy and she bumped his hip with her plush one. Gentle moments like these made Santiago Garcia’s heart flutter with warmth.

#March Spring Prompts 2024 #fanfiction #Oscar Isaac #oscar isaac characters #Santiago Garcia #Santiago Garcia x plus size OFC #plus size OFC #A Nerdie fic

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telumendilsoul · 2 months ago

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Katy’s Merry Write-A-Thon Masterlist

This holiday season, I’ve decided to challenge myself and write something every day for all of December! I’ve created a fun masterlist of prompts I’ll follow for each entry. While I can’t guarantee that I’ll post something every single day, I’ll do my best! I’m excited to share this journey with you and plan to stick with it until we wrap up winter. Let’s enjoy this creative adventure together!

Prompts:

1. Hot Chocolate - Dan x Enya

2. New Traditions - Tommy Shelby x OFC!Dorothea

3. Secret Santa - Francisco x Caroline & Jo

4. Christmas Fairy - Dan x OC

5. Christmas Tree - Joel Miller x Birdie

6. Mistletoe - Santi x Caroline

7. “Of course, I got sick on Christmas, only me.” - Ronnie x Santi

8. “I bet there will be a pregnancy announcement this Christmas!” — Dan “Yeah, ours!” — OC

9. Advent Calendar - Joel Miller, Ellie, Sarah, Kit, and Jo

10. Fake Trees - Tommy Shelby x OC

11. “Come back to bed. It’s okay to sleep in. I know you were up all night.” - Caroline x Frankie

12. Candy Canes - Joel M. x Birdie

13. Dogs - Tommy Shelby x OC

14. Remembering late family members - Birdie and Oberyn

15. I hate Christmas - Tommy Shelby x OC

16. Putting Christmas Lights Up - Dan x OC

17. Watching Old Holiday Movies - Frankie, Caroline and Santi

18. He’s Sober - Tommy Shelby x OC

19. Writing Letters to Santa - Joel Miller, Ellie, Sarah, Kit, and Jo

20. Telling each other stories of their childhood Christmases - Joel Miller x Birdie

21. Meeting Parents on Christmas and Being Nervous - Tommy Shelby x OC

22. Driving to see Christmas Lights - Dan

23. Building Gingerbread House - Inez, Frankie and Caroline

24. Santa’s Coming - Inez, Ellie, Sarah, Kit, Ronnie, Frankie, Santie, Joel Miller

25. No Batteries - Frankie, Santi, and Caroline

26. It’s Tradition - Ellie W. & Birdie

27. Nutcracker - Dan x OC

28. Snowed In - Ellie, Joel, and Birdie

29. “I’m cold. Cuddle me.” - Dan x OC

30. Asleep - Caroline, Frankie, & Santi

31. Midnight Kiss - Tommy M. x OC

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femmeanonymelives · 1 year ago

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Electric Touch (feat. (feat. Francisco Morales) (Val's Version)

Frankie Morales x Valerie "Songbird" Harlow (Singer Songwriter!OC) (platonic)

Santiago "Pope" Garcia x Valerie "Songbird" Harlow (Singer Songwriter!OC) (mentioned in this chapter)

Series Masterlist Part 1

Ari's Note: Finally, I finished this chapter. I took some liberties with the timeline. (In my head, the movie takes place in 2017 and this story takes place in 2019 or 2020ish.) Frankie in my head is in his late thirties, whereas Val is 31 in this story.

Deep breaths, in and out.

In and out.

“What the fuck,” I think in my head as I pace inside the home studio inside my house back in Florida, a day after the show where I ran into Santiago. My mind is racing over the kiss that he gave me the night prior. I owned the house before I started dating Santiago. A small house near a beach. When we were dating, we balanced staying with each other at both of our homes. I come from an old-fashioned family who never believed in moving in together with someone before an engagement.

Frankie comes into my home, holding two cups of coffee, one for him and one for me. His hunter-green jacket is slightly stained due to wear. His slightly brownish-gray hair is messily curled. His “Standard Heating Oil” hat always seemed attached to his head. We have known each other since childhood. He is a few years older than me; he used to babysit me when he was 10, and I was 6. We were more like siblings than friends. His child refers to me as “auntie” more than anything else.

“Kid and momma are spending the day doing a mommy playdate. I am all yours. You okay?”

“I am fine… you are late, by the way.” I sip the lukewarm, bitter coffee slowly to fully enjoy it.

“Being late for a demo session for a song that I am not even singing on.” Frankie takes a look at the home studio setup. A setup that I made when trying to get someone- anyone to recognize what I have is real. A random patterned rug that I found on clearance at West Elm. Faux-leather stools that were found at a yard sale when babysitting Frankie’s kid years prior. The only new thing is the technology given to me by the label.

“The band recorded the instrumentals back in Seattle. The label wanted to see how I would sound doing an actual love song, which is this song. I told them this song is perfect if the male vocalist is a tenor and as a duet. That is why I sent you that text with the lyrics a few days ago. This session to record the vocals and send it to the producer and the label.”

“When you told me about this, I thought you were crazy for wanting me to sing again.”

“Said the man who loved choir in high school.” He rolls his eyes. He takes off his faded trucker hat and tries to straighten his hair. His darkish gray curls are messy like always.

“That was the choir in high school, Val.” He looks at me with concern, fully knowing what happened the night prior backstage. “What happened with you and Santiago last night?”

“It was nothing,” I look over at him as I start prepping the studio for two people recording there. He grabs my arm and pulls me closer to him.

“Val, he left mid-song. I tried to find him after your set for over an hour. I had to find him nursing a beer outside the venue. I know your guys’ breakup was hard on you, but it hit him the hardest.”

“Frankie, I love you like a brother. Can we not talk about this now? I don’t want to waste your time by talking about this instead of doing the recording.” I start vocal warmups before handing him his headphones, and we go into the booth together. We both are standing in front of a microphone for each of us. I place my laptop on a nearby table with the instrumental track and pull up the recording software. He holds the notebook with the lyrics in his hand. “I will lead you in when your part comes in. Recording in 3…2…1.”

The soft country rock instrumental leads me in as I start singing. Frankie smirks the songs as he recognizes the song beat as a signature of my musical composition style.

“Just breathe, just relax, it'll be okay

Just an hour 'til your car's in the driveway

Just the first time ever hangin' out with you tonight

I've got my money on things going badly

Got a history of stories ending sadly

Still hoping that the fire won't burn me

Just one time, just one time

All I know is this could either break my heart or bring it back to life

Got a feelin' your electric touch could fill this ghost town up with life

And I want you now, wanna need you forever

In the heat of your electric touch, mmm”

Frankie’s soft tenor voice appears as I gesture him into the song. His voice is soft, yet rough. I could have been a while since he sang aloud, but he still sounded good.

“I've been left in the rain lost and pining

I'm tryin' hard not to look like I'm trying

'Cause every time I tried hard for love, it fell apart (whoa)

I've gotten used to no one callin' my phone

I've grown accustomed to sleeping alone

Still, I know that all it takes is to get it right

Just one time, just one time

All I know is this could either break my heart or bring it back to life

Got a feelin' your electric touch could fill this ghost town up with life

And I want you now, wanna need you forever

In the heat of your electric touch

I was thinking just one time (just one time)

Maybe the stars align (just one time)

And maybe I call you mine

And you won't need space

Or string me along while you decide

And just one time (just one time)

Maybe the moment's right (the moment's right)

It's 8:05 and I see two headlights

All I know is this could either break my heart or bring it back to life

Got a feelin' your electric touch (oh)

All I know is this could either break my heart or bring it back to life

Got a feelin' your electric touch could fill this ghost town up with life

And I want you now, wanna need you forever

In the heat of your electric touch, mmm”

Out of breath, I pushed the end of the recording. “Please tell me it hasn’t been a while since you sang aloud.” I take a long sip of water from my water bottle nearby.

“Three years.”

“Karaoke with Ben was the last time you sang,” I asked as I gave him a questioning look.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Santiago kissed you?” I gave him the look of “are we really talking about this right now again?”

“How did you know?” Frankie gave me a concerning look since he knows the truth.

“Based on the details in the song, this song was about your first date because you told me how much you cared for him. Plus Santiago told me that he kissed after your set after you two talked after I picked him up from the bar…. Val, what the hell happened?”

“He and I kissed… He told me about the money… his share of the money.”

“And?”

“And that his share was for me…”

“He finally told you then…”

“Frankie, don’t dabble in his bullshit…” I am getting fed up with the same fucking lie that his share was for me.

“I am not… Val, he wanted that money for you….” He sighs deeply as he takes a long sip of coffee. “I know it was shitty of me for not telling you, but I promised you I would have done the same thing.”

“I understand the guilt around Tom’s death but why did he have to do it like that?”

“He was going to buy you a ring so he could propose to you…”

“What?”

“He wanted to propose and do a big old fancy engagement for you. I am sorry that I didn’t tell you.” Frankie is concerned about what is next for me and Santiago.

I sigh as I step out of the makeshift studio so Frankie can record his audio. “I need to record your vocals, Frankie... I will start the music where your part comes in.” As the music plays, my phone buzzes. I pick it up. It is a text from Santiago.

Santiago: We need to talk. Alone.

#santiago pope garcia #santiago garcia x oc #santiago garcia x reader #triple frontier boys #triple frontier fanfic #oscar issac x reader #oscar issac characters #frankie morales x ofc #frankie morales fanfiction #Spotify

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intheorangebedroom · 4 months ago

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Tonight you belong to me, chapter 5

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. Time flies, in room number 2. How much longer do you have, just for the two of you?

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 see series masterlist for extensive tw.

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange bedroom besties 🧡 It's been a hot minute, I sincerely apologise. Thank you to everyone who stuck around, I hope it was worth it, and thank you to everyone who just passed by 🧡 @frannyzooey my love, thank you for your help on the Americanisms, invaluable as always 🧡

Word count: 13.8k

[prev] * [series masterlist] * [next]

Chapter 5: Time in a bottle

It’s late when you pull into the parking lot. Dusk cloaks the motel in its fuzzy veil, the surroundings fading in diffuse shadows. The single-story building stands out in the twilight, akin to an old ship. Wooden poles for masts, hanging lamps swaying gently in the briny breeze, their lights blurry in the muggy air. Tacky and warm, it wafts in through your car’s open windows, dampening the exposed skin of your forearms and the back of your neck.

On the passenger seat, your iPhone’s screen glows in the semi-darkness with an incoming call.

Adrian.

“What now?” you sigh, through clenched teeth.

Your eyes dart up to Frankie’s truck parked in front of you. The word FORD stretched in chrome letters on the tailgate, shining bright in your headlights.

The familiar pull awakens between your constricted lungs. A pounding, greedy little tug compelling you to get out of your car and cover the distance to the room as quickly as your step will carry you. But you want to calm your nerves first. Slow down your heart rate, deepen your breathing.

That discussion you had with your father, earlier this afternoon, still clings to your frame. The humiliation conveyed by his carefully chosen words like tar, black and viscous. You can almost smell its foul stench. And you don’t want to bring any of it inside.

It’s only the third time Frankie gets here before you, if you count that very first Friday back in September. And the second, since you came back from Colorado earlier this month. The pressure in your rib cage eases at the memory of that sweet evening.

All day long, you had rushed through your counting routine. Through the long, icy corridors of your glass prison. Rushed on the 589 northbound. Rushed to strangle the uncertainty of his presence there.

It was a few minutes past 7pm when you parked next to his truck, his early presence cranking up your anxiousness. You got out of your car with an anguished scowl, and you all but ran toward the porch, toward the brass number 2, shoes scuffing the gravel.

