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#angel reyes x oc
darqchilddaydreamz · 4 months
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The Photograph
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- an Angel Reyes fic -
18+ ONLY BLOG *🚩MINORS GO AWAY!🚩
Angel Reyes x OC one shot
1.8k+ words
I just wanna make him happy. He deserves it. Enjoy!
Mayans MC belongs to Sutter, this fic and Bella belong to me but I belong to the brown-eyes of a certain Mr. Angel Reyes.
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“Damn it!”
Angel grumbled under his breath while moving his dresser to find the ring that fell behind it. Peeking behind it, the visible layer of thick dust there mocked his housekeeping efforts. Yanking on it again, he saw his ring but also spied the edge of a small, thin paperback book. Reaching for it with his fingertips, he drug it close enough to be able to pick it up, knowing what it was as soon as he got it in his hands. It was coated in dust so he blew on it rubbing it on his shirt, and fanning away the burst of dust particles he put in the air. Pulling out the white rectangle sticking out of it, he turned it over.  
Standing still, he stared at the old image of himself in the photograph he had slipped between the book’s pages way back when - when it bothered him too much to look at it. It called him back to a different time, to years ago when his prospecting had just ended and the MC was doing so much work between Mexico and Oakland, that he had easily spent at least four days a week on the road. Oakland. Angel suffered through the business portions of every trip impatiently, knowing that once they arrived at whatever musty motel they were going to stay at, he could wash away the road grit and dive into the nightlife of the city. Angel loved where he was from but Oakland was a big fat melting pot of women, different languages and foods. Everything was different there, brighter and louder than his hometown of Santo Padre, he loved it...
And then he met her.
Angel heard her name when her group was introduced, but to him it wasn’t fitting - it didn’t carry any of the enchantment that he saw in her. He had watched her dancing, smiling, laughing and she was fluid and smooth like moving light. Beautiful. He put her given name aside and christened her anew. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear, and tried to hide her smile when he first called her Bella, drew him to her side. Her reaction made him forget all propriety and boldly he reached out to run his thumb down her jaw. Her lips parted in surprise and her eyes on him, wide and unblinking drew him in more.
“Let’s go outside a minute,” he said leaning down near her ear, unintentionally brushing his knuckles against her hand. His lips tipped up when she let her one of her fingers link with his.
After that, Angel’s nights in Oakland were spent in her small but modern and airy photography studio instead of stuffy, low rent motels with snoring roommates. He slept sprawled out on her low rise bed or curled up around her form and woke up smiling. They had been young, wild and absolutely unashamed of their attraction to each other. Every week that he returned to town they came together with the force of a collision and didn’t come up for air until one of them had to. They were uninhibited, hedonistic in her space but it was more than that. They were more than that. The exploration of bodies eventually lead to long talks, trust, connection. Angel wasn’t looking for what they made together but in finding it he tried to make it work until the club’s new demands outweighed his ability to get back to her. As the MC’s focus changed, Oakland saw less and less of him, until they both decided to call it. The regret in their final goodbye kiss left him bitter toward the entire city for years.
0.o.0.o.0
Bella.
Angel sat on the end of his bed fingering the edges of the photo. It was too late to shove it back into the old book or just slip it in a drawer - he was already inside of it…remembering. He could practically hear the rain that had battered her windows all that day. The darkened clouds and thunder had kept the MC from leaving Oakland that morning as scheduled. Marcus wanted everyone to stay put because riding on chrome in the wide, flat desert areas they had to travel to get home, was a death wish. Angel remembered that he had smiled wide at her over his shoulder hearing the ‘order’. Stripping off his cut, he jumped back into bed with her, joyous at discovering they had more time together.
They spent the day in bed letting the rain mold their mood into something lazy and playful. She lay in his arms showing him how to use one of her many handheld cameras, then sat at the foot of the bed posing for him. Just as he was about to take another photo of her. she jumped up.
“Angel, stay like that,” she had said with an excited look in her eyes, picking up an ancient camera from a display shelf. “Don’t move.”
To his embarrassment she began shooting him. Moving his position a little, then clicking away. Once she was finished, she disappeared into her small processing room. She had shooed him away from the tiny space many times before, so when she finally poked her head out to call him in, he was puzzled. Strolling inside the darkened room, Angel was confronted with the pungent smell of chemicals and her true talent. Standing behind her with his arm wrapped around her waist, he stared at the hanging prints of the images they had captured that day in astonishment.
“Look at this one,” she said handing it to him. Taking it from her, Angel was taken aback. While he recognized himself in it, having the bottom of his face partially covered by the camera and some of the upper portion cut from the frame entirely, made him look like a mystery yet to be revealed. She had given it a deep sepia finish that he couldn’t fully appreciate under the tinted lights but he knew the look was truer to their mood that day than color would have been. He was draped with a blanket and swathed in the shadows from the overcast gloom of the day. She chose not to lighten the picture, leaving the shadows on him deep and the background obscure. The effect emphasized muscle tone he didn’t even know he had. He couldn’t stop staring at this version of himself.  
She watched his eyebrows knit together, curious and also pleased - he had never seen himself like this. Every choice she had made gave it a warm, soulful darkness.  
“I look--,” Angel started to speak but faltered, embarrassed. He shook his head, smiling slightly, handing it back carefully by its edge. “That’s crazy.”
She understood his reaction, her clients had it all the time - especially men. Seeing themselves, their own beauty, captured and showcased this way always caught them off guard. “No,” she said quietly, hanging it back up. “it’s the way I see you.”  
Moved by a feeling he didn’t understand, Angel held her face and kissed her like he never wanted to stop. Feeling thoroughly seen and surrounded by photos of their playtime, he expressed himself the only way he knew how. With booming rolls of thunder and crackles of lightning in lieu of music, he lifted her up and took her again against the cabinet door in the room where her creativity manifested hidden beauty.
0.o.0.o.0
Staring at his phone, Angel hovered his thumb over the screen. Letting his mind wander until her phone number started to come back to him in pieces. First came the area code, that was easy. Then the first three numbers that made a triangle on the keypad. And finally the correct order of the last four numbers, that shaped a square. After all this time I still do it…he thought. A triangle on top of a square, the way a child would draw a house - it was that way he had always remembered her phone number back then. Angel stroked down his mustache and beard with his hand smoothing over the beginnings of a smile thinking how EZ would have a field day with that bit of insight. Her number was a home.
Knowing it was Sunday and the likelihood of anyone answering was slim, Angel pressed send anyway. He stood up needing to pace a bit as it rang. By the fourth ring, he almost pressed the end button but something in him had to see if he had actually gotten the number correct.
“Thank you calling Precision Studios. How I can help you?”
The surprise of it being a person instead of a voicemail greeting, gave him a jolt. The silk of her voice was so familiar, he practically curled into the phone. His mouth opened but he couldn't think of a greeting that would cover the amount of time that had passed.
She spoke away from the mouthpiece to the chaos in her background, "Quiet, please.”
"Sorry, ma."
Ma? She has a kid. Should he be counting the years since they had last been together? Angel's brain flashed an image of her swollen with pregnancy. She must have been beautiful, he thought.
"Bella?" His name for her, the name he had owned her with, left his lips without regard for if she had a husband to go with that child. He heard shuffling and the background of voices got louder.
"Boys! Shut it!"
There's more than one. Angel smiled at her sass despite the fact that his chest did a little clutch at the thought of her having an entire family while the single life had his feet trapped in cement for all these years.
"I'm so sorry. How can I help you?"
"Bella.” The silence on her end forced him to say something more. “Yeah, uh...it's An--."
He barely got his name out when her drawn out gasp filled his ear. "Hoooooly shit." Her laugh was exactly as he remembered. "Angel?!"
Her quick recognition was a surprise to him, stripping away the many years that had put creases on his brow and streaks of silver in his beard. The excitement in her voice came across the line warming him to his toes and his smile grew, widening into a grin. “Yeah…ah, it’s me.”  
“Hold on,” her words rushed out, nervous. “Can you? Just hold on a sec?”
“Yeah…no problem.” Now that she had said a few more words, he couldn’t believe that she sounded the same and he wondered if he did to her. Waiting, he sat back down on the side of the bed, wiping his suddenly sweaty, hands on his jeans. On the other end, all sound in the background cut off as she squirreled herself away someplace private.
"Angel Ignacio Reyes….my god.” He could feel the affection in her tone doing things to him, he couldn’t understand. “I…wow. How are you doing? I mean…how are you supposed to answer that, right?” Her breath left her chest in a chuckle that felt like a hug. “But yeah…how are you?"
I should have made this call a long time ago. Angel closed his eyes for moment letting the feeling of reconnection wash over him. With a lazy smile, he listened to her while leaning back on his bed to lay down, tucking his arm under his head. Bella. All thoughts of the ring he had dropped behind the dresser were forgotten for the woman responsible for the photograph laying next to him on the bed.
- fin -
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humble tags: @drabbles-mc @est1887 @ravennaortiz @librarian1002 @spaghettificationandpretzels @jvalentinesworld-cokes-hyna @berberriescorner @oureternalbound @burningtacozombie @buddinglinguist @keyweegirlie @saracatherine @lovedlover @danzer8705 @brie-mode-activated @wnbweasley @blkbutterfly816
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cloveroctobers · 7 months
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SILENCE — ANGEL REYES x OC x CANE TEJADA | Part ii.
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A/N: I can’t believe I’m actually doing a part two since I never do those because they don’t ever preform as well as the first but after that (terrible) finale I couldn’t resist. Thanks for the support on the first one, hopefully this will bring some sense of more life for Angel. if this is my last piece for him then why not also go out with a little something? He’s the last man standing apparently so here’s a send off on my part.
WARNINGS: language, hints of coping mechanisms? Or Mental illness Therapy is mentioned, I’ve also been binge-watching 9-1-1 from the beginning, I’m currently on season 4 I think! which is why Eddie’s character is mentioned but he doesn’t make a appearance so please skip over this if you’re feeling some type of way about that and are looking for a eddie based fic. I will be writing something for him soon btw. There’s also a little surprise towards the end for certain lovers who might read this.
*GIF and photos DO NOT BELONG TO ME!
Read part one here. + using this prompt and number 21. Timing
*ੈ ╭──╯ . . . *ੈ ╭──╯ . . . *ੈ ╭──╯ . . . *
Solay’s half asleep, the soft horns sounding from the NBA game Cane’s got his hands on was actually comforting and it often reminded her of nights when her and her sister would fall asleep on the couch together while their father watched the game. It was late, once watching the clock going from midnight to 2 am, she was once wired, greasing cane’s hair and brushing his waves before securing the doo-rag around his head.
It was a typical night, their version of normal until harsh knocks sounded at the door, breaking Solay out of her slumber. Her eyes felt heavy but she was alert and so was Cane as he paused the game, picking up on the knocks that appeared at the door some more. He tossed the controller onto the coffee table, moving slowly as he reaches underneath the cushion of the couch Solay was lounging on.
His low-lidded eyes briefly met her’s as he brings a single finger up to his lips after taking the safety off. Cane’s on his feet now while Solay shortly follows after, reaching over to turn off the side lamp and ready to head to the back of the home to check on her son, Xavier.
Cane wasn’t sure who it could be, he knew it couldn’t be any of his people considering the situation back home but he figured it could be Tariq’s bitch ass, you just never know with him. He’s against the door now, peeking around but all he could see was a shadow of someone.
Yanking the door back to fly against the wall, he’s quick with his grip as he aims the gun right at Angel Reyes who hold’s out a arm while he cradles his son.
“Fuck you want?” Cane asks.
Angel looks down but it’s not like Cane cares, although it seems he lowers the gun just a bit, for the baby’s sake.
“I need to talk to soso.”
“Nig—, you know what time it is? Knocking on the damn door like you the feds or some shit? What makes you think it’s okay to show up here unannounced at this time of the night?” Cane’s tone is clipped.
Angel shifts Maverick in his arms as he says, “that’s a conversation I need to have with Solay, not you.”
“Last time I checked, she ain’t with your ass no more and I’m the man of this house so you want to run that by me again?”
A house Angel was damn sure Cane didn’t put a penny down to help with the mortgage.
The darkness underneath Angel’s eyes was deafening but the twitch of his brows was evident that he had no intentions of backing down. He still felt a way about Cane showing up to his house and Angel thought he could do the same. If this was his house but Angel couldn’t see himself in the big apple.
It was only right in his eyes.
Before he can send a rebuttal at the shorter brown skinned man, Solay appears from behind Cane, who lets out a sigh before sucking his teeth.
“Enrique Iglesias is here,” Cane informs Solay who pulls her robe tighter around her body.
She hasn’t seen Angel since the funeral for Felipe. Understandably so, he needed time to grieve but she figured he was doing it alone due to the decline of Ezekiel’s relationship with the man and that couldn’t be healthy. And it wasn’t like Solay saw Angel much before that either, he showed up to the second therapy session but it was clear that his mind was somewhere else. Which wasn’t unusual when it came to his precious club but Solay didn’t pry since it seemed like Angel was always on the go or lost in his thoughts. It’s not like she didn’t care but he was the one who encouraged her there to these sessions but her gut also told her that it would always be only a matter of time.
Until he moved on to something else.
Timing was never something Angel managed well. If shit came at him, he was usually thrown for a loop depending on what it was and never had guidelines for plans or anything like that. He was more take things as they were tossed at him type of person but ever since EZ got into that president’s chair and Angel got the chance to raise Maverick, he was also changing.
“Angel…” solay started as she took in his appearance, she could tell that something was wrong, “what’s going on?”
Angel swallowed the lump in his throat and if Cane wasn’t in the room right now, he probably would have collapsed into Solay’s arms. She could see that, she could sense that. It was in his eyes, that he was hurting and sure way back when that might have gave Solay the tiniest bit of satisfaction but that’s not where they were now.
She was annoyed he stopped showing up to the sessions but brushed it off after awhile, saying that she “knew it,” up until Felipe was gunned down in Angel’s childhood home. There was always something going on with Angel and although they were trying to work on their relationship, Solay knew she couldn’t be selfish.
She didn’t have the heart to be.
Solay waved Angel in, despite the incredulous look Cane shot her way. She’s locking the door behind him and rests her hand on Angel’s lower back, which surprisingly makes him flinch as she does.
A brow raises at that but Solay says, “come into the living room.”
“Yeah okay…where’s Xavy?”
“Sleeping like yo ass should be.” Cane mutters, while Solay sends him a sharp look.
He places the lock back on the gun and puts it into the waist band of his basketball shorts, clasping his hands in front of him as he eyes Solay being so gentle with a dude that didn’t deserve it. Cane was heavy on that, “fuck the fact that he’s your baby’s father, after everything he put you through? Why are you still concerned when you knew he was gonna pull that shit? He doesn’t care about you like I do and I’m not even sure he gives that much of a fuck about Xavier.”
This was said after Angel stopped showing up to the sessions and Solay didn’t want to hear it. It didn’t feel like cane’s place—although she vented to him and he did the shit-talking to mainly make her feel better—and it also wasn’t angel’s place to feel a way about her seeing someone else.
Solay inhales as she sits on the coffee table, crossing one leg over the other as she takes in her ex-husband. He’s barely blinking as he stares off in space and Solay isn’t sure what to do about this.
“Talk to me,” she says bringing Angel’s dark eyes to meet her doe ones, “what happened?”
Angel places his lips against a sleeping Maverick’s temple that he cradles and then blows out a breath, “where do I start? Luisa’s gone, just buried my pops, now EZ’s dead—which I—I played a part in, I’m out the club and now I need you and Xavier to come with me to Arizona.”
Cane is laughing it up now while Solay is almost at a lost for words. She wasn’t surprised about Luisa but it would probably explain why Angel was checked out and why he moved in with Felipe. They haven’t really talked like they used to be able to do so hearing all of this—about what was going on in Angel’s world was a lot to process.
It always was.
“What do you mean…EZ’s dead?” Solay croaked out, shifting as she held out a hand to silence the man behind them.
Angel rubs at his exhausted face now, “The club found out…now it’s over. I buried him myself out on the road and I wish I never encouraged him to be in this shit you know? Maybe he’d still be here being a smart ass. My brother’s gone and I don’t got nothing left. This dried blood on my hands…it’s not worth it no more. Which is why I need you and Xavy to come with me before the feds come because I know they will. It’s only a matter of time.”
Solay searched Angel’s eyes and they held sincerity. It was all finally coming full circle now, what she’s been telling him for years…that the club’s brotherhood wouldn’t end well. Not when there was so much dirt, blood, lack of values, and deceit behind it. She had no issue speaking her peace on the club way back when (she also felt a way when she learned that EZ was getting involved fresh out of being locked up but angel didn’t want to hear that shit either) and sure she got along with some of the men there but it’s not like she was ever clueless to what it was. Solay was tired of constantly looking over her shoulder when it came to Angel’s club and that feeling never went away, even when she gave birth to their son and even when they were officially divorced. Everything was crumbling down around Angel and he was trying to get out for good.
“You want me to just pick everything up and follow you to Arizona?”
Angel dips his head, “yeah, it’ll be different this time. And I’m not saying let’s go off and get remarried or nothing like that but we could be something real. A family again.”
“Yeah a real fucked up one,” Cane comments, making Angel realize that he was in fact still in the room with them, “so let’s get this straight? Your daddy’s gone, that bitch you cheated with up and left your ass—which probably means she’s six feet under too—yeah I know exactly what she’s really into and it’s clear you’re too dumb to figure that out still, and now for a club to kill one of their own…it’s evident that your brother was some sort of snitch who got what was comin’ to him. But the ultimate disrespect is you coming back up in here with your tail in between your legs, thinking you can just take back what you lost long ago.”
“Listen man, you watch your damn mouth when it comes to my blood.” Angel points a warning finger at the man who chuckles; not the least bit threatened, “this is much bigger than your fucken ego. I’m looking out for Solay and our son, this don’t got shit to do with you. Never has. You can leave and go back to your own crooked shit in New York and leave Solay and my son out of it.”
Now isn’t that the coffee calling the kettle black?
Cane furrowed his brows, “Now you wanna win the father of the year award? You ain’t never been shit as far as I can tell and you’re never gonna be shit. Solay’s not going nowhere with you, she’s good on that.”
Solay got to her feet now as Angel glared at Cane who was all smirks, knowing he could get underneath the vulnerable older man’s skin so easily, “I’m going to need the both of you stop speaking for me.”
Both men kept their heated stares on each other but Cane couldn’t take Angel seriously with a child in his arms. The silence was weighing down the living room as Solay began to pace the floor. She didn’t know all of the details and didn’t think she would with Cane in the room. There was truth in his words when it came to the club—this Solay knew, although she was always on the outside when it came to anything revolving around the Mayans.
“Cane…I need a minute.”
“Aight, let’s go.” Cane was ready to lead the way back to the bedroom with a nod of his head in the direction of the room but a shake of Solay’s head had him confused.
Solay met Cane’s hooded eyes, “with Angel, alone.”
“I know you’re not considering leaving with this clown, So.”
Angel shrugged his shoulders, “It shouldn’t matter to you no way, the only reason you still stuck around is to get some product right? Now that that’s gone—you don’t need me or Solay. So maybe you should start saying your goodbyes now.”
Which provoked cane to whip out the gun again, until Solay reached for his wrist, making cane glance at her, ready to shove her hand off but he moved his stare back to Angel who had a sly smirk on the corner of his own lips.
“You act like you’re the only one I can do business with.” Cane tightened his stare, “Heroin ain’t really my lane but I thought why not since I’m here? You fucked that up like you constantly do and there you go again assuming shit about my relationship with Solay and you don’t know the first thing about it.”
Angel lifted his shoulders, “I know you ain’t no better than me and you don’t really care about Solay as much as you claim you do. It’s all a game but the difference is I’m always gonna be around, you on the other hand are disposable and I’mma always have my son’s best interest at heart. Solay’s the bonus.”
Cane rolled his eyes, “Let me find you a gold sticker for your forehead—
“ENOUGH!” Solay screams at the both of them, carefully peaking over at the sleeping baby afterwards,“this back and forth is getting on my nerves. Let me think in peace for a little bit, just go Cane.”
She orders.
Cane kisses his teeth and walked off, knowing that it was best before he might actually let some bullets fly.
Solay massaged the space in between her thin brows as her mind began spinning. She thought about all the bad the club brought to her front door and she was just leveling up without it.
So it seemed.
Now here Angel, a man she used to be in love with, a troubled man she wanted to spend forever with once upon a time, the man she shared a child with, was here telling her he was out. Out of the club, something she wanted for years for him because she knew that club wasn’t his purpose. He didn’t see it then but he saw it now. Solay’s faced a lot when it came to the club, with Angel’s disappearing for days at a time making her believe one of those days he wouldn’t come home to her, quality time being cancelled so he could be more dedicated to that club instead, cleaning up his wounds due to all sorts of danger he was involved in, he fucked those bartending bitches behind her back while some of those men smiled in her face knowing his dirt, to having a false sense of protection that led to being tied up, beat on so bad and left alone in a burning building years ago—which she just finished paying off a hospital bill for.
All of those instances let Solay know that The Mayans weren’t some saints by any means but Solay knew Angel loved that brotherhood once upon a time. He was slowly changing and morphing into something else—maybe something better—over these last couple of years but Solay figured that’s what happens when on-going lost comes your way. Gives you a bit of a wake up call and proud wasnt the word she would ever use (everyone that he lost still mattered to her as well) but it was about damn time.
It’s just unfournate how it all played out and there was so much to weigh out here. Solay knew she and Xavier would probably be harassed despite Angel being officially out of the Mayans. The war doesn’t just end and given what state Angel was in—numb yet determined, sitting in her living room clenching onto Maverick, Solay knew this war would just brew many more.
