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quinnnfabrgay-writes · 5 months ago

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isn't he just a sweet, silly lil guy?

thank you so much for reading! 🥰

what it means to burn

This is my (incredibly and abhorrently late) entry for the Summer Lovin Challenge! My prompt was heat wave along with this AMAZING mood board! Thank you so, so much for putting this on @pedgito (and for being so incredibly patient)

pairing: dieter bravo x actress!reader

summary: There are many different ways to burn. People warn against getting sunburned amidst the suns cruel rays. Others are told it's in the afterlife where they'll feel hells wrath and burning flames. But burning desire that fills your body, floods your system, clouds your mind... what on earth are you supposed to do with that?

wc: 4.8k

tags/warnings: not much, some good ol' pining-esque angst (and some tooth-rotting fluff for funsies), Dieter is an idiot - but that's why we love him, i know nothing of film sets so there's that too

reader description: reader is described as having breasts and there is gendered language, otherwise nothing else about reader is described, no use of y/n

a/n: yeah, so this is almost exactly 6 months late, i am SO so sorry. i feel like i've been so stuck creatively this year. BUT here it is. at first I had no idea where I wanted to go with this, but then my wife and I binged all of Bridgerton in two weeks and I have that to blame for how some of this turned out. i also tried to really lean into the heatwave aspect of it 🫣 MAJOR shoutout to @bitchesuntitled for reading this over when i was losing my mind, i am so incredibly grateful

divider credit: @saradika-graphics

Your toes dig into the sand beneath your feet, each grain tickling your nerves - a much needed distraction you welcome. A bead of sweat trickles down your forehead, your body's desperate attempt at keeping you cool as you approach your third hour in this dreadful, sweltering heat. Your fingers twitch, fighting the automatic urge to wipe it away - the last thing you need is to give the director, Jared, another reason to call “cut” for the umpteenth time.

What was supposed to be a “quick and easy” take of the scene in which Dieter’s character has a heat-induced fever dream of your character scantily clad in an oasis, has now become a whole cluster fuck.

Dieter was almost an hour late to set - his reasons being missed alarms, traffic, every excuse under the sun really, but that was the least of your frustrations. Once everyone was finally in place and ready to start shooting, wardrobe mishaps galore.

They originally wanted to have you in a gauzy, deep cut dress, golden ropes tied around your waist to complement your figure. But between the combination of the heat and your sweat, the dress tape meant to keep the cloth adhered to your breasts kept slipping off your skin multiple times, resulting in multiple nip slips that had the wardrobe department ushering you back into the trailers for an emergency costume change.

But perhaps the most annoying circumstance of all has to be the sheer amount of times Jared has had the two of you film and re-film the part in the scene in which Dieter’s character finally confesses his feelings for your character- or the mirage of your character to be exact.

Picture it: Dieter’s character is lost in the desert, he’s been walking for days and nights looking for reprieve when he stumbles upon a beautiful oasis that’s too good to be true. Because it is. It’s simply a mirage used as a catalyst for Dieter’s character to come to terms with his romantic feelings. He’s supposed to come upon the oasis to find you lounging by the pool of a waterfall, dipping your toes in the water before approaching him, lavishing him with attention. Light sultry touches from you, flirty quips back and forth before devolving into a confession of love from him, all culminating into an almost kiss. Dieter is meant to lean in, your lips almost touching before his character wakes from his fever dream with a new determination to get back home and confess his feelings to the real life version of your character.

Which wouldn’t be an issue if it weren’t for the director finding a new problem almost every take.

The first few takes were issues with your wardrobe. The next few, he wanted to try different starting positions: you by the pool of the waterfall, then you lounging on a moss covered rock, finally he settled on you wading out of the pool of the waterfall, the water making your skin sparkle and glisten under the cruel sun.

A change you gladly welcomed the first one or two times you had filmed trying the new starting point, the water helping cool you down as the heat of the sun kept beating down on everyone. But soon enough even the water wasn’t enough of a reprieve, because then Jared had an issue with yours and Dieters chemistry.

Or lack thereof.

He couldn’t really blame the two of you though. At this point you were tired, sweltering, hungry, and so so cranky. Dieter wasn’t faring any better, you could tell he was two takes away from throwing a temper tantrum like a petulant child, and to be honest you weren’t too far behind him. The last thing on your mind was trying to convince the cameras of any romantic inclinations.

Although, if you were being honest with yourself, it really shouldn’t be that hard, it’s not like you would be acting at all. This isn’t the first movie or project where you’ve led opposite Dieter Bravo, and even though you’ve tried your damnedest to do the complete opposite, you have found yourself falling more and more for the handsome goofball with each passing day.

He was one of the first of the bigger names to show you kindness in your earlier roles; even took you under his wing as it were to warn you about the creeps to stay away from, to tell you the little tips and tricks of the trade, he even offered to run lines with you for auditions from time to time.

His party-going ways and eccentricities were enough to keep your feelings at bay for a while, but as the two of you grew closer, and you got to see more of the real Dieter, it became more and more difficult to deny that you had indeed fallen for the one and only Dieter Bravo. And you had fallen hard.

And if that doesn’t just piss you off.

“Oh for the love of Christ- cut cut cut!”

You and Dieter both huff and groan, you drop your head into your hands as Dieter slumps his shoulders in frustration. You feel like you could scream, your anger and frustration building to the point of tears gathering in your eyes.

“What is the matter with you two?!” Jared's voice becomes louder as his steps grow closer to the two of you.

You're just about to let him have it (deservedly so), but luckily Dieter pipes up before you can say something that might deem you “difficult to work with.”

“I don't know Jared, it could be a number of things. This goddamn heat being at the top of the shit list.”

You bite the corner of your lip to keep yourself from laughing, reigning your expression into a slight amused smirk instead as you watch Dieter and Jared go back and forth, mentally checking yourself out of the conversation until you hear Jared let out a dramatic sigh, running his hands through his hair before closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose in thought.

“Okay, I get it. I really do. I know I've been impatient myself, this heat really is getting the best of all of us I suspect.” He drops his hand, opens his eyes, and glances back and forth between you and Dieter as he pleads his case.

“Just one more take, please? Just the speech Dieter gives, that's all we need. You two are almost there, it just doesn't feel… right yet. There's an underlying sense of animosity that I can't pinpoint, but that's what is holding you two up. Just take a couple of deep breaths and let go. Give us everything you got, okay? Really, you two are ridiculously talented, I specifically requested you two for a reason. If there's any hesitation, just let it go. And let everything else be fuel for the fire. Use your frustrations and channel them into your character's desire for each other, okay?”

Tears prick the corners of your eyes. You know his speech was pointed towards you, there's no way it wasn't, but he was good about making it seem like it was a pep talk for the both of you.

You nod your head, blinking quickly to clear the moisture in your eyes before any tear drops could fall.

“Y-yeah, thanks Jared.” You reach your hand out to squeeze one of his forearms, a quiet show of appreciation.

Dieter rubs the back of his neck as he nods once in agreement, his lips pursed in thought.

Jared gives you two an unreadable look before speaking again. “From the top then, yeah? Just one more time.” He claps his hands, swiftly turning around and back to his chair as he orders everyone else back into their places.

Dieter lets out a long, drawn out sigh before turning towards you, an eyebrow quirked and a half smile sweet enough to wash away your irritation.

He briefly looks back over to Jared before shouting “can we have a moment?”

Jared simply slumps in his chair, waving his hand exasperated in a manner signaling “go on.”

Your brows furrow; what could he possibly need to talk about that can't wait until you've at least been able to scarf down the snacks in the shared trailer, enjoying its glorious AC?

He swiftly turns towards you, stepping forward and closing the small gap between you two until you are practically toe to toe with one another.

You draw in a quick, sharp breath as he reaches both of his hands out grabbing your own. Such a simple touch, yet paired with the sheer closeness he's created, it's enough to set your skin on fire where the two of you are connected. Or maybe it's just the heat finally pulling you into an exhausted haze and warming your skin to the touch. That had to be it, there's no way this means anything.

“Mírame, por favor.”

Dieter’s voice raspy from the dry heat, yet it's still smooth as silk to your ears. You acquiesce, slowly raising your eyes to meet his gaze.