The door swung open the very second you stepped under the overhang. A flash of dimple, and his arms wrapped around your waist. He scooped you up from the floor, swift and easy, carrying you inside. Hungry kisses, teeth scraping at your jaw, down the line of your neck. A throaty husk of Happy New Year, Lee Abbott, as he tugged your clothes off your body that thrummed with his scent and his voice and his arms and his taste.

With the density of him.

He lifted you again, your short, giggly yelp bouncing across the room as he hauled you over his shoulder with an easy force. His steps long and balanced, as if your weight was inconsequential to his strength.

In the dim bathroom, he put you down directly into the tub. There, he unbuckled his belt and slid down his jeans, looking at you with a mischievous grin you’d never seen before and that fitted his gorgeous face a little too well.

“Told you I’d fuck you in this shower.”

Thirty seconds later, you were standing together under an aggressive stream of scalding water, his broad back shielding you from the high pressure, steam blurring the tiles and the mirror. You pressed your face into his neck, hands splayed over his chest, feeling it heave with his low, rumbling chuckle.

“ That’s the best I could do. This place is trash,” he scoffed, lips grazing your ear.

“ It’s perfect,” you laughed.

Another notification lights up your screen, yanking you back into the stifling cab of the sedan, to the nagging cramp poking your rib cage, to your hindered breathing.

It glowers at you, bold black letters over a steel gray rectangle.

MESSAGES

Adrian

Your eyes flicker back to the red truck, your face crunching into a grimace.

“Shit,” you grit, grabbing the phone and quickly pressing the home button before you can change your mind.

The lock screen fades as the message app pops open. You squint against the brightness of the glowing white screen.

I made it, babe. I fucking made it. You’re talking to the new senior partner of Balmer & Steigt. Fuck yeah. I finally get what I fucking deserve.

The gray ellipses start blinking underneath the bubble. You frown, bracing yourself.

I couldn’t have made it without you. This is your victory as much as mine.

You scoff, but the dread-inducing ellipses keep bouncing happily. Fantastic. There’s more coming.

I got you something. Something fancy for my fancy girl.

“Oh, hell no.”

Leaning down, you pick up the roomy I ❤ NY tote bag Ava got you as a Christmas present and dump your phone into it, before stuffing the bag under your seat.

If only you could take a full breath. If only your chest would expend. It’s not that bad, really. A few months back, you would have been physically unable to keep going with your day after that conversation with your father. Let alone drive. You’d have suffocated, chocked up on your panic, until you’d been left with no choice other than to gulp down a pill, or two, or three, topped off with a swig of gin. The bitter taste of surrendering.

Is that what it means, to give oneself some grace? You’re doing good, you’re doing better, you’re doing your best.

Closing your eyes, you exhale through pursed lips and ease down your shoulders.

He had you called into his office by his secretary, as you were about to leave, bag in hand, counting steps.

But you were expecting it. In all honesty, you’re surprised it’s taken him this long. Four weeks since you came back from Beaver Creek. Four weeks of defying his strict, outdated, misogynistic dress-code.

The very first morning, you stepped out of the mirror-lined elevator on the 15th floor wearing high-waisted, wide-legged slacks and a loose button-up, the sleeves folded high on your forearms. And flat derbies.

Nervousness, sitting heavy and queasy in the pit of your stomach, beating loud against your eardrums. Prickling under your armpits, raising the hair on your nape.

Kaytee’s eyes widened as she caught sight of you walking by her office, before she remembered to police her expression. The shock on her face turned into something else, something worse. Lurking in the lift-up corner of her lips, in the smugness coloring her cheeks. Something sardonic. Condescension.

“ You can’t spend your life trying to be someone else. ” Ava’s words through the receiver the previous night were a dizzying swirl inside your head, as you walked down the glass corridors, coworkers and subordinates watching you with a similar shocked expression, that blurred their features into one subdued, frightened face.

But who the fuck am I, Ava? you wanted to ask, the only sound on the line that of your short breathing. How did you know who you were? Always. From the very beginning of your life. How did you know how to be so unapologetic about it?

Had it been your gift to her? Does self-confidence require love? Or guidance? Is it innate?

All you know, at this point in your life, is that wearing clothes that you chose for yourself seems like a sound first measure. One that you can actually undertake.

And with that in mind, you stepped into your father’s office, your heart pulsating in your throat, to take a seat across from him, his clear desk standing like a wide canyon between you.

Now, your steps are nearly silent on the shifting gravel, as you walk across the parking lot, fingers brushing along the cool metal of the truck as you pass it by. That pull toward Frankie propelling you forward, inescapable, irresistible despite the nasty sensation oozing down along your legs like thick-flowing tar, weighing your gait.

On the porch, you pause. On Friday evenings, this is when you shed your old skin. Healing wounds, scar tissues. When you set your eyes on the canopy as it swallows the sun, pink-orange dusk fading to dark. Grainy photographs, forgotten vacations. This is when your spine straightens, when you take in the horizon and let it deepen your breathing. When you ready yourself for the life you’ve chosen, between the brown carpet and the yellow curtains and his arms.

But it’s already night. The darkness has erased the horizon and your old skin won’t shed.

The door opens, a draft ruffling your hair.

The first thing you see is the crease between his brow. The tick of his whiskered jaw, and then, his dark brown eyes, appraising the tension that winds up your body, appraising your silence. His grunt, like an echo, distant.

“You sat in that car forever. I was about to come out and get you.”

The concern in his voice rattles something deep inside your belly. You’re not bringing any of it inside that room of yours, you think, as he pushes away from the door to let you in, as you cross the threshold, but it’s stuck to you. Your father’s voice. The tremendous power it still holds over you. His disappointment. Your failures, plural. All the wrong choices.

His hat is set on the desk. His suede jacket is draped over the back of the angular wooden chair. Your gaze lingers on it, you can almost feel the comforting softness of the fabric under the pads of your fingers.

He stands a few feet away from you, giving you space. Dark mahogany searching your features, your posture. His hands propped on his hips, like that other night in the parking lot, after he’d seen the fresh scar in your hairline.

You face away from him. The smell of the room is familiar, in a comforting way. Musty. Dust and the faintest perfume of industrial laundry detergent coming from the starched sheets. He’s pulled the bedspread off the bed. It’s folded neatly on the floor underneath the window. It rises tears along your throat, the idea of him prepping himself, prepping the place, alone in this room where you’ve waited for him countless times and hours. Guilt scrambles your brain, over what, you’re not entirely certain. Keeping him waiting? You failures, plural. All the wrong choices.

“Lee.”

His voice seeps in through the blackness coating your skin, like warm and persistent little droplets of sweet amber.

You turn to face him, at last. An awkward upper-body twist, feet rooted to the brown carpet, teeth clenched around the lump in your throat. He’s wearing that gray threadbare t-shirt you love, the one with a v-neck, and your eyes find the dip at the base of his throat, the fireworks of freckles between his collarbone. Tears well up, too strong to hold back, and you shut your eyes to the muffled sound of his booted steps on the matted carpet.

You’re drifting, enveloped in his warmth, his scent, leather and musk. The contact of his skin as he curls a large hand around your nape, tucking your face into the curve of his strong neck.

His arm wraps around your waist, drawing you closer, flush to his chest, and he presses his chin to your temple. You let go, surrender, honey dripping thick and golden along your loosening limbs.

His pulse beats solid and steady against your cheek. You breathe him in, a hindered inhale at first, and when your shoulders begin to drop, a deeper one. A single tear escapes. It rolls down the round of your cheek into his skin. Your palms skim up to the plane of his back, soaking in his heat, and he presses you in harder, his forearm aligning with your spine, fingers spreading at the base of your skull.

Time stretches. He holds you. You lean in.

Later, after he’s helped you climb into the cab of his truck, you keep your eyes on him as he rounds the red hood.

Sitting behind the wheel, he puts the key in the ignition and, looking at you, tilts his head to the left.

“C’mere,” he says, and you scoot next to him, biting down a relieved sigh as you slide over the seat bench.

He leans over your lap, grabbing the middle seat belt, and buckles you in, then himself. You settle in, with your head against his shoulder, and your hand on his thigh, soft cotton, worn denim. Under your touch, his firm muscles ripple as he drives you into the night, into oblivion. The steady motion lulling you to sleep.

Alongside the deserted road, trees and bushes roll out in the headlights as the truck swallows miles and miles of asphalt.

“I’m sorry,” you mumble after a while, fighting drowsiness.

“Don’t be. You wanna talk about it?” he adds after a pause.

“No.”

You shake your head, your voice so low you’re not certain he’s heard your answer.

“Doesn’t have to be now,” he says. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Your head bobs with his bunching muscles as he releases the wheel to bend his arm at the elbow, fingers threading through your hair. Without lifting his eyes off the road, he leans in, and pecks a pointed kiss on the crown of your head.

Your eyes close. The image of the bedspread neatly folded underneath the window flashes through your mind. You can’t seem to get used to his tender gestures, to his attentions. You hope they will never stop. You hope you will never get used to them.

The emotion washes over you, a soft wave, and you float with it. In the cab of his truck, in his scent and his hold, you feel free of all doubts. Fear and pain cannot find you here. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced so far, a strange feeling, potent and all encompassing, albeit one that doesn’t need to be dulled or tamed.

The words come out of your mouth as a surprise.

“I think I don't want it to define me anymore. My family, I mean. Where I come from.”

This is a new state of mind. Or perhaps it’s been there for a while, a mere shadow on the wall, something you couldn’t clearly discern. Suddenly simple to comprehend and articulate.

“Yea. I get it,” he says.

And you know he does.

You open your eyes, and take in a deep breath, fill your lungs with that distinct old leather scent that clings about him, and the smell of vintage Bakelite from the dashboard, so specific to his truck.

“Music?” you ask.

“Sure, good idea. You like Jefferson Airplane?”

You nod, brushing your cheek against the cottony fabric of his t-shirt, leaving a little bit of you there, for him to find later.

“Yes. I like them.”

“Jefferson Airplane it is, then,” he answers.

Gently, he bends forward, mindful not to nudge you too much, and turns on the stereo. His thick fingers push the tape that’s already there into the slot, and your lips curl with an explicit thought, unlike any you used to have before meeting him. Crude, but welcome pictures that now constantly crowd your brain.

He keeps the volume low, and with the round rumbling of his quiet humming, your mind slowly drifts off again.

You’re about to fall asleep when a thought surfaces, skirting the edges of your consciousness.

“Frankie?” you quietly call.

“Mmh?”

“Are you… Were you in the military?”

The humming stops, his silence abrupt, and his shoulder tenses under your cheek. Pushing away from it, you risk a sleepy glance at his face, plunged in the semi-darkness. It’s not dark enough that you don’t recognize the cocking of his jaw.

“Frankie?” you ask again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”

“I’m a pilot,” he cuts in, pausing to inhale deeply. “I was in the Army for nearly twenty years. I got a discharge a couple years back.”

You remain silent. His eyes flicker quickly between you and the road, and you give his thigh a strong squeeze with your left hand, before resting your cheek against his shoulder, eluding his searching gaze.

Volunteers is crackling through the speakers, but you don’t hear the music. Fully awake now, your mind is reeling with those scattered, minute parts of him you picked up Friday after Friday to stash them away in your subconscious. His puzzle of shadows. All the things that now make perfect sense, and the ones you’re dying to unravel.

His quiet assertiveness. His hands, quick and sure. His silences. His commanding tone. That long, sideways scar etched on his left flank.

His early rage, and his anger too. The flight forward, dimming his eyes, where deep rich mahogany now glimmers.

The zip ties. Your eyes grow wide, a gasping sound catching in your throat. You’re not ready to address how much you appreciate this particular skill of his, considering where he picked it up.