She would be affiliated no matter what and so would their son and so would Mavy—if not more thanks to who his mother is or was. This would always be Angel’s doing and she wasn’t blaming him, that wouldn’t get her anywhere she realized but it was a fact. She was with Angel right when the club was just an idea, a one night stand which later turned serious not long after he got patched in, back when he and Coco just moved into the Azure apartment complexes. The Mayans ripped through Angel, that much she could tell and many in her position would jump at the chance to shout at him, “I told your ass!”
Except Solay closed her eyes and took a deep inhale, rolling the tension out of her shoulders before she met Angel’s stare.
“Tell me all of it but take it easy when it comes to…Ezekiel.” She tells Angel, feeling a twing in her own chest at the thought of the brother she couldn’t save.
Angel held his ex-wife’s stare and inhaled a shaky breath, “…alright.”
Life in the desert was not something Solay thought she would ever be part of. She immediately thought of dry skin 24/7 when she had combo skin. Yes there were deserts back home but at least there was a downtown area that wasn’t far from her home. This transition was certainly just that. She’s in the kitchen in a daze, the southwest home is quiet in her mind as she’s drying the last dish. Her eyes are set on the two square windows by the dining table off to the side of the strangely shaped kitchen, back pressed into the kitchen sink.
It’s a early Monday afternoon, September just hit the calendar and she’s lost track of time. A hand catches her off guard as they tug on the belt hoops of her Jean skirt, making her gaze turn down to her seven year old who’s peering up at her with her mirrored doe-shaped eyes and his father’s nose.
“We’re back from the pool, mommy!” Xavier signs as Solay smiles sweetly at him, hand going around his shoulders to squeeze him to her hips.
She didn’t even pick up on him entering the sliding doors by the dining room, her mind elsewhere.
Labor Day came around much quicker than expected and they had their little celebration that Sunday but Xavier seemed to love the water and couldn’t get enough. Which means Angel was on duty for taking him and Maverick to the pool out back while Solay did a few minor things for work online and cleaned up the lunch angel ordered.
Solay signs, “Did you have fun?”
“Always!” Xavier laughs with a nod of his head.
“Good, let’s get you cleaned up.”
The boy groans as Solay gives him a stern look while he spins on his damp heels before stomping out the kitchen and headed towards his room.
Solay lightly laughs with a shake of her head.
“Xavy pouting about clean up time again?”
“Yeah the usual,” solay shrugs as the man makes his way over to her while she reaches to brush a wet strand of a two year old Maverick’s hair back, “everything go alright out there?”
Angel bends to put Maverick on his feet, the little man taking off on his chubby feet to find his big brother, “yeah, why wouldn’t it be? It’s hot as shit out there though. Isn’t autumn supposed to be here by now?”
“We just touched September,” Solay states kind of ignoring the question he asked back, “and you’re the one who picked Arizona, not me.”
Angel lifts his chin, “you could have talked me out of it though.”
“You don’t listen to nobody but your own big ass head.”
Angel shrugged as he leaned his elbows back on the dark wooded island that was rolled and locked in place on a angle in the kitchen, “seriously though, I’ve seen you in here looking like you’re off in space and shit. You sure you’re alright?”
Ever since Solay made the decision to be here with Angel, Maverick, and Xavier, Angel always made it his task to question how she was holding up. Like it was devastating or like she had regrets being here but that’s not truly how she felt. She wasn’t sure how she felt, Solay couldn’t really explain it. She just knows she feels something unsettling often. After Angel told her the truth back in her old stucco home in Santo Padre, she knew getting the hell out of dodge was also the best option.
They weren’t together but they found a new therapist and communicated much better. Angel worked two jobs, first considering a semi-truck driving job but declined once he knew how much hours he would have to put in and how long he would be away from his family. He was persistent on turning over a new leaf. Of course he still had scraps of his own money and Luisa’s blood money but he promised Solay that he wouldn’t use that money when it came to renting their home. He could do whatever he wanted with it but not when it came to their new home or Xavier. So he worked as a custodian at a middle school full-time and a delivery driver on Friday and most Saturday nights.
Solay signed over the building to her second in command at her shop to continue running her business in Santo Padre and if she wished to turn it into her own, she could. Solay was expecting and waiting for the day that would happen. Her main focus was running her e-commerce shop for her beauty line which continued to be successful and having her products distributed in over seven spas in the major cities of Arizona. She was still doing well and adapted to the new setting although her family was very vocal on this big leap.
Her dad still wasn’t vibing with Angel like that after all these years and knew from the jump that he continued to get his daughter into some mess. It really wasn’t like that but a father always knows and he had no problem booking flights with his ex wife, Solay’s mother to vacation in this hot ass desert right at their house. Her big sister on the other hand? She made it routine to talk to Solay and her nephew, Xavier almost every day.
In a way having Solay’s family around a few times out of the year kinda made him forget missing his own. Almost. Even when he was got in disagreements with Solay’s opinionated father. He could laugh about it once he dropped them off at the airport and brush off the touch of overbearingness because that’s just how Solay’s family was.
He was still down to go to the end of the earth with her as he eyed her in a new light now. Part of him expected Solay to just kick him out that night and keep him away from Xavier. Instead he gave her the littlest bit of time to decide, on his terms and even though everything seemed to be moving rapidly to him, he understood that Solay didn’t operate like that. Things could be drippy when this type of news was delivered and felt overwhelming. She had to sit with all the information Angel gave her, then analyze it all and take Xavier into account before moving forward.
Maybe this was just what they needed, a change of scenery, away from the Mayans and what that town brought into their lives. It wasn’t perfect by any means but life was much more slow-paced now. Initially this is what Solay wanted, a soft girl era but there was always this haunting feeling that shifted from her chest down to her gut.
“Do I?” She asked, snapping out of it.
Angel started tossing a plum up into the air, “don’t know if you notice but you just did it again. Felt like twelve hours later that you answered me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you mean it though?”
“What?”
“You’d tell me if something is wrong right? If you don’t want to do this anymore—
“Shush. It’s not ideal but it works for now.”
Angel dipped his head at this. He was very much aware that Solay could run off into the night if she truly wanted to but she was also invested in beating the odds. She wanted a stable home for their son. It made sense to Angel and knew it didn’t to anybody else and sure it was rocky at first with Xavier having trouble adjusting to the new environment—which kicked mama bear Solay in play, who had no issue telling administrators to be more accommodating to those with special needs (there was a serious lack of specific hearing impaired schools in small towns like this and santo padre but at least back home there was one educator that was also an interpreter) —Angel had to hide the chairs let’s just say that and Angel also had no issue telling the kid that picked on Xavy that he’d “fuck him up,” which the kid repeated but his own parents didn’t believe that surprisingly.
Probably because the wife and her husband had their eyes on angel. Solay was completely convinced that they were swingers but Angel laughed it off until his ass got squeezed by one of them at a third meeting.
“Alright then…wanna talk about that date with the firefighter?”
Solay scowled, “it wasn’t a date.”
“You went to a cooking class together this time around and a escape room before that, which he had a advantage to considering his job by the way. I’d say it’s a date, why are you being so weird about it?” Angel’s tossing the fruit up in the air but frowning over at the woman.
Solay scratches at her scalp above her scarf in irritation before moving to leave the kitchen and entered the living room that’s right next to it, “i’m not being weird about it. I just don’t think I need to talk to you about it.”
“Why not? I’m not feelin’ no type of way about it if that’s what you’re thinking. are we not besties now?” Angel followed after Solay who flicked the reruns of a talk-show off.
Solay scoffed as she looked over at angel in disbelief, “we’re roomies at best.”
“Exactly, besties.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“I think it would help Edgar sleep better at night if you just admit yall are going on dates.” Angel teased as he leaned towards Solay who gave him the hand on her way by.
“That’s not even his name!”
Angel called out to her, “I know it starts with an E though. I gotta be close.”
“Eddie.” Solay told him, “Short for Edmundo and that’s all I’m gonna say about him to you.”
“Edmundo? Awl shit, you got a type!”
“Shut the hell—I’m gonna tend to the kids.”
“Yeah uh huh, you can get away from this conversation now but I’ll just ease drop some more when you’re gossiping about ‘im when you’re on the phone with big sis.” Angel commented as Solay rolled her eyes and made her exit.
If you asked solay she would say Angel’s the one being weird about this. It’s been two years since they left and Angel was keen on seeing solay get back out there and find her perfect match or whatever. He seemed to be more for it than Solay herself. She wasn’t really searching when Eddie came along in a bar (with a few others) she was having dinner solo in and she definitely brought it up to their therapist, who said it was Angel’s way of trying to make up for the unhappiness he brought her.
Still that was more weird than them living in a house together raising their sons in Solay’s eyes. A more normal reaction would be Angel grilling the casual dates Solay went on but now he was ready to hear how it was going and when he would meet them. Solay’s only been on two dates with Eddie and he was a complete gentleman, had a excellent job, a bit dorky and nervous? which gave Solay the indication that he did like her a little bit when he stumbled over his words asking her out for the first time but knew how to keep a conversation going, it was easy flowing. Almost too easy and Solay wasn’t used to easy.
At all.
She’s helping an annoyed Xavier with a Luke-temp bath, putting her thoughts on mute after hearing Angel tend to Maverick in Xavier’s room, coming up with all sorts of sound effects as if they were pilots (she thinks) since Maverick seemed to enjoy airplanes.
“Mom,” Xavier gets Solay’s attention again, sticking his finger into her nostril.
She flinched back making the boy laugh in her expense while she shook her head at him with a disapproving smile. He’s pointing behind her at the counter and Solay turns as she sits on the closed lid, reaching for her vibrating phone, which shows its her old employee calling her.
“Hey Idil, I know you’re not working on the holiday?” Solay greets after putting the call on speaker.
There’s loud shuffling on the line, which makes solay furrow her brows a bit as she turns back to the phone, “Idil?”
“Sup, so. You miss me?”
Solay pauses as she picks up on the familiar voice, “…Cane…what’re you doing?”
“Business. That’s all I’m good for right?”
Things didn’t end the best with Cane as to be expected when Solay told him what she planned on doing. Which included putting the house on the market, packing up half of her things, having some of it shipped out, leaving a small portion to sell with the house, discussing the way her business would be ran in Idil’s hands abruptly, and most importantly leaving Cane behind. She learned all about him showing up to Angel’s house with his little brother Dru, threatening him to stay away from Solay and to see how they can get in on Ez’s supply of heroin to move a percentage of the product in New York. Cane heard about the new president from word of mouth on the streets but he was the first to actually take the trip and do something about it.
Solay came into sight and he got a little distracted but when cane learned her background, he was close enough to get that connect but he also found fun in getting on Angel’s nerves. Which left Solay to question if any of it was real, she was tired of men taking for her weak when she opened up her heart to them which is why she was a little emotionally cut off—so she thought but she was always passionate or sensitive—depends who you ask.
“What do you want?”
Cane huffed, “how you know I ain’t just supporting a black owned business? What if I want to keep my skin looking like a Hershey’s kiss?”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Yeah but you had enough time to fuck off with Antonio banderas and kick me to the curb though.”
“You sound pressed.”
“Nah, I handle shit.”
“And what do you mean by that?” Solay’s eyes were in slits now, “you know what? Don’t answer that. I don’t want anything else to do with your bullshit.”
“Why not? We had a good time together don’t you think?”
“I’d Rather not reminisce about the past.”
“See, I find that hard to believe. You in that clay box ass house with a nobody raising his kids, one of those kids that’s a product of him not being loyal to you. Not loving you. Like you ain’t shit to him, he treated you like you were temporary. Which is something I would have never done to you but you’re too blinded by him for whatever reason. Sounds like you ran right back to the past because you’re scared of something real.”
Solay cackles as Cane voices his thoughts to her, like he just read her. “Scared, maybe? Real? That’s unlikely with you. You didn’t step into what we had as a forever type of thing, it was all lies on your part too. All the red flags were right in front of my face and I don’t know how you don’t get that you’re no better, Cane. I know one things for sure, I wasn’t ever afraid to lose you, so stay the fuck off my line.”
With that she ended the call and only imagined he was probably screwing somebody in the shop now if he wasn’t running product through it. Idil couldn’t be that fooled or backstabbing right? She knew how cane operated and it’s been silent for two years now, not hearing from him and her accepting that most of it was probably not genuine was just Cane trying to get ahead.
Solay was over these men trying to get the best of her when she felt like didn’t deserve this. She was knocked off her path moving to Arizona but perhaps this was part of her healing. At least that’s one way she tried to look at it, putting boundaries up and vowing that she didn’t see being in a romantic relationship again with Angel Reyes. What she saw was: she needed to move on from all the hurt, find happiness behind the success and continue being a good mom to Xavier.
Solay was done with the drama.
“Soso, everything good?” Angel called from behind the door.
Solay had her eyes trained on Xavier, her hand resting on his coarse damp hair. She calls back out to Angel, “yup, all good. Hey, what do you think about taking the RV out for a ride a little later? Go sight seeing.”
“Fucken finally!” Angel cheered from behind the door while a small smile appeared on her lips, “I’m driving though.”
That’s right, Angel made the purchase of a RV for the hell of it last summer while Solay looked at it as a possible exit plan. Did Angel know that? No but she planned on telling him at some point. Did she need to jump ship just yet now that it’s been brought to her attention that cane was still keeping tabs on her? Maybe so but for now she just wanted to enjoy this holiday.
She’s on autopilot as she’s getting Xavier dressed into some lounge clothes that would be suitable for their outing later. After finishing twirling his coils, she sends him off to run to where Maverick and Angel are horsing around—easily joining in on their fun. Solay stands in the doorway, arms lightly folded as she watches them bond with each other, like a family should.
This time it felt like it was time to stop catering to everyone else’s needs always first yet that could be dangerous if you didn’t have balance but Solay was ready for something more. No one was going to get in the way of that, she vowed. She deserved to have genuine joy that didn’t end with her crying herself to sleep at night. That didn’t mean to find that in someone else because you’ll be dependent on that person always and that’s not something she wanted to do anymore, be dependent on anyone else for love, this she learned in therapy but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the company of a certain firefighter if she got out of her own way.
She should text Eddie back.
A lot can happen in two years and her attitude shifted being in the same space as Angel again. It wasn’t necessarily intentional in the beginning it’s just that it was always something with him. Now it didn’t feel like she was simply tolerating him anymore, no it wasn’t all sparkles and sunshine either in this present time but the bad moods stopped being constant. Solay’s mind was always on the move and being someplace else away from her main family, gave her the chance to really sit with her emotions and that brought up a lot some days.
She had to learn that her life wasn’t some play in a dream land or that she was out in the audience watching, like this was euphoria or anything along those lines.
This was actually her life and as she watched a tatted shirtless Angel settle into his newfound life with his boys, warm smiles and head thrown back while he silently laughed as he interacted with both boys in harmony, Solay let a smile of her own split onto her face.
It’s after 3PM when the family of four make their way out into the Arizonan heat that’s good at sending people to do a quick face plant. Solay’s checked the weather every hour before they deemed that now was a good time to go out, the temperature only went down four degrees which absolutely didn’t feel like much as she held Maverick’s little hand and Angel led the way while Xavier ran from his side and up ahead.
Forgetting something in the house, she tells Angel as he’s standing at the dining table inside the cool RV while the boys sit side by side.
“C’mon so!” Angel groaned, “We’re just going on a thirty minute drive and coming straight back, you tryin’ to take the whole house?”
Solay raises a finger in the air as she’s going down the steps, “better to be prepared than not to be if we get stranded.”
“Don’t put that kinda energy out there, cariño.”
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re starting to sound like your mother.”
“Run that by me again?”
“Nothing. Go head.” Angel fanned his ring covered hand at the arched brow Solay sent his way.
He then snickered down at the boys who watched their interaction as he spoke and signed, “Joking,” to Xavier and Maverick.
The heat blew across her skin as she peered down at her phone, house keys swinging on her finger until she stopped in her tracks, looking up and over at the two young figures standing before her.
“You must be Tariq and…”
“Oh, I’m Brayden!” The blond boy on his right beamed with a hand pressed to his chest in greeting, making the taller of the two cut his eyes at him.
Brayden shrugged innocently at the look Tariq sent him while Solay let out a sigh and placed her phone into the back pocket of her Jean skirt.
“You don’t seem surprised to see us.” Tariq noted while Solay held out her hands.
“Not really, when you get older it’s always something. So…what’s the plan here boys?” Solay moved her hand to press against her forehead, blocking out the scorching sunrays.
The two share a look with each other while Solay awaited for them to spit it out. They were here for a reason and Solay was open to hearing them out since they came all this way after all but it’s not like she wanted to be wrapped up in their bullshit either.
They just met and she really owed them nothing.
“Do you know a Don? Don Carter.” Tariq starts and he picks up on the expression on Solay’s face.
She doesn’t say anything but Tariq picked up the expression on her face much faster than Brayden could register it.
“He’s this detective who’s wife got killed years ago and he was never able to solve the case. We have proof that shows Cane pulled the trigger that killed her and we need your help to get him out the way or else our asses are done for.” Brayden added.
Solay answered, “Detective Don Carter is my cousin.”
“I knew it.” Tariq smiled as if this solved his problem, “if we hand him the truth and you lure Cane back here, we can either take him out or Don can do whatever he needs to: throw his ass in jail or take him out himself. Whoever gets to him first besides you.”
Brayden brushed off his shoulders before the teens gave each other dap, “Yeah, team work baby!”
Solay shushed them, making the smiles wipe right off their faces, “what makes you think I want to be involved with Cane again? I’ve moved on, whatever else he’s got going on doesn’t have a thing to do with me if you haven’t noticed.”
“That’s not true though,” Tariq frowned, “you know he’s obsessed with you more than he’s on my shit and that’s saying a lot. He’s gonna disrupt whatever you got going on until he wins.”
‘What exactly does he think he’s going to win?’ Solay thought to herself as she tilts her head to the side at the teen’s words, Tariq would know that side of Cane since that’s not the side she got to see but he did fool her before.
“So the plan is: you want me to trap him for your sake? Which again, doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Yours too. He did you dirty, right? Aren’t you sick of him because I sure am.” Brayden asks, making Solay cross her arms.
“That’s my cousin’s business not mine.” Solay almost sasses, “I’m on a clean slate this time, I’m just trying to be a mother and be a legal business owner, no more dealing with men that have bad shit attached to them. take that shit to Don and leave me out of it. I heard he moved out to New york.”
“Well…” Brayden sucks air between his teeth with a wince.
Tariq states, “we can’t go back to the city just yet.”
“Why not?”
“Cane’s stupid ass, the rest of the tejada’s, and Effie set me up that’s why!” Tariq was heated, rightfully so.
“I tried to take him out but I guess that wasn’t enough to be fatal,” Brayden is apologetic but Tariq just dips his head in thanks, a silent understanding passing between the two boys.
“Wait…you shot Cane? He just called—nope.” Solay begins walking by the boys, done with the conversation while shuffling her keys as she heads back to the house, kicking up dirt while she went.
The boys were pleading as they followed after the older woman but she was not trying to hear anymore.
“Hey!” Angel called out to the trio, making both Tariq and Brayden whip around to face the mustache wearing man who stood on the steps of the RV, shotgun aimed right in their direction.
“Shit, shit! Don’t shoot us man, we really come in peace!”
“Shut up, Brayden.”
“Angel,” Solay calls from the path of the doorway and gives him a shake of her head to tell him not to pull that trigger.
Solay takes her eyes off Angel and says to the boys, “wait here, preferably away from my ex-husband’s eyesight.”
“No problem! You got it!” Brayden disappears, hiding behind the southwest exterior while Tariq holds Angel’s stare who turns them into slits, “what’re you doing, riq? Didn’t you say he’s in a motorcycle club? those motherfuckers get rowdy.”
“Nah, he was. Then he disappeared. He might be our answer too.”
The door slams shut behind them, making the teens turn back to Solay who’s locking up the home while carrying what appears to be a trinket box. She meets their stare as she steps down onto the dirt and nods her head, “follow me.”
“Not if you’re gonna have that guy kill us!”
“Nobody’s dying,” Solay says over her shoulder as she leads the way back to Angel, “my kids are inside the RV.”
Brayden let’s out a whistle of relief as Solay steps up to Angel, reaching up to lower the gun down, her eyes saying something which gets him to put the safety on lock.
“This is Tariq and Brayden,” Solay let’s Angel know as they make their way into the RV, making the man let out a groan of annoyance.
“Our kids are here and it’s a holiday, why are you two pulling up now?”
Tariq presses his elbows into his knees after taking a seat on the couch parallel to where the two kids sit, “To get rid of your remaining problem: Cane Tejada.”
“Oh…the fucken bed bug.” Angel rubs at his face in irritation while Brayden snorts at the insult.
Solay cut her eyes at him, motioning to their kids, leaving the man to hold his hands up in surrender and then sticks his tongue out at Maverick who looks his way. Solay places the headphones onto the toddler’s ears and gently rubs Xavier’s shoulders, although he’s too involved in his tablet to care about the new guests.
Tariq and Brayden give the same rundown they just gave Solay and Angel listens carefully. He rubs at his face in thought over this, on one instance this could go in their favor but on the other hand it could also go very wrong. It became knowledge to Angel that Cane was still keeping tabs on them and that didn’t sit right with him. This means they never knew what he would do or when he would do it, he was always unpredictable like that and the last thing Angel wanted was Cane messing up what he and Solay came so far to have together.
This was the first time Angel got to really start over and he knew from the beginning that Cane was not the one for Solay. Standing here now just proves that.