The look on his face could easily bring anyone to their knees. The molten pools of his dark brown eyes draw you in, begging you to dip your toe in. A false sense of security washes over you as you believe that little voice in the back of your head saying “it's safe, the water's fine,” as if the tide of his gaze won't pull you under at the first chance you'd let it.

You could dive in head first into the deep inky waves, letting them pull you further and further down - not once feeling panicked or afraid even as the darkness spreads around the corners of your vision, finally feeling at peace. Finally giving up your resistance, letting him finally drown and consume you…

You're shaken from this image, your mind coming back into reality, dropping back into your body when Dieter squeezes your hands in his. The deep baritone of his voice floating through your ears like a choir of angels when he utters “estrella.”

“Y-yes?”

“I- um, I just–” Dieter cuts himself off with a huff, casting his eyes down and you're pretty sure you hear him mutter fuck under his breath. He slowly shakes his head, a self deprecating tone weaved into his voice. “I'm terrible at this.”

“Dieter, what're you ta–”

His head swings back up quickly. “I'm sorry.”

You jerk your head back slightly, completely caught off guard. He looks so determined, his eyes flickering back and forth between your own. He squeezes your hands again, takes a deep breath, and continues.

“I'm- I'm sorry. For today, for the million takes, for being late. All of it.”

He pauses long enough, you go to tell him it's fine, but he shakes his head, beating you to it. “No, I'm– fuck. Look, I know why Jared feels like there's some underlying animosity.”

You shuffle slightly, dropping your gaze to his feet, suddenly uncomfortable with the turn this conversation has taken.

“But what I'm trying to say is, I get it. You have every right to want to rip my head off right now. I know me being late really screwed up the schedule, and- and, I don't know. I just wanted you to know that I get it, and I really, truly am sorry. It was incredibly unprofessional.”

You brave looking back up at him. A pang runs through your heart at how genuine he looks. You have to bite the corner of your lip to distract yourself from the tears that want to well up, hoping you can keep them at bay.

“Thank you, Dieter. I really appreciate it.” A small, soft smile stretches your lips, meaning every word.

A small smile spreads across Dieter’s lips, mirroring your own.

“I- um, I just couldn't sleep.”

“...huh?”

“Why I was late. I really did miss all of my alarms this morning. I was up most of the night, too nervous to sleep.”

Your brows and lips wrench up in confusion. “Nervous?”

“Yeah, I know it sounds ridiculous. I mean this isn't the first romantic drama we've shot together or anything. I just really want to nail this scene. I want to be the scene partner you deserve. I really believe this could be the project that gets you nominated.”

“Oh, Dieter, th-thats's… that's getting a little ahead–”

“No, I'm serious. You deserve this. How can you become an EGOT winner without the Oscar? Huh?” He's full on grinning at you, those brown eyes sparkling with mischief.

You huff a chuckle out, shaking your head. “Dee, please. That was just a silly childhood dream.”

“No, it’s not, and you know it.”

He dips his head slightly, trying to get you to meet his eyes. Once you do, his face softens. A small, adoring smile graces his features.

“You deserve it more than anyone I know.” He drops one of your hands to softly cup your chin, his thumb brushing across your skin. “Mi estrella brillante.”

Your stomach drops as you try to remind yourself it’s nothing more than a friendly gesture. But Dieter apparently wasn't finished tormenting your lovesick soul. Before you have time to comprehend what's happening, he leans forward and drops his lips to your forehead, your chin still in his hand.

It had to have been only a brief few seconds, but to you that moment was frozen in time.

His devastatingly soft and pouty lips have your skin tingling, goosebumps forming along your arms, and all he has done is kiss you on the forehead, possibly one of the most innocent kisses two people could share, and yet your knees threaten to buckle as if he was worshiping your body underneath his tongue.

God, you needed to get out of this heat.

Dieter pulls back and must notice something's amiss. His face falls slightly, his eyes searching your own as he says your name.

“Hey, is everything alright?”

Your eyes flutter as you shake your head to try and rid yourself of this spell he's put you under.

“H-huh? Oh y-yeah. I think the heat is finally getting to me.”

“Alright you two,” Jared's voice further coaxing you out of your stupor, “let's wrap this up so we can all go home, yeah?”

If logic was accessible in this moment, you could easily remind yourself that this isn't him talking to you like this. It's all for the movie, nothing more.

Unfortunately, that's not the case, all logic flew out the window the moment his lips touched your skin. You have no doubt in your mind that you're looking at Dieter like he hung the moon– which works for the scene, but were you really acting?

It's hard to think of anything else beyond the feeling of his soft lips on your forehead, the reverent way he looked at you while cradling your chin in the palm of his hand, softly muttering, “mi estrella brillante.”

Mi estrella brillante.

You slowly flick your eyes back and forth between his, wondering if anyone has ever told him he has the most painfully beautiful eyes. So expressive, so captivating.

Many a time you have gotten lost in studying his micro expressions - one of the many reasons you fell for him honestly. The amount of emotion this man can portray in one glance, a simple lift of his brow, a slight tilt of his head or subtle frown - it was mesmerizing. He's mesmerizing.

His hand finds your cheek, the wide breadth of his palm practically encompassing the side of your face in its entirety.

In an instant it all becomes too much - the pounding in your ears, the shallow breaths you're struggling to take in, the haze forming around the edges of your vision. Your gaze drops to his lips. His irresistibly tempting lips, still moving, still reciting his lines, but the words remain a mystery to your overheated state of being.

The way the velvet plush of them unwittingly beckons you closer and closer. And suddenly it all becomes so clear to you.

This fiery all consuming heat, this overwhelming longing that has been ignited and seized your entire being, has nothing to do with the hours spent in the burning sun.

This aching, this burning, it's all coming from within you.

A burning desire all for one Dieter Bravo.

In hindsight, you were probably also dehydrated, but in this moment the only thing you want to drink in, the only thing you crave, is the taste of Dieter's tongue sliding against your own, to feel his lips mold perfectly around yours. The very thought of him pulling your body against his, close enough where you wouldn't know for certain where your breath began and his ended.

It's this thought alone that has you acting like you've finally snapped and lost your damn mind, maybe you have.

Dieter’s still in the middle of his monologue when you suddenly clutch the front of his billowy shirt in your fists, a soft breathy whine slipping past your lips, your gaze locked onto your plump pillowy prize. You see his lips frown slightly, pursed as he starts forming a question, but you can't wait one second more. You shake your head, silently asking him to not speak, to not disturb whatever stars or planets that had aligned to make this moment possible.

You gently pull on his shirt, bringing his body closer to yours as you angle your chin up, brushing your lips against his. Your eyelids flutter closed before you quietly whisper your simple request, “Stop talking and kiss me.”

Every worry, each little annoyance you encountered throughout the day all fades away to nothing the moment Dieter tenderly presses his lips to yours. His palm moves from your face, gently sweeping down the skin of your arm, goosebumps forming under his touch; an unexpected shiver shocking your system amidst the unrelenting heat.

He continues his path until his hand finds the small of your back, the pads of his fingertips stroking the skin bared from the exposed back of your costume. He gently pulls your body flush against his as he wraps his other hand around the nape of your neck, further enveloping you in his embrace.

The warmth of his body against your own should be the very last thing you crave in this unforgiving and blistering heat, your dress starting to soak through with your sweat, yet somehow his touch is exactly what you need. His touch like a balm to your nerves; his caress the only source of reprieve you desire.

You let go of the white knuckle grip you have on his shirt, immediately tracing the edges and curves of his body as your palms chart a path towards his hair. Your fingers twisting into his curls greedily, not even caring to pay any mind to the slick of the sweat drenching his tresses.

Your heart clenches when you swipe your tongue past your lips to find his tongue peeking out as well, the both of you in sync as you deepen the kiss. You can't control the small whimper you make at the sound of Dieter softly groaning as your tongue slides against his for the first time.

His iron grip around your body tightens even further; you swear your body could melt against his from the sheer heat shared between the two of you.

The heat so all consuming it's flooded your senses, spread through your veins, and now sets your skin alight. Dieter is flint and wood, and you are the spark that sets the whole thing ablaze.