Your imagination produces a clear vision of him in a US Air Force uniform, the fabric stretched over his broad shoulders, and you bite your lip, your entire body covering in chills.

Frankie has yet to say another word. Something raises your consciousness, something in the scowl sharpening his features as he scanned your face for a reaction.

Images flash through your head. The 8 × 10 picture displayed in your father’s office in its platinum frame, for every visitor to admire. Smooth faced and confident, his sleeves rolled up high on his lean forearms, your father’s shaking hands with Reagan in front of a colorful assemblage of containers, in the industrial quarter of the Tampa Bay Harbor, during the 1984 campaign. His coldly handsome face split by a smile, larger and more genuine than any of those he ever addressed you, let alone Ava.

Recollections of those dragging hours you spent in church as a child, beads of sweat dripping along your spine as you sat in the sweltering heat on a hard wooden bench, rigid and still like a marble statue for fear of being reprimanded.

The hateful, vehement speeches your father would burst into at random, your mother pinching your arm for you to listen, this is important. The uneasy feeling sitting in the pit of your stomach, like bile, like nausea. Wrong. This is wrong. A feeling, not an idea yet. It grew with you, expending, to become impossible to see past by the time you started high.

The list of names in your father’s neat handwriting, scrawled on a crisp piece of paper, that he handed you before driving the entire family to the polls for your very first election. The sheer terror, primitive in its hold over you, prickling on your nape as you systematically disregarded his instructions, choosing the names followed by the three letters DEM.

The rare political meetings you secretly attended in college, the pamphlets in loud colors and bold letters, that you read hidden from your roommate’s prying eyes, as if they were satanic verses. Reproductive rights! Demilitarization Now! No to privatized prisons! End gun violence!

Petitions you signed with a shaking hand, because what if your parents found out? What if they heard of it? A dread so profoundly anchored at the very core of your psyche that you have never told Ava any of it, even when she would chastise your lack of interest in politics, your lack of involvement, lest she’d reveal your treason to them in the heat of an argument.

Could this be when you started finding yourself? In your diverging convictions? Could it be enough? Could it count?

“Do you want to talk about it?” you ask tentatively.

He huffs a short, bitter laugh, shaking his head.

“You’re a hell of a fast learner, aren’t you?”

“I have a very good teacher,” you shrug, trying to ignore the sharpness in his tone.

Curiosity overthrowing your ingrained fear to displease, you ask, “What kind of aircraft do you fly? Planes? Helicopters?”

He simply nods, and your cheeks heat again at the notion, your heart racing.

“I’m very impressed,” you whisper. “I can barely parallel park.”

“I’m sure you got plenty of other skills,” he answers, softer.

“No. I really don’t.”

—

Frankie walks briskly across the parking lot, carrying a take-away bag and a six-pack of beer. His head hung low to shield his face from the thin, mid-February drizzle. His denim shirt sticks to his back with humidity, and sweat from the drive. It’s pulled uncomfortably taut across his shoulders.

He steps onto the porch, hands too full to open the door or even knock on it, so he gives it three light kicks. A tiny screw pops out from the curved top of the brass number two. The whole thing swivels upside down, swinging like a pendulum.

“Jesus christ, this fucking place,” he scoffs.

The door flies open, and you’re here, with that bright, earnest smile and your wide, luminous eyes. You’ve tied your hair up in a casual do, but you’re still fully dressed. He likes those slacks on you, snug on your curves, wide on your legs. It fits you so much better than the tight pencil skirts you used to wear when he first met you. Those made you look like an 80s porn producer fever dream. But these trousers transform your gait, your entire demeanor, into something more relaxed. More confident. He could watch you strut around the room for hours. If only there was more time.

He catches a glimpse of the mesh fabric of your bra, peeking out from the cleavage of your open shirt, and he mentally curses the corporate fucks who get to work all week around you.

“Hey, Frankie.”

The sharp, familiar pang rips through his chest at the sound of your voice, light and cheery. That ache he waits for seven excruciatingly long days to experience again.

“Hey, baby.”

As you let him in, he feels the tip of your fingers brushing his thigh, as if you need to make sure he’s here in the flesh. The miracle of you wanting him, still.

“What’s in the bag?” you ask, dragging the chipped chair away from the desk, so he can set down his bounty.

His eyes fall on your graceful nape as you crane your neck to see what’s inside the bag, too well-behaved to touch it without having been invited to do so.

“Didn’t have time to eat. I took something for you too, I hope you don’t mind. Did you eat? Are you hungry?”

“I don’t usually eat before I come here,” you admit. “I drive in straight from work,” you add, heat visibly creeping up your neck and ears.

He takes off his hat, ruffling a hand through his hair to conceal a smug smile.

“And you’re not starving, by the time I’m finished with you?”

“Quite the contrary, actually. I feel pretty full when you leave.”

Your lips stretch into a wide grin you’re ineffectively trying to hold back.

“That so?” he chuckles, propping his hands on his hips. For countenance.

Pride glimmers in your eyes, as it does every time you make him laugh. He knows it’s mirrored in his eyes. Your levity is his reward.

Everything about you is unbearably endearing. He’s not sure if he’s hungry for food anymore, or if he’s not going to go straight down on you. You’ve already prepared the bed, that ugly bedspread neatly folded under the window. He could lay you prone on your stomach, lower your trousers to your knees, perk up your pretty ass and eat your sweet cunt from behind.

His hunger for you sizzles along his spine, sparkling in his loins, imperious and distracting. The sensation is delicious, and for once, he takes the time to revel in it. He’s so used to barging in here and just taking. He doesn’t savor, not really, not until after he’s had you at least once.

He’s not proud of his unbridled hunger, the consequence of seven days’ worth of pent-up frustration, chasing your perfume on his clothes and the ghost feeling of your cool, smooth skin under his palms. That ever-growing obsession for your scent, for your eyes, and that crippling craving for the sounds you produce when he moves inside you. That high he gets when he makes you feel good. Every time he gives you what you want.

And there’s the absolute black-out on all communications between you throughout the week that drives him out of his mind. He knows that’s the tacit deal the two of you struck at the very beginning. No phone number, no address, no marks. Hell, he didn’t even know your name until you gave it to him at Christmas. Only, he’s left in the dark for seven consecutive fucking days, with no means to check up on you, and no way to make sure you’re safe.

He understands the necessity for secrecy. But the more time passes, the less it makes sense.

So come Friday night, he needs to crush you under his weight. Needs to feel your flesh gushing through his splayed fingers and hear you mewl his name, eyes rolling to the back of your head, your body tensing up in his hold before it shatters around his cock.

He needs to fuck you deep and full, find you in that place within yourself and wreck you there. He needs to make sure you’re alright. Make sure you’re real. Make sure you’re his.

And his control might be tenuous, but he sure loves the way you lean into it.

You’re still smiling when he takes a step closer behind you. Lowering his face into the curve of your neck, he inhales you there, that spot behind your ear, where your subtle scent becomes heady. He feels your chest rising with your own deep breathing, and he pictures your eyes fluttering shut. His hand skims the curve of your hip, sliding up to the swell of your breast over the smooth fabric of your shirt, gripping you roughly as he takes your earlobe between his lips and sucks on it. His hips move against your ass of their own volition, his cock half-hard, fucking twitching.

“Frankie,” you whine.

“Yea?”

He licks a broad stride up your neck, collecting the tangy taste of your skin, mixed with the chemical one of your perfume.

“What’s in the bag?”

“What bag, baby? Oh, right.”

It’s a beat before he can detach himself from you. His cock is beating hard and angry against the confining fabric of his jeans. With a light brush of his knuckles along your side, he reminds himself there’s also pleasure in the anticipation. The word sits in the back of his throat, like a knife ready to bleed him dry. Concupiscence.

Ripping the paper bag open in the middle, he smooths both sides neatly over the desk, and points at the three rolls wrapped in tin foil.

“Took three burritos, and some fried beans. There’s one beef, one pork, and one vegetarian, in case you don't eat meat.”

You look at him with a twinkle in your eyes, your grin getting wider than he’s ever seen it. He braces a hand flat on the desk.

“Oh, I eat meat, I thought you’d know that.”

The words have barely left your mouth that you burst into a fit of giggles, covering your face with both hands.

“Christ, woman!” he laughs. “Alright, sit down. Let’s get proper food into that mouth of yours, for once.”

Together, you unfold the bedspread and arrange it over the foot of the bed. The thing is already stained, and you mutually agree there’s no need to make a mess of the white sheet just yet.

Letting you pick between the two richer ones, he takes the vegetarian burrito, and you start eating together, two open cans of beer at your feet.

His bites are ravenous, while you nibble gingerly at your food, holding the burrito with two hands, the foil crackling between your fingers. After a few bites, however, you start eating in bigger chunks.

“This is delicious,” you moan with your mouth full.

Is he getting jealous of a fucking burrito now? Is that where he’s at?

“What, you never had a burrito in your life?”

You wince, and he immediately regrets the teasing skepticism of his tone.

Setting the food down, you dab a paper towel to the corner of your mouth, catching a fleck of sauce. There’s grace in all your movements, even the tiniest ones.

“My mother monitored everything I ate. God forbid I put on any weight,” you explain, a hint of bitterness in your voice.

He lowers his hands, eyes trained on your averted gaze.

“I know what you’re thinking,” you tell him, looking up at him.

There’s that quiet resignation painted all over your face.

“Try me.”

“You’re thinking I’m a grown woman, old enough to make her own decisions.”

He shakes his head. “Was actually thinking your mother sounds like the exact opposite of mine.”

Your mouth curves into a sad attempt at a smile.

“I don't judge you, Lee. We all do what we can with what we got dealt with.”

A slight frown knits your brow, as you seem to consider his words.

He has spent a lot of time, lately, reflecting over his own choices, and the many places where they’ve led him, for better or for worse.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. Libya and the most dangerous places in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly everywhere in South America. Twice over.

Over the fucking Andes, and to Tom’s funeral.

Choices that also made him Lua’s father.

Crossroads that have taken him all the way to that shithole bar, last year at the end of August. Conscious decisions that brought him here, into this room. Into your arms. Into your life.

A chain reaction he wouldn’t alter, he knows it now, even if he was given the chance for a do-over.

He used to consider things as definite. Choices as absolute and irrevocable. It took him becoming a father, and meeting you, to understand his mother’s words. Paso a paso, she’d say, watching him with a tender, knowing smile as he rushed toward his life. Paso a Paso, Francisco.

You eat in silence for a while, and he keeps watching you. That sharp pain solidly entrenched inside his chest, blooming through his heart, he has to make a conscious effort to breathe around it.

He bought you the food you’re eating right now. Drove to his favorite place, stood in line and placed his order with you in mind. And you’re enjoying it. In fact, you’re demonstrating an impressive appetite, hungrier, messier with every bite. Sauce dripping down your chin. Pink flashes of tongue licking it from between your fingers.

He could get used to that. Providing for you. Taking care of you. In more than just one way. Sharing the mundane routine of a daily life together.

But this is not real. Whatever is happening between the four walls of this shitty motel is not ground for life-altering choices.

“Do you want to share the pork one?” you ask, crinkling the tinfoil wrapper into a compact ball.

“I’m good, baby,” he answers with a soft smile. “You can have it. Just make sure you’re still hungry for more meat when you’re done.”

—

Adrian has gifted you a new purse from another French luxury brand. It’s a square-shaped thing cut from some grayish reptile skin, with a matching tag and a decorative lock hanging from its handle. It looks insanely expensive and ridiculously vulgar, its tackiness almost cruelly ironic. Like a rich people’s inside joke.

Somehow, you’re vaguely aware this model is exclusive and can’t be bought online or even in stores, however high-end. It has to be ordered, and there’s a waiting list. Useless knowledge you probably gathered from one of your mother’s magazines. A family of four could most likely live comfortably for a whole year for the price of this thing.

