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auteurdelabre · 2 months

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Those who cannot do - Frankie!Morales x f!reader - CHAPTER ONE: ACCELERATION

words: 3.2

pairings: Frankie x f!Reader / Santiago x f!Reader

tags: love triangle (in later chapters), angst, smut, mentions of addictive substances, romance, nicknames,

Reader: Is a CIS woman, able-bodied, gainfully employed as a teacher, has hair long enough to pull, wears both skirts and jeans. Other than that, she is a blank canvas cuz she's you!

Summary: Frankie and Santiago have been through a lot during their friendship and have always come out the other side. But when both of them fall for the pretty new schoolteacher (YOU), it pushes them both to their breaking point.

notes: dividers by @saradika-graphics

Chapter One: Acceleration

Acceleration: A change in velocity; a change in either speed or direction or both.

Cocaine is a helluva drug as they say.

Francisco "Catfish" Morales can attest to such a statement because while the rest of his sleepy neighborhood bunkers down for the night, he stalks to his truck.

The Florida night is muggy, cloying and oppressive, causing his weathered grey t-shirt to stick to his spine. It reminds him of that horrible time back in Columbia.

His truck ambles down the winding side streets for thirty minutes, a new location because apparently Reggie moved.

Reggie is a nice enough guy, known Frankie about five years. Friends with Santi and Tom first. Wasn't always a dealer, he actually used to sell houses with Tom until the market went belly up.

Tom. Frankie tries not to think about Tom. Tries not to think about Columbia. Tries not to think of his wife's disdainful face when he came home empty handed.

I should turn around and go home.

But then Frankie thinks about the empty house waiting for him, he thinks of how cold it will be and he keeps driving.

He pulls up along the curb, turning off the engine. The area is a much nicer suburb than Frankie lives in, in the classy part of Florida.

He glances around and he knows he looks like a junkie. But he's not. He just needs a hit every now and then. Just once in a while when life gets unbearable.

Hey I'm here.

Frankie frowns, typing hurriedly.

Where?

Front of the house along the curb.

Frankie holds his phone in hand, eyes skimming the ... That appear and disappear several times.

There's a sudden knock at his truck window, stern. It makes his eyes jump from his phone to his left and he feels his heart sink as a familiar pair of dark brown eyes stare back at him.

Santiago "Pope" Garcia. Best friend. Best man at his be wedding. Best man he's ever known, full stop.

Fuck.

"Let me in, Fish."

Frankie feels the cold thread begin in his torso. That frantic pull that tells him he's not getting a hit tonight even though he needs it, desperately. Frankie unlocks the car, watching from behind shame-filled eyes as his friend pulls himself into the seat next to him.

"How did you-"

"Reggie doesn't deal anymore. Sent me a message when you texted him."

Fucking rat.

Pope watches his friends brows furrow, can see the flex of Frankie's lean neck.

"Fish I know you and your lady are having a bad time- "

"More than a bad time," Frankie spits out, body full of tension just begging to be released. "She's divorcing me, Pope. Got the papers today. She says she's done."

"But the counseling-"

"Don't mean shit when you're fucking someone else," Frankie says with teeth bared. "Some guy at her work."

Pope's eyes fall to his friends' broad hand tightening around the steering wheel. Recognizes that hollow look in Frankie's endless eyes, the kind that comes after a kill. The kind he recognizes from Columbia.

"Shit Frank, I'm sorry."

Frankie shrugs, eyes closing briefly. The air in the truck is tense, filled with the acrid scent of sweat and Pope's cheap cologne.

"When did you get back?"

"Last week," Pope smiles. "Just in time I guess."

"Australia?"

"Too hot," Pope shrugs.

"And Yovanna?"

"Too complicated."

Frankie scratches absently at his patchy facial hair, hears it rasp against his fingers in the quiet space. He knows better than to push Pope about this. Knows that Pope will never settle down, not really, even if he tries to convince everyone that's what he wants.

"I really am sorry Fish, but do you think you're gonna get split custody if you're high on coke?" Pope says from beside him, voice tight. Disappointed. "Or maybe you don't want custody."

"Of course I do," Frankie says with a flash of grief in his expressive face. "I don't wanna lose my fucking daughter."

"Then wise up and get the fuck outta here idiota," Pope demands. He pulls his cell from his pocket, tapping away. "I'm calling a taxi to pick me up from your place."

And like a good soldier Frankie obeys. He turns over the engine and he drives his truck back home to the sad little house with darkened windows. He does it because Pope told him to and Pope has always been there. A born leader. Someone that Frankie would and has followed into battle.

Someone who arrives every time Frankie falls. Who seems to know just when the load is too much to bear.

From behind his front door Frankie watches him load onto the taxi musing that this isn't the first time Pope has saved his life.

Three years later

"Daddy!"

Frankie gives a good natured groan as his daughter sails into the bedroom, eyes wide.

"What is it Mija?"

"Mommy is here!" Emilia cries, dark eyes wide and unblinking. Her cheek and pyjama top is smeared with blueberry jam.

"I'm up I'm up," Frankie insists, pulling himself to a sit. He looks at the alarm clock next to his bed. Seven am.

Jesus.

Maria is standing at his door, holding the screen door open with one hand and looking into Frankie's place with a critical eye.

He thinks she must inventory the sparse furniture, the children's toys scattered everywhere, the empty pizza box stained with grease propped on the coffee table.

His ex wife looks him over as he ambles to the front door, sees the days worth of stubble, the ratty t-shirt over sweatpants. He thinks she's relieved she no longer has to deal with him.

"What the fuck is this?" Frankie says, voice low. "It's my weekend with her."

"I know," Maria says, voice less acidic than usual. She holds out a Dunkin' coffee cup to him which he takes warily. He and Maria are civil to one another for the sake of Emilia but they don't do things like bring coffee for each other.

"What's up?"

Maria waits for Emilia to settle in front of the television with the muffin from her mother. When the blast of Peppa Pig sounds out behind them she begins talking.

"It's my mom," Maria says after a beat. "She's uh... She's not good Frankie. Doctor gives her three months."

Animosity is left at the door. Frankie immediately softens, brows saddling as he thinks of his ex mother in law.

"Fuck, I'm sorry."

Frankie means it. He'd always liked Gloria, even after the divorce. A woman strong like Maria but without the stubborn streak.

"She doesn't have anyone to take care of her and she's too sick to come here." Maria's eyes fill with tears and she blinks them back. "I gotta go stay with her."

"In Venezuela?"

Maria nods. "I need to be with her."

"Of course," Frankie nods, empathy pouring from him. "But what about Emmy?"

Maria looks around Frankie's frame to see her daughter parked in front of the tv eating toast. She smiles before looking back at Frankie.

"I can't take her out of school for three months," Maria says rubbing at her damp eyes. "She's supposed to start the first grade with all her friends on Monday."

"I know, she keeps talking about it."

"So I'm thinking she can stay here with you full time until I get back."

Frankie is blown away by this development. He has Emmy for two weekends a month and two evenings per week. It's not an ideal schedule but it works with his NA meetings and flights.

Talking her full time sounds like a dream in some ways, getting to wake up to her sweet little face every day? But scheduling will be hard. He doesn't get off until late some days. His mind goes over these details, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip.

Maria sees him hesitate and the look he's long associated with her comes flying back to her features. Disdainful. Angry.

"I don't ask you for anything Frankie," Maria spits. "I'm asking for this one favor-"

"¡Bájale! " Frankie exclaims, holding his free hand out in front of him like she's a wild animal he needs to soothe. "I'm not saying no."

"Then you're saying yes?"

Frankie swallows, thoughts racing. He watches Maria's temper starting with the tic in her cheek and he finally nods.

"Yeah, of course."

You're nervous.

This is your first year at a new school after moving and your first day nerves comes screaming back at you as if it's your first year ever teaching all over again.

You push your hair from your face, finding it already sticky at the temples thanks to the Florida air. You miss the weather back home in Chicago where the seasons change with a shout, not a whimper.

You try not to think of the reason for your move as you gather up your papers on your desk, smiling as the first mother and child approach your door.

You give a bright good morning before ushering them inside the classroom where coffee and muffins wait. Educational toys are placed on the far left corner of the classroom, sitting atop a colorful rainbow carpet.

You've gone to great lengths to make the classroom welcoming. Bright colorful signs, low overhead lighting, large open windows.

More parents arrive, mothers and fathers who greet you with increasing enthusiasm. Some of them look nervous, others look relieved, most just look bored.

The morning bell sounds and you're about to close the door when you see a man holding the hand of a little girl looking absolutely lost.

He's taller, his arms thick and his shoulders broad. Everything about him should be intimidating but he's not in the least. Maybe it's the casual clothes he wears or the baseball cap over his dark curls. Whatever it is, he feels approachable.

"You know where you’re going?"

The man's dark eyes flick to you

"My daughter's first day here," he explains looking flustered. "Got a late start, hair and all that."

He motions to the sullen girl at his left and you hold in a smirk at her lopsided braids.

Wife probably does everything at home.

"Her mom usually does all this," Frankie says looking sheepish. "I'm kinda learning as I go. This is the right classroom I hope?"

"Depends," you smile. "Are you looking for room 105?"

"Yep."

"You're in the right place."

He smiles thankfully at you before ushering his daughter inside while you turn to greet some of the other parents.

"Go on mija," Frankie urges gently. "I can see your friend Melissa is waiting for you."

Frankie waves at Melissa, a girl with wide glasses and curly blond waves. She gives a squeak when she sees Emilia and Frankie's heart un-clenches when he sees his daughter smile and wave. Emilia blinks, still clinging to her father's hand.

"Go on and say hi."

With trepidation Emilia gives a step and her friend’s direction before pausing, turning and throwing her arms around Frankie.

"Don't want you to go, Daddy!"

Frankie kneels, pressing a tender kiss to his daughter's forehead.

"You're not staying?"

You're back by the door, welcoming another group in behind them. Frankie shuffles to the side, noting that you're still waiting for his response.

"Uh no?" Frankie says, a crooked smile on his face. Is this a joke? Why would he be staying?

"Usually the parents stay for the first day since we end at noon," you explain to the clueless father. "We go over class syllabus and-"

"Syllabus?" Frankie's eyes crinkle in amusement. "This is the first grade right? They color and play jump rope?"

He watches as the gentle amusement drains from your face, replaced with a haughty inference. A face that says oh, you're one of those.

"I assure you I teach more than coloring and jump rope."

Frankie feels heat crawling up the back of his neck at the derision dripping from your words. He realizes now that his joke didn't land.

"Oh uh, yeah then sure," Frankie says feeling wrong-footed. Like he's a fake parent or something to not know this already. "Course I'll stay."

"Great," you say tightly. "We'll be starting shortly."

Emilia gives a happy cry, throwing her arms around Frankie's neck. Frankie smiles, pulling her up into his arms as he walks over to Melissa and her mother, Angela.

"Hey Frank," she says giving him a smile as he approaches, lifting the Styrofoam cup to her mouth. "Coffee's not bad."

"Had two cups already," Frankie grins, lowering Emmy to the floor. Now that she knows her father will be staying close by Emmy soars over to Melissa and the two begin playing with some of the toys. Angela surveys Emilia's hair and Frankie's tired face.

"Tough morning?"

"Yeah," Frankie nods feeling frazzled. He's trying to remember if he put on deodorant this morning. He hopes so.

"Heard about Maria's mom," Angela says with a frown. "If you guys need anything while she's gone you just let me know. Me and Terry are usually around."

"Thanks Angela."

Angela and Terry are one of the few couples that are friends with both Frankie and Maria post-divorce. That's what happens when you're kids are best friends, he supposes. Angela works in IT and Terry is a pharmacist.

Frankie is considering the blueberry muffin across the room when you go to the front, clapping your hands gently.

"Hello friends," you say enthusiastically beaming when they call out a warbled greeting in return. "Can I have all of you take a seat? You can sit on the floor or at the desk. Totally up to you today."

Thirty pairs of six-year-old feet go thundering across the linoleum, the squeak of chairs dragging and chirping voices swelling until you clap again in pattern, urging them to copy you. They do, many off-beat and giggling.

Frankie feels as Emmy pulls him down to the carpet, snuggling in the hollow of his legs as he makes himself comfortable there. Most of the other parents including Angela take seats in the back.

From this angle Frankie can see you up close, see the delicate embroidered roses on your cardigan and the way your jeans curve over your body.

"Alright class, my name is Miss-"

"Can I color?" A child interrupts loudly from the front of the classroom only to be hushed by her mother. Frankie watches as you laugh, no irritation in your features.

"When the big hand is on the two we can," you say enthusiastically. You point at the large clock on the wall. "Speaking of which, does anyone know what time that will be?"

A chorus of voices ring out and you give them all a patient smile before slowly raising a forefinger to your sealed mouth.

"Inside voices, inside voices," you coo. You wait for the babbling to dim before you continue with a wide grin.

"I'm so glad I have such a smart classroom! Now, when you want to share something I need you to raise your hand okay? And then you'll wait for me to call on you."

Frankie and the rest of the parents watch as you interact with their children while also informing them of what to expect for the school year. You hand out a prepared syllabus with suggestion reading, citing the children learn much more at home than they do at school.

"Reading with your child every day is so important for their development," you say with conviction.

"My Daddy reads to me!" Emilia says excitedly from Frankie's lap. Then she remembers herself and belatedly raises her hand. Frankie smiles when you give a genuine laugh.

"Well then you can thank your Daddy for helping you grow a big brain," you say, giving Frankie a friendly grin before going back to what you were saying before.

Frankie isn't expecting the warmth that goes along with seeing that grin. He hopes that with it the stupid comment he made earlier has been forgiven or at the very least, forgotten.

"Thank you for helping my brain grow, daddy," Emilia says earnestly. Frankie grins down at her, running a finger down the bridge of her nose, something he's done since she was an infant.

"Anytime, mija."

"Wish my teacher had looked like that," Frankie hears one of the father's murmur behind him. "Never would have gotten any work done though."

Several of the father's nearby smirk or give indulgent chuckles as you write something on the board at the front of the class.

Frankie bristles, shooting a dismissive look over his shoulder at the man before his attention is drawn back to you at the front.

The rest of the morning passes by quickly and at eleven you insist that parent and child alike take a chance to explore the classroom and all it has to offer. Emmy is very eager to play with the trucks as Frankie walks around the classroom with his hands clasped behind his back, studiously looking at the posters you've hung.

He hears you laughing and glances over to see you and a young boy chatting about something the boy is drawing. The boy’s mother smiles back at you, relief in her features.

"I'm just worried he won't make friends," she whispers when her son toddles off towards the water fountain. "He's so shy."

"I was really shy growing up," you promise, clasping the woman's hand in yours. "I promise you, no child is leaving my classroom at the end of this year without making a friend. And I'll keep a special eye out for Oliver."

You sound sincere and Frankie has had extensive experience with having to read people. You're one of those teachers who are in it for all the right reasons, he can tell, and the thought brings him comfort.

At noon you tell them that they are released until tomorrow morning. You remind them of the allergy list and once more about the nightly book reading.

"Even though I know some of you are already on top of it," you say flashing Frankie an amused wink.

Everyone begins to file out of the classroom, the kids chatting loudly as they make their way past you. Some already hug you, some parents commenting that they're excited to have you teach their kids. Frankie holds Emmy in his arms, feeling strangely nervous to talk to you again.

He approaches you swiftly before another group of kids can dart in front of him. You gaze up at his face, no irritation present.

"Wanted to introduce myself properly. Frankie Morales," he says shaking your hand, feeling the warmth of it before you slip your grip from his. "I'm sorry for what I said before-"

"Already forgotten," you interrupt with a smile. "It was a pleasure getting to meet you and Emilia today. I'll see you both tomorrow?"

"You will," Frankie says with a nod. He looks in his arms at his daughter. "Say bye, Emmy."

"Bye Emmy," Emilia says with a charming wave. You give a sweet laugh, waving back at her.

"Goodbye Emilia, goodbye Mr. Morales."

Before Frankie can tell you to call him by his first name another rush of students are calling you over.

Frankie leaves for his truck feeling his face pink at the realization that at thirty nine years old he has a crush on a teacher.

#frankie morales x you #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales #frankie morales fanfiction #frankie morales x reader #frankie friday #francisco morales x reader #francisco catfish morales #francisco morales

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intheorangebedroom · 7 months

Note

Can we just pretend that this is Frankie whispering I love you to you?

I hope you are feeling better. I miss harrassing you with asks 🧡

@deadmantis my LOVE, I always feel good when you’re in my notifs. This one has kept me awake and drove me crazy, but anything for you. They’re so stubborn, and when they don't want to cooperate... Anyway. I'm not entirely satisfied, but I don't want to keep you waiting any longer. I did my very best for you, I always do, I love you so, so much 🧡 Happy Frankie Friday to you 🧡

Summary: Three words. It's not that complicated.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x Gabrielle Tourneur (OFC)/French fem!Reader.

Rating: explicit but no filth, just my gothic heart 🔞

Word count: 1.5k

[series masterlist]

Drabble: To Bring You My Love

He enjoys driving home to you nearly as much as he loves staying home with you.

Tonight’s no different, and when Mick Fleetwood’s voice comes up on the truck’s stereo, Francisco Morales smiles to himself in the bright city night.

He kept his promise. He fixed it. Fixed everything. Or close enough, anyway.

Friday evenings are spent at the bar again, the same dim yellow lights, the same moist, yeasty cheap beer smell. The same table.

And Tom’s chair, loudly empty.

Most likely thanks to Will, if he had to guess, and probably on your account more than his. But even Ironhead’s unwavering loyalty can only abide that many faults before his hard, cold rationalism takes over and prompts him to take action.