Every pass of his tongue, every tug of his hair, each shared breath between you two only serves to feed and fan the flames; the heat of them licking at your skin, growing ever higher and higher until you and Dieter are one giant shimmering inferno.

But even roaring fires turn to ash eventually.

“And cut!”

Jared’s voice cuts through your trance, jolting you out of Dieter’s embrace. You immediately take a step back, giving yourself space to fully assess and absorb what you’ve just done.

Dieter’s hands hang aimlessly by his side now that you’re no longer wrapped around him, his chest heaving as he catches his breath, his lips swollen and slick from your kiss, his eyes wide and wild, glowing like the last few golden embers that refuse to be smothered into smoke.

You find the will to tear your eyes away from him and brave a glance at the crew around you. Some looks of shock come into view, some of annoyance, but nothing is as unnerving as the stoic look upon Jared’s face.

Your nerves quickly take hold, a chill running down your spine and spreading through your limbs as you slowly back further away from Dieter.

“I-I’m so sorry. I don’t- I…”

You quickly turn, gathering the skirt of your dress in your hands and move swiftly to the trailers, head hung in embarrassment.

What have you done?

A rush of frigid air greets you as you fling open the nearest trailer door, too wrapped up in your distress to pay any mind to where it is you’re actually going.

It’s only when the door slams shut behind you that you finally take notice of your surroundings - a table littered with script pages, all strewn about with red and blue ink scrawled in the margins; a green robe haphazardly draped across the back of a chair; various bottles of water scattered across all in varying degrees of fullness, not one of them fully empty.

Dieter’s trailer. Of fucking course.

Even in a moment where you need some space to distance yourself from this school girl crush, you still can’t escape him. Whether you like it or not, you’re inherently drawn to him - even just a space that he’s inhabited has enough magnetic pull to draw you in.

And it’s so fucking frustrating.

You’re just about to let out a much needed scream when you hear the door whip open behind you, the sound of it clicking shut only seconds later after the unwelcome guest makes their way inside.

Well, technically you’re the unwelcome guest.

You bury your face in your hands, not ready to face what’s coming next. You don’t even second guess who it was that followed you in, it was inevitable that he would come running after you - always looking after you, never once giving you a moment to breathe. The sun itself no longer the source of heat that threatens to smother you. Even the chilling AC isn’t enough to temper the rising fury of your admittedly misplaced anger. If only he would give you just one minute to wrap your head around the situation you have placed yourself in.

The heat of Dieter’s body radiates off him in waves as you hear him shuffle closer to you, the exposed skin of your back already starting to dampen with newly formed beads of sweat. The feel of his hand coming to rest on your hip burns as if he is made of fire himself, a quiet “Estrella,” mumbled close to your ear. You drop your hands from your face in defeat, closing your eyes to muster whatever strength you have left, and push his hand off of your body.

“Dieter, please, don’t.”

He lets his hand fall away from you, but you still feel his presence as he stays put behind you.

“I don’t understand, did I- did I do something wrong?”

You slowly shake your head, still not ready to turn around, still not ready to confront this head on.

“It's just… it's jus-”

Fuck, it really is now or never, isn’t it?

You can tell Dieter is starting to get just as frustrated as you have been all day, a childish exasperated huff tickles your skin before the cracks in his composure start to show. In any other moment, you might have the patience and wherewithal to sympathize and agree that his day has been just as shitty as yours, but at your wits end? Well that’s no place for compassion or sensitivity, now is it.

“It's just what? Spit it out alre-”

You whip around facing him, feeling like the embodiment of a steaming kettle finally blowing its top, ready to let its contents boil and bubble over.

“You frustrate the living daylights out of me, Dieter!”

He takes a step back, shock written all over his face, obviously not expecting this outburst of anger from you. His eyes narrow as he crosses his arms in a show of defense.

“Yeah, and? I piss a lot of people off. Where is this even coming from, I thought we were coo-”

“Oh please, we are well past you merely pissing me off. You have completely turned my world on its axis! You have single handedly complicated and confused everything I thought I knew about myself! You're so infuriating - with your stupid reservations over anything bluetooth-”

“Not stupid, the EMF waves mess with your brain-”

“-your complete and utter inability to care for or respect anyone's time but your own. Your obsession with alien probing?! What is that? If aliens are real, you really think out of everyone on this planet, that they would choose you to beam up into their ship just to what? Study you?”

“It's not an obsession! It's a reasonable and completely rational fear and respect for aliens. And no, not study me… I'm afraid they'll impregnate me, okay?”

You stare at him blankly, silence filling the air. Dieter’s face is so… genuine. His eyebrows downturned in distress, those deep brown eyes of his widened slightly in legitimate fear. If it weren’t for the circumstances or the subject matter of your current conversation, you would almost feel bad for him, almost wanting to close the distance and caress his face, easing his worries.

But his worries were… ridiculous.

It starts out small; a quirk in your brow, the corners of your mouth twitching as you let out an amused huff in disbelief. It tickles your insides, the sheer absurdness the turn this conversation has taken.

It quickly takes over, growing into giggles you try to contain behind your hands, but then Dieter’s face cracks - his own expression twisting in mirth as the two of you erupt into fits of laughter.

A few seconds pass as you both fight to reign it in until silence takes hold again. But this time, it's not as suffocating, it's… nice.

You softly smile at him as he returns the gesture, cautiously taking a step forward into your space, Dieter’s hands finding their home cupping your face, his thumbs gently caressing your cheeks. You can see the internal battle waging behind his eyes, no doubt trying to figure out what to say in an attempt to not set you off again.

You give him some much deserved grace, bringing your own hands up to wrap around his wrists, feeling his pulse beating rapidly below your fingertips. You take a shallow breath before attempting to apologize, but yet again Dieter beats you to the punch.

“I won't pretend to know what's running through that brilliant mind of yours, but if I've done anything to upset you…” his gaze quickly drops to your lips before flicking back up to meet your eyes, “... I'm sorry.”

“No, no you really don't meed to apologize Dieter, I… fuck.”

You snap your eyes shut, afraid to see the inevitable look of pity. You can't look him in the eyes when you say it. Brilliant my ass, more like a fucking coward.

“I'm just so embarrassed, that was so unprofessional and I know everybody is pissed that I messed up yet another take and I just… I couldn't deny it any longer. And I'm so sorry I took you by surprise like that, it was completely uncalled for and mmfph-”

Dieters lips come crashing down on your own, silencing your babbling. Your hold on his wrists tighten as you immediately match his fervor, not caring that you're already struggling to take a breath, his is the only oxygen you need at this moment. Before you can get too lost in the kiss, he breaks it off, resting his forehead against yours while you both try to regain your breath.

He nuzzles your nose before smirking, “there, now we're even.”

A surprised and delighted giggle escapes your lips, holding onto his wrists even tighter, filing away every second of this that you can before the moment is over. But Dieter was always full of surprises.

“And if you'll let me, I'd very much like to do that again. Maybe later, after dinner?”

You can’t stop the goofy grin spreading across your face as you respond.

“I think we could work something out.”

Thank you to anyone who reads this, comments and reblogs are never expected, but always appreciated. I'm just happy there's someone out there who might enjoy the things I have to say ❤️

tagging some Dieter moots (no pressure to read or reblog obvi): @sp00kymulderr @perotovar @covetyou @chronically-ghosted @yopossum @whatsnewalycat @kedsandtubesocks @whocaresstillthelouvre @pedrostories @beefrobeefcal @seventeenpins @ozarkthedog @pedrit0-pascalit0

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intheorangebedroom · 1 year ago

Text

Tonight you belong to me, chapter 2

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

Two months have passed since your first time at the motel with Frankie. What has changed, what hasn't. Who are you now?

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 PLEASE, see series masterlist for extensive trigger warnings.

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange besties 🧡 How are you all? Gentle reminder that our Reader is an OFC. In this chapter, we get to know her better, and there are indirect physical descriptions of her. Sincerest apologies to anyone who knows Tampa. I did a lot of research, but I'm afraid my ignorance will still show… I swear I did my best. Raul is real, though. He's a friend of a very dear friend and he lives in Paris.