“We know a guy that can probably help you guys more than we can,” Angel says after a moment, his eyes meeting Solay’s as she nods her head also thinking the same thing.
Solay doesn’t say more as Angel moves to the driver seat, leaving her to tap and motion for Xavier to slide over before she reaches over to hold Maverick in the safety of her arms.
Brayden’s more antsy than Tariq is, who seems to have this calm but cautious demeanor analyzing everything around them just in case they needed to flee from the RV. His guard was secretly up but he did his research, he found out what Cane’s plan was coming out to California but wouldn’t realize how this would backfire on him.
Tariq didn’t care to know the full details on Cane’s fraudulent relationship with the braided woman but he could see the appeal in Solay. With the way she moved on her own, with Angel and interacted with the kids, there was power in her soothing aura. Tariq could tell that she was over it though and that she’s also been through some shit but if she wanted to fully dead the situation, she would even if that meant she didn’t have to get her hands dirty herself.
The drive from the desert into the Mountain View and ramps was not what Tariq was really used to on a daily but the ride was long enough. Angel’s soon pulling up on the side of the road before shutting the engine off.
“We’re here,” Angel says through the rear view mirror before unbuckling his seatbelt.
Solay looks in his direction before turning to the two boys, “before you ask, there’s a pay phone up ahead and you’re going to take this number and let him know that Majesty and Sunny sent you.”
Tariq takes the slip of paper from Solay who rocks Maverick on her lap, “How do we know you’re not setting us up?”
“You don’t.” Angel calls out while Solay blinks.
She shrugs, “that’s not the life we live anymore but if it’s to get the bad off our backs…hopefully this will be worth it.”
“Are you sure this guy will help us?”
“His ass is always into something despite the fact that he should be dead with the rest but I know he’s been itching to get into it. To get his hands on something again…he’s a dumbass just like you two.” Angel fills the two in while they share a look, unsure but knew they didn’t have much else to lose.
They didn’t have many on their side right now.
Solay chipped in as she rests her chin on top of Mavy’s dark hair, “And just like you used to be.”
“That’s before I became a dad.”
Solay hummed in disbelief.
“Alright before i became a better one!”
Tariq got to his feet now while the pair smiled at each other from across the vehicle, “aight thanks for looking out.”
“Sure…but promise me this will be the last time we see you.”
Brayden glanced at Tariq who stood by the stairs, “as long as this guy comes through.”
Solay tunes that response out.
“Uh wait, how do we know it’s him?” Brayden asks as Tariq heads towards the door but also pauses on the last step.
“…he goes by Guero.” Angel says as Tariq repeats the name with a nod of his head before pushing the door open.
Once both boys are off the RV and shut the door closed, Angel starts the engine again and pulls off leaving the boys behind to their own disarray.
Solay turns with one arm to pull Xavier to rest against her chest, her attention turning to the blur of trees lingering in the now partly cloudy sky, lost in the silence that she welcomes again while Angel briefly glances at the sight of her in the rear view, just wondering what’s going on inside of that head of her’s.
He hoped it was tranquility just like he was searching for within himself.
ੈ ╭──╯ . . . *ੈ ╭──╯ . . . *ੈ ╭──╯ . . . *
Continue along with my September anthology prompts here.
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garbinge · 11 months
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Bishop Losa x OC Lara Barrera Losa (Father/Daughter) Angel Reyes x OC Lara Losa (quick interaction at the end!)
Day 21 from these April Prompts: A slight change in appearance
Summary: A little one shot of Lara and her pops, Bishop. I don’t have a place for this in my multi chap, Contaminated but there is some background from that story here. (You really only need to read the first two chapters but don’t really have to!)
Words: 1.8k 
Warnings: Angsty af. Daddy Issues. Mentions of murder and drinking.
A/N: This was pure coping for me, lol. 
​Contaminated Taglist: ​Using my Contaminated Taglist for this, I’m not sure where in the timeline of the multi chap this goes down but it does fit somewhere lol.  @est1887​ @minimel-fics​ @spnaquakindgdom​ @nessamc​ @alienstardust​@mrsstevenbuchananstark @hinagiku0​ @lyly00​ @drabbles-mc​ @lilac-tea-time​  @justreblogginfics​ @danzer8705
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The night was early, but Lara was over being out and socializing. She had spent a majority of the night outside of EZ’s trailer with him and Frankie, just bullshitting the time away but now found herself walking back to the clubhouse. She hoped maybe Angel was back from whatever run he was out on and could take her home. 
The sound of Taza’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts, her head raised to see him calling her from the porch. 
“Lara!” His hand raised as if she wasn’t able to see him. 
“What’s up?” She answered him as she got closer to the steps. 
“Do you mind taking your dad home? He uh- he really isn’t in any condition to drive.” 
“Can’t like Uncle Hank take him or something, me and him aren’t really–”
Before Lara could even finish her sentence, the clubhouse door barreled open and Bishop’s voice was the only thing that could be heard probably in a 5 mile radius. 
“Heee-hey!” He called out and threw his arm over her and Taza weighing them both down. “My best friend and my daughter, what more could I ask for?” His breath reeked of alcohol, it was practically pouring out of his pours. 
“Lara’s gonna take you home, mano.” Taza shifted in a way to lean most of Bishop’s weight on him so it wasn’t weighing down too much more on Lara. 
“Nah, nah, nah, nah” He repeated over and over again like saying it the first time wasn’t enough. “I can get home, I can take my truck.” Bishop pointed to where he thought his truck was but was far from the correct location. 
“No c’mon, I’m gonna take you back home.” Lara started to move down the stairs. “Let me get your keys.” 
“In a bit, let’s go back and hang for a little bit, there’s still a lot of people here.” Bishop’s words slurred as he tried to turn back around. 
“Give Lara the keys, Bish.” Taza’s voice was firm but still soft. 
“Alright.” Bishop gave up when Taza gave the direction, his misogyny showing. 
Taza took over getting the man into the passenger seat of his truck, letting Lara stand outside the driver's seat fiddling with the keys. 
“He’s good to go.” Taza came back over to the driver's side to hug the girl goodbye. 
“Real quick,” Lara pushed off the car and spoke to Taza. “Is Angel here? I had to ask him something about the scrapyard paperwork.” Lara came up with an excuse that by reading his expression Taza bought. 
“Ah, no, he’s not here. Still out with Gilly. I can let him know you were looking for him once he’s back.” 
“No, it’s fine. I’ll find him when I find him.” She shrugged and turned to get into the car. 
“He’s practically knocked out, should be an easy ride home, once he wakes up at the house he should be good to walk in with little help.” Taza called out to her. 
He wasn’t asleep. Or he wasn’t asleep for long. Just after Lara adjusted the seat and mirrors to fit her height and was making the right out of the scrapyard he opened his eyes. He was still out of it, but he definitely wasn’t asleep. 
“Where the fuck am I?” Bishop’s voice wasn’t at a yell but it wasn’t normal either. 
“I’m driving you home.” Lara’s voice was dull, just giving information not trying to poke the bear. 
His head snapped over to his daughter, taking in the site of her driving his car because he was too drunk to drive. His head fell back against the head rest and he closed his eyes, slightly ashamed at everything. 
“You, uh.” He sat up now, adjusting his posture in the seat. “You look different. You got” he moved his hand up to point towards his head. “You got new glasses or something like that?” 
“Something like that.” Lara responded. 
“Alright.” Bishop snapped. “I know I was a failure of a fuckin’ father.” Bishop spit out one of the most harsh sentences. “I got one kid dead and the other doesn’t even wanna talk to me.” 
The emotion was bubbling up in him, the drunkenness making it worse as his words slurred and he stuttered to find the things he wanted to say. 
“I know you hate me.” 
That sentence felt loud and clear. 
Lara’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as she got uncomfortable, she felt like a kid again, helpless, hopeless. 
“I was an awful father.” He was repeating the same things over and over again. “I pushed you away, I pushed your mom away, I pushed Antonia away. I lost Aiden, I lost your mom, I lost Antonia. I’m losing you.” 
“I didn’t realize I bought tickets to the pity party.” Lara spoke out, not wanting to sit in the uncomfortableness of everything. 
Bishop didn't say anything, just leaned against the passenger side window. 
“You weren’t a shitty father. You did what you thought was right.” Her voice was firm but she was trying to comfort him. 
“No. I was. You fuckin’ hated me. You left, you went off and moved in with some fuckin’ piece of shit. Only need me to clean up your dirty work.”
Lara knew he wasn’t trying to direct that anger on her or at her, he thought he was just shitting on himself but in the process, he was bringing his daughter down with him. Those words cut Lara deep. But the next ones cut deeper. 
“I’m just your piece of shit father. President of a fuckin’ MC, a goddamn gang. I’m the president of a fuckin’ gang and my daughter is a murderer.” 
My daughter is a murderer.
Lara tried to swallow the pain that came with that sentence but she felt it coming back up her throat. She tried to forget about the traumatic events of what was self defense towards her ex but every so often they found a way of sneaking back in, but all on her own account. Never her fathers. She pulled into his driveway now, what felt like hours of hearing Bishop shit on himself and now Lara was only 15 minutes from the clubhouse to his home. 
“We’re here.” Lara said, still monotone as she stepped out of the car and moved over to his side of the truck to guide his drunk being inside.
“Who's taking you home?” 
The sentence offered a moment of something, relief might have been too generous of a word but some hope for better conversation until Bishop shattered it with his next ones. 
“Cause you’re not fuckin’ stayin’ here.” 
Again, he was in his own pity party and he was dragging Lara down with him whether he knew it or not. 
“Look, you either got to move the fuck on or shut the fuck up.” Lara was over this, she wasn’t a kid anymore, she wasn’t going to take this. 
“Ge the fuck out of here.” Bishop snapped right back at the girl. 
Lara was now standing in the driveway staring at her father who barely could hold himself up when she nodded her head and took a step back. 
“Aiden might be gone for good. But I’m here. All I’ve ever wanted was to be here. I left because you made me. You pushed me out. I’ll get the fuck out of here, no problem. Because, hey,” Lara shook her head and smiled through the tears, “that’s what we do best, Dad. You push people away and I’ll just keep running away.” Her feet moved to walk away from him, not wanting to let him get another word in but his arm extended out to grab her. 
“Don’t!” She yelled out the first word. “Don’t fuckin’ touch me.” The volume of her voice lowered but it was pointed and said between her gritted teeth. 
 Bishop was quick to retreat to the house, turning off all the lights which left Lara sitting at the curb crying in the dark as she pulled out her phone.
“Hey, I was just about to call you. We just got back to the club.” Angel’s voice was chipper. 
“Can, can you come pick me up?” Lara got the sentence out through sobs. 
Angel’s voice immediately turned from chipper to worried, “Are you okay?” 
“Yea, I just need a ride. I’m at my dads.” Lara wiped the tears and took a deep breath in followed by a few sniffles. 
“I’ll be there in 5 minutes.” 
_____
Lara expected to hear a motorcycle pulling up in front of the house but was shocked to see Felipe’s truck with Angel in the driver’s seat before he threw the car in park and hopped out to help her up off the curb. 
“You aight?” Angel asked as his hands met hers and brought her back into a standing position.
“Why didn’t you bring the bike?” Lara didn’t let go of his hands. 
“You didn’t sound like you were in the state to ride, plus didn’t know if this was more of a stealth pick up thing.” He pointed to Bishop’s house. 
Lara nodded as he helped her into the passenger seat and made his way back over to the driver’s side. Once he was in the car and situated, he looked at the girl. He wanted to ask her what happened but he noticed there was something different about her appearance, something small, but he put his finger on it immediately. 
“You cut your hair.” He said it with a smile. 
Lara looked back at him with frown and a smirk peeked through her tears. 
“You noticed?” 
“Yea it looks good.” Angel nodded and moved to place the car in drive. 
Angel wasn’t the type to notice things like that, and Lara really wasn’t one to care much either, but after the start of her conversation with her dad, this felt like some type of universal sign. She felt wanted. She felt safe. She felt seen. 
That’s all she really wanted. To feel seen. 
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narcolini · 11 months
Text
for brothers - 3.5
angel reyes x oc: tatiana ‘pidge’ clarke, 1797 words
an extension to the previous part of the series
for day 30 of whumpril: holding hands & ‘don’t let go’
a/n: is this the cheapest trick in the narrative book? yes. did i want any old excuse to get them to that ending? yes. what can i say!! more importantly, oh my fucking god, fic 30 of the month. i DID IT!!!!!!!! we did it!! whumpril done and dusted <3<3 thanku to the @whumpril​ for running the event!!!
tagging: @cositapreciosa​ @drabbles-mc​ @darqchilddaydreamz​
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She’s in the middle of it before she even knows what’s happening. Gunfire, sirens. Smoke in the air like something’s been burning, something plastic, toxic. She doesn’t recognise the man beside her, just that he’s wearing a kutte, carrying the patches. He won’t stay still long enough for her to see any writing that matters, any identification that would help. The two of them are crouched behind a wall, of sorts, a folded sheet of metal that she can’t distinguish. Is it a car? The roof of one? Painted red with a strip of sun-bleached white down the middle.
‘Tati!’
It’s comes from the right of her, loud and desperate, shouted by someone she can’t see. Can’t look for, either, because the bullets are whizzing overhead still. Clipping the metal and leaving jagged tears in their wake. She shrinks into the cover, arms up around her head. If she stays still for long enough, then surely it’ll pass, surely, it’ll all pass. Whoever wants her can make their own way here. Duck under the gunfire, and join her behind the safety of their makeshift shelter.
‘You coming or not?’ The man beside her asks, still unrecognisable, still more shape and spirit than anything real. Even when she tries, she can’t make out the lines of his face. It’s blurred like a memory might be, lost beneath years and years of absence.
‘No, what?’ She’s panting, near crying, and trying to talk through the mix of both. ‘Come where?’
He runs before clarifying, out from behind their shelter, into the fire and the noise and the smoke.
‘Oh God.’ She sinks down again, leaving him to the chaos. ‘Oh, fuck.’ Her fingers digs into her eyes, willing it away. He’s dead, that’s for sure. If not now, then soon. There’s too much going on for anyone to dive in and out of that unscathed.
‘Tati,’ it’s her name again, closer and clearer now, ‘you can’t stay here.’
‘But where do I go? I can’t run.’ She can’t move at all, besides pawing at her face, covering her eyes and ears. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
It’s Angel, suddenly. Angel in front of her, from nowhere, saying her name over and over. Untouched and unmarred. Like they’ve plucked him straight from the shower and set him down in front of her, in the middle of all this shit. He’s shaking her by the arms, rings pressing into her skin tighter than they ever have before.
‘We gotta go, okay?’ he says, and he’s trying to pull her up already, indifferent to her resistance. ‘We gotta run.’
‘Run?’
‘I can carry you.’
‘You can’t carry me and run at the same time,’ she snaps.
He frowns deeply, like a caricature. ‘Do you want to die, or not, Tatiana?’
She’s definitely crying now, shaking as each whelp of fear slips out of her. There’s a car on fire, roaring to the left of her, up in flames before she’d even noticed it was there. She can feel the heat, smell the gasoline. How it started doesn’t matter, how any of this began is so far beyond mattering.
‘Where’s EZ?’ she asks, flinching as the glass of its windshield cracks into pieces.
‘He’s already gone,’ Angel answers, ‘we gotta follow him.’
‘You’re not making any fucking sense.’
He’s just making it worse. Confusing her more and putting fear in place of answers.
He takes her hand, gripping it tightly, before pulling her up to her feet like she weighs nothing. Like she doesn’t have feet and legs at all; one minute, she’s on the floor, and the next, she’s up and running with him. Moving fast enough that she can’t see anything besides the stretch of his shoulders and the tattoos down the back of his arm. There isn’t even a ground beneath them, she thinks, no sound of footsteps against the blacktop. Just movement, progress. Smoke-filled wind through her hair.
He looks back at her, eyes wide with panic. ‘Don’t let go, alright? You keep hold of that shit.’
She’s nodding, wild with it. Her fingers so tight around his own that it hurts. That she feels the bones crunching.
‘Where’s EZ?’ she asks again, because she still can’t see him. She still can’t recognise a single face they pass.
‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone where?’
Angel turns, questioning her with just a look, dark and searching and frantic. He can’t understand her. She can’t understand him. Nothing about this makes any fucking sense. He won’t tell her, he won’t pause to let her catch up. ‘Pidge, I—’
He gets shot. Right in the shoulder and twisting away from her with the force of it, his fingers tugged from her own as he falls. She goes with him, knees to the ground she still doesn’t feel the impact of, to pat manically at the hole in his chest. It’s bigger than a baseball, somehow. Bigger than any fucking bullet wound should be. Clean through him, no blood, no bones. It doesn’t make sense. She can see the grass on the other side of him. Feel his heartbeat still—maybe, softly—though he isn’t responding. He isn’t even looking. His eyes are shut like he’s sleeping, expression blank and slipping away from her.
This is too strange, she realises, too bizarre and impossible to be real. She isn’t really here. She can’t be. Angel is frozen in place, hole-punch in his shoulder, and no-one survives that. No-one dies like that either, clean of blood and agony.
This didn’t happen, she tells herself, this isn’t happening—
It was a dream. It was just a fucking dream, and she’s sweating all the same, heart racing like she was really running with him, hands held and desperate to stay so. Her face is even wet—because she’s been crying too, in real time, leaking tears subconsciously.
She sits upright, blinking a few times until the dark of Angel’s living room settles into recognisable shapes. The TV, the easy lounger, the paintings on the walls that were definitely already there when he moved in. None of it was real. No violence, no fear. No clean cut hole through her ex’s shoulder.
Great. Being here is no different than being at home.
She kicks her legs out, straightening the blankets again. Maybe this is punishment for rejecting Angel’s offer and insisting she took the couch, not the bed, as he’d wanted her too. It made more sense, he’s taller. She fits where he wouldn’t. But the couch cushions are clearly cursed, stuffed with bad juju that’s got her subconscious on high alert, dial cranked on the crazy scale.
God, she can’t take many more nights of this.
Her phone lights the room when she unlocks it to check the time. It’s only three thirty. That’s another five hours—at least—until Angel wakes up, or won’t mind being woken up; another five hours of nightmares alone, in the grip of this God forsaken couch. She won’t do it. She can’t, honestly. Her heart’s still racing, still pounding against her chest, blood rushing in her ear drums. If her eyes close again, here, she’ll be right back there, in the smoke. Thrown straight into the dream that makes no sense.
He’ll have to follow through with his offer, then. Late or not.
She pulls herself up, quiet as she can, socks to the floorboards. This will be the first time since the break up. First time in his bed, first time sharing it with him again, in the dark, the quiet. It only took a sort of brother in law’s near-death to make it happen. A week of bad sleep and hopeless determination to not be affected by it, and here she is, padding into his room in the pitch black of night. Leaving all images of EZ and her stupid fucking dreams, on the couch behind her.
The door’s open, of course. He’d walked himself in and collapsed onto the bed once she’d declared herself ready for sleep. Once she’d finished disturbing his nightly routine, and accepted that talking could only go so far. She can’t even tell if he’s undressed, or changed, or gone to sleep in the clothes he was wearing already. He’s just a lump on the bed, barely visibly in the sparse moonlight.
She crawls on from the left, because it has the most space, though really he’s stretched out in the centre of it. One arm over his head, across the pillow. Legs straight and out like a starfish. If she was any bigger, or taller, she wouldn’t fit. He’s too used to sleeping alone now, too used to having the whole spread to unwind on.
At least she’s brought the blanket she’d been using with her, so they don’t have to share that. She doesn’t have to fight with his legs to push her own under the covers.
He stirs, obviously, as soon as she’s got enough of her weight onto the bed to shift the mattress. It pours him toward her, his side to her back.
‘Don’t say anything,’ she orders, whispering it sharply. Harder than she needs to, honestly, but her ego is starting to wound pre-emptively. If he mocks her about this, or says anything at all, she might not be able to endure it. She wouldn’t even quip back in return, too embarrassed to slip into their usual routine.
He groans in response, eyes shut still as he mumbles, ‘Not even opened my mouth.’
‘I’m just saying.’ She settles, sinking into the pillow, his elbow brushing the top of her head. ‘I don’t wanna hear a damn word.’
‘Whatever, Pidge,’ he says, making no effort to enunciate or separate the words. It’s just noise, but she recognises it, her nickname in his half-asleep voice. He’s in no position to argue. Too tired to make any remarks about her crawling into his bed and curling up beside him. ‘Bad dream?’ he asks, tagging it onto the end of a yawn.
‘Too cold in the other room,’ she lies. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘M’kay.’ He rolls after the humming agreement, putting his chest to the curve of her spine. ‘Night.’
Then he flops his arm over her waist, sleepy but intentional. A dead weight she can’t shift and feels no need to, really, though she might in any other circumstance. At least, she thinks she would, because that’s more than friendship, right? That’s more than the cards they’ve been dealt and agreed on. But if anything can keep the nightmares away, it’s that. Angel’s arm, warm and grounding, over the soft of her stomach.
She sighs. ‘Night, Angel.’
He doesn’t reply. He’s already asleep, blowing snores into the back of her neck.
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proceduralpassion · 1 year
Text
More Than A Woman | Chapter 01
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A/N: Chapter one, here we go! Lmk if you wanna be added to the taglist...
WC: 1.5K
“Hi, Mr. Reyes. We spoke on the phone.” Her statement came out more like a question because Desi wasn’t so sure he’d even remember. He sounded like a ghost when they’d first talked and even as he walked into her office, his mind seemed elsewhere. His handshake was robotic and his eyes were vacant.