If Tom’s absence is a consequence Frankie hadn’t anticipated, it’s one he doesn’t regret. He’s heard the man has moved down to Florida, but he doesn’t really care. The further away from you, the better.

Pope doesn’t seem entirely dissatisfied with this new order of things, either.

As for Benny, well Benny just follows suit, like he always does.

The air is still a bit chill between him and Frankie, but they’re getting there, step by step. Frankie’s resentment receding along with his friend’s heartbreak, one drink at a time.

It’s been only two years, and overall, there’s a refreshing, easy balance to their group.

And yet, however meaningful, Tom’s departure is not the most important change.

On Friday nights, like tonight, he’s driving back to you. Whether he’ll find you already sleeping or parking your small Ford after an evening out, you’re here. For real. For good.

He’s nearly home when his phone lights up on the empty passenger seat. His gaze rapidly flickers between the road and the screen, that glares in celadon green in the cabin’s relative darkness. It’s weather alert, forecasting heavy rainfall tomorrow, he’ll have to fight the urge to drive you to the bookstore himself. Maybe he can get away with picking you up at the end of your day? Maybe you’ll let him. You can be stubborn.

He should change that impersonal default lock screen. Put a picture of you, like Santi suggested. Santi, who proudly exhibits Yovanna’s gorgeous smile and luminous beauty to just about anyone who might look at his phone’s screen.

Well, Frankie tried. Turns out he can’t. Not that he doesn’t have any pictures of you in his camera roll. At this point, he has hundreds. And you’re dressed in most of them.

But putting you on display simply feels inappropriate. For years, you’d been his secret. A ghost, a memory. A feeling akin to a curse. He had kept your name silent, protecting the possibility of your existence and the reality of what had happened in the orange bedroom.

Distracted, he re-emerges from his recurring thoughts to find himself at the front door. He considers retracing his steps to check if he locked the tuck before getting into the house, but he can’t bring himself to care. He needs to see you. The living-room’s dark but the bedroom lights are on; he takes off his jacket and gets rid of his boots before walking briskly down the carpeted corridor.

He finds you sitting in bed, the warm glow from the bedside table casting soft orange hues on your soft face. You’re leaning over a thick book, wearing your favourite t-shirt of his, a shapeless grey cotton tee with red letters that spell “Buenos Aires” across the chest. A gift from Izzy, when he was still in the military.

He pauses briefly on the threshold; a broad smile dimples his cheeks.

Your eyes are still lowered on the page when you greet him in a light, happy tone.

“Hey, gorgeous!”

“Hey, querida.”

Your head shoots up at the unusual term of endearment. He steps quickly into the room and turns his back to you to hide his embarrassment, wincing as he undoes his watch and places it on the dresser across from the bed.

“How was the evening? How’re the guys?” you ask, and he can feel your eyes boring into his back.

“Good. All good. Will asked me to tell you Sunday works for him. Apparently you’re supposed to know what that means,” he adds, pulling his plaid shirt above his head.

“Oh, neat!” you exclaim, lying your book face down on the table, wiggling your feet excitedly under the sheet. “The Guggenheim has an exhibition about early 19th century Parisian painters,” you explain.

He smiles to himself again, and proceeds to take off his belt. The heavy buckle produces a metallic thud when it hits the wooden top of the dresser.

Behind his back, your voice comes in suddenly very thin.

“You don’t mind, do you? I never asked.”

He turns, frowning, “Mind what?”

“Me. Being friends with Will. You’re not… jealous or anything, right?”

He’s about to laugh it off, a quip on the tip of his tongue, but something stops him. Something striking, unsettling in its past familiarity and its recent scarcity. It’s in the earnestness of your tone, the sudden solemnity of your gaze.

“What if I am?” he asks instead, pivoting to face you. “What would you do? Would you stop hanging with him?”

“If you asked me, yes, I would.”

“Jesus, Gabrielle, no,” he sighs, and the sting in his chest is equal part anger and regret. The consistent stab that tears at him whenever you unwillingly reveal what you put yourself through.

He crosses the bedroom in two strides to come sit by your side on the edge of the bed.

“I’d never even consider asking you something like that, baby. Why would I–”

He trails off at your hardening face.

You’ve straightened up in his t-shirt, and his eyes dart to your legs; with two fingers, he pinches the white sheet covering them to pull it down, revealing your underwear, and a purple mark in the shape of a pear that his mouth drew on your inner thigh this morning.

He looks at it when he says, “You’re a free woman. And I know you’re mine.”

The contradiction settles like placid water in the amber light between your two bodies, inexplicably logical, perfectly natural.

And the words come up in his chest, from his gut, an ancient rising tide.

“I love you, Gabrielle.”

They ring out around you in the quiet bedroom, incongruous, not unpleasant. Warm, intimate, orange.

He loves you. Of course, he does. You know he does, you’ve always known. You’ve always loved him too.

You’ve loved him young and carefree when it was easy and it was just the two of you. You’ve loved him to safety through countless godless nights. You’ve loved him back to you, you’ve loved him sinful and hurt, you’ve loved him without shame.

Yet, your breathing stops, your eyes widen. You remain silent.

He lets out a disheartened chuckle, before the crease in his brow deepens and his whiskered jaw gives that telling tick that you dread. You follow his dark gaze, it’s strained on the mark on your thigh, and he swallows thickly, licking his lips and you can’t feel your legs.

“Please,” he murmurs, so low, nearly silent, and it’s right there, bright and burning against your ribcage, but it won’t come out, your mouth is too dry and your lips won’t open.

He doesn’t lift up his eyes, instead his hand goes to your hip. He gives it a little squeeze, and you register the sensation, it travels up your body in slow ripples.

He pulls you in, sits you in his lap in a straddle, his hands roaming over your sides under his t-shirt. You let him seek the contact of your skin, how many times have the two of you sat like that? On the bed, on the floor, on the couch. In the truck or under a tent...

His denim feels too rough under your soft flesh. You recoil from the heat of his palms when he cups your face, but he catches you, firm and strong and he will never let go.

His eyes are alight with unshed tears, or perhaps it is yours, because your vision blurs when they finally meet.

“I need to hear you say it back. Please.”

In that tiled bathroom with the yellow light, all those years ago, you had nearly said it. To tame the wild look in his dark eyes when he had realised and briefly got scared. So early but not too soon, and the words had felt far too small in comparison to the feeling itself. You had chosen to soothe him with your touch.

You’d been the hopeful one, then, trustful and fearless.

Today, he is guiding you. With a light pressure of his thumb on your lower lip, the sharp edge of his nose brushing along your temple, his hand at the base of your neck grounding you, so you won’t go missing again.

“It’s ok, baby,” he says, and you feel his words more than you hear them with the white noise filling your brain, “I know you do. Just say it. I got you.”

You close your eyes, inhale his scent. You take his hand.

“Je t’aime.”

****

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theredwritingwitch · 1 year

Text

Soulmate Fic- Home Cookin’

Pairing: Frankie Morales x reader

Soulmate AU: Food has no taste till you meet your soulmate.

Words: 1.4k

Warnings: food consumption

______________________________________________________________

Frankie just wasn’t one for parties. He was getting too old for the loud music, too achy for the dancing, and too stubborn for the small talk. Honestly, Frankie was rather hoping to spend his weekend with a cold beer and a small home improvement project in his garage. Maybe even grab a meal with the guys one night. But Santi was back in town, for good this time. Him and his soulmate Yovanna were throwing a housewarming party, and invited several friends and new neighbors over for dinner. Frankie was obliged to go as Santi’s best friend, but deep down, well actually not very deep at all, he loathed every minute of this party.

The cross of his arms and tugged down brim of his cap gave a good indication of Frankie’s lack of interest in the conversation. Even as Benny awed his small audience in the living room with his tale of his latest fight, Will and Frankie stood on their own in the corner of the room. Santi and Yovanna were busy in the kitchen, bickering over food and drinks.

“Santi says Yovanna’s cooking tastes amazing,” Will broke the brief pause in their conversation.

“I bet, but what does his cooking taste like?” Frankie smirked at his friend.

“Probably like a donkey’s ass.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t know what food tastes like then.”

“Someday you both will try my cooking and then you’ll be begging me for more,” Santi announced as he joined in on the conversation. The two men laughed at their friend as they got a good view of the old Delta Force operator in a greasy apron decaled with the phrase “Life is what you BAKE it.” Frankie played with the small front pocket of the apron as Santi flicked his fingers away announcing to the rest of the house, “Dinner’s ready! Grab a plate, it’s buffet style tonight!”

The guests followed Santi into the kitchen, where a spread of gorgeous food lay out on the kitchen island. Pitchers of pink strawberry margaritas and bright yellow summertime tea sat on the far counter. Colorful and festive bowls of cheese dip, salsa, and feta dip were situated near piles of blue and yellow tortilla chips and pretzel chips. On the island were plates of finely browned meatballs in lush gravy, grilled shrimp in a beautiful lime and lemon salsa, and brilliantly golden ravioli with choice of creamy alfredo sauce or bright red creamy tomato sauce. Even the dessert of a soft and sweetly pink meringue topped with glossy red strawberries and blueberries.

The guests all congratulated Yovanna and Santi on the beautiful and vibrant display of food. A line quickly formed as everyone made their way through the buffet, grabbing food and drinks before sitting down to eat. As the boys waited for their turn for food, Frankie stood behind Benny, smiling as his brother poked and prodded the younger man on his ever elaborating story. Benny, never one to back down from a fight, poked right back.

“Every time I hear you retell that story, it seems to get a little longer,” Will chided.

“And every time I look over at you two old men, I see more lines appearing on your ever growing foreheads.”

“Careful baby brother, these things could be in the genes, you better watch yourself.”

“Why don’t you watch what's ahead of you,” Benny pointed as he shoved Will lightly to the empty space in the line ahead of him.

Will stumbled forward but then purposely leaned back and fell against his brother, pushing the younger man into Frankie and thus forcing him to stumble back. A small squeak of surprise came out from behind Frankie, causing him to quickly turn to find its source. Frankie’s large brown eyes found yours as he turned to start spouting out an apology. You eyed the handsome man before you as he looked at you with his dropping wide open mouth. Frankie expected the person behind him to be one of the couples that showed up together, not the pretty girl next door that came over alone. Caught off guard by the sudden impact and the clear silence, you tried to stammer out an “excuse me” to the man before you.

“No no, I’m sorry. My friend pushed me. It’s my fault.”

“I was standing too close, I could have given you more space.”

“No really it’s my bad. These two idiots get me in all sorts of trouble.”

Your giggle had Frankie smiling as he introduced himself. The two of you made light conversation as you made your way through the line of food and joined the rest of the guests. Many were already chowing down on the colorful food. Santi was explaining how long he grilled the shrimp to give them the crisp they needed for their warm color. Frankie took a bite of the shrimp then, chewing and pulling the shrimp apart just to chew the clearly overcooked shrimp some more before finally swallowing, tasting nothing but the charcoal of the grill and a hint of lime. Frankie froze as all these new flavors hit his tongue. There had been plenty of times where Frankie had eaten Santi’s cooking that he had chewed and chewed the overcooked food to bits, but never once did he properly tasted it. Slowly he lifted the crisp shrimp to his tongue again, lightly tasting the overdone flames of the grill. Now wide eyed, Frankie dropped the shrimp then. He knew what this meant as his brain and eyes went into overdrive, analyzing the people around him. One of these neighbors had to be his soulmate, he just had to figure out if anyone else was having the same stomach turning emotions as he.

Chugging his margarita down to get the terrible taste out of his mouth, Frankie hummed at the delicious tastes that hit the back of his throat. His eyes quickly traveled around the room, taking note of everyone’s reactions. Many continued eating as if nothing was wrong, as if nothing was different. A few couples frowned at the food, but stayed as neutral as possible.

Frankie grimaced and went on to the meatballs, which were undercooked from the looks of the pink center and the raw taste of meat that hit his tongue. Santi must have cooked that as well. Yovanna’s ravioli saved the meal though as Frankie slurped down the tomato sauce and creamy cheese centers of the ravioli. Never in all his dreams and real travels could Frankie imagine the range of tastes that were out there in the world, even if some of them were quite bad. Frankie wondered if his soulmate was going mad from the food. But he couldn’t find anyone freaking out as he was as he looked over the guests to see many conversing with others and continuing on with their eating. He suppressed a groan from the delicious tastes of the ravioli so as to not bring attention to himself, but a cough coming from right next to him broke him out of his thoughts.

There you sat, tucked away in the corner of the room just out of eye sight of Frankie, coughing up rubbery shrimp. A few pairs of sympathetic eyes landed on you, all from people who were clearly couples, as you continued to cough.

“Try the margarita, it’ll help clear your throat,” Frankie watched you intently as he handed you his cup.

You grabbed the drink with thanks and swallowed a decent portion down. Frankie chuckled as your eyes bugged out from the delicious taste.

“Yovanna must have made the margaritas then, because Santi definitely made the tea,” you groaned out.

“I thought the same thing. Just a warning, don’t try the meatballs.”

“Oh no, another Santi creation I presume,” you chuckled and looked over at Frankie.

“Seems to be,” Frankie rubbed his beard contemplating if he should try his luck.

“I’m all of a sudden very new to this whole taste thing…” you paused as you shyly looked over to Frankie.

“Same, I’m new to it as well,” he smiled down at you which only made you mirror his smile. Looking around the room and back at you, Frankie shifted in his seat, “you know maybe the two of us could head out early and see what other things taste like…” Frankie internally groaned at his own words. It had been awhile since he flirted with anyone.

You laughed though, “I think that’s a great idea, we’ve got a lot to experience now don’t we.”

After one shared sweet meringue and at least one week spent together as a couple later; Frankie and you made sure to mail Santi a thank you card for the housewarming party, and enclosed one gift card to a cooking class.

#Frankie Morales #frankie morales x reader #Triple Frontier #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales x you

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artemiseamoon · 1 year

Text

Me: my to do list is so long today I need to get going

Also me: the angst with a happy ending, Will Miller x ex fiancé (Oc) story idea I got last night won’t leave me alone. So now I’m writing it down as I drink chia and there’s a nasty storm outside. Also all the single TF guys are getting paired up so I’m scrolling through my FC folder to cast my ladies. And I’m a big Yovanna x Santi stan so she stays.

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skvatnavle · 2 years

Note

For the fandom ask game, Triple Frontier (you might not be able to do the numbers listed on the game 😆)

Uh, that's a good one. And I actually don't hate Tom, so I can easily make the numbers go up 😆❤️

5 favourite characters*:

Well, that is just the 5 guys. In order: Francisco Morales, Benny Miller, Will Miller, Santiago Garcia and Tom Davis.

3 OTPs*:

FishBen (I love Frankie and Ben's dynamic)

Santi x Yovanna (he's so gonna find her after the film)

Benny and me (hey, no one stated I couldn't do that!)

Funniest character:

There are not many funny moments in the movie, but the times I laughed it was because of Frankie.

"We gotta fly over the fucking Andes, man!" 😆

Prettiest character:

Benny. Hundred percent. I mean, this whole movie is full of good looking men (yes, even Tom), but Benny is so pretty I wanna cry.

Most bad-ass character:

Frankie. That one scene where he switches into some darker and just... fucking ties down people, shot without thinking... damn 🥵

Character I’d like as my BFF:

Poly? Frankie and Benny? Please? 😅

Character that’s ruined my life:

Frankie Morales. That man have occupied so much of my brain space since I saw the movie, it's not even funny.

Leave a fandom in my askbox

#I get the hate towards tom but I dont hate him #annoyed? yes... but no hate #triple frontier #frankie morales #benny miller #will miller #santiago garcia #tom davis #leave a fandom in my askbox

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oogaboogasphincter · 3 years

Text

Kinktober Day 25

💜my kinktober masterlist

pairing: frankie morales x f!reader

prompt: breeding🧡titty fucking🧡breath play (prompt list by @the-purity-pen)

rating: E (explicit) 18+ only!

word count: 800+

warnings: pairing is in an established relationship, food/eating mention, swearing, dirty talk, appearances by santi, yovanna and the millers, talk of body image issues, no actual sex takes place here frankie is just a horny, yearning, sweet dumbass, talk about having kids/being pregnant bc this is breeding kink day, mention of lactation kink bc i’m feral, reader is afab and uses she/her pronouns

author’s note: i apologize that this is kinda all over the place. +if any man said what frankie says to reader in the beginning of this just know that i would punch them in the throat. but since it’s 💜frankie💜 i’m all like omg you’re so silly💗

gif by @theredviper

Your holiday dinner had been a fantastic success. Santi’s household - the venue for your gathering - had a significantly warmer energy now that Yovanna had moved in with him. There was no doubt in any of your minds that she made his house a home, replacing the barren bachelor pad that had the television sitting on the floor and a fridge only filled with alcohol and half-empty take out containers. Never did you think that this man would have furniture that matched, but she made it a reality.

Benny and Will had brought the meat, while Santi and Yovanna provided the setting: a wide, long dining table; burgundy linens; fairy lights and candles that created a soft, arguably romantic, glow around the table. Frankie and yourself happily brought the majority of the food, ranging from charred asparagus to dark chocolate cake. The night was filled with laughter and joy, catching up with all your friends and cracking jokes while enjoying your shared meal. The only thing that cured your sadness from leaving was Frankie’s promise of cuddles all night long (even though he did this every night already).

At home, changing into your pajamas, your naked reflection in the mirror catches your eye. Stuffed with love, your stomach bulges out from your frame in a swell. You chuckle, turning to Frankie and cradling your bloat, “Look at my food baby.”