@frannyzooey my love, as always, I am in your debt. Thank you for your help. I love you more than words 🧡

I hope you enjoy this one, Orange besties, it made me sweat blood, @dreamymyrrh and @pedrit0-pascalit0 had to listen to my constant whining to put me on life support. Ily 🧡

Word count: 8.6k

[prev] * [series masterlist] * [next]

Chapter 2: Closer

The traffic is dense, but you spot Ava’s red Toyota as soon as it turns into E 7th avenue.

On any given Saturday, the upbeat neighborhood is bustling with cheerful crowds of leisured weekenders and hip thirty-something. On this particular Saturday, the first after Thanksgiving, the streets are a vision from hell.

There’s a constant ballet of cars pulling in and out along the curbs. On each side of the avenue, the sidewalks are swarming with jittery shoppers, frenetically prospecting for good deals on potential Christmas gifts. You’re willing to bet that most of them will stretch their budget thin on useless, meaningless knickknacks. Generic trinkets without soul nor purpose but that will, for the first half hour of ownership at least, fill the void in their consumers’ existence.

The traditional Christmas tree of unholy proportions is up and sparkling. Wrapped around the iron porch columns, electrical garlands blink in rapid sequences like luminescent spasmodic snakes. Storefronts are decorated with more or less taste. The temperature has dropped twice below 70. It’s that time of the year.

The merry season usually finds you adding a generous helping of anxiolytics to your daily cocktail of little helpers. This year, however, you haven’t popped a pill in days, and everything feels… more. Louder, too vivid, more oppressive. Sensations magnified and emotions amplified. Which is, after all, what you were aiming at when you unilaterally decided to taper off your intake.

Ava miraculously secures a free spot on the other side of the avenue, about a hundred yards in front of yours. You watch her parallel park, the maneuver surprisingly sloppy, given the parking assist technology the brand-new hybrid car is equipped with, and you wonder if you really needed to spend that much money on it.

In front of your own parked car, pedestrians agglutinate at the crosswalk. When the light turns green, they move as one, like flocks of extras on a movie set, coming to life on cue when the director yells “action!”

They’re not extras, however, each one of them is the main character in the movie of their life. Together they form a constellation of individual and interconnected stories, while you stand at the margin, forever exhausted, willfully forlorn. At best, a supporting part in Ava’s fantastic tale of eccentric adventures, but more likely a backdrop in your father’s gripping success story.

Although, your narrative has changed drastically over the past two months. You now got a part in your own right, unfolding in between takes.

You wait until Ava gets out of her vehicle before you exit yours, reluctant to leave the hushed safety of your old sedan’s cab, even for the few minutes it’ll take you to meet with her and step into the coffee place.

You wave at her from across the busy street until she sees you, but when she proceeds to jaywalk over to you, reckless and entirely indifferent to your pleading expression, you have to avert your eyes. There’s a crosswalk right in front of you, god dammit.

She levels up with you and pecks a kiss on your cheek, hitting your cheekbone with force, more headbutt than demonstration of affection.

“Hey,” she says, barely stopping in her tracks before she pushes open the glass door to the coffee shop.

“Hello, pup,” you answer fondly, your words lost to the street’s bustle.

Inside, the artificial air instantly pulls at your skin. The atmosphere is cool but dry, saturated with the smell of freshly grounded coffee beans and greasy-sweet pastries. The high-ceiling, cement floor, wide open-space is packed. The brick walls reverberate the ambient noises, and the late morning sun beams brightly through the large floor-to-ceiling windows, evenly spaced along the lateral walls. People sit in small parties around the white designer tables, sipping iced coffees from tall red paper cups with white snowflakes, large shopping bags at their feet.

Trying your best not to shrink and shrivel from the multiple overwhelming stimuli, you focus on Ava’s back, walking behind her as she leads the way to a free table at the rear of the coffee shop, between the counter and one of the windows. There’s a regal quality to her gait and the way she carries herself, not unlike your father, the resemblance enhanced by her preference for masculine clothing, and you have to love the irony, given how much she hates the man. She has your mother’s beauty, though. The same luxurious dark hair, fair, flawless skin, and wide green eyes, her frame tall, her figure athletic. She’s the masterpiece. Next to her, you look like a clumsy first draft, with blurry edges and hesitant features.

She throws her jean jacket on the back of her chair and collapses on her seat with a theatrical sigh.

Across from her, you sit down gingerly on the edge of the hard wooden chair, balancing your weight around the sore and delicious ghost sensation of Frankie between your hips.

“You look good,” you start.

“Yeah, you too!” she exclaims, like it’s unexpected, “tired but like, good. Are you getting any sleep?”

You smile, waving your hand dismissively.

“Don’t we have to go to the counter to order?”

“No, it’s fine,” she answers, “they serve at the table. I’m having an oat milk matte, what do you want?”

“An espresso, I think.”

Right on cue, a young woman dressed in a black cropped top and black skinny jeans presents herself at your table and proceeds to tap in your order on a rectangular electronic device. Her long acrylic nails hit the screen with a rapid succession of click-click-click. The sound brings you back to your parents' dining-room, the large table standing like an angular island on the shiny square of reflective tiles, in the middle of a shag carpet ocean. Your mother’s nails, painted in Revlon Desirable #150, rattling impatiently over the lacquered surface of the dining table near her untouched plate and a glass of G&T sweating with condensation. She never ate her food. She drank even when she was pregnant.

Your fingers find the back of your knee and pinch the thin skin there, so hard you flinch.

The waitress waltzes off, and Ava returns her full attention to you.

“I’m happy to see you,” she offers, and you smile softly at her uncustomary expression of affection. Your chest expends. “It’s been a while.”

There’s no reproach in her tone, but you are usually the one expressing ill-concealed concern over her long silences, and the reversal in your dynamic throws you off. Guilts gnaws at you. You choose defense.

“You were away.”

“Yeah, but like, I came back three weeks ago.”

Three weeks. Your smile fades and you slump in your chair, running a quick mental calculation.

Time has never been an easy concept for you to grasp, but until recently, you’ve managed to remain afloat and functioning, on a practical level at least, amidst a society that revolves around schedules and timetables. The watch on your wrist, yearly organizers, recently and reluctantly replaced by the iCal app on your phone, sticky notes, tin boxes filled with tickets stubs… All clutches to your failing memory, anything to keep you tethered against an overpowering and primal instinct to escape, let go, drift away. And perhaps, most of your exhaustion stems from this endless swimming-race against the current.

Lately, your inability to remember appointments, to navigate time and hold an effective grasp on reality has reached a new high. For the past two months, your life has revolved around Friday nights and the sound of a red pickup truck pulling in and out of a decrepit motel’s parking, tires screeching on the gravel. Inside this timeframe, your entire life is contained. Around it, the days stretch, spiral, and blend. And you’ve lost all motivation and interest in any counter-current swimming.

You frown slightly, scanning her face, but she doesn’t let on anything out of the ordinary. After all, if she genuinely worried, if she so badly needed to see you, she could have given you a call. You were the one to reach out and ask to see her this morning.

Something’s different about her, in the way she holds herself straighter on her seat, with her legs crossed and her head tilted to the side, exposing the undercut she got before the summer. You’re still not entirely sure if this was the bold fashion statement she claimed it to be, rather than a dramatic reaction to her girlfriend moving back to New York. With Ava, it could be both. She’s not wearing any makeup today, her face looks disarmingly young, and the concern she’s expressed, however subtle, churns your insides with guilt and affection.

You plaster a polite smile on your face.

“Well, I’m here now. It’s good to see you, too. Tell me, how was New York? How’s Polly?”

The waitress returns with the pastries and beverages you ordered, and Ava begins to narrate her two-week trip to the big city. She speaks fast, punctuating her words with large gestures to describe the cultural buoyancy, the hip neighborhoods and her thrifts finds, the street food and the refined, cutting-edge restaurants, how everything is bigger there, faster and better, how she fell safe walking hand in hand with Polly, the clubs, the galleries, the weather, crisp air and chilly winds from the north, a refreshing, comforting seasonality to pace the existence.

“I was fucking crying when I boarded the plane back, you have no idea.”

“Oh, I can imagine,” you sigh, shaking your head. “You don’t miss her too much?”

She doesn’t answer, and something in the way she avoids your gaze makes you frown again.