They both sat down across from each other.
Desi looked at him for a moment, taking in the anguish and darkness that emanated from him. 
“So how’s this go?”, he gestured between himself and the school’s psychologist, “He ain’t in trouble, is he?”
Desi shook her head immediately, “Oh, no no. This is more so a check-in, if anything. I was alerted of recent circumstances, Santi’s mother passing away… That’s a tough thing for anyone to go through, much less a six year old.” 
To acknowledge her comment, he absentmindedly nodded his head. Tough thing to go through. That was the fucking understatement of the year, he thought to himself. A moment passed and Angel realized he should speak.
“Yeah, we split, but kinda got good with the co-parenting thing. He mostly lived with her, though. I’m sure it’s been a lot for him.”
And because he hasn’t really been the most observant father, Angel kept his mouth shut about whether he saw any signs to worry about when it came to his son. That was okay, though, because Desi Maduro, Ed.S. had been attentive enough for the both of them. She had already had several conversations with the young boy and found he was surprisingly talkative for a kid who mostly stuck to himself in the classroom and playground.
“Yeah, he mentioned he would spend his weekends with you,” Desi spoke with a comforting smile. She let a pause hit the air before continuing, “Mr. Reyes, you have a resilient, intelligent, and sweet young boy. And like I said, while I’m not necessarily worried for him, I’d really like to encourage you to engage yourself more with him. Maybe start an open dialogue at home, so that he feels comfortable whenever he wants to share something-”
“My son is fine,” he interrupted sharply. His face was a mix of confusion and defensiveness as he looked at her.
Not wanting this conversation derailed sideways, she immediately conceded, “Of course! I have no doubt. I just figured I could give you a few things to look out for in the case should they arise. Grief is not as linear as one might think it is, so even if Santi seems fine, we still want to keep a close eye on him-”
“Explain that.” He interrupted again. At the look of uncertainty on her face, he prompted, “What you said before, that shit about an open dialogue and shit.. What did you mean?”
His tone was less aggressive this time and he even seemed a bit embarrassed, shy. The outburst was probably a reactionary thing, more than likely something culminating from his own grief from losing his child’s mother. But now, he seemed actually intent on listening and comprehending the foreign concept.
Desi smiled again, hoping she conveyed softness and understanding. “This is a whirlwind of a time for a young child. Kids thrive on stability and structure. A big part of that is gone now that Stephanie is no longer here. Even though he may still be too young to grasp the concept of death, it can still be traumatizing for a child to have someone in their life for as long as they can remember and then one day that person is no longer there. And you’d be surprised at the way kids can act out, even at his age. Now, again, Santiago hasn’t gotten into any trouble or displayed any behavior of concern, but we want to be proactive. He needs people that he can express his emotions to. Emotions that can be super big for such a small body. Being that you’re now his primary caretaker, it makes sense that that person should be you. Along with making sure you’re establishing a routine for him, you should also talk with him, be affectionate with him… I know you’re probably dealing with this loss yourself. It’s okay for him to know that you’re sad, too.”
Angel scoffed to himself. He focused hard to take in every word that she said and he couldn’t help but get more and more overwhelmed as she continued to go on. He didn’t know anything about putting together a daily routine; school was Santi’s fill of that while everyday at home could be unpredictable based on what the MC demanded of Angel at the moment. And affectionate? He shook his head to himself knowing he hadn’t been much of that lately. Disappointment filled his veins. If anything, Santi needed more affection now than ever, but Angel hadn’t been paying close enough attention to that. 
Desi watched the various emotions flash over his face and felt for him. He didn’t seem to be the kind who purposefully distanced himself from his son. He’d probably been wrapped up in his own grief while also carrying on with life. Of course, his child should come first, but she could see the remorse on his face as he came to some realizations.
After a moment, she allayed, “You don’t have to have all the answers. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is just listen.”
Angel nodded again, this time trying to put forth more effort into actually listening.
“What does he say? You’ve talked to him, right? So, what does he say? What does he talk about?” Angel inquired curiously. He winced as he prepared to hear her reply, not ready to know of some of the pain his son’s been feeling. 
“Well, it was obviously a very shocking thing to him, at first. He talked about how scary the funeral was,” Angel shook his head in suffering, knowing that he hadn’t even picked up on Santi’s fear. He wouldn’t have ever forced him to go if he knew the whole thing scared him. He harshly cursed himself, knowing that he potentially traumatized his son even further. Desi continued, politely ignoring his agony, “I think he’s only just now coming to terms that his mom is gone for good. Of course, I can see he still has moments where a particular emotion may spring up, but he’s not more or less withdrawn in class according to his teacher.” 
Again, Angel took the time to try and absorb the counselor’s words and what this all meant. He was, for sure, out of his depth and didn’t know where to start in attempting to be a more active parent. 
“I know that this is hard for both of you, but I think that establishing a routine and adding some structure to Santi’s will be beneficial for the both of you. Soon enough, you’re gonna have to learn how to help Santi have a life without his mother. Not so that he forgets her, but so that he knows how to move on and keep the memory of his mom alive.” 
But how? Angel thought to himself. 
And then he vocalized it.
“How do I do that?”
“Try. Obviously, it’s more to it than that, but don’t stop making an effort no matter how hard it is. Santi might not feel 100% comfortable sharing his feelings with you all the time, but the best thing you can do is to never stop trying. Mr. Reyes, this isn’t going to be a cake walk. But he’s young and I see a loving father sitting in front of me. That’s the most important thing.”
Angel smiled a little at that.
“And you’re sure he’s doing fine considering?”
“Yes. There may be little outbursts or behavioral changes as time passes, but there’s nothing that’s cause for concern right now,” she comforted. And then she added, “Try to put together a daily schedule for him to follow. Something fun to do when he gets home. And then homework time. Dinner and a bath. Simple things just to give him a little more normalcy.”
“Thank you,” He stood from his seat and nodded appreciatively at her. Turning towards the door, he adjusted his kutte and stretched out his long legs. Before he turned completely away, she handed him a post-it with her contact information on it and gestured to walk him out the door.
“You’re welcome. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me, Mr. Reyes. Please, I’d really love for us to keep in contact so we can manage Santi’s progress together.”
Angel nodded again, completely serious about trying to maintain contact with her. 
He wouldn’t keep this up anymore, it was time for him to step up and be the parent that Santi needed.
“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Reyes. Have a good day!”
Angel took a final glance back at her as he walked out the school’s main exit. Her braids were wrapped up into a messy bun and a few of them fell around the frame of her face. She bid him off with a final, friendly smile and turned back towards her office. 
Tagging: @drabbles-mc @mijagif
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From Blood, Love and Courage - An Angel Reyes/Original Character Story.
So I almost never, ever do this, being as I’m only part way through writing the second chapter, but I just want to test the waters with my audience. I’m feeling unconfident with it, and being that it’s such a battle for A - visibility within tumblr and B - getting more than a handful of people to react with anything other than a like, I thought I’d see if this was worth me actually spending my time writing. So, if you do enjoy it, please do comment and reblog. If it only garners minimal interest, I shan’t continue with it. Sad, but it truly has come to that for a lot of us. Us authors are like plants, water us and we grow. Deny us, and we wither up. I really, really hope it’s a hit!
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Words - 4,625
Tag list - In the comments, please message to be added/removed
Warnings - Mentions of rape and the associated trauma of such to come in future chapters. While I do not plan on detailing these overtly graphically, if the subject is a trigger for you, you’d be best not to begin reading this. 18+ content throughout, minors DNI!
The sound of a lone berimbau opening, preceding the scream of guitars filled the air, a few whistles and shouts going up from various members of the crowd. Being a long-time fan of Sepultura, Angel knew exactly what song was currently filtering through the speakers of the venue. Attitude. A strong choice of entrance music for whomever the fighter was making his way to the octagon, although he had no clue over their identity.  
The first two participants in the MMA night he was currently spectating at had been kept a secret, although many in the audience whom were obviously aware of the fighter whose entrance music preceded them cheered their arrival, Angel surprised when behind two big fellas walking down the aisle, emerged a woman.  
“God damnit, Coco! You didn’t tell me this was gonna be some foxy boxing night, man?” he complained, eyes swivelling onto his cohort.  
Coco shrugged, sipping his beer. “Secret billing! I didn’t have a clue either, homes. Anyway, you can’t tell me that shit’s not hot, watching two girls' brawl.” Angel remained silent, his mouth down turning as he thought on that statement, eyebrows rising a little. “Come on! As if you need to contemplate it!”
“It’s hot when they’re brawling over me.”
His words were met with a snort of laughter, Coco bouncing on his heels with amusement, his eyes widening. “And when’s the last time that happened for you, huh? You ain’t exactly swimming in pussy over there, are you? Thinking you’re some Cassanova daddy, pfft.”
Angel narrowed his eyes, unamused as his friends’ observation into the vacancy of his bed. “Fuck you.”  
Coco laughed with mirth, both of them turning their attention to the octagon before them. The announcer had called out the name of the girl fighter, but in his haste to chastise Coco, Angel hadn’t been paying attention. What he did take notice of was the fact that she was hot. Tall, about five seven or thereabouts, a mix of soft curves and lithe muscles, a full sleeve of tattoos reaching her hand on one arm, long, braided black hair, blue eyes and a ridiculously voluminous pout.  
“Bro, she could suck a ping pong ball through a juice box straw with those lips. Am I right?”  
Angel choked on his beer, turning to bump fists with Coco. “Right, man. Although, I ain’t sure I’d want her to. Look at that shit, man. That girl is raging,” he began, watching her stalking around the ring, her jaw set, looking like she meant some serious business. “She prowls, like a tiger. She looks mean.”  
And she did. Because she was. She side stepped around the octagon at a steady jog while waiting for her opponent, the announcer lifting the microphone to his mouth. It was the usual fanfare, the guys talking between themselves, their ears really pricking up when the announcer called out the name Johhny Boswell.  
“What?”
That word was delivered by both Mayan’s at exactly the same time.  
“No way! She’s fighting a dude?” Angel cried, his head swivelling around to take a look at the guy walking out, his chest stiffening with the immediate discomfort of the idea. “Is that even legal?”
“Amateur circuit, man. The UFC don’t hold shit over ‘em, so they ain’t got no governing body to answer to,” Coco began, who was a wealth more of knowledge on the sport than Angel. “Likely why it was a secret billing though, bro, save any controversy ahead of the match.”  
“I mean, I don’t wanna sound like a raging chauvinist or nothing, but that’s not right, is it?”
Coco shrugged. “These bitches are tough as shit, man.” Gesturing with his beer bottle, he pointed right at the girl, hopping from one foot to the other in her corner, hyped and amped up. “I guess we’re about to find out, though.”
The ref took his place, the fighters touching mitts before the bell sounded, words of encouragement being called from their coaches as they began to circle one another. What happened swiftly afterwards, not one single person in the venue was prepared for, least of all Johnny Boswell. The girl ducked a punch, landing three in succession to his ribcage, her fists meeting bone like lightning. He landed a kick to her side, the only strike he’d make, trying his luck for another. She was too fast though, catching his leg and hauling him by his thigh, throwing him straight to the canvas, on him like a boa constrictor seizing its prey. The noise of his body hitting the deck was deafening from the power of her takedown, Angel and Coco wincing.
Her legs wrapped his chest, thighs squeezing, wrenching his arm under hers and driving her fist against his skull with multiple blows. She was, to put it simply, absolutely savage.
“Holy fucking shit!” Coco yelled, his jaw on the floor, Angel in much the same state, the ref intervening before making a motion with his hands, the bell being rung again. Johnny was out cold.  
“Our winner, ladies and gentleman. Lily Armstrong!” Her hand was held aloft, Lily looking as proud as one could through a mouthful of tooth guard, her coach offering her a hug before she exited the octagon, once again to the roar of Sepultura, the entire venue erupted into cheers, pretty much every single person in there in a state of shock.
She removed her mitts with her coaches assistance, taking out her guard from her mouth and sipping back some water, circling her neck a few times as she began to walk, the air of menace radiating from her, her eyes suddenly snapping onto Angel as he gaped at her in a mixture of disbelief and ‘shit, that chick’s so damned hot’ as she approached.  
“What the fuck do you think you’re looking at, bro?” she barked while passing, Angel and Coco’s heads spinning to each other, looks of surprised disbelief on their faces as they began to laugh.  
“Oh, she’s sparky, dude!”
“Yeah. Fuck, I thought she was gonna jump in and swing at me, man. Jesus!” Angel guffawed. “She’s a fucking lotta something else!”  
“Right? Damn, bitch be walking out to the right song. Attitude in shades.”  
Angel’s nod conveyed his agreement, finishing his beer and heading to the bar to fetch a couple more, sadly of the non-alcoholic variety as they were riding. All around him, people spoke with disbelief about Lily and her impeccable takedown, the savagery of her knockout, the fact that a girl had so easily given a man a whooping. It gave him pause for thought, though, suddenly feeling a little guilty for initially doubting her based on her gender when clearly, she was the better fighter of the two. She just so happened to have tits, which really should have neither been here nor there.  
He knew one thing clearly; he’d hate to get on the wrong side of her, and he was man enough to admit that, too.  
Getting on the right side of her, though? Well... if he happened to see her around after, hmm. She might have chewed him out for staring at her, but Angel Reyes was not one to concede easy defeat. Throughout the next few matches, another four in total, he kept his eye out for her, wondering if she’d come back out to spectate, his searching not going unnoticed.  
“You’re looking for the machine, aren’t you?”
The machine. How accurate a description of the girl fighter with a serious mean streak.
“And what of it?”  
Coco grinned, shaking his head. “Damnit, Angel. You thrive on danger pussy! Whether it’s a girl you know you shouldn’t be fucking, or in this case, one who’d probably snap your junk in two, you’re like a bug at a porch light with those chicks!” He made a flapping motion with his hands, cracking up before turning his attention back to the ring. “Come on, man! Slug him!”
“Well, I don’t see her, so I guess that particular porch light just got turned off.” With the last match coming to an end after two rounds, people didn’t waste time filing out of the small venue, Coco and Angel heading back over to their bikes, the latter doing a double take when he noticed exactly who he’d previously been searching for across the parking lot, leaning back against a street lamp.  
“Ahhh, porch light came back on,” Coco observed, nodding in her direction, his mouth upturning as Angel looked across at her. “Now, what I gotta do tomorrow? Laundry, go pick up a bag of weed, make a little splint for my buddy’s broken pecker, couple of toothpicks should do it.”
“I will fucking plant you into the goddamned asphalt, man!” Angel exclaimed quietly, shaking his head as Coco put his helmet on.  
“Godspeed, homes. If she breaks you, don’t say I didn’t warn you. See ya.”  
“Yeah, later.” As Coco rode out, Angel lit a cigarette and casually walked over to Lily, who was lost in reading something on her phone. The closer he neared, the more he really did see how stunning she was. Her hair had a gentle wave to it now she’d removed the two French braids holding it all back while she’d fought, her muscles shapely without being too bulky, her tattoos of incredible quality and her face. God, her face. She was so pretty.
“You,” he spoke, Lily turning to view him, looking a little puzzled.
“Excuse me?”
“When you asked me what the fuck I thought I was looking at. I was looking at you.”
She closed her eyes for a second, surprisingly looking a little embarrassed. “Yeah, my apologies. I tend to be a little amped up before and after a fight. I go to another place.”
Angel snorted softly. “Where? Seventh circle of hell?”
She couldn’t help but laugh, turning toward him. Oh, well then. What did she have here? He was certainly a lot more attractive than she’d noticed in her adrenaline spiked state. If she was a sucker for anything in a man, it was a tall guy with dark hair and well-built physique. The biker standing before her certainly ticked those boxes. “I think that’s fairly accurate. Lily, and you are?”
Taking the hand she offered forth, he shook it. “Angel.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you’re anything but?”  
He dropped his chin a little, laughing softly. “The kutte kinda gives it away.”
“Oh, you could be standing here butt naked and I’d still think you were trouble.”
“Trouble you could no doubt handle,” he offered, drawing on his cigarette. “Well done tonight, by the way. I don’t know much about MMA, but shit, you handed that guy’s ass to him.”
“Yeah, I did,” she spoke with pride, smiling triumphantly.  
“How’d you learn to fight like that?”
“A hell of a lot of building upon natural talent,” she began, slipping her phone back into her pocket, content to give the handsome biker her full attention. “I was a scrapper as a kid.”
Angel nodded knowingly. He’d been much the same in his youth. “I bet you gave your folks a hard time with that, huh?”
Her lips tightened, her head tilting a little to the right. “No folks to speak of. Growing up in the hell that was endless foster families and group homes is why I learned to fight well. You have to when trying to survive in an environment with other damaged kids, too.”  
He raised his eyebrows, flicking his finished cigarette away. “Shit, sorry to hear you had to go through that. What happened to your mom and dad, if that ain’t too personal a question?”  
Usually, Lily would have likely told someone she’d only just met to mind their business, but with Angel, she felt quite at ease with revealing it, for some reason, like he wouldn’t judge. “My dad, I have no idea about, and my mom died when I was four. Heroin.”
“Fuck,” he exclaimed softly, his brows rising. “Again, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, I’m not. She was a worthless junkie who used throughout her entire pregnancy and neglected me for the entirety of our short time together, until I found her dead on the lounge floor. She wasn’t a mother, merely a vessel who grew me, and she couldn’t even do that properly. At least something good came from it, though. My anger at her being such a lousy mother fuels me before I step foot into the octagon. I like to think of it as both motivation to win and therapy, too. Catharsis, if you will, albeit perhaps a little unhealthy.” She paused, her eyes taking him in a little better, Angel’s mouth twitching into a lopsided grin when he realised she was checking him out. “So, what do your parents think about you being an outlaw?”
“Mom was always a little worried about it, that’s how most moms are, though. My pop saw it coming, I think. He’s alright with it. I was never the golden child, like my brother,” he shrugged. “Hey, do you wanna go get a drink or something?” he then offered, gesturing to the bar just down the street on the opposite side.  
She turned to view where he’d pointed, looking back at him with a smile. “Depends on what the ‘or something’ is.”  
He chuckled, liking her playfulness. “The ‘or something’ can come after the drink, if you want?”
Licking her lip, she sent a spark of fire through him, Angel remembering Coco’s lascivious comment about the juice box straw and ping pong ball. It did nothing to quell that burn when he once again noticed the way she stared at him so appreciatively. “Alright, Angel. Let’s go.” Lily usually had a good measure of people upon meeting them, and from Angel, she liked what she sensed, even if he only ended up as a one-night stand. It was very clear, the signals that they were sending to one another, that they definitely intended a bed to become involved at some point during the course of the evening.  
Pleasingly, she also noted that just before they were about to cross the street, he placed his hand in a soft touch against her lower back. It was gentlemanly. It was nice. People often forgot that beneath the powerhouse fighter, she was still a woman, one who liked to be treated with a little courtesy. He showed that even more by quickening his step to open the bar door for her with a smile. God, he was hot.  
“What are you drinking?”
“Vodka rocks, please?”
“Any particular brand?”
“Anything is fine with me. If there’s a difference between the twenty dollar a bottle stuff and Grey Goose, it takes a much more refined palette than mine to notice,” she smiled, Angel nodding at the bartender to attract his attention.  
“Large vodka rocks and a Coke, please.”
Lily looked on at him curiously. “Not drinking?”
“Nah, I’ve reached my alcohol limit. Besides, I’m by nature much more responsible when I know I’ll have someone else on the back of my bike.”  
She liked that, how confident he was without being too cocky. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
He snorted softly, paying for the drinks and sliding hers toward her. “And you ain’t exactly discreet with checking out my junk.”
Oh, so he had noticed her eyes flitting downwards a few times, Lily blushing a little. “Well, you do fill out those Levi’s well.”  
“Easy, girl.”
She was in soft fits at that. “What? I like to appreciate what I intend to put in my mouth at some point in the near future.”  
For the second time that night, he choked on a drink due to a reference about her lips and his dick. Damn, that brazenness. “Oh, you need to calm it down, or imma drag you off into a darkened corner and have my way with you. I’d like to actually get to know you a little before that happens.”
Her laugh was loud, pulling a chair back and sitting down, shaking her head a little. “Okay, I’ll be good.”
He winked, sending her stomach into a perpetual flip. “Not too good.”  
They calmed down their playfulness enough to sit there and talk, learning of each other’s lives, their interests – of which they had a few in common – and their dislikes, some of which were not met well by the other.
“What in the hell is your issue with Judas Priest?”
“Rob Halford sounds like he’s having his nuts trodden on by an elephant!”
Angel was aghast. “You,” he began, waving a finger at her from across the table. “You’ll take that back, missy.”  
“I shan’t! I’m perpetually tortured by it all fucking evening long! That and REO Speedwagon. My neighbour likes everyone else on the block to listen to his awful music, too.”
“Okay, the Speedwagon part I get, because they’re fucking dire, but damn, how anyone can hate Judas Priest is beyond me. They’re classic!”  
“Showing your age,” she teased.
“Hey, fuck you, Lily! I’m thirty-two!”
Her giggle. Oh, it was the sweetest music. “And you?”
“Just turned thirty a month ago.”  
“Wow, I thought you were like, twenty-three or something,” he exclaimed, Lily certain he was just being charming, although she was confident that she looked good for her age. “So, Lily, aged thirty, originally from San Diego, whose five favourite bands are Sepultura, Linkin Park, Meshuggah, Wu Tang Clan and Cypress Hill – great choices, by the way – and doesn’t appreciate the classics, how long have you been doing the MMA thing for?”