Incidentally, there’s a new perfume clinging to Adrian’s clothes when he comes home late at night. The first time you caught a whiff of the heady fragrance, intense vanilla and white musk, it reminded you of the stunning blonde with feline hazel eyes.

The gift immediately felt less like an expression of gratitude for your support than like a reward for your silent compliance. But it’s of little to no importance. The bag sits idly at the bottom of your walk-in dressing. Unused, containing what’s left of the love and respect you once harbored for the man.

Every so often, you think about it, as you cruise along the 589. It makes you smile. A wide, Cheshire cat grin, one that bares your front teeth, and you wonder if it’s cruel of you to smile about the end of something that used to mean so much. Something that meant nearly everything. You wonder if you’ve ever been cruel before. Intentionally, that is.

Then, you conclude you don’t care. This particular kind of cruelty feels far too good. Too righteous. You could get used to it.

And you keep cruising along the 589 northbound.

—

“Mark Twain or Lewis Carroll?”

“Oh god, Frankie, I don’t know…” you moan, too distracted to think straight.

Teeth ghosting a bite over your neck, he wraps a kiss around your skin, sucking on it. Not sharply enough to bruise, but enough for you to clench hard around him.

In the past few weeks, he’s become playful. It’s new to you. Was it always a part of him, constituent but buried underneath the scars and the years, or was it born from your touch?

He’s become talkative, too. Talkative, and curious. But then again, perhaps he always was. Only, not with you.

Thus, there are new rituals between you. Secrets exchanged behind the shielding partition of the yellow curtains. Murmurs shared underneath the droning of the ceiling fan, in the golden lighting from the quaint bedside lamps.

Some of his questions can pose a challenge. You’re not always certain about the proper answer. The right one. You were raised to say what was expected of you. Taught to speak to please, not to speak your mind. To wait for your cue, and hold your thoughts in between.

Frequently, you hesitate, afraid to trip on your words.

But he doesn’t easily relent. He’s playful and curious. But above all, he’s patient and persistent.

“I don’t know,” you repeat.

“You know. Come on.”

“Okay, um… Lewis Carroll. I love– I love Alice.”

“Oh yea? You do? You like following big white rabbits to strange places, huh?”

His chest shakes with his raspy chuckle, and you laugh, until he pulls you in closer, sheathing himself deeper inside you, and your laughter plummets into a throaty groan.

Seamlessly, these new ceremonials have replaced the old ones, the ones that were carried out under wary gazes, in appraising silence.

Now, you don’t always count your steps on Fridays, but you leave work earlier, and when you arrive at the motel, you try to engage Raul in conversation. His discomfort is obvious, bordering on annoyance, as you disrupt his concentration while he’s busy drawing charcoal landscapes of jagged mountains. But these past two weeks, he seems to have loosened up a bit. Either you’re wearing him off, or he’s trying to get rid of you faster.

On the porch, in front of room number 2, you watch the sun slowly sink into the canopy of trees in an explosion of tangerine pink. Every week, the sunset creates a different palette of orange, but your emotion continues to be whole and unaltered.

Before stepping in, you flick the upside-down brass number. It smiles in greeting, swinging on its one remaining screw.

You wish the place carried Frankie’s scent. It never does, of course. As you fold the comforter and prop it under the windowsill, the only smells wafting around are that of laundry detergent, dust, and the faintest hint of mold.

There’s nothing tangible for you to hold on to in his absence, and this is by far the most difficult. It creates a vacuum, a fertile soil for foul, festering thoughts. Doubt, dread, agitation. During those seven days apart, there is no text or voicemail on your phone you can turn to for reassurance. No photo booth pictures stashed inside your wallet. No clothes of his to drape over your body and keep you warm and safe. Keep you sane.

Every so often, when you cannot find sleep, you convoke the memory of his gray t-shirt, the one with the v-neck and the pilled fabric. The sensation of the slightly rugged cotton under the pads of your fingers. The immediate comfort gently lulls you to sleep.

There is one thing, one thing only: the receipt from the burrito place, that you retrieved from the wastebasket after he’d left, that one time he brought you food. It’s tucked between two pages of your Moleskine planner. You’re not sure whether it’s cute or downright pathetic.

You had thought the want, the yearning, would ease with time. It only kept spreading to every corner of your existence, every aspect of your life. Instead of only missing his touch, you now miss his voice, too. His choice of words, the cadence of his speech, the pace of his gait. His crinkled-eyes, dimpled smile. The way he rolls up his sleeves, leaves the top buttons of his shirt open, and the way he undresses. His three-finger hold on his glass. His long reflecting pauses before he speaks. The freedom and safety you experience with him.

You just became better at handling the longing. Recently, you have become very good at handling numerous things. Quietly but steadfastly defying your father’s injunctions to comply with his dress code. Adrian’s glaring eyes of blue, their silent judgement. Ava living a life of her own, far away from you.

Reading helps. You hadn’t read in years, and you hadn’t realized how much you’d missed it. Now, you carry a book with you everywhere in your I ❤ NY tote. In these last moments before he walks into the room, you lie on your side across the motel bed, your head propped on your hand, and you read.

And when Frankie arrives, everything makes sense again, everything is justified.

The wooden door creaks open, the brass number swiveling frantically, and his relief upon seeing you lights up the dim room. Hushed greetings, his large hands curling at your waist, pulling you into him, a husk of Hey, baby, his lips barely leaving yours while he tugs at your clothes, undressing you already.

There’s rarely any other form of preamble beyond an occasional variation of Fuck, I really missed you, Lee , his teeth trailing down the line of your throat, sinking in just shy of a bite. Out of breath, out of time.

The wait is over.

Does he still come here to escape? Does he come here for you? His urgency hasn’t abated. But his intent feels different.

Stop me, skin on skin, chest to chest, the weight of his body covering yours, calloused hands hooked on your shoulders for purchase, pounding into you loud and ruthless.

Stop me, crouched over you like a devouring beast, his face buried into the crook of your neck, shallow breaths and gripping hands, grinding deep inside your heat.

Stop me, and what you hear is, I trust you.

Deep grunts thrumming out of his throat, tumbling from his plush lips into your skin, a searing branding, an invisible mark.

His plea. Lee.

He comes right after you do, pulling out just in time to spurt hot and thick over your arching body, or inside your wanting mouth.

Later, when his spend has dried on your skin, when he’s kissed the soreness better, when your breathing has slowed, he brings you a glass of water, and waits until you’ve drank it all to bury his face between your legs, or fuck your throat if you begged him to.

And on some Fridays, he goes by the desk to sit on the rectangular chair. He positions it sideways from the framed mirror. Says the reflection distracts you. It’s true.

You could spend hours watching him. Watching him move, watching him sleep. Watch the care he puts in the way he handles his clothes and his truck and your pliant body. Watch him button up his jeans or tie his belt around your wrists. Watch his curls catch the light as he combs his fingers through them, the working of his throat, the pulsating throb of his heartbeat in his strong neck. The dip in his collarbone. The darker scar on his side. The muscles of his shoulders and his back, rippling under his freckled skin. Watch, and map those freckles with your lips.

You could spend the rest of your life with him.

“C’mere,” he beckons, with a little tilt of his head, and a light pat on his thigh.

You get up from wherever he left you lying, the bed, the rough carpeting, the bathroom tiles, and walk over to him on wobbly legs. There, he draws you into his lap in a face-away straddle, his hands on your waist guiding you, firm and gentle, as he makes room for himself inside of you. The tip of your toes barely reach the carpet once you’re seated, and you have to rely entirely on him for balance. You like that.

He braces his strong arms around you, and you keep your fingers curled around them, reclining against him, against his warmth. You like the sticky sensation of your combined sweats gluing your loose bodies. Your back molds to his chest like it was shaped for this very purpose.

Your head tips back onto his firm shoulder, and he props his chin in the curve of your neck. The slight swaying of your hips is languid and slow, barely perceivable, in the same way the earth’s revolution around the sun is imperceptible to its inhabitants.

Time lingers, in long lazy stretches, infinite moments in the amber lighting of the room, in the friendly shadows. In the heart of the night, and the folds of your existence. The low husk of his voice like honey in your ears, his words vibrating from his chest to your back, to your core.

You can hear the smile in his tone. If you close your eyes, you can see it.

He asks about your taste in books, music or movies, food and entertainment, and tells you about his. Silly games of Would you rather? and Never have I ever.

Scrunching up your nose under your pinched brow, brain cells scrambling back together inside your hazy brain, you try to produce coherent answers as his lush lips trace intricate patterns along your skin, your throat, your shoulders, nimble fingertips rolling your nipples into hardened peaks. A scrape of his teeth, followed by the wet glide of his tongue, soothing over your flushed skin.

Sometimes, you feel so full it’s overwhelming. The sensation, the emotion strangles the air out of you. Your cunt flutters around the thick, stiff girth of him, and he lets out a gravelly groan, cock throbbing inside your snug walls. Your slick pools down onto the coarse curls at his base. It’s like a virtuous circle. Everything feels right with him.

After a while, when you’ve melted inside, when amber twirls in your bloodstream and your thoughts have turned to swirling molasses, his hand slides down along your stomach. His calloused fingers parting your folds, he starts rubbing at your clit, telling you that it’s time to come for me, baby.

And when you do, he comes with you, shoving you down and deep onto his pulsating length, fingers digging into the soft flesh of your hips. His mouth pressed to that sensitive spot over your pulse point, his feverish grunts sizzling against your damp skin.

When he comes inside you, when you come together, you are made brand-new. Anything’s possible. There’s nothing you can’t do.

The elating sensation is your favorite daydream, sitting at your desk, over dinner, stuck in traffic, or in the blue hours before dawn. It sustains you throughout the week. The promise of it tingles in tense anticipation, from the crown of your head to the tip of your toes, when you watch him walk over to the desk and fold his tall, massive figure into the ugly chair.

Week after week, question after question, you come into focus between his arms. It’s terrifying, and exhilarating. You keep getting better at it.

It’s a bittersweet ache, tender and addictive, to learn about his existence outside this room of yours. The borderless confines of his life. Of him. The details he chooses to confide in you, about his childhood, his past, and his present, in the dead of the night, his body wrapped around yours, chasing the contact of your skin. Chasing your touch, your softness, your understanding, when he used to grunt away from it. Like a threat, with bared teeth, and a shake of his head. A forbidding. A not yet.

It makes sense to you now. There’s an absolute about him. An all or nothing. You’re not sure when it happened. The tipping point. Perhaps in the bathroom, on that sunny morning after Christmas, when he crowded you against the sink with a wolfish look turning his gorgeous face dark and threatening. You think it was meant to scare you. One last attempt. Your last chance to recoil and escape.

You didn’t. You kept blooming, unfurling into your own limbs under the dark depth of his gaze, reflected in the black-edged mirror. You pressed back into him, the solid, steadying bulk of his body, of his broad chest. You pushed back and sunk deeper into his world.

Today, he had to scoop you up from the floor where you were lying, boneless, in the wet mess he drew out of you.

When he stormed into the room, you could still hear the engine of the truck revving. A scowl shadowed his face. Fidgety, tightly wound up, he began undressing you without a word. Unceremonious in his need, an echo of those early days, when he was imprisoned in his past, when his strength was unrestrained, when violence was his sole language.

Fingers digging into the tense muscles of his shoulders, carding through his hair, you sought eye contact, softly cooing, I’m here, Frankie, I’m here, until your voice got through him. Until he heard you, slowing down, drawing you close. His forehead smearing sweat over your temple, his ragged breathing fanning the shell of your ear. His fist clutching the fabric of your shirt in a ball, with a push-pull motion, torn and primal, I need it, Lee. Please, I need you.