Polly and you have always gotten along well. You genuinely appreciate her solar personality and her worldly conversation. Their encounter four years ago had been the silver-lining in an otherwise horrendous year. The happy, coincidental consequence of a chain of events that had been years in the making.

When Ava dropped out of college halfway through her freshman year, it provided your father with the excuse he had been waiting for to kick his own child out of his house. You had seen it coming. In fact, you had spent your entire adult life shielding Ava from the paternal discontent, investing all your strength into becoming the son and successor he had wished for, and that neither of you could ever be.

Ava, however, had never put in the effort. She didn’t fit into the family portrait. She never had. You didn’t want her to, and she simply couldn’t. Too rebellious, decidedly unconventional, and, well, queer, to boot. Your father had spent years formatting you and there she was, standing proud, strengthened by your unconditional support, a glaring highlight of your diverging values, a breathing reminder of his failure with you both.

In the aftermath of the fall-out, Adrian had refused to take her in, and she had spent days out of your sight, sleeping god knows where. Eventually, you’d dug your heels in, as you only ever did when Ava was concerned and her wellbeing on the line, and obtained that she move in with you. The cohabitation hadn’t gone smoothly in the least. As usual, Adrian was more concerned about potentially upsetting your father than making you happy. You were once again caught between crossed fires.

The strained situation with your fiancé notwithstanding, Ava couldn't spend her time sitting idly at home. You had pleaded with her for weeks before she agreed to resume her studies. Only this time, it had to be with your funding. The realization that you didn’t have any consequential money of your own had been brutal, even though it shouldn’t have been a surprise: you lived in Adrian’s apartment, and were employed by your father, who refused point-blank to let you sell some of your company shares, knowing the money would go to his estranged daughter.

All you could afford was Hillsborough Community College, but things had eventually taken a turn for the better when Ava and Polly had met. Polly was teaching psychology, waiting for a tenure that she would never be granted. Because of the 20-year age gap between them, she insisted Ava graduate with her BA before they started properly dating. And when they did, the improvement in your sister’s mental state and overall balance was immediately noticeable.

Calm and collected, affectionate and thoughtful, Polly grounds your young sibling. She eases her anger and channels her energy into creative and fruitful endeavors, without snuffing her rebellious temper.

And now, despite Ava being almost fully independent, with a job and a place of her own, you don’t know what you’d do if they were to break up. If one of them were to decide that a long-distance relationship is not what she wants.

You lean forward, your hand coming to rest over hers, warm and smooth. “Hey pup, what’s up? Is everything ok between you two?”

“Oh yes,” she quickly assures you, withdrawing her hand, “and by the way, she sends you her best.”

Understanding downs on you like a bucket of ice. You suddenly feel stupid, pathetically naive, forever one step behind. Leaning back in your chair, you let out a short, soundless huff. What you’re facing is not a breakup, but the likely possibility that Ava will soon move out of town to follow Polly to New York.

Ava is talking again, about New York you’re guessing, but you can’t focus on her words. Behind your impassive eyes and your attentive smile, your mind reels and wrestles with a downpour of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Pride flares in your chest at the prospect of your baby sister setting roots in a city as intimidating as New York, but it tugs at something else, something you’re too scared to consider, and an ugly feeling you’re reluctant to acknowledge.

Would she hesitate before leaving you behind, after you’ve prioritized her freedom over yours? After you stayed so she could fly away? And wouldn’t it be the point?

Your eyes travel up along the trail of small tattoos adorning her forearms. Dominos, tea cups, a white rabbit with round glasses, a flamingo, several thin arrows, a broken heart in flames.

What’s your purpose, if she’s not here anymore? If someone else is looking after her? If your sacrifice is no longer necessary nor justified?

“How was Thanksgiving dinner? Did you have fun talking about politics with Richard?”

You wince involuntarily at your father’s name. She never refers to them as “mom” and “dad.” She hasn’t for a long while. But today the sarcasm doesn’t fool you, no more than her feigned indifference.

She’s not truly asking if you had to bite your tongue and smile through conversations that make you nauseous. She knows well enough you’ve got just enough political convictions to carry you to the voting poll, but hardly a step further. Listening to him is painful, but you get by, and your shameful silence buys you necessary peace.

No, what she wants to know is if your family inquired about her. And you don’t have it in you to answer that no, no one has, not last Thursday, not for the past four years, not ever. Not your indifferent father, nor your inebriated mother. Not your bigot grandparents, not your egotistic aunt and her gold-digging husband, not even the housekeeping staff.

You shrug noncommittally.

“Who were the guests of honor, this year?”

The question makes you groan and briefly close your eyes at the memory.

“Adrian’s parents.”

“No?! Fuck! They really want this marriage to happen, don’t they? Looks like you’re not gonna be able to dodge much longer.”

She smacks her hand over her thigh, letting out a short staccato of a chuckle, as if the subject of your confinement through marriage was a laughing matter. You glare at her, crossing your legs and folding your arms over your chest, but the shifting in your demeanor goes unnoticed.

Suddenly, her levity riles you up. She got away. You didn’t. And the only thing that carried you through this year’s Thanksgiving dinner is the perspective of being fucked senseless by a stranger on a dirty motel floor the following night.

For a brief moment, you’re tempted to bite, and retort that, contrary to her, you didn't spend the holiday on your own. But the truth is that you envy her the privilege, and she knows it.

Taking a deep breath that does absolutely nothing to calm your growing nerves, you stir the conversation towards another topic, finding neutral ground with her job. You’re stalling, and you’re not even good at it. You sit restless on that damn hard chair, squirming uncomfortably, sweat prickling under your armpits in the chill artificial air, eyes flicking down to your watch every other second.

“Do you have to be somewhere, or something?”

Your head shoots up. Again, you have no idea what she’s talking about, or how long she’s been rambling for. This is ridiculous. You are being ridiculous.

“Listen, Ava, I have to ask you something. A favor. I have to ask you a favor.”

Her eyes widen at your sudden change of tone but she nods. “Hit me.”

“I need you to… I need to be able to tell Adrian that I spend… that I spend Friday nights at your place. Actually, I’ve already been doing it for a while. He thinks we see each other on Friday evenings. I just… I need more time. I need the night.” You grip your shin with both hands and dig your nails in. “It really doesn’t matter anyway, he’s not home on Fridays, he plays poker and he never comes back until like, 3 or 4am, and I just need— I need to be able to come home after him. Not, like, every week. Or yes, maybe every week. Just in case. If ever. You know?”

She remains completely still and silent as you wrestle your words out of your throat. Her face hardens, her wide, green eyes strained on you. She gauges you in silence for another moment, while you rub your clammy palms on your jeans under the table. Above the table, you do your very best to maintain a casual air.

“And what exactly is it that you do, on Friday nights?”

You anticipated the question, of course you did. You swallow around the sharp stone stuck in your throat. Your eyes dart down to your espresso cup. It’s empty.

“I’m just taking a bit of time off for myself.”

More time, to commit his body and his face to your long-term memory after he’s left you, depriving you of his heat. The tiny bits of him that add up to form the formidable sum of the man he is. The locks that curl around his ears. The dip in his collarbone. The little target tattooed on his hand. You’re never sure which hand it’s on, you need more time, that’s all. And you won’t lie to her, not exactly. You set your mind on that early on. But you will not tell her the whole story.

A large shit-eating grin slowly parts her plump lips.

“Are you telling me that Richard’s favorite daughter is getting some side dick on a weekly fucking basis?”

“Jesus, Ava, why do you always have to be so crude?”

“But you are? Right? You are getting dicked down, every fucking Friday night? Right? Are you on Tinder, or something?”

“I’m not—” you start, but her excitement is louder than your exasperation. She uncrosses her legs to lean toward you, propping her elbows on the table and threading her fingers together, talking over you.

“Why didn’t you tell me? For once that something cool–”

“Because there’s nothing to tell,” you retort through clenched teeth, raising your voice. Her mouth hangs open in shock. You don’t give her time to recover. “And look, if you don’t want to do that for me, it’s fine, it’s not like anyone is going to call you to ask if I’m with you.”

She takes the blow, leaning back in her chair. “Wow. You really thought this through, didn’t you?”

You don’t answer, shame and anger burning your cheeks.

“Why you’re telling me now, then?”

“Like I said. In case.”