“About five years now,” she began, sipping her drink. “Before then, I was into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, started with a friend of mine just as a form of exercise, because I’m by nature quite lazy other than loving to walk almost everywhere I need to go, which is handy with my piece of shit car. But yeah, so Angie and I began doing that, she didn’t like it so quit, I stayed on and then started kickboxing too, which is how Larry, my coach discovered me.”
“I take it he was one of the big fellas who walked you out tonight?”
“Right,” she confirmed. “He was the white guy. The Latino dude is Ernesto, Angie’s husband, who also coaches me from time to time when Larry isn’t available.”
“And do you wanna go pro with it, or is it just a hobby?” he then asked.
“Ideally pro, but it’s really fucking tough to crack the pro-circuit. The last time my gym had a scout out, they overlooked me in favour of another girl, which I can take on the chin, you know, she was better than me. My fight tonight, though, well, Larry said it’d get tongues wagging, get people talking about me, the girl who took on a guy, even though in the same weight category, and knocked him out thirty-three seconds into the first round.  
“Sure, some might think it a little unorthodox when you take gender into consideration, as it’s still quite taboo, the whole dynamic of men vs women competing against one another, but he’s of the opinion any publicity is good. I guess he was right, too, since I did a little networking after my fight, and I got approached by Bulldog Gear, who make martial arts apparel. They offered me the best thing going, sponsorship!”  
He smiled widely all the way through hearing her speak of her sport, Angel loving her passion, her excitement for it. After such a rough start in life, she deserved it, he thought, something to excel at, a world to be embraced by, people to tell her she was good, that she was worthy.  
“No shit, that’s great!” he enthused, pointing to the bar. “You want another?”  
“Let me get the next round?” she offered, Angel shaking his head.  
“Nah, it’s on me. You deserve it, you won your fight and you got a sponsor. Time to celebrate.” He squeezed her shoulder as he passed her, Lily smiling, fizzing inside a little. He was, by the definition of her mental checklist, everything she looked for in a guy. He seemed really nice, articulate, he was very good looking, well-built, tall, tattooed, and he rode a big motorcycle. It was a little worrying that he was an outlaw, but she could decide later if she could handle that or not.  
‘Girl, cool your jets. You know he’s only being nice to you to get in your underwear.’ It was a toxic trait of hers, and she acknowledged it, to have issues with seeing herself as more than temporary in the lives of any new people who she met. A defence mechanism typical of an abandoned child, one might say.  
One might be very correct.
While he was at the bar, Angel received a text from Coco, opening it up to see a picture of a few toothpicks crudely strapped together with masking tape.  
‘Did she break you yet? It’s here if you need it, homie!’
“Fuck you, Johnny.” he snorted, sending a middle finger emoji and putting his cell away, turning back to glance at Lily. God, she was so cute, and what a fucking nice girl, too. The lovely young woman he was enjoying the company of was a million miles away from the utter tiger he’d watched stalk the octagon before taking her contender down with such staggering, albeit brutal, finesse. He enjoyed that kind of duality in a woman, having so seldom found it before.
“So - and I know you can’t tell me in any kind of detail – what was it about the MC that attracted you?” she asked when he arrived back at the table, thanking him for the drink.  
“Outlaw is all I’ve ever done well,” he shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. The action made his bicep flex, Lily’s eyes nearly falling out of her skull and into her drink. “I think I’d pretty much suck at a nine to five set up. So, what do you do other than the MMA? I take it you have a regular job as well?”
“Yeah, I’ve had all kinds over the years, but I work at Rebel Coffee across the street from my gym at present. It’s handy, since I spend up to three hours a day training, longer if I have a fight coming up. I’ll usually put in a couple of hours prior to work too then as well. Luckily for me, the gym is open all hours, so I can grab a quick session whenever, even if I don’t have someone there to do pad work with me. I wish my apartment was big enough to fit a punch bag, I’d love that,” she spoke, smiling a little wistfully. Most of her lounge space was taken up by the huge cage her beloved Cockatoo, Charlie lived in.  
“You live and breathe it, don’t you?” he noted, sipping his drink, catching an ice cube between his back teeth and chomping on it.  
“Quod me nutrit me destruit,” she spoke, Angel raising an eyebrow.
“Which is Latin for?”
“That which nourishes me, destroys me. I expect I have a tidy bruise forming, I dunno. You’ll be able to see better than me.” Lifting the side of her white top up, she glanced around, Angel craning to take a look.  
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, her skin already turning an aggressive shade of purple. “Yeah, you got a big assed bruise coming up there, babe.”  
Her tummy flipped again at hearing him call her babe. “I expected as much. I should buy shares in a company that makes arnica cream, the amount I go through!”
“What does that do?”
“Expedites healing, brings the bruising out more,” she confirmed, adjusting her top again. “Why are you grinning like that?”
Shit. Busted. “No reason.”
“No, go on,” she urged, Angel wiping a hand down his face as he leaned back in his seat. “You’re wearing a red bra, and I got a real thing for chicks in red underwear. Ignore me, I’ll calm down. Eventually.”
He winked again, Lily having to plant her feet in order to stop herself from surging across the table at him in sexual longing. “What if I don’t want you to?”  
“Then the dark corner is looking more appealing by the second,” he began, rising from his seat. “I’m going for a smoke, try and calm myself down a little. Damn you. And your red undies. You ain’t fair on my male hormones.”  
She could have done with a smoke herself, although she was currently trying to quit and had already smoked her daily ration of four, so waited instead, sipping her drink, feeling like she was effervescing inside. Once he’d returned, they continued their conversation, neither noticing that by the time the bar closed, they were the only two people left within it, save for a drunk guy asleep at the bar whom the owner of the establishment had to rouse via a repeated poking in the thigh with a broom.  
The street was relatively quiet outside, the tinkling of glass bottles rolling along the ground in the distance, a cat meowing, a car crossing over the junction to their right, a woman shouting her vexation at someone within her residence for not turning the bathroom light off. Not another soul was around as they crossed the road and headed down the small embankment back into the venue parking lot, Angel suddenly taking her hand and halting her.  
“So, call it cliched, whatever, but...” he paused, taking her face in his hands and leaning to kiss her. God, her lips. He almost couldn’t pull away to continue. “My place or yours, tough girl?”  
“I’m over in Holtville, how about you?”
Holtville was over thirty minutes away from their current location. Nope.  
“Santo Padre. So my place, yeah?”  
Fifteen minutes. That was much preferable. Her nod confirmed it.
She reached for him, guiding his face to her level, kissing him again, a kiss that deepened in an instant, their tongues softly swirling, Lily draping her arms around his neck, Angel’s winding around her waist, caging her body to his with a soft squeeze. God damnit, how the girl could kiss, Angel feeling that alluring tug deep in his loins, his hands slipping to her butt and grasping the well-rounded cheeks. One kiss, and he was hooked. She had him.  
As for Lily, well, if she’d have taken off her undies and thrown them at a wall in that moment, they’d have stuck to it. Very, very few men had made her ache with arousal just from a kiss, but Angel? One kiss, and she was wet for him. Oh, mother Mary. If he could make her feel like that just from kissing her, what the hell was he capable of conjuring with the rest of himself?  
The way he kissed her had her blazing, the feel of him, the smell of him, the sheer size of the man wrapping her in an embrace of pure muscle, Lily imagining that weight atop her. The thought almost made her knees buckle.  
“How the fuck am I meant to ride a motorcycle in a straight fucking line after that? Damn, girl,” he exclaimed, once they finally broke for air.  
She smiled, a sultry tilt of her sumptuous lips, reaching forward, letting her fingernails trail over the bulge in his jeans that she’d had trouble keeping her eyes away from. “Just you wait until I kiss you there.”  
Angel Reyes had never cum in his pants before, but in that moment, he was dangerously close to doing so.  
95 notes · View notes
berberriescorner · 2 years
Note
Lemme get uh, ‘Do Not Disturb’ 👀☺️
Here you go love💗!
Snippet:
Even when he was annoyed, Angel could still concentrate on getting both himself and Nicole off. Not once had he stopped grinding into her. Nicole was now a blubbering mess and still trying to muffle her sounds with the mattress.
Hips still powering through, Angel continued to listen to EZ. “I have a question about Avianna’s formula. Where is Nicole? She’s not answering her phone either. What are you doing? You sound like you're out of breath.” he questioned and then heard a muffled moan.
“Nicole is on her stomach with her face in the pillow. Look, I haven’t touched my wife in weeks, Ezekiel. The whole point of you taking Avi for the weekend was so we could have alone time. I love that kid more than life itself, but we damn near forgot what sex felt like. You’ve watched her enough times to know the damn answers to these questions. Just call Pops and ask him, he knows everything there is to know as well,” he grunted.
Before EZ could respond he was cut off by Angel suppressing a groan and talking to Nicole.
“Stop clenching around me. Gonna mess around and make me bust fast mi dulce. Shit.”
“You really could’ve just sent me to voicemail I didn’t need the sound or visual of you two fucking.”
“Not answering would make me a bad father. Bye Ezekiel.”
“This is my third time calling. That makes you a bad parent.” He would’ve continued, but Angel started tapping against Nicole's g-spot. She squealed while trying to run from him.
“Hell no, sit your pretty ass still and take this dick.” Hearing Angel slap her cheek was the final straw for EZ.
“I’m going to need therapy. I’ll be sending you the bill. Call me the fuck back when your nasty ass is done. Violating my sweet sister-in-law like that. It’s a damn shame.”
“Get the fuck off my line, Ezekiel.”
Hope you like the snippet boo💕! Let me know what you think. Thanks for the ask🥰. Feel free to send in another one if you would like.
If anyone else would like to choose one go to this post.
306 notes · View notes
drabbles-mc · 2 years
Text
One Day
EZ Reyes & Angel Reyes & Sister!OFC (Daniela Reyes) ft. Coco Cruz
Inspired by Day 15 of the August Prompts: bubbles
Warnings: language, family angst, alcohol
Word Count: 3.8k
A/N: I’ve had Daniela’s and Coco’s backstory planned out in my head for a while now and when I sat down to write this it made me realize that I’ve never actually had the two of them interacting in a story before. There will probably be more of that to come. Both Reyes brothers are in this but it definitely focuses more on Daniela’s relationship with EZ. I just. I love them. Enjoy the Reyes family drama!
EZ Reyes Taglist: @ly--canthrope @noz4a2 @queenbeered @sincerelyasomebody @thesandbeneathmytoes @lakamaa12 @masterlistforimagines @doritosandjellybeans @broiderie @kelpies-shed @louisianalady @gemini0410 @paintballkid711 @chibsytelford @yourwonkywriter @sesamepancakes @buckybarneshairpullingkink @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @plentyoffandoms @garbinge @bucky-iss-bae @enjoy-the-destruction @encounterthepast @bport76 @rosieposie0624 @mylittlelonelyappreciationtoo @mijop @blessedboo @holl2712 @bruxasolta @i-love-scott-mccall @withmyteeth @shadow-of-wonder​ @crowfootwrites​ @redpoodlern​ @punkgoddess-98​ @black-repunzel99​ @lexondeck​ @fanfic-n-tabulous​ @beardsanddetectives​ @littlekittymeow​ @amorestevens​ @mijagif​ @frattsparty​ @winchestershiresauce​ @bellisperennis0​ @mveggieburger​ @thanossexual​ @xeniarocks​ @choochoo284​ @cherieann-2001​ @passionatewrites​ (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)
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Daniela had texted her brothers the second she went on break at the hospital. They were no strangers to baby-sitting their niece, and nothing had ever gone wrong while they were watching her. Still, Daniela couldn’t stop herself from texting to check in and make sure that everything was going alright.
She no sooner set her phone down on the table and picked up her water bottle when her phone started to vibrate in the tabletop. Flipping it over, she couldn’t help but to be a little nervous when she saw Angel's name flashing across the screen, his contact photo that was a picture of him and niece staring Daniela in the face as she hit the accept button.
“Hey, all good?” she asked immediately.
“Yea,” he chuckled, “Why you always gotta assume something’s wrong?”
She sighed, “Self-preservation. Also, in my defense, I just texted to check in and you immediately called me. Sorry if that made me a little nervous.”
“Alright, alright,” she could picture the way Angel was probably rolling his eyes at her, “I wanted to ask you somethin’, but I didn’t wanna call you while you’re working.”
“What’s up?”
He hesitated, like he already knew that the question already wasn’t going to go over well, “I was just wondering if EZ and I could bring Ana to the clubhouse today.”
Daniela let out a long, exasperated sigh, “Angel…”
“C'mon, Dani. The guys miss her. Plus Creep's kids are gonna be there for a little while so she’ll have kids to play with. It’ll get her out of the house.”
“You reading all these reasons off a list in front of you?” she joked.
He laughed, “Nah, but I’ve been brainstorming all morning.”
She took a moment to really think about her answer to the question, “Is Coco gonna be there?”
“Dani—”
“Answer the fucking question, Angel,” she wasn’t yelling, just tired of the stress of the situation.
“Yea,” he said after a beat, “he's gonna be there,” he heard her taking a deep breath, most likely gearing up to argue, so he started up again before she could, “But EZ and I are gonna be there. And the rest of the guys, like I said. C'mon, ‘mana, just for a couple hours.”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Daniela mulled it over. She knew that realistically there was only so long she could go handling things the way that she had been. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, even if she didn’t want to admit that to herself.
“Fine,” she huffed, “But I’m picking her up from the clubhouse. And if I hear any sort of sideways shit—”
Angel didn’t let her finish the sentence, “You got it. Thank you, Dani. Seriously,” it was the most earnest he’d sounded with her in a long time.
“Love you,” she meant it, despite the exhaustion in her voice.
“Love you too.”
When she hung up the phone with Angel, she immediately sent another text, this one just to EZ outside of their sibling group chat, “keep a close eye on Ana at the clubhouse today please. I don’t wanna regret saying yes to this.”
She knew that she could trust EZ with the situation in a way that she couldn’t quite trust Angel. Angel loved her, and Ana, and he would take a thousand bullets for either of them. Daniela didn’t doubt any of that. But she also knew how torn Angel had been as the entire situation between his sister and his MC brother crumbled in the worst of ways. He wasn’t going to turn his back on family, but he also couldn’t pretend that he didn’t still have his love for Coco. That was his best friend, he couldn’t just bail on him either. He never blamed Daniela for how she was handling the situation, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he struggled with it a lot, being put between the two of them.
EZ didn’t share that same sense of inner turmoil. His lines in the sand were firm and impossible to miss. He didn’t have many positive feelings left for Coco, not after what the man had put his sister and his niece through. They still shared the club, and EZ was thankful that he was so good at compartmentalizing, otherwise the tension would’ve caused it all to start unraveling. Outside of Templo, or other explicit club business, the two of them didn’t talk. Coco used to try and mend that bridge, but he quickly realized how futile it was. EZ would come around when EZ was ready to, if he was ever ready to.
Daniela knew all of that. Which was why she knew that if anything happened that was even borderline not okay, EZ would step in to stop it, or at the very least tell her about it when she came to pick Ana up.
“I got you. Love you"
She sighed in relief at his text, sending back a quick, “love you too" before finally allowing herself to take a bite of her lunch.
When her shift was over, the drive from the hospital to the clubhouse felt like it took way longer than it used to. Maybe this time it was because deep down she was dreading it. The only times she’d set foot on club turf over the last year or so was when someone needed to get patched up, and even then she was in and out as quickly as possible. It wasn’t a social place for her anymore.
She rolled into the lot and parked her car, taking a deep breath as she fought the urge to rest her head against the steering wheel. It couldn’t be that bad, she reassured herself, there was no way it was going to be as bad as some of the scenarios that her brain was conjuring up. She took a moment to redo her ponytail, and it hit her that maybe she should’ve changed out of her scrubs before driving over, but it was too late now. Grabbing her phone and taking her keys out of the ignition, she opened the door and stepped out of the car.
Small puffs of dust kicked up around her sneakers when they hit the ground. She wondered how many deep breaths it would take to get herself to actually calm down. Looking around, she noticed how quiet the yard seemed, which wasn’t at all what she remembered it being like. She wondered if some of the guys were out of town.
When she got a little closer to the clubhouse, that’s when she started to hear the laughter and the conversations. She could pick Ana’s laugh out of a crowd with no effort at all, and the sound brought her a small sense of peace. If nothing else, her little girl was at least having a good time. She glanced up at the deck, trying to get a good look at everyone who was there. She spotted Ana immediately as she ran up and down the length of the deck, along with Angel and EZ. Bishop was there too, and Gilly. Her steps faltered slightly when her eyes landed on Coco, who hadn’t seen her yet. The few seconds between her noticing him and him noticing her were going to be some of the longest seconds of her life.
Ana skidded to a stop when she saw Daniela walking over, her already bright smile growing even brighter, “Mommy!” she took off down the steps and ran to her mother.
Daniela laughed, feeling a little more at-ease as she crouched down to catch the running hug her daughter was bringing her way, scooping her up and swinging her around before settling the little girl on her hip. Daniela kissed the side of her head, “Hey, chiquita!” she kissed her again, “You have a good day with your tíos?”
“Yea!” she squirmed in her mother’s arms for a moment before hopping back down to the ground, doing her best to take Daniela’s hand in her won and pulling her back towards the step, “Tío EZ got a bubble gun!”
Daniela laughed as the two of them walked up the steps together, “Oh, did he?” she looked over at her brother, “Something tells me he might’ve already had that on-hand.”
EZ chuckled, smiling as he shook his head, “Nah, but I wasn’t going to say no to a reason to go and grab one,” he stepped in to hug her, “Hey, Dani.”
She hugged him tightly with the arm that her daughter wasn’t pulling on, “Thank you, Ezekiel,” her voice was soft enough that no one else could hear it.
She greeted Angel too, or she tried to as best she could between Ana’s excited rambles about everything that they had been up to that day. She talked about the kids who had been there earlier, how much fun they’d had running around playing tag and catch. She talked about how Chucky had made cookies to share with everyone, that she even got to have one before lunch. She casually peppered in, “Daddy let me sit on his motorcycle!” before diverting right off to the next point, already shifting her excitement to the aforementioned bubble gun that EZ had gotten.
She fought to tune into the rest of the things that Ana was saying as her own thoughts began to spin out. Turning, she looked back over her shoulder to see Coco standing there watching the two of them talk and interact. She could see all of the different emotions that were swirling around in his mind. The two of them hadn’t said a single word to each other but Daniela still felt herself getting choked up.
EZ clocked the entire thing. And, as much as he didn’t really want to leave his sister and Coco by themselves, he knew that their first real conversation in well over a year probably shouldn’t take place within earshot of their daughter. So, in an attempt to distract Ana, he crouched down, loudly whispering to her that the two of them should try to run down Angel and get him with the bubble gun. It was an idea that she little girl was all too excited to take EZ up on. She managed to get out an, “I’ll be right back,” between giggles as she let go of Daniela’s hand and ran with EZ after her other uncle. Daniela watched them for a moment, a soft smile on her face before she returned her attention to the other matters at hand.
Taking in a deep breath to try and give herself an extra boost of confidence, she crossed the deck so that she was standing in front of Coco. He could see the conflicting emotions on her face and it broke his heart. It’d been so long and yet here they still were, still struggling to figure it all out. Daniela wanted to be the first one to say something, but she couldn’t force the words out.
“Thanks,” Coco nervously fussed with the pack of cigarettes in his hand, “’Preciate you lettin’ Angel bring her over.”
She nodded, “Yea. N-no problem.”
He wanted to make a joke about how he knew it was probably a little bit of a problem, but he knew it wouldn’t land. They weren’t there yet—they probably wouldn’t be there for a really long time. So, instead, he kept his mouth shut.
Daniela had to admit that he looked like a completely different man from the last time that she’d seen him. It had been a long time, and despite her anger and her hurt she did truly always hope that Coco was getting his act together. She just couldn’t afford to keep herself and her daughter around him while he did. But he looked good. Nervous, because of the specific circumstances of the day, but he looked healthy. It brought her some relief, even if it didn’t wipe away the years of damage done.
“She looks like you,” Coco commented as he nodded towards Ana, “Thankfully,” he added with a laugh.
It got Daniela to chuckle a little bit too. She shrugged, “Yea. Sometimes she makes faces that are very much you, though,” she raked her fingers along her scalp, “I know I’m gonna be in for it when she’s older.”
Coco watched her watch their daughter, and he wished that he knew what to say to her. He wished he knew how the conversations were supposed to go now. He knew that they couldn’t just start over, but he didn’t want to dig into everything else on the front steps of the fucking clubhouse, either.
“You look good, Dani,” he said.
She looked back over at him, a weak smile on her face, “Thank you, Coco. You too,” she motioned towards his hair, “The braids look good,” she sucked in a breath before leaning back against the railing, crossing her arms over her chest as she continued to look at him, “Today was okay?”
There was only one right answer to the question. But Coco knew that he wasn’t the only person that she was going to be asking about it. And he couldn’t blame her at all, even if he wanted to. He nodded, finally stuffing his cigarettes back into the pocket of his kutte, “It was good. She’s,” his lips twitched into a smile, “she’s a funny fuckin’ kid, you know?”
She had a soft smile on her face, “I do.”
Even though the two of them were running around with Ana to keep her busy any away from the conversation unfolding between her parents, both Angel and EZ were trying their best to sneak looks over at them to get a feel for how the conversation was going. There were none of the usual tell-tale signs of Daniela’s anger. There was no yelling from either of them, no angry gesturing. Angel hoped that that was a good sign.
He saw EZ watching the same way he was. He shrugged, “Looks alright.”