You relented, gave into it, lose and pliant as he bent you over the desk with a press of his palm, flat between your shoulder blades, as he pulled your panties to the side and lined himself up, as he thrust into you in one ruthless shove, down to his base. The clasp of his watch biting into your flesh. He was still fully clothed.

Pulling on your wrists with an iron grip, he drilled into you at a brutal pace, skin catching at your entrance along his length, and you bit your lips through it, nearly drawing blood, until, at the very center of you, the pain turned into something blindingly pleasurable, bright and searing. A shockwave, erupting from your core, fast spreading along your limbs, lighting up every nerve-ending.

Tensing under his constraining hold, bucking against his grip, you cried out his name, your back achingly stiff. Slick gushing out of you fast and hot, as your legs trembled uncontrollably, and through the din of it all, his rumbling growl, a guttural string of Fuck, before you slumped onto the desk and he fucked his own release into you.

When he let go of you, he had to lay you on the carpet, where he collapsed next to you, chest heaving with exertion. Time blurred, you might have spent the whole night lying there, staring blankly at the popcorn ceiling, but he got up to undress.

He’s cradling you on his lap now, gently rocking into you. The slow and steady rhythm of his heartbeat aligned with yours, you’re bathed in his warmth, enveloped by his musky scent. You play along, searching your brain for answers. To his questions, and yours.

There’s no evidence of his earlier outburst, saved for his thumbs drawing circles on your wrists where his fingers left a bruising indent. And of course, the wet spot on the carpet.

Nuzzling your jawline, he trails a path of messy, lazy kisses down the column of your neck, capturing the tender skin between his plush lips, his tongue peeking through them.

“I should read it again. Alice. Read it so long ago. When I was a kid.”

Humming distractedly in agreement, your head lolls back on his shoulder.

“Did I hurt you, earlier?”

Your eyelids fly open. His voice is barely a murmur, no more than warm breath grazing your ear, and you feel him throb inside you.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you.”

The vulnerability in his words shoots through your heart like a bullet. You free your arms to twine your fingers with his.

“What happened today, Frankie?”

His chest stiffens underneath you.

“Nothing. Nothing happened. It’s more… It’s the date.”

The overhead fan hums over the room, louder than your breathing, louder than his.

“A year ago, I agreed to a mission. With my former teammates. It was… It was bullshit. From the start. Nothing went as planned.”

He pauses and you wait, still and silent.

“One of us got killed.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, squeezing his hands with all of your strength.

A chilling, bone-deep dread settles over your body in the sweltering heat, so cold he can probably feel it. You don’t want him to.

“You said you resigned a couple of years ago?”

“I did. I worked for the private sector, on occasions. It’s over now.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Fuck no,” he snarls. “But some of my friends did. I– I had to go.” He clears his throat. “I chose to go.”

“Do you miss him?”

He doesn’t answer for a while. Lifting his hand in yours, you give his knuckles a long, open-mouthed kiss. His forehead rests heavy against the back of your head, his eyelashes a fluttering caress on your nape.

“For a long time, I felt responsible for his death.”

His words are dense with defeat. With sadness, and fatality. They sink heavily into you, into your bloodstream. You don’t need a mirror to know what his face looks like at this very moment. Your body will remember it, even if you live long enough to forget your own name. The pitch-blackness of his beautiful eyes, the stern crease splitting his brow, imploring for your touch. The tightness in his jaw. The downward curve of his plush lips.

That first night at the motel comes back rushing like a flood, like a wildfire. His roughness, the urgency saturating his actions, the anger in his grief. His bleeding wounds, invisible, evident, glaring. He reached for you through his despair, clutching your body, clinging to the idea of you.

Are you real?

I don’t know.

A dry sob wells up in your throat, but you swallow it down.

“What do you think now?”

“I think it doesn’t matter who’s responsible for his death. His girls are still orphaned.”

Between your lungs, the wild creature curls up into a ball. Its tears fill up your heart. There isn’t any pill or alcohol strong enough to numb this pain of yours. But it doesn’t matter. You want to feel what he feels.

You turn around. You kiss him.

—

“What about this one?”

He should be leaving soon. But your body’s soft and relaxed, curled into his side on the rumpled bed. Pleasantly cool in the muggy atmosphere of the motel room, in the dawn’s indigo hues. Your thin fingers hover gracefully over his skin, tracing the outlines of his scars, and it’s like you’re reshaping his entire body, all of his wounds, and his whole life, with the gentle touch of your fingertips.

“Frankie, what’s this one?”

He should be leaving soon. The sun’s about to come up.

“Did you save it for last because it’s the largest?” he deflects with a smirk.

Folding an arm over his chest, you prop your chin over it, frowning exaggeratedly with your jaw shifting to the side. He laughs so hard that your head bobbles with his shaking belly.

“That supposed to be an impression of me?”

“You recognized yourself,” you smile, sitting up next to him.

He should be leaving soon. And you know it. You’re giving him the space he needs to get up and get out. He fucking hates it.

“Stay here,” he says, curling his fingers around your arm as you’re about to get down from the bed.

The look you give him awakens the pain in his chest. You peer through the curtains, into the blue morning sky, and your gaze returns to him with a silent question.

“Come on. Please. Just a little longer.”

It’s not lost on him that he should be the one getting up. Not pleading.

The mattress creaks in protest as you move over it on your knees, sitting in a straddle across his hips.

“Yea, that’s better,” he smiles, smoothing his palms over your thighs. His left hand slides up to palm your breast, and he notices he hasn’t taken off his watch, tonight. It’s the second time this month.

“What’s this one?” you ask again, entirely undistracted, measuring up your hand to the length of the darker patch of skin.

“Okay,” he sighs, “I crashed a chopper near– wait, I can’t actually tell you that.”

“Jesus, Frankie,” you gasp, spreading both hands over the old wound, as if to stop a ghost bleeding. Your eyes have grown so wide, they eat up half your face.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s old. Wasn’t a big deal.”

It had been a big deal, at the time. There had been talks of awarding him a Silver Star for that mission.

“Did it hurt?”

“Mostly my pride. It wasn’t that bad, don’t worry. Nothing compared to what my sister threatened to do to me if I didn't leave the Army.”

“I can’t say I blame her. I would have probably done the same.”

“Ok, my turn. What’s this one?”

His left thumb skims along the thin line on your inner thigh, and he feels you tensing under his touch.

“It’s nothing,” you snap, taking your hands off his skin as if you just got burnt.

He presses his thumb into your soft flesh. The pain in his chest accentuates, radiating down to his stomach.

“You’re cheating,” he says, as softly as he can.

You face away from him, gaze flickering up to the window again, and you start moving away, but he holds you firmly in place with both hands on your waist.

“Lee. Tell me what it is.”

Seconds turn into minutes, the only sound in the room that of the ceiling fan’s motor, and the pain grows stronger, pulsating from his neck to his gut. Your eyes remain trained on the window, lost somewhere beyond the curtains.

“I had several more like this,” you start. Your tone is detached, your voice distant. “Smaller ones. On the back of my arms. When I was 17, my mother took me to a dermatologist. He removed them with laser treatment.”

You pause, and look down at him.

“She got me fixed, so I could find a good husband.”

His fingers dig into your flesh. It’s a full minute before he remembers to breathe, through his nose, because he can’t unclench his jaw. The chest pain turns into blinding, white-hot rage. His truck is parked outside and in his mind, the sequence of actions is crystal clear. Get you dressed. Get you in the cab. Drive away with you as far as the road goes, and never come back here.

“It burnt like hel—“

“You’re perfect, you know that?” he cuts in.

“I’m really not, Frankie,” you calmly answer. “What I am is a coward.”

He sits up with a cinch, cupping your face so you can’t recoil from him. Somehow, this would be easier if you looked upset. If you were crying. Showing any kind of emotion, really. But you’re far beyond that.

“I can’t let you say that. Not when you risk everything to come here every week.”

“Alright, so I’m a selfish coward,” you say with a joyless little smile.

“No. You’re perfect. You’re my perfect girl. Say it.”

It’s there. Your unbending will, your steel-hard determination. In your defiant gaze and your pinched lips. In the distance you're trying to put between your body and his.

“Okay, fine. Don’t say it. I’ll keep repeating it until you believe me. I can be fucking persistent, you know?” he adds, falling back onto the pillows.

“I know you can,“ you say, lifting a leg off the bed.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he nearly growls, a bruising grip on your thigh, “I’m not done with you.”

His clipped tone appears to be more effective on you. You sit back down, let your shoulders relax, and the palm of your hands find his skin again. Distant gaze, cold touch.

“What’s this one?” he asks, the blunt fingernail of his thumb grazing the grid-shaped scar on your left knee, his tone barely a question, and to his surprise, you come alive with a spark in your eyes.

“Oh! This one’s a good scar. I like it.”

You adjust your position over him, slotting your folds over his resting cock, and a coiling heat stirs in his loin.

“I had a bicycle when I was a kid. The most beautiful bicycle in the entire world. Red, the exact same shade as your truck. With a round cushion protection on the frame, I don’t know how you call that, and the letters MBK painted in white over it, you know the kind?”

He nods, and you continue talking.

“I would spend hours riding it. I would disappear for entire afternoons. It was heaven. And maybe you’re not going to believe me, but I was pretty reckless on that thing.”

“Oh, I believe you.”

You’re smiling again.

“Well, one day, I was too reckless. I hit the brakes too abruptly and I skidded over gravel. I flew ten feet away from the bike and I tore my knee open. I got home covered in blood, my parents were furious.”

A vengeful smile curves your lips, one he’s never seen on your face.

“They confiscated the bike. My mother said it wasn’t ladylike, and my father said– I can’t remember his exact words, probably 'you can’t damage my property,’ or something along those lines. They never let me on a bike again after that.”

“How’s that a happy story?” he frowns.

“I didn’t say it was a happy story. I said it’s a good scar. I got to keep this one. It reminds me of what I’m capable of. Even when I want to forget.”

The sun is rising. A new day colors the sky in vivid bronze. The light filters into the room through the yellow curtains, dust particles suspended in the air, suspended like Frankie’s life when he can’t be with you.

He should leave, but instead, he’s going to fuck you one more time. Pump you full of his come. Brand you with his essence, mark you as his in the only way he can before he has to let you go back to face those people who put murder on his mind.

His hands skim along your thighs to the swell of your ass, roughly kneading the round of your cheeks. His grip settles on your hips, and he bucks up into you, ever so lightly, his length hardening between your lips. He sees it on your face, on your profile bathed in the first ray of sunlight. The moment when you register his intention. The shift in your body, the echo to his desire. So powerful, so immediate, it’s almost like black magic. Your mouth parts open, your back arches. You press down on him.

“That serves him well, your father,” he says, sliding you slowly over his cock.

“How’s that?” you ask, voice laced with lust.

“Look what you’re riding now.”

—

The pillow is damp underneath your back, sweat exuding from your every pore. The last days of March have been unforgiving. You find yourself longing for a room with a proper air conditioning system, instead of the motel’s weak, outdated fan that only swishes hot air.

Frankie’s searing touch doesn’t help. Stroking the back of your arm in a repetitive up-and-down motion, he’s laying across the bed, his head resting heavy on your lap, his long hair curling in every direction in this sweltering atmosphere.

Instead of shying away from the discomfort, you embrace it. With your fingers twined in his locks, you lean into his touch, focusing on his high forehead, and the crease in his brow. On his long eyelashes, the curve of his lips as he speaks, the working of his throat.

Ignoring the dark blue rectangle of night sky, gradually lightening up behind the musty curtains.