“I case what? In case I find myself on a Friday evening in the same place Adrian takes his cuntsluts?”

You steel yourself and stare at her.

“Something like that, yes.”

—

Two months.

Two months of lies and deception, shoving your bright secret deep down inside you, shrouded under a veil of routine and normalcy.

Nine weeks, split into six days of stretched out hours, swirling languid and excruciating, like smoke from a cigarette stub in a room without air, and one day of counting. The minutes, your steps, your breaths, your heartbeats.

Saturdays, worn-out, appeased, pleasantly aching. Sundays rising slow like a lurking threat. Mondays-Tuesdays-Wednesdays merging, dragging and useless. People talking to you, expecting words, when your mind is filled with two glistening bodies entwined in golden hues. A tremor on Thursdays, the nearing promise, and by Friday morning you’re all frayed nerves and aching want, tapping into your pent-up emptiness for focus and patience.

Friday evenings sliced up into a ritualized sequence of actions.

At 6pm, you leave your office and head toward the employees' underground parking. There are 37 steps from your desk to the two silver-doors elevators on the landing. Seventeen stories down, including 2 underground levels, and 58 steps from the elevators to your designated parking place. It is crucial that you don’t allow the pace of your steps to catch up with the racing thumps of your heart.

From downtown Tampa, it’s an hour and thirty-six minutes drive north on the 589, before you reach the motel. An hour and fifty minutes, two hours top, if the traffic’s bad. There might be faster alternative routes, but you don’t use the GPS, so you don’t know about them.

Once you’re there, you park in front of room number 7, the one with the missing brass number. You stuff your phone into your purse, which you slide under your seat.

You exit your car and walk towards the reception in short, hurried strides, cursing the tight skirt that hinders your steps and gives your posture a subdued aspect, which is probably why your father imposes the garment on his female employees.

The reception is a square room with an old humming AC unit, dark-brown fabric wallpaper, yellowing popcorn ceiling and a counter behind which sits Raul, the night clerk. Raul is a short man in his mid-60s. His dark eyes are reshaped into tiny concentric boot buttons by the thick lenses of his small, round glasses. His light brown, straight hair is styled in a bowl cut. He only wears beige Henley’s with rolled-up sleeves and indigo painter overalls. You’ve never seen his shoes.

Every week, Raul hands you the key to room number 2 without lifting his boot-button eyes from the charcoal drawing he busies himself over behind the counter, and tells you in a thick accent that “everything has already been taken care of.”

Every week, you thank Raul, grab the key from his stretched out left hand, and chance a glance over the counter to see what he’s drawing. Mountains, infallibly, week after week, the scenery only varying in shape and shades of anthracite.

And every week, as you exit the reception, you feel Raul’s boot-button eyes strained on your back through his round glasses.

When you step inside room number 2, you flick up the two toggle switches by the door, turning on the lights and the overhead fan, and you go to the bathroom to wash your hands and check your reflection in the antique black-edged mirror.

Then, you return to the room and you sit on the bed. That’s where you wait for him.

You don’t undress, you don’t lie down, you don’t undo the bed.

You know what he’ll do to your clothes. Anticipation trickles down along your spine all the way to the ripe heat between your thighs, and it travels right back up to tug up at the corners of your lips, but you press them together, lips and thighs, as you wait.

He comes in after dark, preceded by the sound of tires on gravel and that of his boots stomping on the porch and he’s here, Frankie’s here, the rush of night air from outside when he storms into the room wafting over your face.

He greets you with a hoarse voice, like he hasn’t used it all week, and he takes a couple of long strides towards the desk, where he sets down his cap. You peer at his reflection in the framed mirror when he combs his fingers through his dark curls, tense jaw, creased brow. You study his broad shoulders, the rippling muscles of his strong back, when he takes off his jacket and drapes it on the back of the chair, swift, precise gestures. It’s his own ceremonial, you let him have it, his transition into this world that you share. The confine of this room. Brown carpet, yellow curtains.

When he turns to face you, at last, it’s always with a heavy, grating sigh, a sound so rough and primitive to express his relief, his hunger, the limit of his patience. You stand up slowly, unfurling in slow motion from your sitting position on the edge of the bed, eyes on him, forever and always. His want radiates from him in colorful angry waves, like a tangible, virulent aura, black eyes boring into your skin and you welcome it as it pours out of him and creeps up to you like thick fumes.

You stand tall in the charged stillness of the motel room, offered, but not quite yet within reach, waiting for him to come and seize you.

“Take off your clothes,” he says as he comes closer, tilting up his chin. The command rumbles low and guttural from his throat, and those words are your cue. You clamber out of your statuesque stillness, twisting your ankles out of your pumps while he tugs at your blouse, as he crashes his lips onto yours.

His first kiss is voracious, unescapable, your face trapped between his cupped hands, and you’re engulfed in the taste of him, drowning in the scent of him, leather and soap and musk. And something metallic you have no name for. It’s intoxicating, you’re floating, losing both bearings and balance, like when you were thirteen, and you’d sneak to the downstairs pantry to drink your mother’s gin before dinner.

On some Friday nights, you’ve already made it back to your glass prison when you notice a tear in the seam of your shirt, or a missing button. “Take off those fucking clothes, I wanna feel your skin.”

“Yes,” you answer with parted lips, parted heart, parted life, jaunty fingers working your skirt open.

Beyond that point, neither of you talks much.

It’s his name –Frankie– falling from your lips, a long but quiet whimper when you come, a whine of pleasure-plain when he inches into you, a moan when you plead for more, a whisper when you promise you can take it all.

It’s his clipped orders, sharp and short.

Open up

Push back into it

Let me hear you

I want you to come on it

And two words, always the same since that first time in the parking lot.

Stop me.

Stop me when he pins your hands above your head or folds your arms in the small of your back, his fingers like shackles around your wrists, and he lines himself up. Stop me before his saliva drips down his tongue in fat drops between your breasts, and he straddles your chest. Stop me, when he closes a fist in your hair and slides you down along his hard length, your chest caving in under your gag reflex, beads of tears like precious shiny diamonds clinging to your lashes. Stop me when he angles your spine backwards with a sudden tug on your hair, when he bands an arm across your belly and ragdolls you to the floor to fuck you harder and deeper. Stop me when he ties your wrists to your ankles with the black zip ties that bite into your flesh.

Stop me with the flat of his hand pressing down between your shoulder blades, Stop me with his thumb teasing your tight ring, Stop me with your legs around his neck.

Those two words, a beacon guiding you through the week that precedes.

Sometimes, when you’re alone, you repeat them to yourself.

“Stop me,” you say, low and quiet, facing the mirror when you're applying makeup, staring straight into your eyes, so intently it twists your reflection.

“Stop me.” A whisper, and a slow-spreading, carnivorous smile that splits your face in two because someone, at last, wants you beyond reason.

Stop me. You will never stop him.

He fucks you twice, three times a night, before he leaves you covered in him, sated and sprawled on the rumpled bed around 2am, with a nod and a husked, “I’ll see you next Friday.” He sounds calm at last. Drained.

Once he’s gone, in the rumbling of the pickup’s engine and the screeching of the tires, your mental countdown to the next Friday is reset. You crouch into the narrow bathtub of dubious cleanliness, and ruefully wash him away in the trickle of hot water. You try to hold on to the thought of him, even more so than to the feeling of his touch. That’s what the soreness is for. It will stay with you until Monday at least.

But in your memory, his face is blurred. Only his sad angry eyes stand out, dreamlike, entrancing.

There's a conflicting distance beyond his hunger. An underlying restraint beyond his roughness. Withheld intimacy. A reluctance to give into your softest touches, when his forehead briefly rests on the plane of your chest, and you circle his neck, or carefully run your fingers through his sweat-soaked curls.

It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to understand that if he wasn’t in here with you, he’d be somewhere else, doing something worse.

Some weeks, you go through strings of sleepless nights and restless days of anguish, your mind spiraling to the agonizing thought that you are nothing more to him than an empty and interchangeable vessel into which he can fuck his rage.

With masochistic thoroughness, you pull taut a red woolen thread to connect the clues of your insignificance.