EZ didn’t look quite as convinced, “We’ll see,” he looked back at Angel and saw the way he wanted to argue, “Quiet doesn’t always mean good.”
Angel sucked his teeth, “C’mon, why you always gotta,” he gestured vaguely at nothing, “What if it’s a good thing?”
EZ rolled his eyes before blasting a slew of bubbles at his brother, causing Ana to break out into laughter, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Coco caught the fact that both of Daniela’s brothers were watching them intently. He also knew that they were watching for very different reasons, “I gotta,” he nodded towards the area where the bikes were parked, “I gotta run. But thank you. Seriously. I know it’s not…you know.”
Daniela nodded, knowing all too well, “You’re welcome. Stay well, Coco, okay?”
He was surprised at how genuine she sounded. He had been ready for more anger, more venom, which again he wouldn’t have blamed her for, “Okay.”
He walked away, leaving her leaning against the railing as he made his way towards the stairs. She turned so that her arms were folded and braced on the top of the rail, watching as Coco went over to Ana to hug and kiss her goodbye. It looked so natural, Daniela though, even in spite of everything. But one afternoon going well didn’t mean that everything was alright. Still, there was an ache in her chest at the sight of her daughter excitedly waving to her father as he strode over towards his bike.
Once he was gone, the two girls didn’t linger too much longer. Daniela gathered up her daughter’s things and brought them to the car while she finished playing with her tíos. The sounds of the three of them laughing eased the knot that was in her gut after seeing Coco for the first time in so long.
EZ was buckling Ana into the car as Angel walked over to say goodbye to his sister. He pulled her into a hug, “You good?”
She sighed, not wanting to lie but not wanting to get into it all with him when she was so close to finally being able to go home, “I’ll be fine, Angel.”
He stepped back, “It meant a lot to him, you know.”
A sarcastic comment was on the tip of her tongue but she managed to stop it just in time. Instead, she side-stepped his comment completely, “Get home safe, alright? Love you.”
He couldn’t stop the frown on his face, but he still returned the sentiment, “Love you too.”
Angel said goodbye to his niece and made his way back towards the clubhouse while Daniela waited for EZ to finish saying goodbye to her. She smiled at the sight of the two of them interacting, always laughing together.
He kissed Ana on the forehead, “Be good, alright?” he ruffled her hair, “Love you.”
She giggled, “Love you!”
EZ carefully shut the car door before heading over to his sister. He could see the exhaustion on her face, and he knew that it wasn’t just from a long day at work. He knew better than to ask, because it wasn’t like she was going to get into any of it with him in that moment.
“I love you,” he ran his hand up and down her back.
She gave him a squeeze before pulling away, “I love you too.”
It was fairly late when Daniela heard the knock at her door. She put Ana to bed a few hours before, the little girl falling asleep almost instantly when her head hit the pillow. It’d been a long, exciting day for her. Daniela was happy for her, but she was also exhausted by everything it had dredged up.
She was expecting the worst when she walked over to see who was standing outside her front door. She was relieved to see that it was EZ, though. Unlocking and pulling the door open, she did her best to give a smile, “Hey, you good?”
He nodded, his smile coming to him a little more easily, “Yea. Just,” he held up the bubble gun, “Ana forgot her weapon of mass destruction at the clubhouse.”
Daniela chuckled softly, shaking her head as she pulled the door open a little more and motioned for her brother to come inside, “Figured you kept it on purpose.”
He laughed, setting it down on the table as they walked into the kitchen, “I can’t be trusted with that kind of firepower.”
“Hm,” Daniela hummed in amusement as she grabbed them both beers from the fridge, “That’s true,” she sat down at the table, motioning for EZ to do the same once she handed him his beer, “What’s on your mind, Ezekiel?”
He shook his head before lifting the bottle to his lips, “Just wanted to check in on you. Today wasn’t exactly what you had planned.”
Her laugh was hollow, “No,” she took a long drink out of the beer bottle, “it wasn’t. He was…he was okay, though? With her?”
He nodded, not hesitating because there was nothing to hesitate about, “He was good, yea. He missed her.” EZ saw that Daniela was biting back a comment, “What?”
Glancing over at him, she remembered who it was that she was talking to. She didn’t have to pretend, “He fucking should.”
“I know,” EZ nodded.
“I’m not,” she took an unsteady breath as she toyed with the bottle in her hands, “I’m not ready for that to become a regular thing, EZ. I saw him for about five fucking minutes and I’m so tired.”
His expression hardened, “What’d he say?”
She shook her head, “Nothing, that’s just it. He was perfectly,” she took another swig of her beer, “perfectly fucking cordial. And I don’t, I don’t mean to sound like a horrible person. I’m glad he’s doing better. I am, really. But all of the, all of the damage? It’s hard to look at him and not see that.”
“I get it.”
She looked down at the bottle, “Ana loves him.”
“She does.”
Tears started welling up in Daniela’s eyes after an entire afternoon and evening of trying to keep her emotions pushed down. She leaned back in her chair, letting her head drop back for a moment as the tears spilled over onto her cheeks. She quickly wiped them away before looking back at her brother.
“I don’t want her to go her whole life without him. I don’t. But just, fuck, how am I supposed to know when he’s ready? How do I know he’s not going to do the same thing he did last time? I can’t go through that again. I sure as hell can’t put her through that now that she’s old enough to really see what’s going on. How do I…” her voice trailed off.
“You’ll feel it,” EZ nodded, “You knew when it was time to go. You’ll know when it’s time to let him come back.”
She let out a dry chuckle, “I waited too long to leave.”
“But you did. You’ll know when it’s right,” he brought the bottle to his lips.
“But Coco—”
“Fuck ‘em,” EZ’s voice was quiet, but firm. He saw the look on his sister’s face, “I’m serious, Dani. This is about Ana. If you don’t think he’s ready to show up for her, then fuck ‘em. He cost himself this.”
It was more nuanced than that, but also, it really wasn’t. She knew that EZ was right, that at the end of the day it was about what was best for Ana. Everything would’ve been different if Daniela only had to think about herself. She could put up with a lot, put a lot of work and struggle into something, but she couldn’t ask the same of her daughter.
“Thank you, EZ,” she said with a nod.
“You need anything?”
She chuckled, “You got a time machine?”
“I’m working on it,” he joked before finishing off his beer and standing up out of his seat, “I just wanted to stop and check in on you. Go get some sleep—you look like shit,” he chuckled.
Daniela laughed as she stood up, walking over and hugging him, “You’re lucky that gun isn’t loaded,” she leaned against him for a moment, “Drive safe.”
“Always,” he started making his way back towards the door, “Call me if you need anything.”
“Will do,” she sighed, running her fingers through her hair, “Lock the door behind you, yea?”
“Got it.”
She lingered in the kitchen, listening for the sound of EZ’s pickup truck starting and driving away. Once it was silent again, she tossed their beer bottles into the recycling bin. Grabbing the plastic toy off the table, she quietly made her way upstairs towards Ana’s room. She quietly walked inside, placing the toy on top of her daughter’s dresser.
On her way back out, she lingered in the doorway for a moment, taking in the peaceful look on Ana’s face as she slept. One arm was hanging over the edge of the bed, her fingertips nearly brushing along the floor. Daniela smiled despite the weight in her chest, taking a breath before stepping out completely and pulling the door shut.
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Text
This Hurts Like Hell
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"High school sweethearts Angel Reyes and Hazel "Charlie" Cooper ended their relationship over a decade ago, with Charlie leaving town and Angel. Now she's back with a secret past and a wound that hasn't healed."
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three |Chapter Four |Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty | Chapter Twenty- One | Chapter Twenty-Two | Chapter Twenty-Three | Chapter Twenty-Four | Chapter Twenty-Five | Chapter Twenty-Six | Chapter Twenty-Seven | Chapter Twenty-Eight | Chapter Twenty-Nine | Chapter Thirty | Chapter Thirty-One | Chapter Thirty-Two | Chapter Thirty-Three | Chapter Thirty-Four | Chapter Thirty-Five | Chapter Thirty-Six | Thirty-Seven | Thirty-Eight | Chapter Thirty-Nine | Chapter Forty | Chapter Forty-One || Chapter Forty-Two || Forty-Three
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superhoeva-archived · 2 years
Text
𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲
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𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: the mayans head to the casino. gabriella struggles with everything that's going on.
𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: gabriella adéline carter, angel reyes, michael "riz" ariza, marcus alvarez, che "taza" romero, obispo "bishop" losa, johnny "coco" cruz, ezekiel "ez" reyes, miguel galindo, adam, hank "tranq" loza, gilberto "gilly" lopez, jimmy
𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: as promised, here's the next chapter. very i'm excited about how the story is about to ramp up ;) (gif credit: @everyhowlmarksthedead)
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠(𝐬): language, angst, drugs (mentioned), some fluff (finally)
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1.5k
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“Bishop wants to hit the road early. I guess Galindo invited the Chinese to our prison sit down.”
Gabriella shuffles uncomfortably at the news before turning to Angel with an apprehensive expression. Her heart dims a little when he looks away from her, his obvious disdain for the fact that she lied to him still fresh in his head. 
“Let them know the cartel will be able to deliver,” Gabriella assumes with a sad shrug of her shoulders, giving up on trying to get the older Reyes brother to look at her. Riz nods and goes to make his way into the clubhouse so he can change before they leave. 
Marcus, Taza, and Bishop trek down the stairs and away from the Clubhouse just as Coco breathes out, “that makes it easy.” 
“Hey, buy me a few minutes?” Angel wonders, Coco and Gabriella nodding immediately. “Gonna give Jimmy a call.”
Angel steps away from the group, pulling out his phone. Gabriella’s gaze locks onto him until there’s a soft nudge on her arm. She turns to find Marcus staring back at her. 
“Can I talk to you before we head out, mi’ja?” Gabbi swallows at the questions, but nods. She attempts to mask her worry with a small smile, telling him, “of course, Padrino.” 
Gabriella follows him back inside the clubhouse and into Templo quarters in complete silence. All she can think about is Benny and his son. And how upset Angel is with her. And how upset Ezekiel was yesterday. And the intrusive questions KJ found himself with the audacity to ask. And whatever Marcus is about to speak to her about. And Miguel. 
Gabriella barely managed to repress the shaking her body wants to take part in under the curious gaze of her godfather, instead allowing her hands to wring themselves behind her back. 
“You know I don’t like when you lie to me, right?”
The question has Gabriella’s hand squeezing tighter as gives him a small nod. 
“So if I ask you how you’re doing, you’re not gonna lie to me, right?”
Gabriella nods again and Marcus sighs. 
“Alright, then,” Marcus starts, “how are you doing?” 
It only takes a few short seconds for the tears to well in Gabriella’s eyes. Luckily, Marcus is already waiting with open arms. Gabriella falls into his chest with a broken sob, thankful for the way his arms create a protective barrier, at least for the moment, around her hurting soul. 
Marcus grips Gabriella tighter than he probably should, but he doesn’t care. He knows this is something he should’ve done after they left Galindo’s pew yesterday. No matter how she gets, he feels that it’s his responsibility to take care of her… and not just because of the promise he made her father.
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Just as he promised, Gabriella rides with Riz in the van when the Mayans head to the San Bujo Casino. He decides against asking about her puffy eyes and occasional sniffle, instead attempting to cheer her up with purposefully bad singing along with the radio as they speed down the highway. 
By the time they make it to the casino, Gabriella’s eyes are only a little pink, stomach sore from all the laughter. Marcus notices immediately, sending a quick nod to Riz after he parks his bike. Riz nods back, pleased to know that he was an adequate distraction from whatever had her so upset. 
As they travel to the front doors of the facility, both of the Reyes brothers send desolate stares Gabbi’s way. Ezekiel, for feeling bad after not making an effort to really speak to the woman ever since he found out that she knew what would happen to Emily’s son. And Angel, who still wants to know why she wouldn’t tell him where she was last night. 
“My brown brothers,” a voice calls out as the group saunters through the front entrance.
Everyone looks up to see Adam, the owner of the casino, and two of his men ready to greet their visitors. 
Bishop smiles and holds out a hand. “Adam.”
Adam smiles, returning the grin and handshake. “Bishop.” The casino owner then goes to greet Taza with a cordial hug, before turning to Gabriella. “And the lovely Gabriella.”
“It’s good to see you again, Adam,” she smiles as the man presses a short kiss on her cheek. “How’s the family?”
Adam beams at the mention of his children, answering, “oh, they’re great. I’ll have to tell that you asked about them. Oh, and sorry about checking the weapons. It’s tribal law. Booze and bullets have not been a good combination for my people.”
“Our’s either,” Hank replies, pulling a small grin from Adam. 
“The other parties get down here yet?” Riz questions. 
Adam shakes his head. “Not that I know of. But we have the room you requested. It’s private. Very quiet.”
Alvarez nods assertively with a quick, “thank you.”
Adam gifts the Mayans with one last smile, before leaving to go take care of other pieces of business. Bishop turns around with a sigh. “Well, we’ve got a few hours to kill.”
“Me and the Boy Scout,” Coco starts immediately, we’re gonna win a little wampum.”
Ezekiel can only look at Coco before the sniper is dragging him to one of the tables, causing Bishop to turn to Angel, Gilly, and Gabbi.
“Keep him contained,” Bishop orders, earning nods from the three. As soon as they are away from the older Mayans, Angel turns to Gilly.
“We’ll catch up,” he tells Gilly, who nods and goes to follow Ezekiel and an exhilarated Coco. Gabriella then turns to Angel. With Gilly gone, it’s just the two of them, now. 
When she looks up at him, he’s already looking back at her. In his eyes, a hint of guilt.
“Look, Angel,” Gabriella sighs, “if you’re still mad at me, fine. But can we please just shove that aside for a moment and handle our business? This is important, and Jimmy won’t take if he sees that you can’t even look at me without–”
Gabriella pauses when Angel wraps his arms around her. Her eyes widen when he pulls her close. 
“I’m still mad,” he starts delicately, “but I missed talking to you. Like, a lot.” 
A small smile crosses Gabriella’s face, as she gives in and lets her arms clasp around his body. There’s an elongated silence before either of them speaks again. 
“We can talk it out later, okay? Let’s just get this over with so we can get home.” Angel nods before taking a step back. The two share a stare before turning to make their way to the side entrance they agreed to meet Jimmy. 
He’s already standing outside when Angel and Gabriella arrive, a cigarette working to keep him company. 
“How you been Jimmy?” Angel asks as he settles on the other side of Gabbi, lighting his own cigarette in the process. 
“Getting by,” Jimmy nods, peeking down at Gabbi, “what do you have?”
Gabbie sighs before telling him, “six keys.”
“Ninety-seven percent pure Guero heroin,” Angel continues for her. “Thirty per brick.”
A frown crosses Jimmy’s face and has to bite his lip to contain his irritation. “Thought you had nine.”
“So did I. But circumstances change, Jimmy.” Gabriella steps in. “So like I said before: six keys, thirty per brick. You don’t like that, I’ve got plenty of other buyers I dump you for––”
“Okay,” Jimmy calls out with his hand in the air. He takes a deep breath before asking both of them, “can you get it to Vegas?”
“You certain it stays outside the family?”
Jimmy takes a long drag of his cigarette before nodding. “Yep. You?”
A small laugh leaves Gabriella. “Would we be speaking out in the open like this if the answer was no?”
Now, it’s Jimmy’s turn to laugh.
“I’m in.”
Angel and Gabriella part from Jimmy swiftly with a quick, “okay,” not wanting to risk catching the eye of any of the other Mayans.  Jimmy watches them leave with a shake of his head, having to ignore when the smallest voice at the back of his mind wonders ‘What the hell am I doing?’
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Back inside, Ezekiel sits begrudgingly in a seat a few feet from where Coco is playing Blackjack. The youngest Reyes brother has been there for song long that he almost forgets to scratch his chin when to alert Coco that he should call for another card. 
“Twenty-one,” the dealer calls out before flipping over a few more cards. “The house is over. The gentleman wins again.”
Ezekiel shakes his head at the smile on Coco’s face, a deep sigh leaving him when it’s apparent that Coco wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. 
Angel and Gabriella arrive at Gilly’s table just as Coco starts another round. 
“Jimmy?” Gilly questions, Angel responding with a nod. 
“All good. I’ll fill you in,” he replies while Gabriella looks over at Ezekiel with furrowed eyebrows. 
“He’s got him counting cards?” She asks, eyes going back and forth between a locked-in Coco and annoyed Ezekiel.
“Yup,” Gilly tells her and Angel lets out a scoffed laugh. 
He and Gabriella waltz over to where Ezekiel sits, Angel ordering his brother to “take a break.”
Ezekiel blows out a long breath, telling his brother, “thank you.” Before he walks away, he swallows and turns to Gabbi with a reddened face. Her breath nearly catches in her throat when she looks at Ezekiel and realizes he’s already staring. 
“Want a drink?” Gabriella questions, shoulders relaxing some when Ezekiel nods. 
“I’d love one.”
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darqchilddaydreamz · 2 months
Note
🌹🌹🌹
Heeeey! I wanted to give you a Juice excerpt but I'm on mobile. Maybe I'll sneak you one later😉
Seeing the Santos filing in, Bishop did in one sentence what Angel hadn’t been able to do for the last hour. Taking her hand, he patted it affectionately, “Querida, you need to head out.”
Looking over his shoulder as they filed in, she smiled and kissed his cheek. “Got it. Later.”
After giving Angel’s arm a squeeze, she hopped down from her barstool. The relief that had flooded Angel’s body was short lived. Head up and shoulders back she walked past the crew filtering in headed for the door. Angel watched one of them stop her but she was smiling so he had no real cause to intervene. EZ came and stood next to him, immediately seeing why his brother was so tense.
Angel ground his back teeth watching the Santo try his luck. He wasn’t all that tall but he was built like a linebacker that never missed a damn day in the gym. And after seeing him smile, Angel wanted to smack the silver grillz right out of his grinning mouth. Even though he was keeping his hands to himself, Angel bristled when he closed more of the space between himself and Jacqueline. Running his hand over his mustache and beard, Angel had one thought…
Mine
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withmyteeth · 1 year
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Vigilante Shit: Clue #17
Mayans MC
CHAPTERLIST
Story Summary:  Dorothea Cox has been living her life from one porn studio to the next since she was eighteen years old.  After a tragic accident involving her sister, she moved from sex for hire to on-set vigilante, acting as judge, jury, and, if need be, executioner to keep everyone safe.  As a favor to a friend, she finds herself in Santo Padre - a town she vowed to never set foot in after an engagement gone wrong, but she can’t say no to someone in need.  However, the risk of running into a past lover isn’t the only complication waiting for her on the border…..  
WARNINGS: 18+ only; BDSM themes; explicit sexual material; violence; guns; blood; murder; drugs; foul language; character death; general themes of the show
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The guttural moan that erupts from his chest puts a smile of satisfaction on my face.  “Angel?”  I sit still, my hips on his, his cock buried inside me as his fingers dig into the skirt bunched up on my hips.  “Did you hear what I said?” I ask innocently, looking at him over my shoulder as I clench and unclench my core.
He puckers his lips, blowing air out harshly, before meeting my eyes.  “If you don’t stop doing that, I don’t know how I won’t.”
He’s squeezing tight enough now that even through the thick layers of cotton, I can tell I am going to have bruises from his fingers on my skin tomorrow.  The idea of wearing his marks on my skin sends a shiver up my spine, but I take a deep breath, stilling myself in his lap.  “Better?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it's better, but it'll stop me from blowing my load,” he spits out between breaths.
I decide to go easy on him.  “You know, you can always ask me to come if you think you can’t hold on any longer.  I’ll probably even let you,” I add with a wink.
He groans, tossing his head back on the mattress.  “You’re going to kill me, I can tell.”
“Oh, baby, there’s far worse ways to go,” I say before lifting myself off his lap and falling onto it again.  On the next rise, I adjust my feet so I can remain squatted and place my hands on the wall in front of me.  The motions come back to me easily as I throw my hips up and down on him, feeling every bump and ridge of his cock, the stretch feeling a hundred times better than anything I could do on my own with a piece of silicone.  “Fuck, this cock feels even better than I thought it would.”
I’m already more winded than I expected, my thighs burning from holding the position, but I am determined to keep it up a few moments longer. The sound of Angel’s moans, punctuated with expletives, mixed with the hissing of air through his teeth is like a symphony created just for me.  I’ve never liked it when a bedmate is quiet, so the fact that he’s letting me hear how good I’m making him feel only helps me hold out longer.
When I can’t take anymore, I readjust, slipping my legs on the outside of his, and pull his legs together as I sit in his lap.  “I’m going to use the wand now, okay?”
“Querida, I don’t how much longer I can wait,” he admits, his voice tight with his restraint.
“You can do it, baby boy,” I say.  “You wanna feel my pussy come on that cock, you’re going to wait for it.”  I grab the wand, pressing the button so it buzzes to life.  It’s a high end model, so the sound isn’t obnoxious in the quiet room.  “Are you ready?”
I can feel the deep breath he takes before he answers, “Yes.”
My skirt is useless now, completely bunched up around my waist, but I refuse to get off his cock in order to remove it.  It just feels too good, so I bring the head between our legs, first just pressing it on my mound just under the edges of my skirt, above my clit, letting the vibrations flow through my pelvis.  I know he feels them by the way he stills under me, his breath catching as he waits to see what I am going to do with it.  When I feel him relax, I slide it down a little further, finally ghosting it over my clit.
“Fuck, that feels so good,” I groan, my legs trembling at the sensation as I feel another wave of wetness gushing between us.  “Can you feel it, baby?” 
A strangled sound bubbles from his throat before he finally manages to confirm that he does feel it.  “Fuck, I’ve never,” he gasps.  “Fuck.”