He raises his eyebrows and returns your laughter, running a hand over his own belly, “Yours rivals my permanent one.” Frankie always feels insecure about the roundness of his lower abdomen, but you try your best to make him see it how you do. When you go down on him, before reaching his throbbing cock, you pepper loving kisses around his tummy. With your head in his lap during cuddles, you turn and sweetly nuzzle your nose into his softness.

Shaking yourself out of your trance, you catch Frankie staring at you in the mirror, “What?”

His sleepy eyes rake up and down your form, keeping to you as he slips his boxers on, “Nothing, it’s just..... you would look really hot pregnant.”

You feign offense with a slack jaw, raised eyebrows and a gasp, “Fuck you.”

He giggles, “No, I’m serious. My sweetheart growing my child.....”

He makes his way over to you, running his rough, strong, gentle hands along your shoulders, collarbone; trailing down your stomach, ending by cupping you in between your legs.

“When I breed you, baby, I’m going to cum in you until your womb can’t hold any more and it leaks out of your pussy.”

“Holy fuck, Frankie,” you’re awestruck by his fantasy. Where the hell did this raging kink come from?

“When it drips down your thighs, I’ll want to collect it with my fingers and push it back into you. If your pussy can’t take it, I’ll spread it on your ass or I’ll make you swallow it. I want my seed in all of your holes, honey.”

Frankie’s usually soft spoken, quiet, even with you. This descriptive language is telling of just how crazy this dream is driving him. His fingers skate up to your chest, your heartbeat fluttering and warm under his touch. He cups your breasts, skimming the pads of his thumbs over your peaked nipples, “I get hard just thinking about these tits swelling with sweet, frothy milk to help our child grow.”

Your widened, adoring eyes stare at his face, fixated on your chest. You explore a potential corner of his fantasy, “I want you to drink from me too, baby.”

Wrinkles in his boxers twitch as his cock jerks at the thought. His cheeks pull up in a smile, “You’ll have to limit me. I don’t want to steal from our baby and I might not be able to stop myself once that taste hits my mouth.”

You both laugh, but your lungs clip off in a gasp when he pinches the hard buds. A pitfall reveals itself to you, “I won’t want you to stop fucking me once your cum takes hold.”

He shakes his head, patting your hair, “Oh, sweet thing. My tongue will be lapping in between your legs every fucking day if you’ll let me. And I’ll do some research. Learn how to fuck you good without harming either one of you.”

He sighs, “Little amalgamations of us running around the house, giggling with each other..... sweetheart, that’ll be my heaven.”

A hand comes up to cup his scruffy cheek, “They’ll have great smiles, but they’ll be even greater if they get your teeth. No braces needed.”

“If they have your eyes I’ll be in trouble,” he says, “They’ll ask me for everything because I won’t be able to put up a fight if they give me those sparklers.”

💘taglist: @pascalpanic

#tppkinktober2021 #kinktober 2021 #frankie 'catfish' morales x reader #frankie morales #frankie ‘catfish’ morales #frankie morales x f!reader #frankie morales x reader #frankie ‘catfish’ morales x f!reader #pedro pascal characters #kinktober

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supernaturalgirl20 · 3 years

Text

This Love (part two)

Pairings: Frankie Morales x reader

Warnings: Smut 18+, p in v smut, cursing, fluff, fighting.

Summary: Months after admitting your feelings for each other, your relationship with Frankie is stronger than ever. Helena makes a decision that could tear it all down. All good things must come to an end. Right?!

*comments and reblogs appreciated*

You grab the sheet tightly in your hand, a moan escaping your swollen lips.

“Oh god….baby don’t stop…just like that.”

You move your hand to grab at his hair, tugging it harder as you near your release. Almost. Almost. Suddenly his mouth is off you and you sigh in frustration.

“Frankie, baby, I was almost there. Why did you stop. You can’t just wake me up like that and then leave me all wound up.”

He laughs, kissing his way up your thigh, over your stomach and finally meeting your lips in a searing kiss. He grabs his thick cock and strokes himself twice before lining up at your core. In one swift motion he is buried to the hilt inside you, filling you completely. You let out a loud moan.

“Shhhh baby, you gotta be quiet, don’t want to wake Sophia.”

It’s slow, almost lazy and you can feel every ridge, every vein on his thick member. God you love sleepy morning sex with Frankie.

“Didn’t……thrust….let….thrust….you come….before….wanted…ugh….come on…fuck…my cock.”

“Oh god Frankie….harder…please…..too slow.”

With that Frankie began pounding into you over and over. Hitting that sweet spot inside you every time. Your whole body was in ecstasy as you came loudly soaking his cock. With one final grunt Frankie spilled himself into you. He slowly pulled out and went to the en-suite to get a cloth and cleaned you up. Getting back into bed he lays down and pulls you into him.

“God I fucking love you baby.”

“I love you to.” You snuggle into his side.

“So what are the plans today?” He says as he runs his fingers up and down your spine.

“Well Santi is having that barbecue tonight, show off his new girl.”

“Damn forgot about that. Do we have to go?” He says snuggling closer

“Yes, or Santi will come over rip you a new one.”

There is a knock at your door before Sophia comes barrelling in. Jumping on the bed, she leaps on top of Frankie.

“Oof, bebita you gotta go easy, daddy is getting old now” he says tickling her. Once he releases her she crawls over to you.

“Morning baby, have a good sleep?”

“Yeah, am I staying with my abuala today?”

“Yeah baby and your going to stay for a sleepover, is that ok?”

“Yeaah” she hops down and rushes out of the room.

You turn to look at Frankie to find he already has his eyes on you, a look of adoration on his face.

“What?”

“Your just….so good with her, you’ve always been an amazing mother to her, it gets me thinking.”

“Oh no, don’t hurt yourself”, you say laughing.

“Oh you’ve done it now,” he says moving on top of you tickling you.

“Stop…..Frankie please….I can’t take it.” He stops and just stares down at you.

“Let’s have a baby!” Your shocked, having not expected this conversation today.

“Before you say anything, I’ve wanted this with you since that night at the bar. Your amazing with Sophia and she isn’t even yours, you would be an amazing mom. Imagine a mini me or you and Sophia would be the best if sister.” He was rambling now and you decided to put a stop to this, so you kissed him.

“Frankie…”

“It’s ok…we can talk about it again further down the line..” He goes to move off of you but you pull him back. You place your hands either side of his head, looking him deep in the eyes “is this what you really want?”

“Yes, I want it all with you baby.”

“Ok.”

“Ok? As in we’re going to have a baby ok?

“Yes Frankie we can try for a baby.” He plants kisses all over your face, “I love you, your going to be a hot mama, all swollen with my baby inside you.”

“Ok slow down there cowboy, our eldest is awake now and could walk in any minute.”

“Tonight,” he says wiggling his eyebrows at you. He’s dressed and out the door to Sophia before you know it. Lying back on the bed you run your hand down to your stomach, imagining what it will be like carrying Frankie’s baby. You can’t help the smile that spreads over your face.

****

Arriving at Santi’s that evening, Frankie is beaming, his arm wrapped around your waist.

“Hermano, glad you could make it, and Y/N, looking stunning as always.” He goes to kiss your cheek but Frankie stops him, “eh no funny stuff, hijo de puta.” They both laugh and hug each other.

“So where is this girl Pope? Or is she all in your head.”

“Nah, she’ll be here soon you’ll see.”

Walking towards the backyard, you spot the Miller brothers arguing over the bbq.

“You got to put it on like this..”

“Hey I know how to cook, back off benny.” Laughing at their antics you walk towards your sister.

“Hey, someone seems extra cheerful tonight”, she says nodding towards Frankie.

“Is he, I hadn’t noticed.” Smiling into your beer.

“You gave him a blowjob on the way over here?”

“He wishes, no we had a chat this morning about the future.”

“Omg…aah, he proposed, I knew it, wait until I tell Will.”

“What that’s not what…”

“Benny owes me 100 .”

“Wait what? You guys bet on this?”

“Ugh…yeah. Come on it’s you and Frankie, I bet he had the ring picked out years ago.”

“Oook, well as much as I would love to be engaged to Frankie, that’s not it.”

“Oh! Well what has him smiling like the cat that got the cream.”

“We’re going to try for a baby.”

“Aaahhhh, I’m going to be an auntie.”

“Keep it down, I’m not pregnant yet.”

Frankie makes his way over to you both, sits down beside you and pulls you into him.

“Hey Jen, how was Mexico?”

“Oh it was amazing, and the food, ugh, I’ve book it again for next year.”

****

Pope’s girl as it turned out, was Yovanna from that job in Colombia. It was a little tense at first but the guys warmed up. As the night was drawing to a close there was a knock at the door. Pope went to answer it and when he came back Frankie went stiff beside you. You turn to him and his face, it was like he saw a ghost. You follow his gaze to see Helena standing in the door to the patio.

“Helena what are you doing here?”

“Not that’s it’s any of your business, but I’m here to see Francisco.” If looks could kill she would be dead from the looks Jen was given her. You move your hand to Frankie thigh and give him a reassuring squeeze. He looks to you and his face softens.

“I gotta go talk to her baby, I owe her that much.”

“You owe her nothing Frankie.”

“Maybe not but I owe it to Sophia, she is still her mother.” Frankie stands and makes his way towards her.

Pope comes to sit beside you, “hermosa are you ok?”

“What if she wants him back Santi? I can’t lose him or Sophia, it would break me.”

“Hey, now you know Fish is smitten with you, your the love of his life, she may be Sophia’s biological mother but your her mom.” You curl into him trying not to cry.

Suddenly raised voices can be heard from inside. Pope turns to you, “hermosa I think you should go in there.”

You leave the group and make your way to Frankie and the closer you get you can make out what’s being said.

“Oh so your going to let that whore raise my daughter, I don’t think so.”

“No. You do not call her that, Y/N is not a whore, that women is my everything and she’s more a mother to Sophia than you will ever be. You abandoned us, don’t forget that, because I never will. If you want to start seeing Sophia, we can discuss it with a lawyer but don’t think for one second that there will ever be anything between you and me, because there won’t. I’ve moved on, I’m happy, I am going to marry Y/N and we are going to build a home together.”

“Oh come on, Francisco…..baby, your telling me you don’t want a piece of this anymore, you don’t want to fuck me again.” Having heard enough you open the door and Frankie pushes Helena off of him. He comes to stand beside you, wrapping his arm around your waist. “Get out Helena, your embarrassing yourself.”

“Fuck you Francisco, this isn’t over.” With that she storm out, slamming he door behind her.

“Baby are you ok?” Frankie turns to you and pulls you into a kiss.

“Yeah baby, I’m fine, I love you.”

“I love you too. She can’t take Sophia away, what are we going to do?”

“Hey , look at me baby, I’m not going to let that happen ok. It’s me, you and Sophia against the world, always.”

“And maybe one more?” You stare at him lovingly and move his hand down towards your stomach.

“Well then we better get working on that then,” he says peppering kisses all over your face.

“Actually..” He pulls back and looks at you expectantly

“Are you…are we…”

“Yeah, we’re about to become a family of four”. Frankie lifts you up and spins you around. “You have just made this old man very happy. I love you, both of you, he says placing his hand back on your stomach.

“Wait until we tell Sophia .”

Previous part

Tagging:

@lunaserenade @asta-lily @day-off-inkyoto @librariantothejedi @anaaaispunk @elinedjarin @maievdenoir @kirsteng42 @loserrlauraa @thorins-queen-of-erebor @dihra-vesa @javierpinme @seasonschange-butpeopledont

*if you want to be added or removed let me know*

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x reader #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales x f!reader

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mandoalorian · 4 years

Text

Touch Starved [Frankie Morales x Reader]

Summary: You and your best friend Frankie Morales have had silent feelings for each other since the day you met. No one could’ve ever guessed the strange circumstance which occurred one fateful night, and how the proceeding events would be the push you needed to take your friendship to the next level.

Word count: 6k (what the heck this is the longest piece i’ve ever written BY FAR)

Rating: 18+ only.

Warnings: SMUT, thigh riding, oral (m and f receiving), alcohol consumption/intoxication, food/drink mention, lot of pining over each other and just some general fluff

Author’s Note: This is my first ever Frankie fic anddddd my first ever smut lol. Please be kind I hope you enjoy. PS if you want a part two let me know! xx

MASTERLIST | Submit your requests HERE

•••

Your eyes were heavy and you shuffled into the cushion, adjusting your position on the couch until you felt more comfortable. You grazed your fingers against the pages of your book, but found yourself re-reading the same sentence over and over again in attempt to keep yourself awake. Even your two scented candles were close to burning out, and you figured it was time for bed.

Gently dropping the book on the floor, you closed your eyes and felt yourself drift off into a dreamy sleep when a loud bang on your door woke you up with a jolt. Your heart was pounding as you bolted upright, clutching the thin wooled blanket that was lazily draped around your body in fear. Within seconds, you heard another bang on the door. Rubbing your eyes, you flicked on your phone and checked the time. 11-48pm. Almost midnight. You groaned, standing up and padding to the front door of your apartment. Who could possibly want to see you at this hour? You wondered. Not even bothering to check through the peephole, you let out an elongated groan.

“Who is it?” You called out and rubbed your tired eyes. You ran your fingers through your hair in hope that you would look somewhat presentable for when you greeted your uninvited visitor.

Without hesitation you heard him. A voice you were so familiar with. “It’s Frankie, man! You gotta let me in!” you noted that his voice sounded urged and your stomach filled with concern. Was he alright? Why was he at your apartment at 11-48pm? A million thoughts raced through your mind in just the second it took you to open the door. The thought of Frankie being here made you nervous, but excited. In a fluster, you stumbled with the door lock before finally managing to get it open.

There he was. His dark brown waves were tucked into one of his infamous baseball caps and he was wearing a dark green flannel and a washed out pair of denim jeans. You tried to search for answers in his face, but he truly seemed fine, other than the slight panic in his voice. He slid past you, allowing himself into your apartment and began pacing around.

“Would you like a drink?” You asked, almost rhetorically. Frankie didn’t answer, nor did he need to. You were already clicking open the bottle of ice cold Bud and handing it over to him. He took a big sip out of the alcoholic beverage, and you took the liberty of admiring him as he done so. He wasn’t watching you anyway, but instead focusing on downing the drink. That's what he needed. A drink to wash away his worries. How could he ever explain this to you?

You loved the way his chocolate brown eyes shone under the candlelight and the way his skin looked almost soft and golden. You waited patiently for him to finish drinking, never wanting to hurry him.

Frankie appreciated the atmosphere of your apartment too. He always had. It made a change from his current living situation. Frankie wasn’t picky as such, but living with his four best guy friends definitely had its downfalls. Whether that be Ben constantly hogging the living room television to play his Call of Duty video games, or Santiago bringing home a different lady every other night, making such noise that nobody but Will could sleep, or even Tom with his untidy behaviour and complete disregard for everyone else who lived with him. It wasn't great but what other choice did Frankie have? Other than you. You didn’t feel like a choice to him, you felt like a necessity. He needed you. You were his safe place, and your chic apartment felt more like home than his shabby downtown place.

“I gotta ask you a favour.” Frankie prompted eventually, sliding down into the cream faux-leather sofa and placing his bottle of beer on the coffee table. You took a seat in the chair opposite him and folded your arms, waiting for him to continue. “Actually, I don’t know. Never mind. Uhm… it’s a funny story to be honest. But, maybe it’s fine. It’s not fine. It’s just, well-”

“Spit it out Frankie!” You giggled jokingly, reaching over and nudging him slightly. He was immediately put at ease by just the simplest brush of your fingers, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with you. He found himself staring into the burning flame of your cinnamon scented candle. He felt mildly ashamed about how this whole situation had even surfaced in the first place.

“Me and Santi… we had a bet. A dare kinda thing.” Frankie explained, shuffling around with discomfort. He was definitely embarrassed that he had driven himself all the way to your apartment in the dead of night just to tell you this— or rather, ask you this. “The guys were teasing, you know how they are. About how- well, you know, I’ve never really been with a girl since…” Frankie paused.

“Marià.” You sighed, and Frankie nodded slowly. “Your ex wife…”

“Yeah. And I know it’s crazy but after the divorce and everything… I just haven’t really uh, had the opportunity. I mean I’ve had the opportunity it’s just- never felt right. I suppose. And you know, it’s not that I don’t want to start dating again. Or seeing women. Sleeping with wo-” Frankie was about to start rambling about his sex life (or lack there of) and you were not prepared to let your mind journey there. Not that you had never thought about it before… no. He was your best friend. And it would be wrong. Besides, Frankie had a tendency to over share but you were always there to help him get back on track, whereas others, namely the guys, would tease and mock him for it.

“Why are you here, Frankie?” You cut him off with as much delicacy as you could muster up. Your voice was soft, and Frankie noticed how gentle you had always been with him.

“Santi said he bet I couldn’t ask a girl out if I tried,” Frankie explained with a short sigh and you frowned. You knew Santiago well and you knew that he and Frankie were like brothers, but Frankie had been through a lot lately and Santiago never really had the best choice of words. You wondered if he had hurt Frankie, and instantly felt defensive over your friend.

“And then what happened?”

“I told Santi I could get a girl, and then, this afternoon, he asked me how I had come on. I lied, told him I asked out a pretty girl. He asked me about her and well, the girl I described… I guess… in my head I was just picturing you.” Frankie said, and finally glanced up at you, his pretty eyes shimmering in the dim light. You felt your heart rate increase at his revelation. “You know? It’s funny. This made up girl looks just like you.” He chuckled lightly. Your silence was deafening and his stomach filled with anxiety. “I don’t know why!” he assured but that was a lie. He knew why. He was your first thought at the start of the day you were his last thought at the end of the day. Every moment he got, he was thinking about you— pining over you.