He doesn’t name you. There are no sweet names, no terms of endearment, and he certainly never calls you Marion. The sounds he produces when he’s inside you, that’s your reward. Deep guttural grunts, and if you’re lucky enough, they resonate through your whole body when he holds you tight and close.

He never comes inside you. Where do you want it? he pants, when his hips start to fall out of pace. “Mouth,” you quickly answer, always, a greedy match for his gritty ways. And most times, he obliges. Flips you around or scoot over you and shoves his pulsating cock into your warm, wanton mouth.

But sometimes, he doesn’t. The thick pearly white ropes of his spend spurt over your back, your belly, your chest. That’s when he’s got a mind to rub it into your skin. That’s when you want to believe he might have chosen you to be here with him.

In those scarce instances, you are tempted to rely on your instinctual understanding of your relationship. Far from the toxic codependency that, according to Ava, you feed into with Adrian, what you share with Frankie is elsewhere entirely. Week after week, he presents himself before you, visibly wounded, willing to offer exactly as much as he needs to receive. The balance is perfect. No travesty, complete equality. The purest form of interaction. The most honest transaction you’ve ever taken part in.

And thus, no matter how remote he may seem on some nights, no matter how dark his eyes, how clouded his gaze, or how brutal his hold, you can’t help but feel safe.

The feeling thrums underneath your skin and finds an echo in his bloodstream. You hear it in your shared silence, when you lie side by side on the bed and stare emptily at the ceiling, chests heaving, bodies cooling off. When a shiver rakes through you, he gets up and turns off the overhead fan. Walks over to the bathroom to bring you a glass of water.

He’s given you everything you wanted and didn’t know how to ask for.

And when he looks you in the eyes, he doesn’t blink.

Stop me, he says, and what you hear is, Trust me.

He’s been quick to learn your body, and he’s greedy with your highs. He keeps you pinned down onto the threadbare linen with his mouth fastened around your cunt until your legs tremble and your throat is hoarse with your repeated high-pitched moans, the stubble on his cheeks scraping the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. Bestowing pleasure, drinking it right back.

Your body expands into new sensations, after years of a dormant existence, curled up within your outer shell into the tightest ball, the smallest possible shape. You’re spreading, stretching into your limbs, filling them in. Growing nerve endings that shoot farther along your extremities with each fiery kiss, each starving touch, each orgasm, like trees rooting in beautiful, intricate ramifications.

The wild creature nestled between your lungs has a mind of its own. You’re developing emotions unknown to you until now.

The tranquil contentment he leaves you with when he steps back into the night and closes the door behind him rapidly fades over the following days. By Sunday evening, there’s nothing left of it, and you find yourself shivering, deprived of his heat, unsettled, agitated.

Your mind wanders to her. The faceless, nameless woman he drives back to after you’ve fucked each other free of your pain.

Envy, tinged with hatred, pours ugly inside your chest, pressing against your rib cage, hindering your breathing, its heavy particles tainting your oxygen.

Does he handle her with reverence? Does he use sweet names to beckon her into his embrace? Does he spit in her mouth, does she beg him to? Does he rub his spend into her skin, or does he stuff her pussy full of his seed?

Whenever you loosen the grip on your thoughts, you’re brought back to a large reception room on the last floor of another glass prison, stilettos wounding your feet, strangers with empty smiles and cruel eyes drinking from crystal champagne glasses. The excruciating misery of having to interact with Adrian’s colleagues, laughing at golf jokes you did not understand, desperate to fit in. Fighting your survival instinct, to tether yourself and not present a blank stare to those people you were supposed to impress. As Adrian’s fiancée. As your father’s daughter.

The effort seemed worth it, then. You were in love. Or so you thought. In hindsight, you’re not certain anymore. Reinterpreting your past is a temptation you try not to succumb to. In more then one way, you still love him.

There was a hushed tremor in the faceless assembly of tuxedos and cocktail dresses, and you saw her entering the room, parting the crowd. Slender, swaying, lush honey blonde locks and incandescent hazel eyes. Junior partner at Adrian’s firm, quickly climbing the ranks, flawless makeup and oozing self-confidence, she smoked Vogue cigarettes and when your gaze returned to Adrian, everything fell into place. You knew with a chilling certainty that this formidable young woman was fucking your boyfriend.

Adrian had had a couple of flings in the past, but this one was different. He fell for her hard, a grown man in a teenage-like trance. Your blood left your face when you realized everyone else in the penthouse, and most likely in the firm, could see what you were seeing.

You decided then and there that you were never going to marry him, regardless of what he or your father would threaten you with.

But even then, what you had experienced wasn’t jealousy. You’d felt trapped, and yes, betrayed. Wounded, in what little self-esteem you possessed. Thoroughly defeated. But you did not feel jealous.

You understand it now, and every time you think of Frankie’s touch grazing the faceless woman. Every time you torture yourself into considering the nature of their bond and the depth of their attachment.

Would Frankie look at you the way Adrian looked at her? With blunt desire, unabashed, irrepressible thirst? With belonging? Would people around you know? Would they identify you as lovers?

After all, a single glance had been enough for him to take you from a bar, to a parking lot, to a motel. To make you desperate to mean something to him.

Does he miss you outside your shared time? Does he think of you? Does his mind wander to your skin in the blue morning hours, does he try to name your scent?

Deep down, you are no fool. If there’s one thing you’ve always known in this life, it’s your place.

But some Friday nights are more dangerous. They give you too much hope. Prompting you to call your sister, for instance, and risk your little secret so you can spend more time in the small room with the yellow curtains. Wrap yourself in the dirty sheets that bear his musky scent, instead of jumping into the shower. Linger into that breach of your life’s continuum. Extend the delusion.

Last Friday, he buried his face into your core and drew violent waves of release that he kissed back into you, swirling his tongue into your mouth to coat it with your taste.

His face was shiny with your slick and his body glistening with sweat in the soft yellow hues from the bedside lamps, when he got up to the desk and slid his belt out of the loops of his pants.

Your eyes grew wide, but not with fear.

He placed you face down on the bed, with your arms along your chest, and he trapped your body with the belt. You accompanied his movements, docile, curious, without apprehension. The metal buckle was cool on your feverish skin, and the leather smelled like him.

Stop me. He was hard and thick, and he fucked into you in long, thorough strokes, dragging the round tip of his cock along your clenching walls, slamming his hips into the swell of your ass. With his thumb pushing into your asshole and his hand around the belt to keep you where he needed you to lie still.

You came in seismic tides that quaked along your body in concentric ripples, from your wrung out core to the extremities of your fingers and toes. The sound that came out of your throat was unrecognizable, and perhaps it was his. Your mind tipped over into unconsciousness. When you resurfaced, his cock was rubbing in the cleft of your cheeks, his come leaking down the curve of your back, mixing in with your combined sweat, his chest pressing down onto your shoulder blades.

You felt his lips brushing against the shell of your ear, hot breath searing his choked up words into your soul.

“You’re a good girl. Say it. Say you’re a good girl.”

“I’m— I’m—“

“That’s it, say it for me.”

He was lying heavy on top of you, sinking you into the mattress, his belt buckle digging into your side. This was going to leave a mark.

“I’m a good girl.”

“You’re my good girl.”

You will never stop him.

—

Sitting on the edge of the bed, with your back straight and your ankles crossed, you wait. Eyes on the yellow curtains, darting beyond the dusty fabric into the warm December night. It’s yours. All of it. Yours until morning.

There’s the faintest hint of a bad taste sitting on the back of your tongue. Coppery, bloodlike. It comes in waves every time you remember how you twisted your baby sister’s arm into covering for you. But the night is yours. You swallow hard, force a smile. You want to be guiltless, for once.

“Polly says you’re overly secretive. That you like to live ‘hidden between the folds of life’, as she puts it. Something about culpability being a coping mechanism…”

The words, delivered flatly after you’d stubbornly diverted and defused all her questions, had cut through the most tender parts of your flesh.

“Is that her professional opinion?” you had retorted, your chin tilted up as if you were not bleeding inside.

You swallow hard again. If you close your eyes, if you concentrate, you can almost hear it. The pickup’s engine, bolting down the asphalt, bringing him into your needy arms. You can feel the heat radiating from his solid chest and seeping into your body through your palms, resting empty and upwards on your lap. Your tongue tingles with his tangy taste, a trail of goosebumps breaks across your skin, anticipating his caress.