I shut off the wand, looking back at him over my shoulder.  “You’ve never what?” He’s panting at the loss of sensation, so I give him a moment before asking again.
“I’ve never fucked around with a vibrator before.”
I can’t keep the shock from my voice.  “Really?”  I know Angel is not some shy virgin, that he’s had more than his fair share of women roll through his bed, so to have him admit that he’s never so much as used a vibrator really surprises me.
“Nah, never.”
“Well, in that case, let me show you what you’ve been missing.”  I bring the head of the wand back to our joined bodies, but I don’t turn it on yet.  “I understand how intense this can be, if you come before I tell you, I won’t punish you for it.  But, if you can hold off until I come first, I will make it worth your while.”
I don’t wait for him to answer before turning it on and circling it on my clit.  I keep my hips still, trying not to make things any harder for Angel as I work myself up closer to the edge, but it takes almost no time for me to be teetering on the precipice with him.  “Okay, it’s going to get a little bit more intense.  You can come whenever you want, but there’s a reward if you wait until I tell you, okay?”
“Okay, yea,” he confirms.
As I move the wand down, I also press the button to make it stronger, so when it touches the base of his shaft, he springs up from the mattress, clawing at my skin as his arms wrap around me.  His head settles between my shoulders, his breath hot on my skin as I squeeze around him.  “You’re doing so good, baby.”
I arch my back, grinding my hips onto him as I work the wand in small circles in the tight space between us.  I can feel the vibrations all the way through me to the tip of his cock, his body jerking when I go lower, grazing it against his sac then back up to my clit.  His arms start to shake and I know he’s trying to hold on, trying to do what he’s told and his resistance is what sends me over the edge the next time I graze my clit.  I come with a shout of his name, telling him to let go, and he tightens around me like a vice, the only movement between us happening at the juncture of our bodies where my fluttering cunt squeezes his twitching cock.
I shut the wand off, letting it land on the floor as his hands slip from me and he falls back onto the bed.  I slide off of him, both of us whining at the loss, then remove the spent condom before flopping back onto the mattress next to him.  His eyes are shut, his chest raising and falling with his breath.  I can see a few sweat beads on his forehead as proof of the exertion he was showing to restrain himself.  
“That was,” he starts, his eyes still closed,  “that was something else.”
His words send a wave of pride through me.  Even after all this time, I’ve still got it.  “You did really good, I’m really proud of you.”
He rolls his head to look at me, one eyebrow cocked.  “I didn’t do anything except lay there.”
“And how many girls have you fucked that have just ‘laid there’ but you still go off?”
He blinks, staring at me a moment as the realization dawns on his face, then he chuckles.  “Well, I never thought the day would come where I’d become a mattress princess, but here we are, I guess.”
It’s my turn to stare at him before I erupt into a fit of giggles, burying my head in his shoulder.  “A mattress princess, huh?”  He nods, still chuckling.  “Well, it’s going to be awfully hard to fuck me bent over in the shower from in here.”
The smile falls from his face as he watches me for a moment to see if I’m serious.  When I don’t say anything else, he pushes himself off the bed, grabbing my hand.  “Well, what are you waiting for?  Let’s go.”
I allow myself to be pulled from the bed with a smile, following him into the bathroom.  In no time at all, I’m stripped, both of us standing under the steaming stream of water as he pounds into me.  “This is your reward, baby, you do what you want, come when you want.  I’m yours to use as you like,” I’d told him as I slid another condom over his length.  
His hips bounce off mine, his thrusts deep but not painfully so, as he uses his leverage on my hips to fuck into me.  “This angle, I don’t know why I haven’t messed around with a tall woman before,” he pants.
I can’t help but chuckle, although it's broken by a moan when he adjusts ever-so-slightly, hitting a new spot inside of me.  “I imagine this has got to feel a lot better on your knees and back, huh?”
One hand snakes around my side, pulling me up against his chest from where I was pressed against the tiled wall.  I arch back against him, keeping my hips tilted and he leans forward to say, “I’m going to fuck you bent over everything.”
My cunt clenches around him at the thought of all the things in the house that he could bend me over and he hisses at the sensation.  His hand slips from my hip to between my legs, honing in on my clit, clearly remembering when I said I wouldn’t come from penetration alone.  The fact that I am offering my body to him to use, but he still wants me to enjoy it as well, has me practically screaming as I push back against him, chasing my own release.  We both fall over the edge and come back down together before finishing our shower and crawling back into bed after I, once again, ask him to stay.
We are laying in bed, his arm under my head, when I ask,  “Tell me, honestly, how was it?”
He hums.  “Is ‘life changing’ too much?”
I can’t help but laugh.  “So better than the videos?”
“I’ll admit, there was some intense shit to wade through, stuff I didn’t even know people did to get off.  I shouldn’t have gotten in my own head about it, though.  I know you’re not like that.”
His declaration confuses me.  “But I am like that.  That was me in that video.  Not only then, but after.  Time and time again, people paid me money to do that.”
“Yea, but I didn’t,” he says, matter-of-factly.  “Like you explained, yea.  It may be something that you did before but it’s not something you need to do again.”  He shifts so that he’s on his side, looking at me.  “I’m not even saying I couldn’t be persuaded to do something like that one day.  I mean, I did practically yank my dick off watching those videos, but it’s different watching it versus being a part of it, you know.”
I can’t help but smile, knowing that what Lyla and Astia told me was right.  “Yea, I get it.”
“But seriously, looking at you and what you do.  It was foolish of me to act how I did.”
I know the confusion is showing clearly on my face, but I still say, “I don’t know what you mean.”
He sighs, sucking on his teeth.  I know he’s trying to come up with the words to tell me what he’s trying to say, so I wait patiently until they come to him.  “I trust you,” he finally says with a shrug.
“Yea….I know.”  I’d asked him that before we even started.  
“Do you know why I trust you?”
That brings me up short.  We really haven’t known each other that long, I haven’t really given him a reason to trust me, especially after I snuck off to Vicky’s after telling him that I would give him time to sort things out on his own.  The memory makes me chew on my lip in shame.  “No, I guess I don’t,” I answer finally.
“Because you care about people.  The people at the studio, the girl who died.  Even Letty.  And let’s be honest, that girl don’t make it easy to do a goddamned thing when it comes to her.”  We both chuckle in agreement at that as he reaches out to smooth a piece of hair behind my ear.  “Even your sister.  After all this time, you’re still trying to take care of her, in your own way.”
The mention of Jess causes me to freeze as I absorb the rest of his words and how they lead to him agreeing to be here with me tonight.  I told myself that this was just going to be a fun thing, something to do while I was down here in Santo Padre, to scratch the itch that’s been building inside me, but as I look into his dark eyes, laying in the glow of the streetlight, I realize that I’m already farther over my head than I ever intended to be and while the realization should scare me, I find myself only wanting to go deeper.
CHAPTER 18
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TAGLIST: @darklydeliciousdesires @drabbles-mc @darqchilddaydreamz @jvalentinesworld-cokes-hyna @asleepspoon368 @fanfic-n-tabulous @msjava1972 @lilac-tea-time @annetje @alwaysachorusgirl @scribbuluswrites @spaghettificationandpretzels @rebelwrites @saltyunicorn079 @danzer8705 @passionatewrites @chibsytelford @purplerain85 @est1887 @stormcloudss @bishoplosamiguelgalindos @camelia35 @stillbreathin @babaohhhriley @challengeahellcat @carma-fanficaddict @jaxfairyteller @band--psycho
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kindnessisweakness2 · 9 months
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Masterlist!!
Delusional (Jax Teller X OC!)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28
*** (Jax Teller X OC!) - Havent worked out a name for this yet!!
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9
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Perfect Chaos (Angel Reyes X OC!) 
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4  Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10
You Were A Bet (Angel Reyes X OC)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 
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garbinge · 1 year
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Pottery
Angel Reyes & EZ Reyes & Sister OC Cynalena ‘Cyn’ Reyes
Day 15 from these April Prompts: “Pottery”
Summary: The youngest Reyes sibling deals with the death of her mother and the effect that has on each of the Reyes men. 
A/N: I apparently love to give funeral backstories to sibling OCs I have full multichap stories for. I have a whole nestor x cyn story that I’ve been working on and hope to post sometime soon, but in the meantime enjoy this little back story of her life with her brothers. 
Word Count: 2.3k
Warnings: All my fics are 18+ regardless of content. Mentions of death and blood. Angst, a whoooollleee lot of it. 
Mayans Taglist: @justreblogginfics @drabbles-mc @narcolini
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The house was empty. Not physically by any means. There was furniture throughout, pictures hung along walls, some older, some newer. There were even signs of life, keys hung on hooks that were conveniently placed near the front door, shoes tossed around underneath in an untidy pile, and finally a chair pulled out from under the table, like someone had just gotten up and was expected to be back. But unfortunately, no one was expected to be back in that seat. Which is why the house felt empty. 
Cyn stood at the front door taking in the emptiness, staring at the chair right hand to the head of the table, taking note of the plate full of crumbs and mug that had dried coffee stains in it by now. It had been 3 whole days since her mother had passed but each one felt like an eternity. 
The first day was when she found out, the numbness hadn’t hit anyone yet, the shock was still prominent. Each member of the Reyes family trying to wrap their heads around the news, except EZ, who was there. Who saw his mother laid out on the ground, the blood leaving her body. EZ had hit numbness the minute the paramedics pronounced her DOA. 
The second day was when everyone else was caught up to the middle Reyes sibling. That’s when the quiet overcame them, no one had much to say. The only chatter in the house was Cyn who ended up putting together her mother’s memorial services. It was very much a ‘if she didn't do it, it wouldn’t get done’ situation but she took the opportunity to really just dive into it, push the grief and mourning aside and just busy herself. 
The third day was the day before the services. There wasn’t anything left to do which is what left Cyn standing in the house she was currently growing up in, just barely 17. She stared at the dishware for a moment before making her way through the living room and into the kitchen. There was no sign of anyone being in the home, but she knew her father was probably laying in bed, it took him two days to even enter the bedroom, let alone sit in the bed he shared with his now late wife, but once he did there was no getting him out. 
Cyn looked around at the kitchen, her face filled with sadness but also a tad of disgust when her eyes roamed over the misplaced stack of dirty dishes and trash bin that was overflowing. After a quick deep breath, she decided to fill her mind with more busy work. Cleaning the dishes, taking out the trash, clearing the dining room table. Her last task was washing the blankets from the living room, figured she could at least swap out whatever her father was using in the bedroom with a clean blanket. As she was taking things out of the dryer she heard the front door close rather loudly followed by heavy footsteps. Angel. She knew each of her brother’s footsteps, she had come to learn through the years of them sneaking in and out of the house. Angel’s were heavy even when they wanted to be soft and secretive, while EZ’s were more calculated, like him. 
She peaked her head around as she folded the last blanket. Angel caught her movement and nodded his head toward her. 
“Sup.” 
“Hey, where’ve you been? Where’s EZ?”  Cyn picked up the blanket she was going to bring in for her father and folded it over her arms so it was cuddled in front of her.
“What is this, 20 questions?” The sound of the fridge opening echoed in the house as Angel opened it. 
“I just figured we could go over the schedule for tomorrow.” Cyn walked into the kitchen beside him.
“Schedule?” Angel frowned. “We get her ashes, we spread her ashes, and then we drink at some shitty restaurant afterwards with people we haven't seen in years telling us how sorry they are for our loss.” 
Cyn wasn’t going to argue with her eldest brother, she understood they were all hurting and Angel had a tendency of acting out even on a good day. 
“Pops hasn’t left the room, I’m not even sure if he’s eaten.” 
Angel popped open a beer, “He’s been drinking though, there’s only 6 beers left, I bought a 24 pack yesterday.”
“I had a couple,” EZ said as he entered the kitchen from the back door. “Needed to get out and get some air last night, took some with me.” 
“A couple? You took like half the fuckin’ case,” Angel snapped. 
“They’re in the family fridge, figured they were up for grabs.” EZ shrugged his older brother off. 
Cyn knew what was about to happen, she’d seen her brothers argue with each other time after time. 
“Family fridge? What the fuck is that?” Angel was shutting the fridge. 
“Do you want me to pay you back, Angel? Fifteen fuckin’ dollars for the case of stale ass miller lite?” 
Angel scoffed and ushered out the kitchen chair and sat down abruptly. “Man, shut the fuck up.” 
Cyn quickly brought herself into the conversation in hopes to de-escalate it. 
“I cleaned up, Pops–”
“You what?” EZ turned to her, his eyebrows frowning while his eyes were wide. His head snapped as he rapidly moved through the house leaving Angel and Cyn alone in the kitchen looking at each other in confusion. 
He stomped back into the kitchen, practically running to the microwave and looked at it displaying the time. 
“Why would you do that?” His voice was nervous, but scaringly loud. 
“What? Clean?” Cyn frowned, a little bit of attitude dripping off her voice. 
“The microwave had 3 seconds left on it, she always left it at that when she’d reheat her morning coffee,” EZ was moving just as quickly as he was talking. “You washed her blankets and cleaned up her mess, those were the last things we had of her.” 
EZ’s voice was starting to become more shaky as it raised at his little sister. Cyn stared at him, shaking herself because this was one of the handful of times her brother ever yelled at her. They were close, not just in age but also as siblings, Cyn even considered him a friend. They went to school together, they talked all the time, he knew the girl, and yet he stood there, during one of the most heartbreaking times of their lives, losing it on her. 
Angel spoke up. “You sound fuckin’ crazy bro.” 
“Me? I’m crazy? At least I’m acknowledging she’s gone, you’re in denial and Cyn’s trying to be her.” 
Angel saw Cyn’s face drop, the pain of EZ’s words slashing through her like a knife. 
“Yo. Watch it.”
Angel stood up, still towering over EZ in height. 
“Come at me all you want, but don’t come at our baby sister on some bullshit.” 
EZ got up in Angel’s face, not letting the height the eldest Reyes had on him sway his ego in the slightest. “I’m doin’ for this family, what it can’t do for itself.” 
“What the fuck does that even mean, bro?” Angel was frowning down at EZ. 
EZ didn’t answer, he just stood there for a couple seconds before he turned away and walked right back out the door he came through. 
Cyn felt her stomach fall into a pit, the tears were welling up in her eyes. She was staring empty out of the kitchen window, the words of her brother still sitting fresh inside her brain. All of them, not just the ones that were directed at her. It was the moment she fully realized she lost what she had with her brother. He was no longer her friend. The only thing connecting them now was blood and that even felt shaky. 
Angel’s hand on her shoulder caused her to jump and turn to him. “Don’t let his dumb ass get to you, he’s all fucked up from seeing it all go down.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Cyn’s voice was pointed. Old habits die hard, she tended to always take EZ’s side growing up because he always had hers. She felt like she needed to defend him in this moment. 
Angel’s hand fell from her shoulder at her response and she immediately back tracked. “Fuck, Angel. I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m fucked up too.” 
Angel nodded, his face solemn as he chugged the rest of his beer and placed it empty on the table. “I gotta head out, I’ll see you tonight or tomorrow morning or whenever, just text me the details for the service.” He was placing a quick kiss to her head and making his way out the same door the other Reyes brother had just left from. 
“Angel.” Cyn called out, taking one step forward but it was too late, he had already left. Her head fell in defeat and her eyes closed for a couple seconds before she processed everything. After a deep breath of accepting everything, she shook it off, grabbed the empty bottle, threw it in the recycling and walked over to her parents bedroom with the blanket still draped over her arm. 
She lightly knocked on the door, waiting for a response but opened it even without one. 
“Pop?” Cyn peeked her head in and saw him laying on his side in bed, the blankets were moving up and down from Felipe’s breathing, which gave Cyn a slight bit of relief. She moved into the bedroom swiftly, not wanting to disturb him much more than she already had. 
“I have a new blanket for you. Fresh from the dryer so it’s still warm.” Her voice raised in a hopeful tone, thinking maybe that fact would bring him some type of comfort. “I’ll leave it here at the corner of the bed.” She placed the blanket down gently and moved to grab the empty glasses and plates that were in the room to move them to the sink. As she reapproached the bedroom door, she turned and spoke up. “I’m going to be heading down to the crematorium, we’re picking out an urn for them to place Mom’s ashes in. I told Angel and EZ about it but I have a feeling they’re probably not gonna be able to make it, but I just wanted to let you know, in case, but no worries, i can handle it. I’ll pick up dinner on my way home, too.” She felt herself rambling, her father wasn’t much of a talker usually, but the silence felt worse these days. “Um, alright. I’m gonna head out.” She started to close the door but then opened it again. “Love you.” It was said at that same hopeful tone as earlier but this time she was closing the door before she could be let down by his lack of response. 
_____
She felt small staring up at the wall full of urns. She felt alone too. Her eyes were darting from one row to the next, taking in all the urns, some made out of ceramic, some handmade in Mexico, some porcelain, some marble, metal, and even glass. Scanning them all trying to pick one for her mother was seemingly difficult, her mind was scattered all over the place. 
“That one.” Her father’s voice startled her. Turning her head she saw him standing next to her, pointing to the handmade and hand painted urn on the second shelf. It was black and clay coloured with accents of blue, green, orange, and yellow as flowers and patterns along the body of the urn. It felt like Marisol. Cyn actually was wondering how she had completely missed it. 
Cyn nodded and got one of the operators of the crematorium to assist her in the purchase. Her father stood outside and waited for her to wrap up, it was probably his first time out in fresh air since the day everything happened. 
“You want to walk downtown and grab a bite?” Cyn asked as she approached her father. Her face wasn’t looking at him as she asked, she was too busy fidgeting with the receipt into her bag to notice he was in his own world. 
“You’re not replacing her, you know.” Felipe’s voice was raspy and low as he spoke. 
Her face snapped up to see him staring into the sky. 
“I heard what EZ said. You’re not replacing her.” This time Felipe’s voice was more stern. 
“Thanks.” She wasn’t quite sure what to say here. 
“You should leave.” Felipe looked over at her now. 
“Alright, I’ll bring food home for you.” Cyn didn’t take his words to heart. 
“No, Cynalena.” Her full name left his mouth. “Leave Santo Padre.” 
Those were probably the heaviest words she heard all day. She didn’t respond. Not just because she didn’t want, but because she had nothing to say. 
“The service is at 11AM tomorrow, I’ll let EZ and Angel know. The word has spread to the family, everyone who needs to know, knows. Love you, Pop.” She kissed the side of his head and made her way in the opposite direction, not taking a second to look back at him but just keep walking forward. 
Her footsteps stopped and she looked up to see a neon sign turn on. Dusk was approaching so the moment it turned on and illuminated onto her feet she was looking up at it. Her gaze turned to inside the tattoo shop in front of her and before realizing it, she was inside and on the chair getting something permanently on her skin to commemorate something she wanted to permanently forget. 
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narcolini · 1 year
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for brothers, pt. 3
angel reyes x oc: tatiana ‘pidge’ clarke, hurt/comfort, 2358 words
for day 10 of whumpril : shivers & ‘i’m scared’
a/n: omg i knOW i know. i know i said the last one was just an extra scene/epilogue but now theres another part and kjSHFgj`hfg its fine. its fine. the fic is sentient. thanku to @cositapreciosa for prompting this
tagging: @drabbles-mc @hausofmamadas @darqchilddaydreamz​
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Tati’s shaking when she finally finds the courage to knock, stood on Angel’s doorstep at God know’s what time. Not from fear, but from the cold that’s sunk itself beneath her skin, gripped the bones like a vice. She shouldn’t have left without a coat, shouldn’t have abandoned the Jeep three miles down the road. She shouldn’t be doing any of this at all.
He takes a minute to answer. She stares at the chipped paint in front of her, hearing him shuffle behind, before light finally tips out into the night. He’s got the door open just enough to see who it is, and his arm's tucked back behind his shoulder, gun in hand. She knows to expect it.
‘Woah. Shit, Tati.’ He swings the door open, stepping in front of it. He’s half dressed: jeans, a-tank, handgun. ‘You okay?’
‘No, not really,’ she answers, not bothering with pretences. He’s knows her well enough to know she’s not from looks alone. Her teeth are chattering between the words. ‘Can I come in?’
He hesitates, just long enough to make her feel real shitty about herself, real stupid and careless, and selfish for showing up here, for letting her feet carry her here on autopilot, but then he nods. Steps aside. Lets her in without any judgement at all—well, with only a hint of it.
He locks the door behind her, leaves the gun on the side table. ‘You couldn’t call or something?’
She scans the room. Dark, minus a lamp in the corner and the glow from the muted TV. Warm, too. Like he’s had a fire lit, but that’s just her. Just the difference of being in here and not out there, with the cold that’s chilled her so thoroughly. There’s a throw along the floor by the couch, thrown off, no doubt, at her arrival.
‘Were you asleep?’ she asks, forgetting he had wanted an answer out of her first.
‘Nah, I was just… I was up, yeah, watching TV and shit.’
Couldn’t sleep either, then. Probably as worried as she is, though he’d never admit it unless he had to. Unless he was having a fucking panic attack and she just happened to be there when he did. Vulnerability was the one thing that didn’t survive their break-up, a sacrifice that she didn’t used to mind. Now, she wants to ask how his chest feels, how the anxiety sits beneath his ribcage. If it weighs the same as her’s does, if it makes him do dumb shit like walking around in the middle of the night. If it’s even there at all.
‘Sorry, I should’ve called, you’re right.’ She nods, pulling her arms into herself. He may as well know the truth of it, the order of bad decisions that led to her being here. ‘I got, I don’t know, freaked out, and I just had to go for a drive or something. Couldn’t sit inside anymore. But then the jeep reminded me of EZ, and I kept picturing him there, in the back. The blood.’ She gulps. ‘Really fucking crazy shit, man.’