“Oh,” you whispered, unable to process any more words. You weren’t sure what to make of it. You brushed away your feelings, thinking that you only came to Frankie’s mind because you saw him so much. You were the only girl he really hung out with.

“Of course Santi didn’t believe me. I’m a terrible liar. You know that. But I really don’t want the guys to catch me out on this! It’s so embarrassing.” Frankie was exasperated. You took to your feet and walked over to him, falling back on the sofa and resting your hand on Frankie’s forearm. To Frankie, your touch was like electricity.

“You do not need to be ashamed of something like this Frankie,” you assured him. Frankie took off his cap and ran his fingers through his brown locks.

“I know I know,” he sighed before looking back at you. “Santi wants to meet this fake girl. He’s been seeing Yovanna again and he’s organised a double date kind of thing. For him, Yo, myself and well… I'm hoping, you.”

You blinked hard. “Wait,” you paused. “You want to go on a date with me?”

This had to be dream. Had you just fallen asleep on the sofa? You pinched yourself and checked the wall clock above the television. Only a few minutes had ticked by. Definitely not a dream.

“Fake date.” Frankie corrected and you felt your heart sink slightly.

Or maybe it was a nightmare.

You shuffled around, not knowing how to feel. “Uhm, Frankie… I’m not sure…” you hesitated. All you had wanted for so long was to go on a date with Frankie. A real date. You had been dreaming about the day he would ask you out since you first met him, but this wasn’t what you had pictured at all.

“Please,” Frankie begged, clasping his hands together in a pleaing manner. “Just pretend to be my date.”

And how could you ever say no to Frankie Morales’ puppy dog eyes?

The night of the date, you and Frankie had agreed to meet at the restaurant. You hadn’t really discussed anything prior, but this date, albeit fake, was all you could think about. Every chance you had, you were thinking about Frankie. You wondered how it would be, pretending to be his date. And equally, Frankie was thinking the same.

He struggled to catch any sleep, and instead would lay in his bed staring at the ceiling. He wondered how to fake a date. He didn’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable and he simply hadn’t dated anyone in so long. He was so sure that he would embarrass himself, and that you’d never want to talk to him again.

Frankie, Santiago and Yovanna were already sitting around the restaurant table before you arrived. It was a quaint little Italian place on the coast and it had the most beautiful evening view. The sky was darkening and there wasn't a cloud in sight, but instead, pearly white stars pierced the velveteen abyss above and it looked like something straight out of a romance movie. The environment was perfect. The place was slightly out of the usual burger joint budget for Frankie and Santiago, but Yovanna insisted on the high-end restaurant, and even Frankie had to admit it would be nice to eat some good quality food for a change.

You weren’t late, but rather Frankie, Santiago and Yovanna were early. Frankie had already downed three bottles of beer before you arrived, trying to wash away his nerves. By the time you came, he was already slightly intoxicated. His ease was all that mattered and besides, Frankie was a happy drunk.

When Frankie saw you enter the restaurant, it was like his whole world stopped. He always thought you were beautiful, but tonight he was looking at you in a whole different light. You weren’t in your usual sweats and hoodie, and truthfully he had never seen you like this before. Your little black dress hugged your body in all the right places, and your matching heels clicked against the marble floor as you padded over to the table. You felt a blush creep upon your cheeks when you caught Santi gawking.

“Whoa, you clean up well!” Santiago complimented, looking you up and down, grinning ecstatically.

Frankie tried to keep his cool, but he couldn’t take his eyes off you. He took in your bare legs and how fine they looked in your dress, and he admired the way you had styled your hair. It was out of your face, and he appreciated that, because now he could infatuate himself over your features. You wore minimal makeup, but your eyeshadow accentuated your eye colour and your choice of lip gloss plumped your lips slightly. Frankie’s eyes went from being drawn to your legs, to now your lips, and he cursed himself for the thoughts he was thinking. Fake date. He reminded himself; but he couldn't help but question— what if it was real? If he could, he’d take you in his arms right then and there and kiss you.

You took your seat next to Yovanna and opposite Frankie, trying to remain as nonchalant as possible, but as you felt Frankie’s eyes burn into you, electricity sparked in your in your lower stomach. A certain kind of excitement. You pushed it away the best you could, focusing on reading the menu in front of you and deciding on the food you would order. Frankie pushed over a vibrant purple drink in a cocktail glass. “I got you your favourite,” Frankie smiled, and you felt your heart flutter. “I hope you don’t mind.”

You smiled and took a sip, but scrunched up your nose when the strong taste of vodka hit. “Um, sweetie,” You thought that tonight you would have to force out the pet names but it came so naturally. “How many shots are in here?”

“It’s a treble.” Frankie bit his lip, watching you with intent as you took another sip. His heart blossomed at the little name you called him.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?!” you gasped playfully and Frankie offered you another warm smile. “I don’t mind. Actually, I need it. Had a bad day at work.” you explained.

“It was Santi’s idea.” he admitted and Santiago innocently raised his hands in response. Frankie reached over the table, taking your hands in his and brushing his thumbs over your knuckles. You felt a shiver run down your spine at his touch. “Bad day?” he furrowed his eyebrows together, concern peaking in his gentle voice.

“Talk about it later.” you promised. Frankie brought your hands to his lips and kissed them softly. You had to stop yourself from swooning on the spot. Your heart began to pick up speed again and at this point, you were finding it difficult to remember that this was all fake.

As the four of you ate your food, you and Frankie were flirting all night; playing footsie under the table and exchanging dirty jokes. At one point, you accidentally ran your heel up his leg and he let out an accidental groan, fillet mignon almost spilling out his mouth. You hurled with laughter and his cheeks rosied up in embarrassment. Both you and Frankie were enjoying yourself way more than you had ever even considered.

“Wait,” you spluttered out in a fluster of giggles. You were still laughing at one of Frankie’s jokes. “Yovanna and Santi have gone home.” You noticed, pointing your finger at the empty seats next to yourself and Frankie.

“Oh yeah,” Frankie replied. “And we didn’t even notice.” He burst into laughter again and you followed, the alcohol really letting you both lose your inhibitions. “That bastard left me with his and Yovanna’s bill too.” Frankie shook his head in disbelief.

“Let me help you pay,” you unzipped your purse but Frankie put his hand out and stopped you.

“Don’t worry baby, this is on me.” Frankie promised and offered you a cheeky wink.

Santiago and Yovanna were gone. They had no one to prove their fake date to— and yet, exchanging flirtatious comments were simply too fun to stop.

“Okay,” you laughed, taking a gulp of red wine. You were sure the warm liquid must have stained your lips crimson with how much you had drunk, but you weren’t too concerned. “But next time, I’m paying.”

“There’s going to be a next time?" Frankie asked you hopefully.

“Isn’t there?” you returned a smile. “This was the best fake date I’ve ever been on.” You and Frankie let out a boisterous laugh, even catching the attention of other couples who were sitting around you trying to enjoy their romantic candlelit dinners.

“Touché,” he agreed, taking out his wallet and signing a check before clipping it to the bill and standing up. He took your hand, pulling you forward but you stumbled to your feet, falling into his chest. He was so broad and his arms were so big. Your feelings for him picked up a notch and you were unsure how long you could keep up the charade of pretending you saw him as just a friend.

You thought about how strong he was, barely flinching when you fell into him, and honestly, it turned you on. He slung his hands around your waist, slowly pushing you off his, but even when you weren’t resting on him anymore, he kept his big hands around you as you left the restaurant and walked through the parking lot to Frankie’s truck. You were grateful because without him guiding you and steadying you, you’d probably struggle to even reach the truck.

The close proximity between you and him made Frankie overwhelmed, his palms getting clammy and his cock hardening from your scent alone. Everything felt so intense. The cool night air took his breath away and he loved the way he could feel the shape of your body through your dress. He craved more.

He hoped that in the darkness of the night, you hadn’t noticed his throbbing length under his jeans. He slid into the driver seat of the car and you sat next to him, strapping yourself in. Frankie turned the key and as you set off, you both sat there in silence. Silence around Frankie was never uncomfortable, but this wasn’t a situation you were used to. It was a big difference to the environment in the bustling restaurant, but now it was just you two, alone, in his car— and you could cut the sexual tension with a knife.

“Come home with me.” You said eventually, not moving an inch and still looking at the road ahead. You managed to find the confidence, but you weren’t yet able to bring yourself to look him in the eye. He was your best friend. And you realised that what you were asking of him was a lot.

Frankie wasn’t put off, in fact, he felt his cock twitch at your words and he had to suppress a moan from escaping his lips. Did you really want him to take you home? As if on cue, you continued your proposal.

“Stay the night.” This verified Frankie’s thoughts and you hoped he had got the hint. You looked up into the rear view mirror and watched Frankie as he concentrated on driving, his body completely tensed up. He didn’t say a word, but when he detoured, you knew he was taking you back to your apartment. You wanted to calm him. Relax him. Soothe him. You let your fingers grace his jean clad leg, accidentally brushing over his erection. Frankie cursed under his breath. “S-sorry.” you mumbled, feeling your face flush. He was already hard. You crossed your legs tight together, trying to ignore the way your cunt was already dripping for him.

“No,” Frankie said. “Was good. Felt good.” his grip on the steering wheel tightened as you contemplated his words. He liked it. You moved your hand over his crotch again and began to palm him as he drove. He felt so constricted in his jeans and he couldn’t wait to get them off. It wasn’t long before his vision began to feel hazy under your touch but luckily he soon pulled up in front of your apartment. You removed your hand from his leg and let yourself out of the truck, feeling dazed also, and hurried inside. Frankie followed, loosing his belt as he stepped foot into the building. He was throbbing and in such desperate need of relief.

You pressed the button and waited for the elevator to come. By the time Frankie caught up with you, it was here, and the pair of you stepped inside. As the doors began to close on you, Frankie crashed his lips onto yours, pushing his body against you. This time it was his turn to touch you. His rough manner made you gasp but you needed to feel his body against yours. You let his hands explore you, his fingers rolling over the curves of your breasts and the dips in your waist. Within seconds, the elevator door opened with a ping and you had reached the floor of your apartment. Hungrily, you grabbed Frankie by the collar of his shirt and dragged him to your front door, unlocking it with haste. Once you were inside, you turned to shut the door behind you when Frankie pinned you against it. His hands were on your wrists and your arms were spread out over the wood. He pressed a kiss into your jaw. “You want this?” his voice was rough and barely above a whisper, and his manner made your knees weak. He was so close to you, you could smell the beer mixed with his fragrance.

You didn’t dare move, but instead mewled out a tiny “yes”. Frankie smirked and turned you around so he could look at you in the eyes. He still had a hold of you, his grip was as tight as vice and his eyes were no longer the usual shade of honeyed brown but instead were much darker and lustful with a predatory glint. He kissed you again, hard, and his tongue swiped along your lower lip, begging for entry which you quickly granted. It was easy to get lost in the kiss; he was so good and so passionate. He worked his hands all over your body, pulling the occasional moan from your lips. Hearing the noises you made felt like music to his ears. You felt his hardened manhood press against the inside of your thigh and you shuddered, breaking the kiss to regain your breath. “Bedroom.” you mumbled out. You took Frankie’s hand and dragged him through the living room and into your small bedroom. He sat himself down on the edge of your bed and began to kick off his shoes when you took him by surprise and straddled him, wrapping your legs around him and initiating another heated kiss.

You needed some kind of release and on impulse, you began to grind yourself over Frankie’s denim clad leg. Your heart was racing as you rubbed yourself over the material, a fire burning deep in your stomach at the friction between the jeans and the thin silk panties you were sporting. Frankie placed a soft kiss to your lips, along your jaw, and down your neck as you began to get yourself off on him. He bit down gently, leaving his mark, wanting to claim you as his own. “Mine.” His voice was dark and you grabbed his shoulders, grinding on his leg harder.

“Yours.” You shakily exhaled, trying to keep your composure. You shuffled forward, further onto him and started rubbing yourself over his erection, pulling a groan from his lips, and you couldn’t help but smile knowing that this was your doing. You kept at it, enjoying the control, and watched Frankie’s eyes close from the sensation as you grinded over him.

“Yeah baby that’s it,” he praised. “Take what you need.”

Those four words threw you over the edge. You reached up, letting your fingers tangle in Frankie’s chocolate coloured locks of hair, tugging at them as you rode out your high. He opened his eyes, watching you as you dropped your head back, seeing stars. You were truly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Feeling satisfied, you scrambled off him, your legs shaky and he grabbed the hem of your dress. He began to pull it off you as eagerly as he could. Frankie noticed the damp patch on his leg from your wetness and muttered another curse. You were so wet and it was all for him. He looked up at you, watching you kick your dress to one side and felt his jaw tick. He was mesmerised by your body. In only your panties, you straddled him once more, and Frankie let his hands roam over your breasts, giving them the occasional squeeze.

“My turn.” you told him, pulling his shirt over his head and pushing him into the blankets of your bed. He let out a soft groan as his head hit your pillow and you shuffled backwards a little. You unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped them before pulling them down to his ankles. Frankie kicked them off and they pooled into a pile amongst his shirt and your dress at the bottom of the bed. A little gasp escaped your lips when you eyed up his hardened length under the thin cloth of his boxer shorts, a small patch of wetness already visible. You dipped your hands into his underwear and pulled him out, licking your lips at the sight of his precum beading at the tip.

You let your fingers wander his length, teasingly, making sure you were as soft as possible. Then, you pulled away and spat into your hand. You wrapped your hand around his cock and began pumping at it. “Ngh, s-so good,” Frankie grunted, closing his eyes as you worked at him. “Haven’t-haven’t been touched in so long.”

“Relax,” you soothed. “Let me take care of you.”

Frankie bucked his hips further into your hand and you kept going. His eyes fluttered shut and his mind was in a solid state of euphoria. This was better than he had ever imagined and he knew he wouldn’t last long. You stroked him up and down and watched him as he came undone beneath you.

“Wanted this for so long,” he admits mindlessly. “Imagined this, so many nights… imagined your pretty lips around my-”

You cut Frankie off by taking his length in your mouth and pushing as deep as you could, opening your throat up to him and gagging slightly from his length. However, it didn’t take long to become comfortable with the way his cock filled you. He let out a gasp, his back arching and his fists grabbing the bed sheets. You bobbed your head up and down and he took a fistful of your hair, only encouraging you further.

He raised his head and watched you take him. Your hand still wet, you begin to pump the remaining length of him that you couldn’t fit into your mouth and he shudders in ecstasy. With your free hand, you cradle his balls, rubbing circles with your thumb and you can feel him almost lose it completely.

“Won’t last,” he warns you. “Please, wanna be inside you. Wanna feel your pussy.” he practically begs and as soon as you feel his cock twitch in your mouth, you pull off him, leaving a trail of your saliva between your tongue and his length.

You admired Frankie’s naked body spread out in your bed, a thin sheen of sweat glazing over his chest. It was a sight you had only dreamed about. He sat up and grabbed you by the waist, pulling you down so now he was on top. He positioned himself in between your legs and gently spread them apart, eyeing up the dark patch in the crotch of your panties from where you had previously orgasmed on his leg. He let his finger glide over the material, rubbing against the bud of your clit and you whimpered in desperation. “So wet for me.” he drew out. “Can I taste?” he asked, looked up at you with his big brown eyes. You wanted to smack that innocent look he had playing on his face.

“Frankieee.” you cried out. You would never, ever deny oral from Frankie but right now you craved something else. “Need you inside me. Please.”

Frankie pulled your panties down your legs and threw them to the floor. “Oh baby,” he moaned, running his fingers through your slick wet folds. “I’m just warming up.” his voice was like honey and he attached his mouth to your clit, sucking intently. You threw your head back at the sensation and felt his mustache and stubble tickle you as he worked your core.

This was better than anything Frankie had ever dreamed about. He needed to taste every drop of your arousal. He had wanted this for so long, and now it was finally happening. He wanted to savour every moment like it was his last. After all, you two were the best of friends and he didn’t know where exactly you’d stand about all of this tomorrow. If you’d even want to see him again. You were both risking a lot but somehow, it felt worthwhile.

Frankie found it difficult to remain composed as he devoured you and felt your body shake as you neared your climax. He grabbed your thighs, steadying you as you let out a wail. “Please Frankie.” you cried out, tears threatening to spill from your eyes. “Need you inside of me.” You reminded, tugging on his hair even harder. He took his finger and grazed your entrance while still working his tongue against you. “Stop teasing.”

For once, Frankie listened to you and pulled his lips away from you. He thought he could cum just from eating you out and he didn’t want that to happen. This could be his only chance. You groaned in frustration at the break of contact. You were so close and he had edged you completely before pulling away. You had asked for it. He was such a tease. Frankie hovered himself over you and pressed a kiss to your forehead. You felt his cock nudge against your core and you dug your fingernails into his back. You needed him now.

“Do you have a condom?” Frankie whispered into your ear. He hadn’t brought any to the fake date because truthfully, he didn’t expect the night would be ending like this.

“I’m safe.” you promised him and he smiled, kissing your lips. You laced your fingers into his hair as he steadied himself on the bed.

“Are you ready?” Frankie questioned, nudging his cock over your entrance again causing you to let out a wail.

“Please Frankie. I’m ready.”

The second those two words left your lips, Frankie thrusted deep inside you. You gasped as he slowly adjusted himself inside of you and, still experiencing your high from when he ate you out, you knew you wouldn't ask long. He felt your walls tighten around him and he knew it too.

“I’m gonna cum.” you warned him, tugging on his curls at the nape of his neck and pulling his head down into your collarbones. He pinched at your skin with his teeth and increased his speed.