Dawn used to be a deliverance. From your thoughts that the night painted black. From the wait, when Adrian wouldn’t come back. From a forced rest that never really came, another disappointment, another let down, another part of your life requiring the artificial help of chemicals.

Now, you resent it. Dawn is when Frankie leaves you behind to go back to his family. Dawn is when he’s the happiest, with his child, without you, in a realm over which you have no grasp.

A rational part of you acknowledges that it’s easier if he leaves before the sun rises. It prevents you from yearning for things you’re afraid to want. Things you cannot have. A life with him in broad daylight. A life without shame.

Recently, he’s become increasingly reluctant to let go of you. Dawn finds him wrapped around your body. Last week, he stayed past daybreak, and fucked you in the sunlight.

The brighter tone of his skin, the lighter shade of his curls, the depth of his mahogany irises hit by a sunbeam, everything was like a knife through your chest.

“Lee?”

The caressing timber of his husky voice brings you back to the soft amber light from the dusty lampshades, to the humming fan, and the blue rectangle.

“I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

“I asked if you like it. Your job.”

“God no, I hate it! Sales productivity statistics and accounting manager, can you picture me?”

He huffs his breathless chuckle, the one that sends tremors rippling through your chest.

“Not really, no.”

“I’m terrible at it, and it’s a problem, but no one says anything because daddy runs the company. I don’t understand why he insists on maintaining me in this position. It’s like a power play. He needs me to be miserable.”

Frankie’s hand pauses, fingers digging into your flesh, and he cranes his neck to peer at your face. You give him a reassuring smile. A genuine one.

“Is that what you studied at university? Accounting and statistics?”

You wipe your sweaty brow with the back of your hand, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“Yes. But university was a golden parenthesis. I minored in Russian literature. Not a skill that easily translates to the employment market, but Richard was thoroughly pissed,” you say, wiggling your eyebrows.

“My little punk.”

His smile is brighter than the midday sun. Your index finger darts to the dimple in his right cheek.

“I really like this,” you whisper, your voice dropping, thick with heat and arousal. With affection. “And these,” you add, scraping your fingernail over the bare patches on each side of his jaw.

“Mmh. I’ve noticed,” he says with a smug expression.

“Oh, you have?” You try to laugh off your embarrassment, but what comes out is a quivering sound, betraying the want that hinders your throat.

He grabs your hand and brings it to his mouth, closing his plush lips around your index finger, wrapping his tongue around it. Your belly quakes. You clench around nothing.

He releases your hand, and you hope he’ll get up and move over you, but instead, he reaches for your arm again, resuming his rhythmic strokes.

“So what would you do, if you didn’t do this?” he asks.

You sigh, glancing up, and you catch a glimpse of your reflection in the mirror above the desk.

“I’ve no idea, really. I never allowed myself to consider the possibility.” And before he can prod any further, you add, “What about you? What would you have liked to do, if you hadn’t become a pilot?”

The diversion doesn’t fool him, you know it. You’re acutely aware of his gaze, scrutinizing your face. You picture the familiar, pensive frown. His hand leaves your arm as he suddenly gets up, air hitting your damp skin where his head was lying.

A few strides, and he steps into the bathroom, disappearing behind the partition wall. The tap runs for a moment, and there’s the distinct sound of wrung out fabric before he comes out, holding the hand towel.

You watch him walk back toward you, his naked body glistening with sweat, highlighted in shadows in the warm lighting. You think about how beautiful it is, about your extensive, intimate knowledge of it. How it feels under your touch, every single part of him. How this knowledge is now constituent of the woman you have become.

You know the callousness of his palms that catches at your clothes. You know the silkiness of his curls around your fingers, the smoothness of his chest against your breasts, the taste of his mouth and the bobbing of his pebbled throat between your lips. The thicker skin of his shoulders, tanned and freckled. The coarseness of the darker hairs under his navel, and how they feel rubbing at your clit. You know the weight of his cock in your hand, on your tongue, inside your walls.

And if you know all this, then, isn’t he yours?

He circles the bed over to your side, by the window, and sits next to you.

Delicately, his fingers circle your wrist. He lifts your arm, and brings your hand to his lips, nuzzling the relaxed curl of your fingers open, to press a kiss inside your palm. His eyes briefly flicker shut as he inhales the transparent skin of your inner wrist.

Lowering your arm, he starts running the towel along it and you jolt at the contact of the cold, wet fabric, letting out a short whimpering sound.

The sensation is sudden, seizing like an electrical shock, but the relief is immediate. The coolness radiates on the surface of your feverish skin, soothing your thoughts. Eyes fluttering shut, you relax into it.

“Maybe an architect,” he starts, the towel gliding up to your shoulder, “or a carpenter. Build stuff, for a change. Instead of destroying them.”

Goosebumps break out along your arms, on your nape, as he skims the towel over the plane of your chest in slow, meticulous movements. As he rounds your breasts with reverent care, one, then the other, your nipples tightening in peaked buds, the low rumble of his voice filling your mind, his words boring into your heart.

The towel brushes up, tracing your collarbone, left, then right. Higher along the column of your throat, curling to the side of your neck. A droplet of water rolls down between your breasts, running along your stomach to end its course into your navel. You sigh.

“I could… run a small business, building houses or crafting furniture. In a small town, somewhere up north. Somewhere with seasons,” he says.

The towel wipes over your trembling belly, over your mound, down your inner thigh. He’s slow, precise, thorough. Careful and gentle with your limp limbs. You’re sinking into the mattress, and floating over it all at once.

You lift a heavy eyelid, your dazed gaze landing on his gorgeous face. He’s solemn, focused on his task.

He readjusts his position on the mattress, so lightly the bed barely moves, and twists his torso to reach down your leg.

“You could be my accountant.”

Your eyes shoot open. He’s facing away from you, wiping the towel under the arch of your foot.

“The last thing you want is to have me as your bookkeeper,” you whisper, your heart beating in your throat.

He turns around, looking straight at you. Soft sad eyes, cold hard stare.

“That’s all I want for the rest of my life, Lee. Be with you night and day.”

—

Everything seems to hinge on you now.

His balance, his happiness, his redemption.

You filled a void, a hollowness inside his chest, he carries you with him wherever he goes. A pale shade of yellow and celadon green.

He tries to convince himself it’s harmless. That he’s not doing anything wrong. That it’s easier this way. Easier than the drugs, easier than placing that burden on his daughter’s shoulders. He tells himself the peace you bring him makes him a better man, and a better father. Makes him worthy again. There might even be some truth to it.

He’s not so sure if he deserves the second chance. If he deserves the parts of you that you confide in him. Your past, your regrets, your secret victories. Your hindered aspirations and the shores of your inner island, within his reach. The touch of your cool skin. The strength of your embrace. The veneration in your eyes. Your trust, your faith. Your time.

But he wants to believe it. It’s more of a fundamental need, really.

And as long as he’s with you, the illusion holds. When you’re sitting next to him in the truck, singing along to the tunes playing on the old crackling stereo as he drives to nowhere, when his body’s wrapped around yours in the dark, when he murmurs against your temple everything and anything that runs through his mind, when you’re coming undone between his hold, with his name on your lips. He believes he can be as good for you as you are for him.

But it’s a thin fabric. One that tears the very minute he steps outside the room, leaving your sleepy form tucked under the starchy sheet.

Day after day, until the next week, he’s left on his own to fence off the thoughts that plague him.

The voice inside him, relentless, somber, asking how much longer this can last. How long before the consequences on your life are irreversible? How long until that man who’s not your husband finds out, and takes action? What repercussions would you face, then?

He knows what he’d be capable of if he ever met him. He doesn’t like to think about it.

You won’t open up about your life with him, no matter how much he prods and pry. He knows your strength. And he chose to trust it.

Seven months, and one week. He sat down with the cardboard calendar hanging above Lupe’s desk at work, and counted. His mind crowded, overflowing with what ifs.

What if he took you out of this shitty motel, for once? Not just to drive into the night, but on a proper date. Dinner. A movie. Fucking lunch. A weekend somewhere. An entire vacation.

What if he took you out of your life?

Lupe started dating this Marcus guy back in December. Now she’s staying at his place every other night. The man is decent, one of the best paramedics he’s worked with, honest, reliable and steadfast. The kind of man Lupe deserves, and that he doesn’t mind around Lua.

He should move out of the house. Lupe hasn’t said anything yet, but it’s just one more grace she gives him that he hasn’t earned. Every time they see each other, Will hints at it, the allusions becoming increasingly less subtle.

The truth is, he sees no point in moving forward with his life if it’s not with you. If it’s not to take care of you, and provide for you. Watch you thrive, keep you safe.

A couple of weeks back, when he’d first thought about it, he’d deemed the idea crazy, painfully aware of all the frustrations a couple’s daily life entails.

Now, it’s the only choice that makes any sense to him.

—

The airport terminal is bustling with flocks of tourists. Noisy families with children too young to travel, transient businessmen and women, groups of youths of dubious soberness flying out after spring break.

Ava stands out in the crowd, her tall frame topped with a short bob of bright purple hair, and you spot her immediately. Standing on your tiptoes, you wave at her until she sees you and starts running in your direction.

She all but leaps into your open arms, and you both grab at each other, leaning into the embrace, laughing. You inhale her scent, searching for that baby smell in the crook of her neck.

“Oh my god, pup, your hair!” you exclaim. “You look terrific!”

“Yeah? You like it?” she asks with a broad smile, running her fingers through her locks.

“I love it! It’s perfect for you!”

In turn, she takes you in, looking you up and down, and lets out a low whistling sound.

“You look good, too. You look better than good. You look gorgeous!”

“Oh shush,” you gesture bashfully, but you can’t hold back your own smile.

The two of you walk to the parking lot to retrieve your car, immersed in bubbly conversation, oblivious to the moving crowds around you.

Driving out of the airport, you glance at the sign indicating the 589 northbound and smile at your precious secret, before making a left turn south.

“Where are you taking me?” she asks, “I’m hungry! Feed me! Feedmefeedmefeedme!” she chants, before breaking into a high-pitched giggle.

“Alright, alright! Hold tight, I’m taking you somewhere special. Do you like burritos?”

“Who doesn’t like burritos? Wait, what? Burritos? Do you even eat burritos? Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

You had to type the address from the crumpled receipt into your GPS. Until today, you’ve never allowed yourself to go there. Not on your own.

It’s a small cantina with tiled walls and concrete floors, colorful trinkets arranged in pyramidal displays behind the counter, chalkboard menus and an endless list of drinks. Star-shaped lanterns are hanging from the ceiling, and the staff is busy but jovial.

Lunchtime on a Saturday, the place is packed with couples and kids, and your pulse accelerates. You hadn’t considered the possibility of running into Frankie and his family.

You place your orders, and after a short wait, you secure a spot in the back of the restaurant. Sitting on high metal stools behind a round table, you catch up on the past three months as if you hadn’t texted every other day, speaking with your mouths full, sauce dripping down your fingers.

The life she’s built for herself in New York treats Ava better than anything you could have hoped for, anything you could have helped her achieve, had she stayed here. A job in a cutting-edge art gallery, where her vibrant personality and her flair for networking are not only recognized but valued, a bustling social life, more thrilling projects than you can keep track of, all of it balanced by Polly’s grounding presence by her side.

Your choices and sacrifices, justified.

Ava puts down the crumbling remnants of her vegetarian burrito to wipe her mouth, and takes a sip of her margarita.

“You sure you don’t want to drink anything?”

“I’m drinking something,” you answer, pointing at your iced tea.

“Whatever you say, girl,” she shrugs.

“It’s too bad you’re not staying with me. It’s idiotic, you’re only here for a couple of days and you have to sleep over at Jules’.”