Frankie.

The daydream that carries you through the week, carries you through that very last stretch.

Until the man himself storms into the room like bad weather. Dark, electric, a standing threat.

One look at his face and you know. It’s going to be one of these nights that make you doubt everything.

At first, the change in the script is barely perceptible. There is no gentle acclimatization, no ceremonial, no tacitly shared ritual. He doesn’t face away to let you observe his reflection in the mirror. But he looks like he hasn’t slept since last Friday. The crease in his brow is forbidding, his eyes are too bright, too clouded, circled in black and you’re dizzy with the distance you find there. Tension rolls out from his taut muscles underneath his clothes and you stand up, alert, if not entirely ready.

“Get naked,” he growls, tugging his gray t-shirt over his head, his trucker hat falling to the floor and tonight, you miss your cue.

Instead, you come closer, extending your hands towards him. You call him in a murmur, Frankie, but the wild thumping of his heart under your trembling palms cuts you short.

The light flickers in his eyes, so you hang in brave, hang onto the thread of your touch, sliding your hands up his burning chest. He stills. His gaze focuses on you for the first time since he came in. Your fingertips brush lightly along his collarbone, to the dip at the base of his neck, where they linger, underlining the hollow shape of it, skating around his neck to his nape. His brow shifts, his jaw ticks, and you draw him in for a kiss.

He jolts when your lips meet his. His hands grip your hips, rough and desperate. This is the part where you melt into him, surrender to his touch, but tonight the balance is tipped off. He licks into your mouth with a pained, muffled whimper, and your eyes remain open.

You’re powerless, powerless to get to him and bring him back to you from wherever the hell he may be. And his distance settles between your two bodies, an invisible partition. It stands erect and opaque, projecting its shadow over you when he lies you down on the synthetic quilt and dives between your hips. His ministrations are detached, performative, mechanical. There’s no contained urgency in his handling of you. Empty touches, empty silence, and you orgasm weakly, the sensation floating on the surface of you.

You can sense him, trapped behind his black eyes and this damn crease that splits his face above them, only you can’t reach him. He won’t let you. For every one of your attempts at a caress, at tenderness, is rejected by a shrug, a push of his hand, a shake of his head.

Sweat breaks on his forehead and dampens his curls as he becomes restless, showing none of the familiar signs of the relief he finds in your release, when he hums softly into you, lapping at your entrance to capture what you offer him, what he drew from you. Impatience and desperation roughen his grip on you. He shoves you to the head of the bed and you scramble, sliding on the slippery quilt, curled on your side, until you’re caged between his rigid body and the headboard.

There’s no warning, no Stop me, when he lines himself up with a stifled groan. You bury your face into the pillow and bite down on it to muffle the pain when he splits you open. He starts rutting into you with unrestrained strength, forcing through the vice grip of your tight cunt around his hard length. You try to relax into it. That’s all you ever want, for him to fill you up, to be inside you and around you, but that’s the thing: he’s not touching you. Not really.

Instead of gripping the curve of your hips, or kneading your breast, or lying between your shoulder blades, his hands are clenched on the headboard, white knuckled. His bent knee doesn’t quite touch your folded legs, his hips don’t even slap against the swell of your cheeks.

“Frankie,” you try, but your voice comes out thin as a ripping thread. It’s immediately drowned under the sounds filling the room, the creaking of the bed, his strained breathing.

“Frankie,” you call again, louder this time, reaching to the side to grab his thigh.

He jerks at the contact, sliding out of you with a hiss like you just burned him with a red-hot iron. You grab the side of the headboard to haul yourself up. Behind you, you feel him falling back on his knees. For a few seconds, you can’t bring yourself to move. You remain hunched over, fingers wrapped so tightly on the hardboard, your nails digging into the cheap, tender wood.

“Fuck,” he breathes out, and you turn around to face him.

Your heart sinks and chatters at the sight of him, of his glassy, pleading eyes that won’t meet yours. His chest heaves with exertion, and the weight of something else. He grazes a palm over his face, tilting his head down.

“I hurt you. I fucking hurt you, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Tonight, this is it. These words are your cue.

“No,” you start, scooting closer to him as he shakes his head, exhausted, isolated. The gesture no longer carries the warning it did as he was about to succumb. It’s a measure of his failure, of the depth of his defeat, and it chills you to the bones.

“No,” you repeat, stronger, and you offer him the only lifeline you know.

Closing the physical distance, you straddle his lap and wrap your arms around his shoulders. When his body stiffens, you harden your hold.

“Frankie… Frankie…” you coo, again and again, like his name holds the solution, and all of your devotion. You say it as you press your forehead to his, as you rub your cheek against his stubble, as you nuzzle the sharp edge of his nose, and trace his plush lips with yours.

Until his shoulders sag under your embrace, until you feel the choked up breath that quakes his chest, you keep repeating his name. A few minutes, or an infinity of seconds, time doesn’t matter anymore. The night is yours, your skins are glued together in the soft yellow light.

His arms circle your waist, hesitant at first, but you encourage him, raking your fingers through his hair, twining them into his soft curls. He lets you, he gives in, tucking his face in the crook of your neck. He inhales you there, raising the soft hair on your nape. His voice is broken when he speaks.

“I’m not–”

“Frankie don’t, please don’t,” you cut in.

You know the words that are piling bitter and desperate on his tongue, know them on an instinctual level. You feel them swirling, black and hopeless inside his head, you’ve known them from the very beginning, recognized them in the sadness of his angry stare. And you won’t let him pronounce them inside this room you share, you won’t let him give them any kind of substantiality. Not between your arms, not against your skin.

“I’m not hurt,” you begin, pulling back to see his face, to look into his eyes and sink your words of hope and faith into him, past the barrier of remorse and regret, “I want everything you–” but his brow furrows deeper as he clenches his eyes shut, and you trail off.

Panic briefly floods your brain. You’re acutely aware of your shortcomings and limitations, of all the things you’ve never been taught growing up. How to translate feelings into words, how to express compassion, how to care for others. How to be heard.

You take a deep, shaky breath, your breasts pushing into his chest.

“Look at me, Frankie baby. Look at me. Let me–”

Let me in. Let me be yours. Let me mean something.

Your plea dies on your tongue when his eyes shoot open. They shine with unshed tears, pierced by a ray of light from the bedside table, and for the first time, you see that they’re not black. They were never black. His eyes are brown, a deep, rich, precious mahogany brown. The color paints your vision, it flows into your bloodstream and courses along your veins. It spreads into your heart, gets tangled in your soul. Around you, the whole world disappears, along with everyone in it. There is only him, his mahogany eyes brimming with tears, and the feeling of his hot, damp skin against yours.

His arms wrap tighter around your back, his warmth seeps into your bones. His hands find purchase on your curves, drawing you closer.

“I want you so badly to be real,” he whispers, quiet and pained, like he can’t ask you this much, but you know that, for him, you’re willing to be.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again.

Swallowing down the tremor in your throat, you give him a tender smile, tinted with gratitude, colored with praise. You cup his face, fingernails scratching at the heart-shaped patch on his jawline. His eyes flicker down to your lips, and you give him what he needs, leaning in to press them to his.

Underneath you, his length throbs with unreleased hunger, and you sway your hips over it. He moans against your lips, the vibration trails down to your core like hot, liquid amber. His tongue peaks out, and you open up for him, like you always have, like you always will. A grating sound comes out of his throat, an echo of your gratitude, a mirror of your pain, a reflection of your loneliness.

He breaks the kiss to lift you up gently, helping you find friction with his cock sliding between your folds, where it pulsates hard and thick against your clit. Your limbs turn to molasses, toffee soft and sticky, but your hips lock into a slow, languid rhythm, slick pooling down on him as you stroke him between your two bodies. His right hand skates up flat along your spine, to settle on your nape.

He draws you in closer, closer than you’ve ever been. His heart beats inside your chest, enveloping the purring wild creature you still can’t name or tame.

“Make us come, baby.”

A dry sob undulates up to your throat. Your eyes fill with hot tears, they spill against his temple. Mahogany explodes inside your brain. The night is yours.

“Yes, Frankie.”

“Make us come together.”

****

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