“Cum for me.” He instructed, his voice dark. With a few more sloppy thrusts, you came undone beneath him, dragging your nails down his back. He didn’t stop and continued to thrust into you as you climaxed causing small screams to emit from your lips. Frankie loved the little noises you made.

“Shit,” he whispered, his coarse hands finding and massaging your breasts. “Your cunt gets so tight when you cum.”

“Frankieeee, keep doing that and I’ll cum again.” you said softly and you felt Frankie’s lips twist into a wicked smirk as he pushed himself deeper inside of you.

“Ngh you feel so good,” Frankie grunted, pearls of sweat beading at his hairline. “Can you cum for me again? Can you give me another one?”

“Yes Frankie,” you obeyed, cupping your hands around his face and forcing him to look you in the eyes while he fucked you. His coarse facial hair grazed your hands but nothing felt as good as his length filling you up, hitting you in just the right spot with each thrust.

“I want you to cum with me,” Frankie gasped, groaning loudly as he felt his cock twitch inside you. He was close, and you could feel it too. “Same time.” he instructed. He was so used to giving orders, that it turned you on even more. “Can you do that for me?” his voice was urged and he kept his pace consistent.

You managed to give him a small nod and closed your eyes feeling nothing but pure bliss and ecstasy. “I’m close!” you managed to cry out.

“Me too, n-not long baby,” Frankie promised you. “Say my name.”

“Fuck Frankie, you fuck me so good. Your cock fills me up so well. Feels so good,” you moaned, your legs tightening around his waist.

“That’s it.” Frankie groaned.

“Cum inside me Frankie,” you gasped. “Pl-please. Need to feel your warm cum inside of me.”

“Gonna count down baby girl,” Frankie said, straightening up and pushing more hard thrusts inside of you. He admired your tangled body between him and brought his thumb to your clit, rubbing at it while he finished fucking you. “Are you ready?”

“Frankieeee.” You cried out, squeezing your eyes shut.

“3, 2,” Frankie pushed one final deep thrust into you. “1.” You and Frankie both came together, your wet cunt squeezing his cock like a vice and his thick ropes of cum spilling inside of you.

Frankie rolled off you and lay next to you. You curled yourself into his damp chest and he slung his arm around you. You felt safe. Protected. You knew that Frankie would never let anyone or anything hurt you but now it felt different. He was your safety, and you were his home. For a few minutes, you both laid there in silence trying to regain your breath and settle down.

“That was-” Frankie started but you cut him off.

“So good.” you smiled and he grinned back in agreement.

“The best.” He replied and gave you a little squeeze of reassurance.

“Hey Frankie?” You asked and he hummed in acknowledgement. “If that was a fake date… what the hell do you do on a fake date?” You raised an eyebrow and giggled when you saw Frankie’s cheeks rosy up.

“Wanna find out?” He beckoned and your grin couldn’t have grown any wider. You were finally going to get your chance to have a real date with Frankie.

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales smut #smut #catfish morales #triple frontier #x reader

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nocturnal-milk-dud · 3 years

Text

Call Me

Pairing: Frankie ‘Catfish’ Morales x Reader (however, you don’t see much of them together this round)

Summary: You go to a party at Benny and Will’s house, where you have to confront your ex, Frankie.

Rating: PG

Warning/notes: it’s all angst, sorry; drinking; swearing; takes place after the events of the movie. What is canon? The song reader sings is “Call Me” by Imelda May; I’m really not sure how I feel about this fic, and you honestly might hate it, but I worked hard on it, so...plus I like the friendship I created between Reader and Benny. There will be a part two. Critiques are welcome.

Word Count: 2451

Tag list: @dodgerandevans @slugbuggie @reading-rosa @bi-son-writes @souls-rain @heythere-mel @pascaliprincess @vanthrefrigeration

The coffee shop was full of people and you let your eyes pass from table to table, enjoying the hum of chatter in your ears. Outside, the fall wind tousled the trees, knocking yellow and orange leaves from their limbs. The barista called out your order and you thanked her, turning to join Benny at the counter.

“Will and I are having a party Friday, you should come,” he said. You were only half listening to him, though, as you tried not to spill the overly full cup all over yourself.

“Huh?” you said, not looking at him.

“Party, Friday, my house, just like the good old days, and you’re going,” Benny said. He took your cup from you and walked over to a table, leaving you standing there with a carafe of creamer in your hand. You glanced at it, then back up at his retreating figure.

“Benjamin…” You sighed down at the carafe before setting it back on the counter.

“I don’t know about the party, Benny,” you said, sitting down across from him.

“It’ll be great! And everybody’s gonna be there.”

“Yeah, everybody,” you said, raising your eyebrows pointedly. Benny ran a hand through his hair and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. Both of you were quiet. You hadn’t really talked to him or Will about what happened, just like neither of them had really talked about what happened when the five of them went to South America and four of them came back. For three people who had known each other since childhood, there were still bridges you couldn’t manage to cross.

“There’s gonna be plenty of people there, you don’t have to talk to him,” Benny said after a moment.

“Just out of curiosity, how am I going to avoid talking to someone who is friends with the same people I’m friends with?” you asked, leaning forward and resting your chin in your hand. Benny mirrored you and the two of you sat in silence while you watched him think.

“We can come up with a code word, or a signal,” he said finally. You let out a dry chuckle and rested against the back of your chair.

“This sounds like a lot of work at something that should involve no work whatsoever,” you said, sipping your coffee. Benny sat back in his chair, propping his ankle up on his knee and pushing up the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

“Just think about it, okay? Please? Will misses you, Pope misses you, I miss you, just...think about it. It won’t be the same without you.”

“Oh yeah? Well, if Will and Pope miss me so much why don’t they ever ask to get coffee?” Benny’s cheeks filled with air and he looked around the coffee shop like someone might answer for him.

“Well, to be fair, Pope did just get back in town.”

“Yeah, and your brother?” Benny pointed out the window suddenly.

“Look, a dog!”

“Really?” you asked. “That’s--you’re gonna try and get out of this by distracting me with a dog?”

“Seriously though, look! You’re gonna miss it.” You did and saw a Saint Bernard lumbering down the sidewalk and your mouth fell open.

“Aww, what a big boy!” You turned back to Benny. “We’re not finished.”

Your phone sat on the bed and you stood there staring down at it, at the cluster of texts from Benny still on the screen, urging you to come to the party. You’d had all week to make a decision, but here you were, pacing your room. You looked over at your cat, Checkers, perched in her spot atop your headboard.

“What do you think?” you asked. She mewed softly in response and returned her attention to whatever fascinated her outside the window.

“You’re biased,” you said, waving her off. You sighed and sat down on the edge of your bed. You wanted to go; wanted to see Will and Santiago. And if you were being honest, you wanted Frankie to see you, and you wanted to act like you had no idea who he was.

“Okay, now I just need to decide what to wear. That should only take another hour.”

People were crowding the Miller’s porch when you pulled up, laughter and cigarette smoke filling the crisp night air. You’d kept your outfit simple, dressing up high-waisted jeans and a crop top with a nice jacket and boots, remembering the moonlit treks you’d sometimes go on along the wooded paths behind the house. The Miller family had carved them out over the years, their own little hiking trail. You stopped walking, almost turning around and going back to your car when you remembered the night you and Frankie “got lost” in the woods. You told the others you’d wandered off the trail. Of course Benny and Will knew it was bullshit: you knew those paths almost as well as they did. After that you couldn’t go into the woods with the two of them without them making jokes.

Reluctantly, you made your way inside, knowing you’d find the guys in the kitchen or the backyard. You felt Benny before you saw him, his arm coming down around your shoulders and pulling you into his side.

“You came!” he said, his voice full of laughter, and you looked at the beer in his hand, wondering how many he’d already had.

“It was either that or watch you blow up my phone the rest of the night,” you said, taking the beer from him. “I need this more than you.” The two of you stepped through the sliding door onto the deck and you spotted Will, Santiago, and Frankie over in the corner, huddled together, talking animatedly. They didn’t see you, so you quickly turned back to Benny, watching him grab a fresh beer from a cooler. You stepped up beside him and rested your arms on the railing, staring at the bottle in your hands.

“I’m not sure this was a good idea,” you said, and Benny rubbed your back reassuringly.

“You never told me what happened between you two,” he said after a moment, and he was right. You hadn’t. You’d had absolutely no desire to. If Fish could forget everything you were to each other, so could you, right?

“He ghosted me, right before you guys left on that disaster of a mission. Nothing, not a word. Didn’t even tell me he was back.” Benny looked confused, like you were talking about someone he didn’t know.

“Fish wouldn’t do that,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but he looked at you like it was, looked at you for reassurance.

“He did.” Your mouth felt dry and you sipped your beer, but it only made it worse.

“I guess I gotta pay up.” You turned when you heard Will and saw him walking towards you with his arms outstretched for a hug. “When Benny said you were coming I told him he was full of shit.”

“Well, he still is,” you said, smiling into Will’s embrace. Santiago was next and you took his face in your hands.

“You look old, Santi,” you said, a grin spreading across your face.

“Yeah, like a fine wine,” he said, pulling you into a hug. “It’s good to see you, bella.”

“How long are you in town for?”

“A couple of weeks. I’m getting a place ready for me and Yovanna--she’s pregnant.” A smile broke out across his face at this piece of news and you embraced him again.

“Oh my God, Pope you’re gonna be a dad! Congratulations! Can you guys believe this?” you said, pulling back to look at Will and Benny.

“Not even a little bit,” Will said, slapping Santiago on the back. Your eyes fell on Frankie then, who came up to stand next to Santiago. You nodded to him, a trace of the joy from Santi’s news still on your face. Frankie opened his mouth to speak, but Benny interrupted, so he put his bottle to his lips like that had been his plan all along.

“Hey, we need some music!” Benny said.

“We have music,” Will said, gesturing inside.

“No,” Benny said, coming over to you and putting his hand on your shoulder. “We need some music.”

“Oh, Benny, no.”

“That’s a great idea! I haven’t heard you two in forever,” Santiago chimed in.

“I mean, you guys have done it at every party, so, won’t really feel like one until you do,” Will added.

“Benjamin,” you started to protest, but it was too late. He already had that gleam in his eye and before you knew it he was running around, telling all the guests to get inside.

The two of you had bonded over music early on, Benny with his guitar and you with your voice. You were always finding songs to perform together. One night at a party very much like this one, Benny convinced you to do a duet by the fire, and it became a tradition at every party since. That was the night you had met Frankie. You’d felt his eyes on you across the fire as you sang and the stirring in your stomach gave the words you sang a new meaning.

Now, you were sitting on the window seat in the living room. Despite the cold, the windows were open and you could hear the chatter from the people on the porch. Benny had rounded up as many people as he could, and you could see Will, Frankie, and Santiago lined up against the wall at the back of the room. You only ever did two or three songs at most. Short things. People lost interest after that and it became too loud to do anything else. The first song that night was a simple little lilting tune. It didn’t ask you for much and put you at ease. You heard the voices settle outside and the room felt warm and cozy. You found yourself smiling at Benny, at the people in front of you, and you felt like things were going to be okay.

“Call Me?” Benny said after the first song was over. You looked at him, eyes wide.

“What?” you asked.

“The next song: Call Me.”

“No, I know that--not that one, Benny, please,” you said, feeling the panic start in your heart, but he was already playing. The lyrics made you want to cry and scream at the same time. They felt pathetic, they made you feel like you were begging, and they snapped your heart in two. They aren’t your words, you told yourself. This isn’t your song. You felt Frankie’s eyes on you and you closed yours.

Don’t you miss me?

Don’t you need me?

Don’t you leave me this way.

Aren’t you lonely?

Don’t you want me?

How many times must I say…

You opened your eyes and they found Frankie’s across the room. The song came to an end, your voice getting smaller with the repetition, and the moment it was over, you ducked out the front door, feeling like you couldn’t breathe.

Frankie hadn’t moved while you sang. He felt like he hadn’t breathed either. After you walked out the door he passed his hand over his face, tugging at the hair on his chin. He’d watched you fight your way through that whole song and he felt sick to his stomach. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get your eyes and the pain they held out of his head. The worst part was knowing that he was responsible for that pain. Frankie set his beer down a little too hard on a table beside the couch and Santiago looked over at him.

“You good?” he asked.

“Yeah, I just need to get some air.”

It took you forever to figure out where you wanted to go, but eventually you found yourself heading into the woods. One of your favorite spots was a wooden bridge passing over a small creek and that’s where you went now. You huddled in on yourself as the heat left your skin and the cold found its way in. Your jacket was inside, still sitting on the window seat, but you had no intention of going back in for it. You’d freeze first. You couldn’t stop yourself from thinking about that first night with Frankie. The two of you had drifted away from the fire and ended up on a blanket in the bed of his truck, staring up at the stars and talking quietly. He’d asked you to sing more for him, too, and he ended up falling asleep like that, listening to you, your fingers in his hair. Even then you were already imagining future nights like that.

“That’s cause you’re fuckin’ stupid,” you whispered to yourself. You heard boots on the wood of the bridge and you looked up to see Frankie walking toward you. Afraid of what your face looked like, even in the moonlight, you turned away quickly, wiping a tear from your cheek. You felt him place his jacket around your shoulders.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“It’s just, after the song in there, you, well, you didn’t look too good and you left so fast, so.” Frankie cleared his throat.

“I needed some air, that’s all,” you said. “It was just a song. Benny picked it because we both knew it, that’s all.” You stopped talking, because the more you talked about it, the more obvious it became that it was more than a song. The silence between the two of you felt so thick, so overwhelming. It was more than you could bear. You passed behind him, heading back toward the house.

“I didn’t want to leave you,” Frankie said. The words stopped you in your tracks and you felt like all the air had been sucked out of you. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He didn’t want to leave? No one made him leave, he walked away. The truth was that he couldn’t wait to get away from you, he was just too chickenshit to say it. You turned enough so Frankie could see your face.

“We’re not talking about this.”

Back at the house, you found Benny and the guys in the kitchen, and you figured they were talking about you by the way they quieted down when you neared.

“I’m gonna call it a night,” you said, expecting them to fight you on the decision. Instead, to your relief, they hugged you goodnight, Benny last.

“I’ll call you,” he said before letting you go. You turned to Frankie and shoved his jacket into his hands, brushing past him and heading for the door.

#angst #all the angst #i'm at the writing fanfic stage of the lockdown #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales fic #frankie morales #frankie catfish morales #catfish morales fic #catfish morales #triple frontier #benny miller #will miller #will ironhead miller #santiago pope garcia #pedro pascal #garrett hedlund #charlie hunnam #oscar isaac

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need-a-fugue · 3 years

Text

Trustworthy (Chapter 4)

Summary: You’ve spent the last three years teaming up with Santiago Garcia on every mission you had a hand in coordinating… and the past several months plotting with him to take down the biggest bad to hit your radar. But even all your time at the DEA and all your experience in the field couldn’t have prepared you for this.

Pairing: Frankie “Catfish” Morales x Fem!Reader (slow burn)

Warnings: Violence, language

Okay, yeah, sure, fine, you and Santi might not have been 100% honest about what you were planning in the jungle.

In fairness, neither of you ever actually said that this recon mission was at the behest of the CNP or Colombian military or any other government entity. You may have hinted at it. You may have neglected to correct the guys when they assumed. But you never actually told them that anyone had requested the raid on Lorea’s house.

What you had said was that there was a good chance this could turn into… something more. Something that might end up in a hefty pay day for all of you. You just never told the group of men that you and Garcia were actually banking on it.

You didn’t love the idea of lying to a bunch of strangers whom – if they agreed to everything – would end up holding your very life in their hands. Frankly, just the thought of doing so felt… sleezy. Especially considering that these men were Santi’s trusted friends. His brothers. But Santiago insisted that it needed to be played this way – They’ll never go for it if we tell them what we’re really up to. But I promise you, bonita, once they’re here, once they see… they’ll be all in.

He clearly knew his team because after just that single two-hour recce, a couple rounds of beers at a local bar, and a rather stirring, pointed speech, they were, in fact, all in.

And why not, really? The only one of them who had anything to lose – a family beyond those seen at the occasional holiday, wedding, or funeral – was Tom. And he’d been struggling so badly lately with impending alimony and child support and two kids’ worth of college tuitions – eight years minimum – that the money alone did all of their convincing for them.

It was illegal, yes. It was, as the captain said, “downright criminal.” But it wasn’t wrong. And as long as everything went according to plan, no one would know anything about any of it.

In the end, the world would be down at least one piece-of-shit, megalomaniacal drug lord murderer.

Some of the struggling people of Leticia – because you and Santi had promised each other and Yovanna that you’d drop a good chunk of the money into the hands of local charities – would have better lives.

Tom’s girls could go to college without having to worry about paying off student loans until they die.

Will could finally get rid of his old junker and buy a nice car – maybe not the Ferrari Ben was angling for, but a nice car all the same – to get him back and forth across the country for all those rousing speeches he insisted he would not stop giving.

Benny could invest in better training, at better gyms with better equipment… and real trainers. Or, hell, he could give all that shit up and quit getting his ass handed to him by kids ten years his junior, all in the hopes of capturing what was almost always one hell of a disappointing purse.

And Frankie? Well, Frankie wasn’t sure what he’d do with his share. But it sure would be nice to not have to worry so damn much. To not have to scramble to make the house payment every month. To not have to beg that dick who owns the local airfield to let him take on a few jobs just so he could settle into a cockpit for a bit. To maybe have the time – and funds – to take a woman on a date every now and then… not that he had a clue who that woman might be.

And you and Santi? Well, after years of accomplishing nothingin the fight against Lorea – the fight against the drug trade that had ruined and taken so many lives around the world – you two could finally say that you’d actually made a difference. Even if you couldn’t quite say it aloud for everyone to hear.