“Listen, even if your douchebag of a fiancé had agreed to have me, which I know he didn’t, I don’t want to see his ass face.”

“Alright,” you concede, “valid.”

She nearly chokes on her margarita. Setting her glass down, she gives you a pointed stare, emphatically scrutinizing your face.

“Okay, seriously, what’s going on with you? How are you? I mean, that’s obviously the wrong question, you’re fucking thriving. What happened? What’s happening? New medication? Are you finally leaving him?”

“I’m not taking any medication,” you answer with unexpected satisfaction. “But no, I’m not leaving him.”

You catch yourself before you can add another word.

“Are you still seeing that other guy?”

You nod, dipping your head, heat creeping up your neck. Why are you like this?

“I take it he likes burritos, am I right?

“You are correct in your assumption, detective,” you quip with a grin.

There’s a pause as Ava seems to consider her next question. It’s always so easy for you to forget that she’s a grownup now. That she knows you at least as well as you know her. That she has the capacity to outsmart you. The notion flares pride in your chest.

“Is he married? Is that why you haven’t run off together in the sunset yet?”

“I’m not sure if he’s married or not.”

“What does he do in life?”

“I don’t know.”

Ava throws up her hands.

“Girl! What do you know?” she exclaims with only half-feigned exasperation.

I know what’s important. He’s a father. He’s a friend and a brother. A pilot and a veteran. He's thoughtful and observant. He’s organized and practical. And a reluctant sentimental. He learned to swim in the Pacific Ocean. He’s capable of cold-blooded violence, but it will break him. He’s capable of infinite tenderness. And it will save him.

You pull a face, communicating how little you care about what you don’t know. Your sister shifts on the hard stool. She frowns, and when she speaks next, her voice is low, her tone conspiratorial.

“Adrian doesn’t suspect anything?”

“Of course, he does. Or he did. His attention is elsewhere, for now. Seems serious.”

“Again?”

“Again,” you nod.

Ava squirms on her stool again, probably trying to restrain her temper.

Your mind wanders, jumping back through time at light-speed, to when you first met Adrian. To the way he used to hold your hand when you started dating, squeezing your fingers with his. Letting you choose the wine, opening doors for you. To the affection in his smile, and how fast he started calling you babe . The glimmer warming his cold blue eyes when he introduced you to his family. The way he leaves the bathroom mirror splattered in toothpaste every time he brushes his teeth. The way he lets his alarm ring off forever after he’s gotten up even if you’re still in bed, even on weekends.

The ease with which he admitted to all his flings, whenever you confronted him, but never confessed to the one with his coworker, the ambitious young lawyer.

Would you admit to having an affair? Would you use that ugly word that make you crawl out of your skin? Would you deny it? Could you answer No, I’m not seeing anyone? Could you bear the betrayal of denying Frankie’s existence? The truth of what you share, but can’t define?

“Your fiancé is a bag of dicks,” Ava finally says, shaking her head.

“His obliviousness suits me for now,” you remind her.

“I don’t understand why you don’t leave him,” she snaps back, forsaking her reserve. “He got his big promotion, he got what he wanted! And Richard loves him, it’s not like he’s going to fire him just because you two broke up, right? You don’t really love him anymore, do you?” she adds on second thoughts.

The words spill out of you unchecked, once more. Just like in the truck with Frankie, back in January. Months, years for the idea to mature below the surface of your conscious thoughts, the reflective process unbeknown to you.

“I’m scared, Ava. I’m scared shitless. I want to leave. I’ve been wanting to leave for so long. Adrian, the company, that fucking ugly apartment.”

“Well then fucking do it, Lee!”

“If I leave, I have nothing. No job, nowhere to go.”

And if you could give up a relatively comfortable life, would you be able to renounce the refuge of your sadness? Of your life between the folds?

“You have money,” Ava counters. “You have shares. Sell them. Richard can’t stop you. Get a lawyer, if you have to. One that’s not on Adrian’s payroll. And then you can fuck your man Friday every day of the week, how’s that?”

You think about the folded bedspread under the windowsill. About the wet hand towel brushing up your skin. The trucker hat on the desk, and his fingers splayed on the steering wheel. The pleading arch of his brow.

You think about that space between Frankie’s chin and collarbone, that contains your safety, your desires, and all of your hopes.

“I don’t… I don’t know if I should leave a man for another one,” you whisper.

Ava’s eyes widen. She sits up straight, a smirk tugging the corner of her lips.

“I don’t know either, but it looks like this one fucked some sense into you. The irony.”

She’s withholding something, you realize. It’s in her uncharacteristic pauses, her sideways glances. Surprisingly, human interactions were simpler when pills kept you numbed and oblivious. Being attuned to everyone’s minute expressions is a daily trial.

“Why don’t you move to New York with us?” she eventually asks. “We can take you in until you find a job there, for as long as you need.”

There’s that we again. People talking about you in your absence, judging your choices, plotting your future.

“I don’t know how to do anything, Ava. I have zero skills.”

“First off, that’s not true,” she retorts, relentless with her well-rehearsed arguments. “And then, Polly can help you find something. Lee, if you can leave this company, there’s literally nothing you can’t do.”

Suddenly, you feel exhausted. Weary and old. A bone-deep lassitude. And at the heart of it, the realization that this is a liminal sequence in your life.

“Is that why you flew here for the weekend? To ask me to come away with you?”

“Are you mad?” she asks with a face. A little girl’s expression, afraid of being scolded. Your little girl.

“No, I’m not mad, pup. I can’t be mad. You came back for me.”

“Of course, I came back for you. I was never going to leave you behind, silly.”

****

201 notes · View notes

nerdieforpedro · 1 year ago

Text

Her need for routine and the fact that Santi's been there for her since Jay's death... 😭 He's already reading baby books and keeping track of what's best for mom aka Vin (not that he isn't been doing that). It's just so sweet.

Half of You (Chapter 3) [Santiago Garcia x fem!Reader]

CH. 1 CH. 2

Summary: What's a romcom without a little tragic backstory, huh? Tragic backstory and muffins.

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: Mentions of death, mourning, talk of pregnancy.

A/N: I want to thank you guys so much for all the lovely comments and tags on the previous chapters of this story, it means the world to me 💚 This is going to be kind of a slow burn, mmmkay? I want Vin and Santi to simmer good and long before we add the spice because we want that payoff to be delicious. Enjoy!

You don’t knock when entering Santiago’s home anymore, not in the mornings, at least. You know you’d never catch him in a compromising position in his kitchen or living room, especially not at 9am. He is military clockwork. The ISS could set its time to Santiago’s morning routine. He’s up at 6 every day for a weighted vest run. Sometimes, when you’re up at that hour and just laying in bed, you see him jog past your window at 6:04 and always back at his front porch again by 7:00.

For the past two years, with almost no exceptions, you’ve been getting up every morning, making some kind of breakfast, and bringing it over at 9, or around nine. You’re not as punctual as Santi and sometimes the muffins or breakfast bars or whatever you make aren’t ready on the dot like his routine, but he never complains.

It wasn’t really like you were doing this for Santi, this was a structure for you. This routine of taking care of someone, being expected at someone’s home at a certain time to feed them. Not that Santi needed to be fed, the man could subsist on protein powder and supplements if needed. It was the promise you made to him….

How worried he’d been for you in the early weeks following Jay's death. When he wouldn’t see the lights of your home turn on all evening despite knowing you were inside. How he’d knock and sometimes you couldn’t find it within yourself to even tell him to go away; instead silently crying into the pillow that your head couldn’t leave.

Santi had been at a loss. He was grieving too and could only turn his pain into work. Toughing out the emotions through tasks.

It had been an odd morning about two weeks after the funeral that you saw a pair of legs sticking out from under Jay’s car in the front driveway. You were so pissed that someone was fucking with Jay’s things that you went outside for the first time in over a week, in your pajamas (a pair of Jay’s sweats and one of his giant cotton t-shirts) no shoes, and kicked the intruder in the thigh, hard enough to hurt your own toes.

“Get the fuck away from that car! I’m calling the cops!” You screamed, not caring that Mrs. Rosenthall was walking her little dog across the street, slowing her pace to watch the domestic scene play out.

“Fuck!” The hidden man shouted grabbing his thigh and in the process of reacting to the leg kick, he audibly hit his head on the underside of the car, giving another prolonged “Fuuuck.” Before scrambling out from under Jay’s vintage Mustang.

“Santi? What—What are you doing?” You cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to get to his knees, wiping off the oil from his hands onto what are clearly work pants.

“I’m changing the oil and then, if you’d be so kind as to not club me in the head with a wrench, I was going to replace the spark plugs.”

“Replace the spark plugs?”

“Yes. After the oil. Jesus, you kick like a horse.” He groans, rubbing his definitely bruised thigh over his dark blue pants.

“Sorry.” You mutter, meaning it but not really projecting culpability. How were you supposed to know it was him? Santi dives back under the car and you gasp affronted. “You can’t have his car you know. Just because he’s— you can’t, it’s not yours.” You sound like a child, unable to even express basic sentiments and the ones that you can express are stubborn and selfish. It’s the way you’ve come used to talking in the past few weeks.

Santi makes a frustrated sound under the vehicle and you don’t know if it’s because of your words, or if its a particularly stubborn nut he’s prying.

He emerges from under the car again after a few silent moments of you shifting your weight from foot to foot. Santi brings out a pan of dirty oil with him and wipes his brow with the back of his dirty forearm.

“I’m not angling for the car, Vin. It’s not my style. The fucking color alone, dios. But if you just let these things sit here, unused and unserviced, they have a tendency rot, ok?”

The metaphor feels like a personal attack, an attack on your inability to honor Jay’s memory by letting his car go to shit, an attack on your own inability to take care of yourself down to the routine maintenance of tooth brushing.

The tears come again and you let them fall pathetically. “Jesus, will I ever stop crying? I didn’t know this many tears could exist in a person.” You laugh in woe at the hard understanding on Santiago’s face.

Santiago brings you into his arms. He holds you and lets you ugly cry into the dirty fabric of his shirt. The oil and armorall smell reminds you of Jay and all his Saturday mornings spent under that fucking car.

Jay would come in after an hour or two, depending on what needed to be done, or how distracted he’d get on the maintenance if Santiago showed up to help. Tack on an extra hour if they decided it needed a ‘test drive’.

You always had breakfast waiting for him when Jay came in; oily and sweaty. Sometimes he’d come in and grab you from behind with dirty hands to which you’d shriek and demand that he needed to take a shower before he ate. You regret that now. You miss his big strong arms and you you’d give anything for the stains of his embrace. So you shift tighter into Santiago’s hug.

“I’m filthy.” He says apologetically. Probably realizing you’re in One of Jay’s nicer cotton shirts, definitely not something he’d wear to work on the ‘Stang, and he doesn’t want to ruin it.

“I don’t care.” You insist through tears, clutching his torso like a port in a storm. Santiago rubs your back, up and down like soothing an infant. You even hiccup like one.

“Do you wan’t to come in for breakfast?” You sniff. “Please.”

“You don’t need to make me breakfast, Vin. You should probably rest.”

“No. No, I don’t need to sleep. Please?”

Santiago hesitates. You can feel his head turn to look at the car.

“Spark plugs first, then I’ll go home to shower, then I’ll come back for breakfast. You need me to bring anything?”

“You don’t need to shower.” God, it comes out so starved. Your emotional regulation has gone to absolute shit and you realize for the first time that the feeling that has been eating you up is a little thing called loneliness.

“Vin, it’s okay, I’ll come back.” He pats your back and you pull out of the hug, wiping your tears and snot on the back of your forearm, looking down at your barefeet on the gravel.

“Eggs.” You nearly whisper.

“Eggs?”