Angel walks past as she explains, then bends to hook the throw with his fingers and bring it up from the floor. Not to put it back on the couch, she realises, but to put it over her shoulders instead. No comment, no disruption to her story. Just the blanket around her, a tight-lipped smile, and then a sigh as he drops into the couch afterwards.
‘I pulled up at a gas station and left it there,’ she continues. ‘Walked around a bit and then, I don’t know. I realised I was walking here and I’d come too far to turn around again, and it was so fucking cold that I just thought—’
‘It’s cool, Tati,’ he interrupts, dragging it out. ‘I’m not mad’
‘But it’s not fair for me to just show up like this.’
‘So? None of anything we’ve seen this week has been fair.’
Not exactly true, though, is it? Because EZ started the shit with Yuma, but she can’t say that to him now.
When she doesn’t reply, he rolls his eyes and gestures to the seat behind her. ‘Will you just sit down, Pidge, we’re past all this shit. You know I’m here for you.’
She does as he says, landing with a thud. ‘Still feel like shit about it, though.’ If she had anyone else to go to, she would, but it’s just him. Especially at this hour.
He laughs, rubbing a palm over his brow. ‘Yeah, likewise. You think it feels good every time I need you for something?’
No, but she doesn’t mind helping. It’s the only thing that brings them together anymore. Besides, he’s yet to show up at her place in the middle of the night, shivering and desperate for it. Who knows how she’d feel then, how disrupted sleep would shape itself in he. She might not be generous at all, if roles were reverse. She might not wrap him in her blanket and let him babble about his night unprovoked.
‘You want a coffee?’ he asks, leaning his elbows on his knees. ‘A sweater?’
She nods. ‘Both would be good.’ She’d never have asked for them herself.
When he’s back, with two coffees and a hoody that smells like him, she’s finally starting to warm up. The extra layers and the caffeine does more than she expected them too. She’s no longer shivering, no longer doubting her right to be here, to come to him, no longer focusing on the tightness of her breath. If it’s not them, it’s him. His company has drawn the chill out and put her head straight again.
He’s sitting opposite her now, looking the same as he had when she arrived. Tired, indifferent, lived-in like she’s seen a thousand times before. If you went back a year, this is how it always was. Angel tired, worn through from the day, and Tati awake, just to be awake with him.
‘You gonna tell me what it is then,’ he says, resting the mug on his thigh. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever seen you worked up enough to go walking round, freezing your ass off. Not since that Potter bullshit, anyway.’
Not since the DEA had a target on Angel’s back and she was helpless to it. Just like now, really. Different shooter, same victim.
‘What’s got you so spooked?’ he asks, insistent on it now, and nudging the hesitance out of her.
‘Honestly,’ she pauses, incase she changes her mind last minute, and tucks the confession back to bed, before deciding, no, fuck it. She is, and she’ll tell him. ‘I’m scared, Angel. Like, really fucking scared.’
He frowns, which isn’t the reaction she was expecting. She didn’t think he’d crumble, obviously, or rush over to comfort her, but she expected more than that at least. More than brows tucked together and a squint like he can’t make her out.
‘The shit with EZ, Yuma. You.’ She forces a breath. ‘It’s freaking me out.’
‘But why?’ he asks. ‘None of this is new to you.’
She scoffs, yeah, that she’s aware of. It’s been years since she had the right to be surprised, or overly concerned, about club business. But this is different. Because they’re different.
‘Before, if something happened to you…’ She puts her hands to her face, fingertips against her temples then combing through her hair. ‘Fuck, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’m saying something I’m not.’
His lips pull down around the mouthful of coffee he’s just taken, a grimace, almost, as he swallows. ‘You wanna translate that for me?’ he says afterwards, nervous humour in his voice. ‘The fuck does that mean?’
He expects her to laugh back, probably, to tell him to engage his brain for once, but the words are already fighting through the lump in her throat. Now’s not the time to waste them with jokes, or bickering. Whatever the fuck it is they do now.
‘If something happened to you,’ she explains, slowly, ‘like, right now.’ She gulps, and the more she speaks, the more she’s sure she shouldn’t—but there it goes, out of her lips anyway. ‘I don’t know that I wouldn’t spend my whole life regretting how we left things. How we’re leaving things.’
He looks down, away from her, like the woven rug beneath his feet is calling his name. She carries on like she hasn’t noticed. Don’t read into it, Pidge. It’s too late to go back now.
‘I’m not saying we should get together again. Or assuming you’d even…God. I don’t know.’ It’s not making any more sense now she’s putting it out there, a voice to the thoughts that’ve been tormenting her all week. If anything, it’s just tightening their grip on her, stirring the worry into a real threat. ‘It just feels different now, and it scares me.’
She waits for a nod, a reaction. He doesn’t move.
‘I can’t stop thinking about wasted time,’ she admits.
He snorts then, so sudden that it’s a surprise to both. ‘Wasting what? I see you all the time, Tati. We’re, y’know.’ He shrugs. ‘We’re good.’
‘Are we?’
‘Are we not?’
He isn’t getting it. Or maybe she’s the one not getting it. Maybe the only thing stopping her from saying that she would want to fix things, to get back together, is the self-awareness that she shouldn’t. Can’t. Won’t, until he gives any sign that he’s thinking it too.
‘Let’s just leave it,’ she says, falling into the cushion behind. ‘I’m clearly not thinking straight.’
Clearly, the shock of their rescue mission, of EZ half dead and bloodied, has taken a week to hit her, caught up at last and pushed her off the rails—straight into Angel’s easy-lounger. She doesn’t want to be with him—it doesn’t work, didn’t work—she just can’t face losing him, either. That’s all it is. If the worst happens, she doesn’t want to have forfeited her right to mourn.
Angel sighs, leaning back as she had, in his own seat on the couch. His arm goes up behind his head, face pointed to the ceiling. Thinking, hopefully, running desperate through his rationale the way she is. ‘You know, for once, Pidge, I actually think you should keep talking.’
She snorts. ‘Let me guess, so I can bore you to sleep?’
‘Nah.’ He rocks his head—a shake without any of the effort—and ignores her sarcasm completely. ‘So I can understand,’ he says. ‘You know I don’t think about stuff like this. Just block it out and keep shit moving.’
‘Yeah, maybe I should try that.’ Her method hasn’t helped tonight. It’s only made things worse, made her problem, his. ‘I don’t even know what I’m saying,’ she admits. ‘I’m just so fucking scared of regretting things. I don’t want to regret this,’ she points between him and herself, though he isn’t watching, ‘but I know that we don’t work.’
There’s a mark still, invisible but printed around them both. They had gotten worse and worse; bickering, arguing, fighting until they hated each other. It’s been six months now, and it only just starting to fade. Only loosening enough for moments like these.
‘Well, you must know something I don’t,’ he jokes, ‘cause I’m really not seeing the problem.’
‘Yuma,’ she stresses. ‘That shit isn’t just gonna go away, Angel.’
‘Not that part. The you fucking regretting this, part.’ He looks up at last, head lifting from the back of the couch to catch her gaze. ‘Does it look like I’m going anywhere? Shit, does it look like I want you to either? Whatever we got going on, it’s as much as a relationship as it was before.’
‘Angel.’
‘I’m serious.’ A smile creeps onto his features, eyes alight with the joke before he’s even said it. ‘You think I have time to get another girl while you’re still all up in my shit?’
Tati laughs, against her will, but it helps. ‘Asshole.’
‘Like, you really are cramping my style, Pidge.’
‘Okay, stop it. I’m fragile.’ But smiling, somehow, and then the laugh drops into a sigh, and the point of it—the actual point of what he said—comes back like a freight train. He’s not going anywhere. He doesn’t want her to either, regardless of where things stand.
‘Fuck,’ she breathes. He’s made her cry, somehow, but she can lie to herself and say that it’s not him, it’s the night she’s had. It’s the Jeep at the gas station, it’s the blanket round her shoulders and the almost-dead, almost-brother, and not Angel, that’s brought the wet to her eyes. ‘God, I hate this. ’
There’s a gap beside him on the couch, under his bent elbow, and he invites her to it, flicking his chin. ‘Come here,’ he says, soft, familiar. Too late into the night to care about their boundaries. ‘Gonna make me fucking depressed, watching you cry and shit.’
She snorts, standing and bringing her bundle of comforts with her. ‘That was my plan all along,’ she replies, barely managing the sarcasm. ‘Gotta drag you down with me.’
‘Yeah, real sweet.’
His arm drops as she does, settling around her shoulders, as she settles around him. Cheek to his chest, arm threaded between his waist and the cushions. As normal as it used to be. One thing less to regret.
‘You wanna crash here?’ he asks, thumb smoothing over her arm. ‘I’ll take the couch. Drop you back at your car in the morning.’
She should say no, but there are worse things she could do. And he’s warm, warmer than she has been all night, hot beneath her like he’s running a fever.
‘Are you sure?’
He tuts. ‘Man, if you make me beg, I’m taking it back. You can walk your ass right back to where you came from, Tatiana.’
‘Alright,’ she laughs, ‘fine. Thank-you. I’ll take it.’
There are worse things she can do, there are worse things that could happen.
>>> bonus scene
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proceduralpassion · 11 months
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𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐀 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 | 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟎𝟑
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𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐱 𝐎𝐅𝐂
𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲 “𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢” 𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝. 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐚 𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐝𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐂 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝.
𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠(𝐬): 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞
𝐖𝐂: ~𝟐.𝟓𝐤
Just as promised, Angel picked up Santi and Destiny with a Romero Brothers tow truck. Riding in a pick up style truck, whether it was the Romero Brothers or his grandfather’s, was the norm for Santi. Still, he was excited that it was his father picking him up and that Ms. Maduro was coming along for the ride. The six year old held her hand and practically dragged her towards the truck when Angel pulled up. 
His mouth ran a mile a minute and Angel felt warm and flustered that his son had made continued effort in including Angel into the conversation. Initially, Angel was perturbed with how he was going to be able to pick up Santi two or three times a week with his MC duties. But now, with the vibrant welcome response he’d received, he figured his brothers would just have to make do without him for an hour out of the day. 
Because Santi had homework, he wanted to go ahead and drop him at the clubhouse before dropping off Destiny. The school psychologist gave no element of resistance when Angel apologetically expressed his desire to get his son settled first. 
“Hey, you offered to tow my car for free. The least I can do is be patient while you tend to this cutie pie,” she ruffled Santi’s hair and giggled with the young boy as they continued discussing their day.
Angel chuckled himself as his eyes briefly looked over at them. Her braids were again up in a bun wrapped with a brown headband that matched her earth-toned maxi dress. She had a radiant smile as she listened to Santi talk about the math question he got correct when called on during class. The image warmed his heart. He was thankful there was such a beautiful soul watching over his son at school. 
“Here,” he announced once he parked the tow truck not far from the line of bikes that were covered under a shady port. 
When Destiny looked up, she was met with a surprisingly bustling lot. There was the loud noise of a car currently being scrapped somewhere in the distance. There was a motorist outside who was tending to his bike. A man on the steps of a small office building that was no bigger than a trailer. An actual, abandoned trailer that was nestled between tall piles of scrap metal and directly behind what looked like a fighting cage. Destiny was careful getting down the truck and held her hands out for Santi to jump into as he got out himself. The minute she released him, he was off speeding towards the building that Destiny guessed was the Santo Padre MC’s headquarters, if the surrounding memorabilia was any indication.
“Huh,” she hummed. “All this time, I’ve passed by here, I never knew all of this was behind the gate.”
Angel was so embedded into the club life that there was something refreshing about being acquainted with someone who had no clue about it. He wasn’t even sure if she was originally from California. She definitely wasn’t from Santo Padre. The town was small enough that he’d figured he’d at least know of her before they met to talk about Santi. However, he had noticed her surprise and the quick glance she took of his kutte when he first told her he worked at a scrapyard, so she knew enough to be at least somewhat wary of the MC. 
“Yep,” Angel responded, “My second home, if you will.”
Destiny handed him the title to her car along with her license as they began to walk closer to the small office. “You’ll just have to fill out some paperwork so we can get you the cash for the scrap.”
“Awesome,” she assented. She looked up at him with a smile and there was no denying the sparks flowing within her frame as their eyes met. Her smile grew wider as she looked away as he continued to lead her towards the office. The man had obviously gone through a lot, but there was something indescribable about those small nanoseconds where she could see who he was underneath all of that stress and agony. She saw it yesterday in the light jokes he made to clear the air. She saw it today as he reveled in hearing all about Santi’s day from the young bundle of energy. Her job entailed taking care of the young kids at Santo Padre Elementary. She just hoped that parents like Angel found the time to take care of themselves. To allow more of those moments of humanity to shine through, for their kids and for themselves.
“Hey, bro!” A voice from behind interrupted their walk. A young man was jogging up towards him. When he got closer, Destiny took notice of the word “Vice-President” stitched onto the front of the man’s kutte. “Pop texted, said his appointment would be over soon. He’ll pick up Santi when he leaves.” The man pointed back to the clubhouse where Santi had just run into, a minute before.
Angel nodded in acknowledgment, “Cool.”
And then both men looked at Destiny. EZ smiled at her and then at Angel, silently waiting for an introduction. Angel rolled his eyes before doing just that.
“EZ, this is Santi’s school counselor, Destiny Maduro. This is my brother.” 
Destiny smiled, “Hi, nice to meet you.” The words “family affair” were under her tongue at the fact that the two brothers were both in the same MC. EZ took her hand and gave another smile to Destiny and Angel. The one towards Angel was more cheeky and included a wink. Angel reminded himself that he would need to throttle his little brother at a later time. For right now though, he simply explained why she was here.
“I’m scrapping her old car. Went and got it while I picked up Santi.” Angel pointed backwards towards Creeper who was currently maneuvering the truck so that the Pinto could be let off and sent to the machinery that would destroy the vehicle. 
“Ohhh.” EZ said with a little more exaggeration than was necessary. Angel cut him with a glare before he looked back at the office and yelled for Chucky. 
“Chuck, do me a favor and handle this paperwork for Ms. Maduro.”
Chuckie excitedly gestured for Destiny to join him in the office to fill out the necessary documents, “Right this way, Ms. Maduro.”
“Call me Destiny,” Angel heard her say as their voices decreased in volume in the closed off office. 
“Tryna’ get your ass whooped, I see,” Angel grumbled at EZ once the two were alone.
EZ chuckled with his hands up in defense, “Was trying to get the details, that’s all.”
“There are no details. She’s Santi’s counselor.” Maybe his words were more firm than needed to be, but it was the truth. Especially since he wasn’t even sure of his own feelings towards the woman. They hadn’t had much discussion beyond a professional scope. In fact, he didn’t know a single thing about her, other than her name and profession. He just knew that whatever feelings he had towards her were unable to be described at the moment. 
“Mmmm, and I guess that’s why you two were staring at each other all googly eyed,” EZ pressed on. “You like her, ask her out or something.” The younger Reyes brother was open and welcome to any opportunity that brought a little brightness to Angel’s life after Nails’ death. 
“Mind your business,” Angel threw at him. Still though, they laughed and gave each other a brotherly shove. 
There was laughter and conversation that could be heard from the office, “You better get in there before Chuckie steals your girl.”
Angel, indeed, made his way over there, but not before throwing up a middle finger at his brother. When he got inside, Coco was also there, seeking cool refuge from the unforgiving sun outside. He, too, was enjoined in conversation with Destiny.
“She’s not gonna try your pound cake, Chuck, it’s been sitting in the fucking heat since this morning.”
Destiny smiled brightly at the kind offer of cake that Chuckie had extended, but she couldn’t disagree with Coco about eating a treat that had been agonizing in the emblazoned heat within the trailer office.
Chuckie winced only a little before his smile emerged once more, “Perhaps, maybe next time, you all will listen to me about keeping sweets refrigerated.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Coco gave a brotherly shove to Chuckie before moving to grab a water bottle from the nearby cooler.
Destiny couldn’t help but find the interaction endearing and she smiled at it while completing the necessary paperwork. 
“Hopefully, these shit heads ain’t giving you too much trouble,” Angel commented. He stood with his arms swinging, not really knowing what to do, but wanting to make sure no one was bothering her.
“No, they’ve been lovely!”
He grabbed the papers once she was finished signing and nodded his head towards the door.
“I’ll just get these squared away and you should be good to go!” Chuckie hollered after them. Destiny looked back with a bubbly smile and thanked him for the help.
Because she was selling the scrapped car, she’d get a couple of thousand dollars back in cash. Angel and Destiny waited outside for Chuckie to come back with the money. 
“Do you mind if we drop Santi to my dad’s place first? I’ve got a couple of more hours on my shift so I was gonna leave them there until I finished.”
Usually, if nothing was going on, he’d just leave Santi in with Chuckie or one of the girls that tended the bar as he worked. Today, though, consisted of job responsibilities that were in his less than legal role as El Secretario. He’d be going over the border this evening and wanted Santi nowhere near the club during that time.
“No problem at all, I just appreciate the ride.”
Once Chuckie gave her the money for the scrap, Angel went and got Santi out of the clubhouse. The young boy ran out with his book bag strapped onto his back and jumped into the pick up truck with a little help from Destiny. 
“Little speed racer,” Destiny joked as the trio got settled into the truck.
“Yeah, dude moves a mile a minute,” Angel noted. With a twinge of his usual boldness, he asked, “You got any kids?”
“No, unless you count the hundred kids I look after everyday,” she sniggered.
No kids could mean no boyfriend, but Angel felt like he’d probably be crossing a boundary by outright asking if she was single. He bit his tongue because the question was almost out of his mouth before he could help it.
Santi peered up at her with his curious eyes, “Do you want kids, Ms. Maduro?”
Destiny merely shrugged with a smile, “I don’t not want kids, I guess. But you and all your classmates are my babies for now, so I’m not in a rush!”
She tickled his shoulder as she leaned closer to him, which elicited a loud laugh that made even Angel chuckle.
Angel took a right turn away from the citified area of the small town and ventured further into the isolated, residential areas of Santo Padre. When Destiny had told him her address, he took note of the fact that her house was in a small quiet nook of the city that bordered the town’s limits. The sun had yet to set and instead blared into their eyes as the trees grew thinner and thinner. The rays were hitting Destiny directly in the eyes and Angel silently slid his sunglasses her way. 
“Thanks,” she said in response, adjusting the black shades over her eyes. 
“So, where you from?” Angel questioned, his eyes still focused on the road. “It’s subtle, but I hear an accent.”
“Wow, you’re good,” she noted before answering, “I grew up like an hour away in Ventura but a lot of my family’s from Venezuela, so I visit a lot.”
Angel nodded. Santo Padre was overwhelmingly Mexican in ethnicity, but there were also some El Savadorians and Guatemalan enclaves as well. Never any Venezuelan. Perhaps, the various dialects and inflections present within the Hispanic Diaspora made it all the more obvious when he realized that he couldn’t quite place certain characters of her intonations.
“How long you been in Santo Padre?”
“About a year. Ventura’s a great city with one of the better school systems, but I got into counseling because I wanted to go where I’m needed.”
“Makes sense,” Angel hummed.
He tended not to believe the best in people, but Destiny had been genuine from their very first meeting. And truth be told, there wasn’t much of anything in this town worth moving for. He supposed wanting to make it a better place could be one of the only valid reasons for moving here, especially coming from a rich tourist town like Ventura.
Destiny reminisced about growing up in Ventura, missing the view of the ocean and the resort-like atmosphere. If it weren’t for her aspirations, she could’ve lived there her whole life. But what she desired to put into the world was more than about where she sought comfort. If she gave it time and a chance, maybe she could find a unique comfort of its own in this small desert town.
“My parents thought I was kinda crazy to move here, so I’m sure you’re thinking the same, but…” Her eyes veered out onto the passing road as the trees grew thicker yet again the closer they got to her home. “But, sometimes an opportunity falls into your lap and your guts knows something that you don’t.”
She looked down at Santi, who was switching through the staticky radio stations without a care in the world.
“I still don’t know what my gut was telling me. But it hasn’t done me wrong yet.”
She shrugged her shoulders weakly, unsure of how else to explain her choices. Maybe things weren’t supposed to make sense to her right now either.
Angel pulled into the quaint, run-down cottage style home that housed Destiny Maduro. 
She let out a farewell sigh, “Well, I thank you gentlemen for your services. Santi, I’ll see you around at school tomorrow.” They bumped fists before she looked up and beamed at Angel, “And I guess I’ll see you at the next PTA meeting?”
Angel widened his eyes and Destiny burst out into laughter at the reaction.
He joined in with a chuckle, “Querida, what about me is spelling out PTA meetings and fuckin’ bakesale fundraisers?”
Destiny giggled even more, “It was worth a shot, right?”
“Yeah, well, baby steps,” he muttered, even though he had no intention of showing up to the school with some damn cupcakes and a smile.
“I have one on one sessions with Santi throughout the semester, so I’m sure I’ll have you in at some point to discuss his progress.”
Angel nodded, “Good. I look forward to hearing from you, then.”
“Likewise,” she said while hopping out the truck, “Buenas noches.”
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A/N: Next chapter, we get to meet Dro, Destiny's cousin! Club politics comes to play a role in this fic, so you can also look out for your other Mayans faves in the story too 🥰 Hope y'all enjoye. Please reblog and leave comments if you liked 💗
Taglist: @mijagif @drabbles-mc @kmhappybunny240 @babaohhhriley @nunya7394 @darqchilddaydreamz
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