000

By the time you get to the compound early Sunday morning, rain’s already been falling for hours. The area’s nearly flooded, so your off-road path is basically a sprawling swampland. You barely slept, your hip is aching like crazy from an old injury, and the minute you step out of the SUV you damn near squeal like a stuck pig as you suddenly sink up to your calf in thick, sucking mud.

“Shit,” Frankie mutters under his breath – under a breathless laugh, you’re pretty sure – as he hops out and wraps a steadying arm around your waist. “Let me help,” he says, the words so soft, you can barely hear them over the unyielding pounding of the rain.

You try to balance, holding onto the door, one foot just barely sinking into the soft earth as Frankie leans down to pry the other from what feels like an utterly engulfing quicksand. He struggles, still holding you around the waist while his left hand works to grip your leg, your boot, your ankle… whatever he can wrap his fingers around. But it’s no use. The op has yet to even begin and already you’re stuck. In the disgusting mud. Deep in the endless jungle. With no hope of ever getting out.

You let out a painfully dramatic, completely despairing sigh and glance up only to see Benny laughing. Really laughing… not even trying to hide his utter, unabashed amusement at your awful predicament. You shoot him as threatening a glare as you can muster. But it only makes him laugh harder.

“Go get into position,” Tom orders, slapping him on the shoulder and shaking his head – once again in a seemingly all-too-practiced dadway – before he bends down to help Frankie out.

Finally, finally, the two men manage to free you. Shockingly, your boot leaves the earth as well, though you can feel the muck inside squelching beneath your instep and in between your toes. Your lip curls in disgust as you haphazardly wipe the boot – bottom, sides, and top – on the wheel well, a bit of mud getting squeezed out near your ankle as you do so. “I’m gonna get jungle rot,” you mutter bitterly as you continue to smear grime along the body of the SUV.

Tom swats your leg away. “Just be sure you don’t give away your location with all the squishing,” he says with a hint of a smile. Then, patting Frankie on the back, he finishes with a much more stern, “Let’s do this,” and takes off to find his position, face and shoulders both set as he easily drops into soldier mode.

“I’m still not sure if I like that guy,” you begin as you and Frankie head for the high ground, “or really freaking hate him.”

He bites out a quick laugh, turns to show off that too-damn-perfect smile, and replies with an easygoing, “Yup.”

Once you make it out of your drop-in point, everything else seems to be smooth sailing. The worst part is just waiting, especially with the rain. Waiting for Garcia’s informant to drop off the van. Waiting for the guards to leave for church, the family not so quickly following suit. Waiting for the guys to move in – Frankie shooting a quick wink alongside, “Watch my six,” as he heads out to join them. Waiting for the all-clear from Benny before you can finally enter the house yourself.

The house. Lorea’s house.

You’d been waiting for this for too damn long. Years of hunting the man had led to these last few months of building out this very plan with Santiago… and then to the last week of recon and final plans with these soldiers whom you barely even know. For all of the initial mistrust heaped upon you by them – and you honestly don’t blame them for any of it – the truth is, they know they have each other to depend on. You’re the odd man out here. You’re the one who should be questioning them… their dedication to this mission. Their loyalty to Santi, and by extension, to you. Their desire to end Lorea’s reign of terror.

You’re in this to take that man out. And if just one of these guys decides that’s not going to happen – for whatever reason – you’re shit out of luck. You should trust them only as far as you can throw them, which would be… not very far. But as you catch sight of Ben standing inside the front door, eagerly waving you in, and as you see the trail of blood leading into the kitchen, a voice over the coms calmly declaring, we had to shoot one of the guards in the leg, something inside of you shifts and settles and all of the worries about who may or may not be trustworthy simply flit away to nothing.

But other concerns quickly rise to take their place.

Watching the highly trained special ops team move about you – each man light-footed and fluid, so quiet that their breathing is nearly inaudible, even as one of them leans over your shoulder from his position behind – is nerve wracking enough to make your legs begin to tremble. You knew what you were getting into here. You knew that this would be dangerous, that it would require a certain level of skill and technique and training. But it isn’t until you actually see these men – these elite soldiers – in action that you realize how woefully inept and unprepared you are in comparison.

Self-doubt begins to seep from the cracks now forming in your carefully crafted façade. Uncertainty, insecurity, fear starts to build up and rise within you, burning like bile creeping up the back of your throat. By the time you and Santiago finish the second sweep of the downstairs and begin climbing the steps to the second-story landing, your entire body is vibrating with regretful apprehension.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” you hear as you approach the study upstairs. It’s the room where your informant took the picture of the stacks of cash after her delivery, the holding area where all of Lorea’s blood money sat, just waiting to be counted. But when you enter, there’s no money to be found, just pissed-off-looking soldiers surrounded by the empty bags they had planned to fill with cash.

“Your girl burned us,” Frankie mutters blankly, eyes full of regret and annoyance as he leans heavily against one wall. His dark gaze collides with yours for just a fraction of a moment before he shakes his head and breathes out, “We gotta get outta here.”

Your brow crinkles in confusion, all of the insecurity bubbling through your body suddenly settling and getting replaced by a sort of righteous indignation. “Whoa, wait,” you spit out, sidestepping Santi and rushing to the center of the room. “We’re not leaving. We’re not done here.”

Will gives you an almost disappointed look and blankly mutters, “Nothing here, sweetheart,” before dropping heavily into a chair in the corner.

You shake your head, a pointed certainty to your words as you level him with a heated stare and say, “Lorea’s here. He’s always here. He does not leave.”

Tom scoffs. “Yeah, well, he left today,” he says, tone full of spite. “And he took the money with him.”

You spin to face him, “No,” pouring from your lips in a firm and unyielding tenor. “He’s here. And so is the money.”

“We did a full sweep,” Will breathes out.

“So we’ll do another,” Santiago chimes in, suddenly at your back.

You look around at all the forlorn faces and roll your eyes, realizing all at once that, for all their training in war, these men don’t have a freaking clue about the kinds of things you deal with in your job. They’re used to encountering soldiers – enemy combatants, trained mercenaries, militias… people who’s purpose is to fight. That’s not what Lorea is. That’s not what he does. He didn’t move deep into the jungle to fight, to wage war, to build an army. He came here to hide.

“You guys are fucking idiots,” you declare with a huff. “I once spent two hours tearing apart a houseboat before finding the guy we were after squatting in a hidden cutout near the bilge. A few years ago, we found fifty thousand dollars under a false bottom in a hot tub while serving a search warrant. Another raid ended with us tearing apart a kid’s tree house that had cash hidden under the floorboards. You think because Lorea isn’t sitting here behind his desk, counting his millions like fucking Scrooge McDuck that they’re not here? That he’s not here?”

“Didn’t McDuck swim in his money?” Benny inquires from behind, the question earning quick huff of a laugh from his brother.

You feel Santi step away from your side. “She’s right,” he says, his eyes dancing around the room, looking for… something. They land on a mostly empty can of paint, and he smiles, sniffing quickly at the air. “Fresh paint.”

Tom’s eyes widen and tick towards the wall to his left as his lips split and out pours what you had all along seen as being an obvious truth. “The house is the safe.”

000

When it rains, it pours. You’d been the one to say that, to inanely mutter the adage through the coms with a huff as Benny took off back inside the house – the safe – while you sat in the now heavily weighted van, so full of money that the suspension sags to the point of extremeconcern.

The guards are coming back, the sound of their SUV’s engine just barely chugging atop the steady beating of the downpour that had engulfed you all for the past few hours. They’re coming back, and everyone but you is still inside.

Call it greed. Call it vindictiveness. Call it whatever the fuck you want. But you all had agreed to get as much plata out of that house as possible, to fill the cars to the freaking brim with as much of that motherfucker’s money – his lifeblood, his love, his everything – before setting fire to the whole damn thing. You’d been in this business long enough to know that bringing down one cartel merely opens up a door for others to grow. But still, the idea of watching Lorea’s empire burn makes you wet in a way the torrential rain beating on the roof on the van never could.

You toss a glance back, over you shoulder at the mound of duffel bags, a child’s suitcase thrown into the pile as well, all filled to bursting with cash. It’s pretty unbelievable. Incredible. You’d never been the type to really worry about money, no more so than the average guy. But damn if being surrounded by millions of dollars doesn’t make you a little lightheaded. And the fact that it’s Lorea’s money?

Despite Santi’s little bullshit pep talk the other night about how all of you deserve this – for serving your country and fighting for what’s right… blah, blah, blah – you honestly don’t feel like you deserve this money any more than anyone else. But Lorea sure as shit doesn’t deserve it. And you trust yourself – and each of these men by your side – to put it to far better use than he ever would.

You can’t see the guards, can’t see the SUV carrying them from your vantage point in the van. But Benny had told you to stay put, he’d get the others and he wanted you ready to drive as soon as they came out. Still, you know now that the first car must’ve arrived at the compound because – aside from the steady pounding of the rain and the wild pulse of your heartbeat echoing in your ears – everything is suddenly silent. No more hum of an engine. No choppy callouts over the radio as Ben seeks out the guys. Everything is silent and still. Until… pop-pop, short and sudden, muffled by the thick walls of the house.

Over the coms you hear – in a calm, controlled tone – Two down in the entryway. Another sharp pop, followed by a voice you’ve come to easily recognize. That’s three.

There’s something in the way their words are uttered, something in the utterly placid tenor of each of their voices. Something also to the sparse shots – so unlike the rapid, automatic gunfire you’re used to being thrown into amid scared and untrained local police and inexperienced, foolhardy kids hired as cheap labor by the cartels. There’s something about the way they all rush suddenly into your line of sight – fast but calm, controlled – as they pour out of the house, a few racing past to find the guards’ SUV, the sounds of their footfalls and quick breaths nearly drowning out the whir of the engine as you turn the ignition. There’s something about it all that leaves you feeling – despite the fact that things did not go as planned and you can see that all-too-recognizable, pissed-off scowl tugging at Santiago’s features as he flies past your window – calm as well. Safe, even.

Frankie climbs quickly into the passenger side of the van just as you fire up the engine, Will slowly pulling himself into the seat behind him. “Shit,” you mutter, eyes widening as you take in the grimace on the man’s face, the blood on his hands and shirt. “What the hell happened?”

“S’fine,” he tells you, punctuating the statement with a nod, a directive to look forward. “Let’s move.”

You put the van in gear and hit the gas, maneuvering steadily through the compound and towards the front entrance. “Did you get shot?” you inquire again, your voice showing less concern and more simple curiosity.

“Yeah,” he groans, a thick breath hitching as you hit a particularly big bump in the road. “Your friend Lorea popped out of his little hidey hole and got me. Guess you called that.”

You whip around to face him, eyes now like damn saucers. “You got him?”

Frankie grabs your arm and gives a little tug to get you turn back towards the front, only speaking, answering for Will, once you do so, once you settle a still-wild stare on the path ahead, “Yeah. Pope took him out. He’s dead.”

You say nothing for a long moment, letting those words seat inside of you. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. How long have you wanted to hear those words? How long have you been gunning for that son of a bitch, waiting for someone to take him out… hoping that someone might be you? Santi doing it is the next best thing, you figure.

A sudden explosion lights up in front of you as you approach the gate and Benny blows past it, and past the van, angrily muttering to himself all the while. “He looks pissed,” you comment blithely, looking to Frankie for something akin to permission before flooring it and ramming through the gate like you’re just itching to do.

He gives a staunch nod forward. “Can’t blame him,” he says, capping it off with a softer, rather encouraging, “Go for it.”

You hit the gas, glancing in the rearview mirror and asking, “The others are in the SUV?” as the guards’ car pulls up behind you and waits for Ben to jump in.

Frankie nods – “Yeah.” – and his eyes suddenly tick your way, narrowing a bit as they rove your body before coming to rest on your hands as they tightly grip the wheel.

“What?” you ask, feeling his stare burn into you.

Will laughs from behind – a swift, stilted thing that tells you just how much pain he’s actually in – and lets out an amused, “Fish always drives.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you say, voice dripping with put-on sincerity as you continue down the unpaved road. “Do you want me to pull over?”

He rolls his eyes, but there’s no hiding the plainly obvious pout tugging at his lips when he looks over at you and mutters, “Just watch where you’re going.”

The first half or so of the long drive up to the airfield is spent in tense silence. You don’t fight it, don’t force any sort of conversation, don’t inquire about what exactly happened in that house. You can tell that these men need a long-ass moment to come down from everything. Hell, your own adrenaline still has your pulse thrumming endlessly through your ears. And you’d been safely ensconced inside this van for most of the action. It’s not like you had to fight your way out of there. It’s not like you got shot.

Your eyes bounce up to the rearview mirror, finding Will curled into himself in the backseat. “How you doing, Ironhead?” you ask, purposefully infusing the ridiculous name with a mocking intonation.

He looks up and catches your gleaming eyes in the mirror, notes your slight smirk, and gruffly replies, “Well, I’m not dead yet.”

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Frankie supplies from your right. He spins around to give his friend a quick once over. “He’s fine.”

“That’s awfully presumptuous,” you challenge, raising a brow. “Didn’t see you coming out of there with a new hole in your body.”

“Didn’t realize you were so focused on my body,” he returns with a bit of a lilt.

Will groans loudly from the back. “Don’t start flirting up there,” he practically orders before the no-argument tone slips into something softer, almost jovial. “I’m suffering enough back here as is.”

“You’re fine,” Frankie shoots back, turning bodily in his seat and craning his head towards his friend. “You act like you’ve never been shot before.”

“I’m retired,” he replies. “Think I forgot how much this sucks.”

You nod, almost to yourself, emitting a simple, assenting, “Yeah.”

Frankie leans back, still remaining sideways in the seat, his stare now wholly on you. You glance over and see his brow scrunch in… is it concern? Or merely curiosity? “You’ve been shot?” he asks, an odd edge to his voice.

Again, you nod. “I have. Didn’t care for it.”

“See, Fish,” Will mumbles from the back as he slips further down the seat in an effort to find some semblance of comfort. “Maybe you’ve been so busy flying around rich businessmen in the private sector that you’ve also forgotten how shitty this is.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” he mutters with a frown.

Will cocks his head at you – not that you can see it, eyes remaining trained on the road lest you get another watch where you’re goingevil stare from the man by your side. “What happened to you, sweetheart?”

You snort out a short laugh, glancing quickly at Frankie and saying softly – and more than a little bit condescendingly – “He likes to call me sweetheart.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the man in the back sighs out, waving a dismissive hand through the air. “Guess I’m just a run-of-the-mill chauvinist.”

You shrug. “I never said anything about you being run-of-the-mill.” And from your right, you hear a soft snicker. A gentle smile spreads across your face and your hands loosen their death grip on the steering wheel just a bit as you feel the air filling the van begin to lighten, tension seeming to slowly spill away. After a lingering – but not at all wrought – moment, you shift a bit in your seat and say, “Went on a raid just outside of Tijuana. My first down in Mexico. And I took a bullet in the hip.”

“Shit,” Will intones. “Hell of a bienvenido.”

“Yeah,” you breathe out, suddenly all-too conscious of the old ache in your joint that’s been plaguing you all day. “But on the plus side, I’m now always the first to know when it’s about to rain.”

Both men laugh. You laugh – despite the pain in your hip and the worry about the guy in back… and your terribly distracting infatuation with the wide smile now painted on Frankie’s face. You all sit in the van – on your way to flee the country after committing a terrible crime – and laugh about the fact that, despite each of you being a little bit broken, none of you are dead yet.

Taglist:

@tweedlydumbtweedlydoo @icanbeyourjedi @greeneyedblondie44 @mrscrain-x7 @kyjoraven@elephants-are-a-thing @nakhudanyx

#frankie catfish morales #frankie morales #triple frontier #frankie morales x reader #francisco catfish morales #pope garcia #santiago pope garcia #frankie morales x you #will ironhead miller #benny miller #triple frontier fic

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honeybeeespeaks · 4 years

Text

Polaroids

• Story Warnings & Chapter One Preview •

A/N: Hey lovelies! Polaroids, my new Frankie x OC story is finally here! It will be posted hopefully soon. *crosses fingers* For now, I’ll give you the warnings and a little sneak peek of Chapter One! P.S. Argos is Frankie’s dog💕

Warnings: Adult content, drug use, alcohol consumption, mentions of violence/death, smut (18+), mentions of trauma, flashbacks, angst, the fluffiest of fluff cause its Frankie we’re talking about here, if I forgot any I apologize and will do content warnings for each chapter so no worries🤗

Without further ado: Chapter One Sneak Peek!

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“Santi,” Leah smiled as she approached the couple sitting near the sliding glass doors. “It’s good to see your face.”

“Not nearly as good looking as it was in college.” He joked, jumping a bit at Yovanna pinching his side. She shook her head some with a smile and placed a small kiss on his cheek.

“I’d disagree.”

Leah giggled at their exchange before looking around a little and stepping closer.

“Hey um..” her brows furrowed a little, eyes darting toward the wooden floor beneath her. She fiddled with the tiny gold ring on her middle finger as her eyes rose to meet Santiago’s face once more. She leaned in, her words coming out softer than she’d intended. “Is Frankie okay?” Santi stiffened a bit and looked past Leah to their other friends, Frankie included. He cleared his throat and gave a knowing look to Yoyo before his glance landed on Leah, nodding his head toward the glass doors.

“Let’s go outside.” Leah’s confusion must have been clear as Yoyo gave her a warm smile and a small nod. Her brows furrowed as she followed Santiago through the glass doors. She let out a nervous laugh as he turned and shut the door behind them.