“Eggs. Bring eggs. I don’t think ours are— mine are any good.”

Santiago showered and came back with eggs and you made food in your kitchen for the first time in weeks, fresh food, a meal that wasn’t a condolence casserole.

It lifted your sprits up so much that you begged Santiago to come over the next morning and then it quietly evolved to you bringing the baked goods over to his house. The responsibility did so much to haul you out of bed on days that threatened to swallow you into the folds of your comforter, on days where all you’d want to do was watch the day grow bright and fall dim without performing a solitary meaningful action.

Two years had passed. There were hardly any mornings nowadays where you felt the pull to sink into sleep and waste the day in unconsciousness. You were excited to get up every morning to see your friend. And on days when he would be gone due to the nature of his work, you’d braved up and made other friends in the neighborhood, bringing them freshly baked scones or a pitaya bowl if it it was too hot to bake. Just something. A reason to get up, to greet someone.

Santi’s home is immaculate, like always. He’s the type of single man who takes pride in a cleanly appearance, wether that’s a learned behavior from the military or if he’s always been tidy from childhood, you don’t know. The granite countertops are spotless and he’s perched at the barstool with the morning paper. His hair is still slightly damp from his morning shower and he scowls over the sports page, shaking his head at some news or other from the top fold.

“I hope you like crasins… and walnuts.”

“Jesus, Vin!” Santi startles from his stool and tosses the paper down.

“That’d be a no on the crasins then?” You laugh and ruffle the back of his curls as he settles back down into his seat. You grab a couple plates and napkins, setting a crasin muffin down on each one before pouring yourself a cup of coffee from the pot into your designated yellow mug (a trinket Santiago had made at a Color Me Mine double date from 3 or so years ago).

“You ever think about knocking when you come over?” He takes a bite from the muffin and hums pleased.

“Knocking? I’m hurt. So all that mi casa su casa talk was just for show, Garcia?”

Santi closes his eyes and slaps the counter. “Mmmm, this.” He points at the muffin and gives you a thumbs up.

“You like it more than the cinnamon rasin bread from yesterday?”

He wipes his mouth off on a napkin and gulps from his coffee mug. “That was good too.”

You take a bite of your own muffin and hum in agreement. “Oh yeah, that shit’s delicious. Adding this one to the roster for sure.”

“Uh, roster, don’t remind me.”

“Why?” You gesture to the paper “was there a tragic drafting in the world of fantasy football? Should I fly the flag at half mast?”

“Pretty dismal. Do you want to hear about it?”

“I mean, you can tell me anything, Santiago, but I’m not going to understand a word you’re saying.”

“Uh huh, I figured. I’ll spare you the tragic details and sum it up with ‘I think I’m going to lose a big chunk of change to the boys this week’ but, hey, at least I’ve got these muffins.”

“You can’t have them all, I was going to bring the rest over to Mrs. Rosenthal.”

Santi makes a quiet noise of indignation and pulls the plate of muffins closer to himself.

“Not to Gertie! You know her little fur ball was barking till past midnight? Right outside my window. Again. She doesn’t deserve muffins.” There’s a twinkle of teasing in his eyes and you sigh and relent, squeezing between your fingers the bit of tum that sits above his belt.

“You’re starting to turn into a muffin. I spoil you too much.”

With a full mouth, Santi shoves the plate back in your direction and frictions his fingers clean of crumbs.

“Take em!” He shouts dramatically with a mouth full of muffin, pushing his stool back and taking his plate to the sink to wash it by hand.

“I like the tum by the way, it’s very becoming… and the dad bod is fitting, you know, considering…”

You trail off and Santi turns around wide eyed, drying his hands on a dark grey tea towel. “Do you mean…?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, not yet, not for a couple weeks… I mean I could be right now, and I— I wouldn’t know.” You’re beaming, eyes alight with excitement. “I’m nervous!” You clap your hands quietly together. “That’s why I made so many muffins this morning, I’m just ugh, bouncing with the anticipation— HEY what are you doing with my coffee, Garcia?!” Santi dumps your full cup of coffee down the sink and starts on hand washing your yellow mug. The barstool scrapes as you get up to retrieve your mug from his soapy hands.

“You can’t be having caffeine! It’s bad for the baby!” His upper arms are strong as he blocks you from getting your hands on the mug with his back turned to you.

“Bad for the baby? How do you know that?” Santi dries your mug with a clean towel and sets it by the electric tea kettle, flipping the blue switch on. When he abandons the mug to grab some tea from the cupboard, you snatch it and hide it behind your back, making your way sneakily over to the coffee pot as he rummages for something on the shelf.

“I’ve been reading up about it.”

“Reading up about it?” You’re not really listening to him, simply parroting his words as you quietly pour yourself a new cup of delicious dark roast coffee.

“Aha! Got it!” He holds up a box of celestial seasonings tea, eyes getting wide as he sees you taking a sip from the piping hot mug.

“Vin!” He cocks his head and holds out a hand, and the way his eyes narrow on yours, glinting with resoluteness makes you sigh with defeat and hand him the steaming hot mug.

He rinses it out once again without complaint and you examine the box of “ugh, herbal tea?”

“Yep.” He pops the ‘p’ of the word. There’s no arguing with Santi.

“I might not even be pregnant, you know.” But the proffered information is pointless. You know what he’s about to say before he even says it.

“Yeah, but you might be.” It’s exactly what you knew he was going to say.

“I never read anything like that.” But it’s a lie. You have read things like that, but of all the things? Coffee? How are you supposed to live without coffee?

“Well maybe you should read harder. I have a book you can borrow.”

“You have a book?”

“I’m not done with it yet, I’ll let you read it when I’ve finished.” Santi pours the boiling water over the teabag and you almost cry when he places the mug into your hands. In a last ditch effort to get your way, you pout your lips out and fix him with a defeated stare.

“After all the muffins I’ve made for you. Now this.”

“Nuh uh, Vin. Just try it.” He ruffles your hair in a very ‘you’ move and chuckles when you stomp your foot in a petulant show.

You sit back at the stool and blow on your tea before taking an exploratory sip. It’s not bad, but you scrunch your face in disgust anyway.

Santi shakes his head at you and takes a big gulp of his own coffee. “Mmmm, that arabica roast. Delicious.”

“You shit.” You mutter taking another gulp from the chickory tea. It’s really not too bad. You’ll have to take a picture of the box so you can get some more from the store later.

“I don’t mind playing the villain, as long as our baby won’t have a third arm from the bio hazard levels of caffeine you consume on a daily basis.”

Our baby. Our baby. Our baby. Your eyes go wide and Santiago backtracks. “I didn’t mean ‘our’ baby like that, I meant your baby… of course.”

A few beats of silence fall between the two of you.

“I’m sorry, I shouln’t—“

“I’ve been meaning to—“

You both speak at the same time and laugh awkwardly. Santiago gestures to you gently. “Please, go ahead.”

“I… I was just… well you signed all the papers Renatta gave you, and I’m sure that you, being Mr. ‘I’ve been doing my own research’, you read the whole release contract?”

“I did.”

“So… how involved did you… how involved are you intending to be with the baby?” The baby. Neutral. Not “my”, not “our”, “the”. Safe.

Santi scratches his smooth jaw and licks his lips deliberately.

“I guess I’ll be.. I wan’t to be…”

Your heart stops for a second with the intensity of his pause, your head swims and flicks through future images at a thousand miles a minute. Santiago holding a little baby’s hands as it takes its first wobbly steps, shushing a wailing baby to sleep in a nursery that doesn’t exist, singing lullabies, scrunching his nose at a dirty diaper, hiking trips with a toddler on his shoulders, tee ball practice. You shake your head to clear the whole little lifetime that unfolds rapidly in fantasy form.

“I want to be as involved as you let me.” His eyes meet yours then. And you nod unthinking at the brilliant umber depths. “If you want me to be their uncle, their neighbor, their… whatever. I’m,” he takes in a breath that fills his whole chest, “I’m okay to be whatever you need me to be.”

“Okay.”

“Well how involved do you want me to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“At all?”

“No.” Your voice sounds small and all of a sudden you feel like you’re being interrogated.

“Haven’t thought about it one bit?” He presses.

“No.” But the no feels like a lie. Because of course you’ve thought about it. You’re thinking about it right now, seated next to him in his immaculate kitchen.

“That tracks.” He scoffs and goes back to his paper, flicking the pages open with agitation.

“Hey!” You push his fist down and hold his clenching fingers lightly with your own. His face looks hurt. “I don’t really know right now. It’s— this is all new to me, Santiago.”

Santi nods in understanding but still looks as though there’s something on the tip of his tongue that he’s trying to reign in. “I’m sorry Vin. You…” he unclenches his fist and takes your fingers into his warm palm, holding them with reassurance. You stare down at your joined hands, unable to meet his understanding eyes. You don’t deserve how kind and patient he is with you. How giving he’s always been with you. His nature makes you feel fucking guilty at times. “You take all the time you need, Vin. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No?”

“No. I live right next door.”

You smile at him. “Thanks, Santi.”

He lets go of your hand and pats it. “Plus the real estate market is a nightmare right now,” he takes another sip of his coffee which sloshes slightly when you shove his shoulder. “I’d be insane to sell in this economy.”

“You shit!”

Santi smiles and goes back to his paper with a smile and genuine interest.

“What are your plans for today, officer.”

Santi scratches his eyebrow, “I need to hit up Home Depot to get some fresh wire for the weed whacker. How about you?’

“Oh my god, thats perfect!”

“Glad you think so, seeing as how I’ll be treating your lawn too.”

“Are you taking your truck?”

“Uhhh, yeah?”

“Becasuse… if you could, if you’d be so kind…”

Santi rolls his eyes, “What do you need?”

“There’s this little outdoor plant shelf from their weekly ad that I want to get. Plus this osmosis water filtration thingy, but what I really need your truck for is the plant shelf.” You temple your fingers at your lips in hopefulness.

“Thought you said it was ‘little’?”

“Uhhh…. Comparatively.”

“Compared to what?”

“Compared to my car.”

“Vin…”

“And I know what you’re thinking. You think that I’m going to force you to build the plant shelf for me.”

“Bingo.”

“But its pretty simple, I think I can do it myself!”

“Uh huh.”

“I will need to borrow your zzzz zzzzzz gun, though.”

“My what??”

“Don’t play dumb. Your bzzzz bzzzz gun! The think that can drill stuff?”

“My drill, you mean?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

Santi scrunches up his face and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“And the osmosis filter?”

“What about it?”

“Is it an internal or external component?”

“Uhhh? Elaborate?”

“Is the system under the sink or to the side of the sink?”

“Oh! Under.”

Santi blinks at you. “And where will the filtered water come out of?”

“A little spigot with a lever on the side of the main faucet.”

“You know you’ll need a drill for that one too? Plus you’ll need to shut off the water main? I…. Vin, did you know this?”

“No… but I did taste the reverse osmosis water and Renatta’s the other day and ugghhh I need it! She said it wasn’t hard to install.”

“Really? Did she install it herself?”

“No. She hired someone.”

“You’re insane.”

“I can figure it out, Santi! I don’t need your help! I just need your truck to fit the planter desk thingy.”

“Fine.”

You clap your hands and Santi sighs, grabbing his keys and sunglasses. You push past him out the door with the plate of remaining muffins

“I just gotta drop these off at Gertie’s and grab my purse, I’ll meet you at your truck!”

“Careful!” Santiago barks at you as you jump over the low hedge toward Mrs.Rosenthal’s house. You nearly stumble and spill the plate of muffins on her driveway. You turn to see Santiago standing on his porch with his sunglasses on his head, both hands on his hips and shaking his head at you with a slight smile. He really would make a great dad.

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