“What is it?” Her smile faltered a bit as she watched him walk over to the railing of the deck, his forearms coming to rest on it as he rubbed his hands together. She moved to stand beside him. “Okay...now you’re scaring me a little Santi..what’s going on?” He let out a long breath, keeping his eyes forward toward the lake.

“Two years ago....Frankie was flying us over an active war zone. It was our group; me and Frankie, Will, Benny, and Tom. Few guys from another unit were with us too.” He paused for a moment, glancing down as his thumb roughly rubbed the skin of his opposite palm. “We were shot down.” He breathed, lifting his head a little bit and looking at Leah. She sucked in a sharp breath, her chest rising suddenly. Tears brimmed at the edge of her eyes and she desperately willed them to stay where they were. He nodded softly as he turned and faced the lake, ripples of moonlight illuminating their otherwise pitch black surroundings. He continued after a moment. “We started spinning out of control, Frankie couldn’t do a thing but fuck if he tried.” He let out a sad chuckle before looking down again. He shook his head a little bit, as if he was trying to shake the memory out of his mind. “We crashed....there were ten of us on that helicopter. Four of us lived...” he trailed off some and jumped slightly when he felt Leah’s hand come to rest on his forearm. He sighed, a sad smile gracing his lips as he gently laid his hand over hers. As much as she fought them, a few silent tears escaped, trailing their way down her cheeks like raindrops on a window. She bit her lip as Santiago continued. “Frankie, he...he uh, he hit his head pretty hard. Had to have surgery after the whole thing and he um, he didn’t wake up for a while.”

Leah shook her head, her stomach turning at the thought of Frankie being in a state like that and her not knowing a single thing about it. A few more tears trickled down her face as she blinked back at Santiago.

“I-I..fuck I had no idea.” Santiago squeezed her hand gently and shook his head. He brushed his thumb over the top of her hand before beginning again.

“Three weeks later he woke up. He had trouble remembering things, concentrating. And he would get angry. Out of nowhere he’d go into a blind rage. They called it a traumatic brain injury. Discharged him early, he went back to live with his parents in Colorado until a few months ago when I got out. He moved in with me and Yoyo in Arizona and he’s been there with us since.” He finally turned to look at her again. “Hey..”

Leah’s head shot up, the slightest hint of panic in her eyes. “He’s okay.” Santiago nodded. “He still has trouble focusing and sometimes remembering things but he’s okay. Argos keeps his anger at bay, he has a normal life. We’re helping him look for a place of his own..” he squeezed Leah’s hand again. “He’s good, Buttons.” She sighed and nodded softly, bringing herself to copy his stance, her hand still resting between his two. She laid her head on his shoulder and let out a long breath.

“I didn’t even know...h-he could have—you both—”

“He didn’t want anyone to know. You know how Frankie is. Everything’s always okay. He’s always okay.” A small humorless laugh slipped past her lips.

“Just as stubborn 10 years later...”

——————————————————

Tagging just for fun! If you don’t wanna be tagged just let me know😊

@pascalplease , @keeper0fthestars, @irishleesh93, @mrsparknuts , @emwriterblr, @voteforpedropascal , @valhallavalkyrie9 , @lokiaddicted, @zeldasayer , @qveenbvtch, @ithinkhesgaybutwesavedmufasa , @rae-gar-targaryen

#omg okay i hope you all love this story im so excited to share it with you🥺#polaroids #frankie catfish morales #catfish morales #frankie x oc #catfish x oc #francisco catfish morales #frankie morales x oc #frankie morales #triple frontier #fanfic #santiago pope garcia

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poppunkdee · 3 years

Text

Running

Frankie “Catfish” Morales x Latina!reader. AO3

Warnings: Explicit (no smut but there's violence and mentions of death) some angst and unrequited love? let me know if I should add any other warnings.

Word Count:14.7k

A/N: Guys this is my first try at writing Frankie and honestly it was supposed to be just a tiny angsty thing and it became this monster retelling of the entire movie! So honestly read at your own risk!

The beat of the music felt like it was still beating within your chest even now that you’ve stepped out of the reception hall and onto the balcony overlooking the ocean. The full moon bathed you, and the waves crashing below you, in a soft white glow. The night was perfect. You suppose that's why they chose this place, you would have too if it had been you. The hem of your dress rippled in the wind against your ankles, the slit along your left leg billowed open for a second before someone joined you. Your dress trapped between you and the man standing on your left. His warmth radiated through your leg giving your chilled body a respite from the goosebumps that had made themselves comfortable on your skin.

“South America, huh?” You finally ask after a few minutes of silence. “Think that's the answer?” You take another sip from your drink. The alcohol does nothing to warm you up, just keeping you in that numb state that you’ve held yourself in since the beginning of the day. The heavy weight of your heart was a bit less of a burden with the coursing hot liquor thrumming through your veins.

The silence passes long enough that you thought he wasn’t going to respond. He finally set his glass down on the railing, his drink sloshing a bit. “There’s nothing left for me here.” He finally whispers quietly enough that you thought it was more to himself than to you, his head bowed down a bit, a sigh leaving his body as if against his will. A few more seconds pass, the part of your dress that wasn’t trapped, moving with the breeze. The music slowed down inside and you knew there was no way you could go back in there, years of working in the most dangerous situations, but a wedding had you wondering how to pull off a hard out. “I could use a friend out there, Tweets.” He finally says as he shifts his body to look at you, your dress rippling in the wind once more now that it wasn’t trapped, those goosebumps reappearing on your skin. You can tell he’s trying to persuade you with the use of your callsign. A name Frankie had given you after the team discovered your twitter account where you would live tweet movies while drunk.

You mirror his movements to meet his gaze, “You’ve got friends here” you look back down at your drink. Your fingers lightly tracing the rim of the cup as you let out a whisper, “Friends that need you.”

He releases a long breath and looks back towards the door separating the both of you from the celebration that should have been filling you with happiness. A happiness you can't seem to muster when your hearts are breaking with every kiss within those walls, “You and I both know we don’t have shit here. Not anymore.” He sucks his tongue against his teeth, the noise lost with the wind and the crash of the waves below you. “Not now.”

With a slight huff you finally give him a good look. His combed hair had lost its integrity after he ran his hands through it all day. His blue dress shirt was loose around his waist, almost pulling free from where he had tucked it onto his pants, a dark spot along his back where sweat had pooled after dancing throughout the night. To everyone else he was the perfect best man, dancing and smiling, his toast was beautiful. But you knew him, you knew that his smiles never managed to reach his eyes, you knew that the tears he shed at the end of his toast weren’t just due to the happiness he felt for his friend, but also due to the heartbreak that the woman he loves was now married to his best friend. You were sure that he could see the exact same in your own eyes.

The team was well aware of your feelings for the groom, how you had finally found the courage to tell him how you felt. The cheers they gave you at the booth you all shared when you announced that you were finally going to tell him, only for him to show up with a date, a girl who looked vaguely familiar. The team gave you sad pats on the back at the end of that night. Telling you it probably won’t last, don’t give up hope. Then, six months later when Frankie announced the engagement you and Pope had gotten equally trashed, that night he let you know that he and Vanessa had been sleeping together before your last tour, and how she refused to see him when the team returned stateside despite him confessing his feelings to her. She had moved on, the tour had gone on longer than she expected and she had moved on. What surprised them both was that she had moved on with someone from his team. Santiago had only thought about getting back home to her, but she had slipped through his fingers during the team’s deployment. Frankie met her through a dating app, letting her know that he was retiring soon. Santi couldn’t blame her, just as much as he couldn’t blame his friend for falling in love with her. Now, you both found each other taking refuge on a balcony at the wedding of the two people you both loved.

“Flight leaves in two days” he breaks the silence again. This time picking up his glass, his drink sloshing a bit more forcefully letting you know he was drunk enough to face the party again, turning back towards the building he added, “You know where to find me.”

“Santi” you say just before he opens the door leading back into the reception, his fingers still on the door handle, “I’ll miss you.”

You lasted two weeks. Two weeks after Frankie and Vanessa returned from their honeymoon. The night you bought your one way ticket to South America felt worse than the wedding. It was another fight night. Fight night was exclusively team nights, the guys gave you so much shit when you brought a date once. The poor guy was unable to keep up with the jokes at his expense, but was sharp enough to know that he wasn’t welcome. He left halfway into the night and you never heard from him again. So when Frankie showed up with Vanessa your heart felt like someone was giving it a tight little squeeze. Even Will didn’t bring Monica, his finance, along to fight nights. The feeling returned with a vengeance when Benny gave her a bear hug and that goofy grin of his when she cheered him on. You decided that maybe two beers wasn’t going to be enough to get you through the night. The rest of the night passed by in a blur of loud cheers, the sounds of men beating the shit out of each other, Frankie’s voice when he yelled out his support to Benny, and the laughs he let out when Vanessa would whisper something into his ear. Benny took three hits that drew blood, but your bleeding heart ached with a hurt you had never been trained to ignore. It was when Vanessa leaned into Frankie’s body and he placed a soft kiss on her forehead when you decided that enough was enough. Pope was right, there was nothing left for you here. Will made sure to drive you home, he helped you climb up the stairs to your apartment. Once inside and making sure you sat you down on your couch without toppling over, he shuffled over to grab a glass of water from your kitchen.

“You can’t do this forever you know.” His soft words reached you as he handed you the glass of water and sat down on your coffee table facing you.

He didn’t have to elaborate for you to know where he was going with this conversation. “I know” was all you managed to choke out, a tear rolling down your cheek. You take a gulp of water to try to calm your emotions. Jesus you’ve been trained to keep them in check yet here you are, drunk and breaking down, because your fucking broken heart couldn’t take it anymore. “I know, but I-” you cut yourself off when a sob claws its way out of you. “Will I-” you try to speak again but after the first one made its way out you had no way to control the rest of the tears that began to pour out of you.

“Hey, hey come here.” Will moved to sit next to you, a bit awkwardly. Although the team saw you as a younger sister, Pope was always the one you seeked when it came to stuff like this. Yet, he still wrapped his arms around you as you buried your face into his chest and finally let go. You have no idea how long he held you like that, but he kept you close until your sobs subsided into hiccups and and your tears had stopped soaking his hoodie. Your heart had taken a beating that night that you weren’t sure you would ever recover from.

“I think Pope could use a friend” You break the silence that fell between the two of you. His chest moved as he released a deep sigh. You sort of expected him to scold you about running away. Instead he released you and handed you the glass of water that had been forgotten on the coffee table.

Waiting until you finished the glass of water Will finally asked, “You sure about that, Tweets?” His tone was gentle, as if he was afraid that you would start crying again. You briefly wondered if he was always this uncomfortable with crying women. Shaking the thought from you head you will yourself back to the conversation.

“Yeah.” You took a deep breath and released it along with a stray sob, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Will, Monica, and Benny helped you store a few belongings into a storage shed later that weekend. Handing Benny a copy of the key to the shed and the keys to your now empty apartment, you gave him a tight hug and a; “Don’t let them hit you too hard, Benny” before climbing out of his car and walking into the airport.

The next week you and Pope were planning a tactical raid of a house connected to a major cartel.

-----

“No.” Your voice was hard when Pope had outlined his plan to ask the team for help once Yovanna had finally given him the location of Lorea. “I don’t want them to be involved.”

“It's been three years.” Pope sighed. With one look at your face he started again, “Fine, I can ask them to just come down for the recce, just three days, then we hand it over to the agency and everyone can go home again.”

“You and I both know you want them for the full op.” You nibble on your bottom lip as you look over the plan again. He was right, you hate it but he was right, you need the team for this. You’ve both been here too long, chasing down clues and people that got you nowhere, and dealing with corrupt police officers. Sure you’ve both bent some of your own rules, telling yourselves the good outweighed the bad. Taking money from people you knew you shouldn’t, but you’ve survived. Three years and you haven’t been murdered in the streets, yet. Finally you had a chance to bring down Lorea and you were afraid that seeing one particular teammate might bring back feelings you were sure you had dealt with in the past three years? No you told yourself this is bigger than you. “Fine, but I’m not going back to ask them.” You agree swiftly and begin to walk towards the door of his apartment. His voice makes you pause when you’re halfway to the door.

Pope calls out your name, you know he's about to say something you’re not sure you’re going to like, Pope hardly uses your name unless he wants you to listen. Like a scolded child, you choose not to look back at him letting him continue talking to your back, “I only need one pilot, I don't have to ask the whole team.”

Pope was looking out for you, you know that, but something dark inside you made you want to punch him for implying that the reason you didn’t want to involve the team was because you were scared of seeing Frankie again. Yes, you were apprehensive about it, but you weren’t about to risk an op going wrong just to save yourself from seeing someone you had worked so hard to get over. Lorea was one lucky son of a bitch for evading your efforts for so long but he was not going to continue getting away with this shit anymore, not when you finally had his location. “Call the fucking team, Garcia” was all that you said to him before walking out.

-----

“How are we doing up here?” Pope asks when he feels the chopper struggling as it keeps gaining altitude.

You give Santiago a look that he reads in a second. Tom had been pissing you off since before he implied that Yovanna was a loose end that needed to be clipped, and despite being well aware of your anger he kept prodding at you as you helped Fish pilot the chopper. If the boys saw you as a little sister, Tom saw you as the annoying one that had to be dragged everywhere in order to keep mom happy. These past three years had let you forget how much the man managed to get under your skin.

“How ‘bout you give them space to do what they need to, yeah?” Pope taps his shoulder and gestures towards the seat he had just vacated as he speaks to Tom.

“I’m good here.” Tom replied in the same hard tone he uses to give orders. You roll your eyes at the tone, Redfly was quick to take the lead when it came to the team. Even if this plan was outlined to go smoothly by yourself and Pope before he got greedy.

Santiago looks like he wants to push Tom over to the seat, but thinks better of it and directs his next words at you, “Do you think we can make it over?’ just as the lowest ridge gets closer and closer.

“I don’t know” You reply, keeping your grip on the joystick in front of you steady. You’ve flown over this section of the sky several times in the past three years. Flying out here to catch the sunset brought you peace that you’ve only shared with one other person. However today your heart felt heavy as you soared over the jungle. The man you had shared this with was no longer by your side, and the one that was, well running from daydreams with him was the reason you found yourself here in the first place.

“Fish?” Tom asks, as if your assessment was not good enough. You roll your eyes at his words. Just because you had only flown for the last tour the team was active didn’t mean you were any less skilled of a pilot.

Frankie doesn’t blink an eye when he replies, “Tweets is right, I’m not sure” Just as he says that the engine makes a noise that you and Fish both know is never a good sign.

“Alright, baby alright” Fish tells the chopper as it begins to shake harder and the engine whines. You know you should be paying more attention to the struggling bird, but when he talks to the helicopter in that raspy whisper you can’t help but think about how it would feel to have him say those words to you. You never cared for your name, but if he whispered it to you like that...well, that thought left you slightly breathless. “Come on now.” You shake your head internally, now is not the time! You can tell from his voice that his focus is fully on the task at hand. His tunnel vision has sucked him in and he sounds like he's determined to make it over the ridge out of sheer force of will.

“Fish” You warn as a loud beeping begins giving you warning signs of redlining, the joystick in your hands vibrating with the efforts of the engine. “Fish, we’re redlining!” you press more urgently as the beeping becomes more insistent. Behind you you hear Pope telling the others to strap in.

“It's close though.” Frankie says as he ignores the beeps and your warnings just as the ridge expands below you. His voice had an almost calm demeanor, one that you just could not fathom with the panic that was beginning to bubble within your chest.

“FISH!” You yell when the chopper gives another unforgiving bump.

“It’s too much weight, its too much fucking weight” Frankie finally concedes lifting his voice above the whine of the engine, his focus no longer on the ridge but on you as you look up at him in alarm, the crease between his brows finally allows the panic into your chest to spread. “We’re never gonna make it!” His grip on the joystick makes his knuckles white, and the vein in his neck jutting out a bit as he growls out that last bit. You briefly wonder what it would feel like to run your tongue along that vein.

Jesus, snap out of it!

Tom appears behind you again, this time you're glad for his interruption, “What does that mean?”

“It means we’re losing fucking money” Fish replies as the joystick he holds begins to vibrate with the same force as the one you’re holding on to.

“You wanna leave $50 million in the middle of the fucking jungle?” Tom asks incredulously.

“You wanna get to the ocean?” Frankie replies without missing a beat, looking over at Tom with an eyebrow raised as if asking him to challenge him. Frankie was always the calm, level headed one on the team so when he gave anyone that look he meant business.

Pope intervenes before you could add to the fire, “Alright, go do it!” he calls into the back letting Benny and Will know that you have to lose weight in order to get things back to normal.

You can hear shuffling in the back and the sound of the wind whipping through the cabin as the others throw duffles out of the main cabin. You look over at Frankie as you chew your bottom lip from the stress, his eyes reflecting the same worry as he meets your gaze. You're not sure if its the adrenaline or the look he gives you, but you feel a shiver run through your body with the weight of his eyes. As soon as a few duffles are thrown out you can feel the vibrations on your joystick lower in intensity, and the bird rises just a bit from the loss of weight. Feeling like you physically have to pull yourself away from Frankie’s gaze your eyes survey the gages across the console.

“How is she feeling now?” Pope’s voice carries towards you and Frankie.

“Better!” You shout over the noise of the ramp closing.

“Come on!” Frankie begins to mutter under his breath in that whisper once again, “Come on.”

“Fish we-” you’re about to warn him that your joy stick began to vibrate again when you get a glimpse of the ocean. The sun reflects off the water, giving off a mesmerizing effect as the waves ripple across the surface. For a moment you let the view warm your insides, sending a wave of calm through your body. You’re about 100 meters away from the ridge when the gearbox gives out.

“THE FUCK ARE YOU TWO DOING?!” Will’s voice rings in your ears along with the rapid beeping within the cockpit and Frankie’s groan as he pulls on the joystick so that you don’t lose control and fall into a spin. You blink rapidly as you’re pulled back to the cockpit. The bird was losing altitude, alarms were blaring and the joystick in your hands was getting harder and harder to keep steady.

“We should land, we should land now!” Frankie tells you as the jungle gets closer with every second. At this point your heart feels like it might fall out of your butt. Despite all the crazy situations you’ve been in while miles up in the air, a failing bird was always one of your biggest fears.

“Copy that!” You reply as you start preparing for a crash land and quickly think back to the area you had just flown over, looking for a valley in the thick jungle. The panic you had felt before when Fish had seemed so determined was gone, your adrenaline rushing through your body like it would when you had to pick up the men from a hard out. Your nimble fingers began to attend all the proper switches while your right hand kept the joystick you held steady. All while your eyes darted across the jungle below you looking for a flat surface.

“Crash land here and we all die!” Tom yells at you when he sees you preparing for a landing.

Ignoring him you call out, “There should be a farmer's field on the other side of that ridge, we passed it on the way up!”

“I remember it!” Frankie says as he tries to maneuver the rapidly failing bird.

Just as the bird made it over the ridge the gearbox gave another awful groan and two more alarms began to wail within the cockpit.

“We need to lose the money” You tell Frankie over the headset.

Tom looks at you both as if you’ve lost your minds. But before you can yell at him Frankie beats you to it, “LOSE THE MONEY OR WE ALL DIE!” He shouts past Tom and into the cabin his adam's apple bobbing with the effort of shouting over the noise within the cockpit. “Hit the external release” he continues to shout as Tom begins to strap himself into the seat Pope had offered him earlier.

“It didn’t work!” you hear Pope shout from within the cabin. Your adrenaline rush had you calculating the outcome of keeping the bag below you and you did not like the odds.

“There should be a manual override!” Frankie instructs as you both begin to sweat from the exertion of trying to keep the bird in the air long enough to drop the load so that everyone will have a chance of surviving the hard landing. Behind you there is more shouting and then the groan of the bird when the bag is finally released. The second the bag is dropped the joystick in your grip jumps up from the lack of weight holding it down, and you vaguely hear Fish curse.

“FUCK, I GOTTA JUMP” Benny’s voice is almost lost in the chaos that ensues after the chopper jerks to the left as Frankie tries to circle around the field where he was attempting to land. The joystick in your hand gave an awful jerk that ripped it from your hands. Your heart felt like it had jumped out of your chest for a second as your fingers tried reaching for it once more, although gravity pulled you away from it with the way the bird tipped.

“Bad landing” Fish grunted out. You were on the verge of responding with a sarcastic reply, when another sudden pull jerked you forward and back, causing you to hit your head. You vaguely hear Frankie call your name before you pass out.

---

You’ve had quite enough of the bickering the team has kept up since the crash. The tension in the air was so thick it felt suffocating. That’s why you had chosen to sit a bit further away from the rest of the team when stopping for the night. Pope’s question about who shot first had begun to fester between him and Tom and you knew it was a matter of time before the two of them would be at eachothers throats. On top of that the pouring rain was not helping with anyone’s mood. Although you desperately wanted to build one, you knew that a fire would attract unwanted attention, so you kept quiet. Deciding instead to keep your thoughts on the noise of the rain pattering against the vegetation, rather than on the cold seeping into your bones.

“You okay?” Frankie’s voice drifted over to you as he sat down next to you.

“Yeah” you paused, “Well, no, but I will be.” You tell him knowing that there was no way you could hide the emotions that were bubbling up in your chest from your expressive eyes. The guys had trained for this, they knew how to push past their emotions during a crisis. They had lived to see their way out of many failed missions. You however had managed to stay a safe distance away. Your skills as a sharpshooter allowed you to stay at a distance, and later when you gained your pilots license, you were only ever in the line of fire when dropping them off on a mission or picking them up once they had reached a rendezvous point. Sure your time out here had kept you in a state of perpetual danger, but your ops lasted at most three hours, then you could deal with the aftermath in your apartment with your late boyfriend or later with Santi when he wasn’t curled up with Yovanna. This was different, you had trained for this years ago, but you’ve been out of practice and it was starting to get to you.

Frankie nodded at you, understanding clearly in his eyes, “You and Pope make a pretty great team.” he changes the subject as he hands you an MRE. “He told me you two have been doing a good job of looking out for each other these past few years.”

You stir the contents of the MRE together, thinking about how you’d thought you’d left this gunk behind when your team was retired. “Before Yovanna, he and I were all we had out here.” You tell him as you scoop out a bit of the gunk and shovel it into your mouth. Despite your hatred of the stuff it tasted like heaven after hiking through the jungle all day.

“Can I ask you something?” Frankie asks after a few minutes of watching you eat.

You swallow the bite you just took and meet his eyes. His soft brown eyes, peering at you from under his cap, have a question you were afraid of facing since Pope told you he intended to bring the team down. A question you had been running from for three years. You wanted to say no, to shut it down and tell him you didn’t want to talk about anything at the moment. You knew he would sit there in silence with you, that he won’t pry if you choose to not to let him. But you also knew that it wasn’t fair to him, two of his closest friends moved just after one of the most important chapters of his life, he deserved an explanation. “What is it, Cat?”

“Why’d you leave?” He asks softly, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer but he had to ask. “I know why Pope left, but why did you follow? If he and-” he paused as if trying to reach for the right words, “I thought you two would have…” his voice trails off, but his implication lingered in the air.

“Pope offered me a job.” You start, then decide he deserves the full truth instead of half truths, and if Santiago had come clean about why he left, you could too. “I couldn’t stay for the same reason Pope couldn’t,” you finally say when the MRE envelope was empty. “I thought I could, I thought it would pass, that I could truly go on with life like I had before, but it hurt too much to see the person I loved find happiness with someone else.” You kept your eyes fixed on the envelope, your fidgety hands had started folding it down. “So I ran, Pope offered me an out and I took it. Eventually, he and Yovanna found each other, and I...I found purpose within the job.” You decide he doesn’t need to know about the man you fell in love with and lost within the first year you had lived here. “I’m sorry for not saying goodbye, I took the cowards way out. I know that, but after...I just knew I couldn’t stay.” You fell silent after your mumbled explanation. Half expecting him to shuffle away now that you all but told him that the reason you left was because you were in love with him.

After what felt like an eternity, his hands reached out to stop yours from fidgeting with the envelope. He plucked the small folded packaging from your fingertips and wrapped his warm hands over your smaller ones. “I’m sorry-” he began, using that soft, but firm tone of voice he used when he wanted to make sure you were listening, but he didn’t get much out before the conversation the rest of the team was having drifted over and made you both turn towards the rest of the group, his hands leaving yours. However, it was then that you noticed his left hand was bare. A tan that should have been on his forefinger was missing, and for a brief second your brain was struggling to remember if his wedding band had been missing since he and the rest of the team arrived, or if he removed it for the op.

“We’re dancing with the Devil now” Benny’s voice breaks you out of your thoughts. Shaking your head at the dangerous path your mind was taking, you look up to hear Frankie’s reply.

“Dancing?” He had scoffed out, “We were dancing when we got on a plane to come down here. I would call this full intercourse.”

Benny chuckled at the way Fish reacted to his statement. Looking over with concern when his brother grunted out a noise of agreement as he made himself comfortable...well, as comfortable as he can get on a rock with a bullet wound on his abdomen. “How you doing, bud?” He asked his older brother.

“Golden.” Will let out as he closed his eyes.

“Here.” Benny offered his brother a mango that he had grabbed from the village where the team had crashed.

“You’re a good man Benny.” Will tells his brother as he accepts the mango, “We’re a dying breed boys.” He chuckles giving you a wink.

“No, we’re not” Benny argues, “The world is always going to need someone to go door to door to hold the line.”

“Cops go door to door to hold the line” Will returns, “We were warriors.”

“Well, it's hard to remember that sometimes.” Benny shoots back, you don't miss the way Frankie’s hand clenched into a fist. The same one that was holding yours not too long ago. The same one that was missing a ring.

“Yeah it is” He chimes in after he manages to unclench his fist and slides his open palms against his legs as he leans forward and rests his forearms on his thighs, pulling his body into a hunched position.

“What are you talking about?” Will asks him when he sees Frankie poke out from the ridge in his new position.

“I was too quick on the trigger. You know it, and I know it.” Frankie tells him, his fingers fidgeting with one another as he berates himself for the shots fired at the crash site. You want to pull his hands back towards you once more, but he’s pulled himself away from you and you don’t want to overstep. “I killed those people.” He lets out, anguish coating his words.

“No, you didn't,” Benny says, “We all did.” You nodded in agreement along with Will. Your fidget with the strap of your gun. It’s been a while since you’ve had to sleep with it strapped to your chest. Sure your handgun was always by your bedside, but this was different. Here with adrenaline running through your blood and the fear of being discovered made that section of your brain click back into focus where you shot first and asked questions later. The army gave you many skills, but sometimes you wonder what life might have been like if you had chosen a different path, one that didn’t require you to know how to make a clean shot from a mile away. Maybe you might be able to sleep through the night.

You spend the rest of the night taking shifts watching the camp as everyone sleeps. Your shift is shared with Will and he’s quick to catch you up on what you’ve missed back home. From Benny finally moving out of your apartment last year, Monica finishing her degree, to the new gym he and Benny have been training in.

“Finally tied the knot then?” You ask when your conversation lulls into a bit of silence and you’re dangerously close to nodding off.

Will smiles as he plays with the band around his finger, “Yeah, Monica told me her engagement ring was turning green on her finger and threatened to ask for a new one if I didn’t hurry up and take her to a chapel.” He chuckles at the face you gave him.

“Don’t tell me you two eloped?” your eyes wide as you realize what he was saying.

“Hey, it was her idea!” He chuckles as he raises his hands up as if surrendering, “Said she was tired of saving up for a dream wedding. So we took a weekend off and got hitched at the white chapel in Vegas. Figured if it was good enough for celebrities it was good enough for us.” He shrugged his shoulders, his smile faltering a bit when the movement caused discomfort on his wound.

“You two are amazing.” You laugh, thinking about how Monica would absolutely match Will’s spontaneity and jump on a plane to get married. “I miss her.” You let out in a voice dripping with sleep. You missed all of them, even if Tom always managed to get under your skin, you missed your boys.

“What about you, hot shot?” Will’s voice makes you peel your eyes open, “Is there another hot informant we might meet once we make it to the ocean?”

You want to laugh at Will’s wording, the team was not going to get information about Yovanna from you. “Nah, mine-” You let out a soft sigh, “No, mine wasn’t as lucky.”

“Oh shit, sorry, I didn’t know.” He said quickly when he noticed the far off look in your eyes.

“It’s alright, Will.” You pull your jacket closer to your body as you settle into the rock you were leaning into. “I was shit at keeping in touch, wasn’t I?” you ask.

Will looked up at you, “No one blames you.” He jutted out his chin in your direction as if asking you to continue.

With a smile you tell him, “He wasn’t an informant, he was actually part of the tactical team we worked with.” You explain, remembering the man who helped stitch your heart back together. His warm smiles and the way he would hold you tight after an op went sideways. A soft smile spread across your face. You weren’t a stranger to death, hell your career choice was proof of that. So remembering your past partner with fond memories and burying yourself in finding Lorea was one way to cope with the loss.

“So you’ve got a type huh?” He teases while wagging his eyebrows towards Frankie’s sleeping form. “Teammates” he mouths the word, as if the sleeping team might overhear your conversation. “I know you're a couple months older than Benny, but then age never seemed to bother you, so don’t go breaking my little brother’s heart.” He adds with a shit eating grin.

Laughing you shoot him a half hearted glare. “You cannot tease me, William.” You say, “Don’t forget that you had a bad habit of dating blondes before you found Monica.”

“Hey, hey didn’t you have blonde hair for a while?” He shoots back giving you one of his goofy grins, you flip him a bird in response. Oh yes, you missed your boys dearly.

“Shut up!” You try to glare at him but your laughter overtakes you.

“Alright, fine I’ll take over your shift if y’all won’t shut up and let us sleep.” Benny’s voice cuts through your laughter.

“Shit sorry, Benny.” You let out when you were finally able to get your giggles under control.

“Yeah, yeah, just don’t go falling in love with me.” He says with a grin.

You roll your eyes at them both when they start laughing anew. Huffing out that you were getting some much needed sleep, you lean further into the rock behind you and close your eyes. Missing the dark brown eyes tracking your movements.

---

The next two days were brutal on your feet. The jungle was unforgiving and even more so when you had to cross a river and continue hiking in wet clothing, you felt horrible that the animals you bought at the village were forced to continue walking while carrying wet packs. Although, it was too dangerous to stop and dry off by a fire, so you kept your complaints to yourself. By the evening of the second day tempers were running short and the trail was getting even more dangerous when you reached a ridge that changed the landscape into a rocky terrain.

The side of the ridge was dangerous. The trail was narrow and the drop was steep should you lose your footing. You had your eyes on the ground focusing where your next step would be and making sure your mule was staying on the side closest to the rocky wall.

“Stop pushing man, it's steep up here.” You hear Benny’s voice up ahead, Pope was leading the group with Tom, Benny, Will, you and Frankie taking the rear.

“Obviously, Man. We are on the side of a fucking mountain.” You hear William’s heated reply to his brother.

“Just shut up and concentrate! Jesus Christ!” You hear Frankie yell out behind you. Much closer than you thought he was, giving you a start. Your mule felt your moment of panic and made a soft whining noise.

“Come, on. Just go.” Will says as he stops in front of you causing you to place a soft hand on the nose of your mule, signaling to stop.

“Fuck you!” You hear Benny reply. You can feel the tension between the two brothers, wishing you had taken the spot between them so that you could have defused the situation.

“Oh really?” Will’s shout causes your mule to startle once more, giving a loud huff and pulling away from you. You quickly try to calm the animal down by gently tugging on the rope you held in your hand, and trying to reach out to pet his nose again. The animal, however, refused to calm down. It’s shrieks of fear got louder as the shouting between Benny and Will got louder. Eventually Tom’s voice joined, but you were too busy trying to calm down your mule to focus on what was being said.

Frankie noticed that your mule was retreating and you heard his low. “Whoa, Whoa” when it bumped into him behind you. Then, “Oh shit.”

The animal had tried to step back further but after sensing Frankie behind it, it tried stepping to the side, missing the ridge and slipping down. You felt the burn of the rope as it quickly slipped through your fist. You had been gripping the rope so tightly that for a second the weight brought you to your knees before you let go completely. The mule let out an awful screaming noise as it fell to its death. Leaving everyone in a tense silence as you look over the ridge where an explosion of cash puffed up as the mule and the cash made impact with the rocks below you. You hear an exasperated laugh as you kneel there looking down with wide eyes. “What the fuck are you laughing at?” You hear the words before you realize they left your lips.

“That was a living animal man.” Pope’s voice drifts into the air as you stumble back on to your feet. Frankie shuffled close to you, giving you a hand up.

“It could have been any one of us that went over,” Tom starts in a sarcastic tone, “and y’all worried about the fucking donkey?”

“You need to get your shit straight here, man.” You hear Pope’s response.

“What?” Tom replies. While the two are shouting at each other Frankie shuffles closer to you, helping you get on your feet once more and carefully dusting your hands of the pebbles that were embedded in your palms. “Me?”

“Yeah, you” You surprise Frankie when it was you who answered Tom instead of Pope. His fingers pausing what they were doing as he looks at you shouting in the direction of Tom.

“Don’t point your fingers at me!” Tom yells back at you. Frankie's fingers give your hand a squeeze. You know he's telling you to stand down, but you're too heated up to stop. Will and Benny share a silent look as the shouting is directed towards you. Tom and you might have passive aggressive arguments but he has never yelled at you like that. You hardly realize that Frankie has handed you the rope for his own mule. He begins to make his way towards Tom, knowing you're not going to heed his warning and stop yelling.

“You’re the only reason we are in this mess!” You continue. You sweep your arm out, the one that isn’t holding the rope, and gesture towards the situation that you all find yourselves in. Pope gives you a nod in agreement.

“Oh? How the fuck is that?” Tom asks you sarcastically, the ire in his voice evident as he yells at you from his position at the top of the trail.

After three years of taking care of eachother Pope’s anger rose when Tom turned on you. His reply was in a bitingly cold tone, “Don’t talk to her like that! You’re the one that had to grab every dollar you could get your hands on, didn’t you?”

“Both of you could have gotten Lorea two months ago! We didn’t have to be here, if you knew how to do your jobs right!” Tom spits back at both of you.

“Alright!” you hear Pope reply and push forward, seemingly done fighting with Tom.

“Fucking bullshit!” Tom yells after him.

“We are all on the hook, are we not?” Frankie asks Tom his voice strong and low, he has reached Tom at this point, his palm raised towards him. “Stop it!” He says in a raised voice, driving his point further.

“Fucking horse!” Tom grits out as his horse whines at the shouting.

“Stop it!” Frankie tells him again, this time his voice carries.

“Fine. Fine!’ Tom agrees when he sees the look Frankie gives him.

“We’re not picking at the fucking scab right now okay?” Frankie tells Tom now that he has his attention. “One foot in front of the other alright? Lets go.” He commands lifting an eyebrow when Tom looks like he might say something else to you. You stand your ground head held high in an almost challenging manner. “Jesus Christ.” Frankie mutters as Tom finally turns back around and continues following Santiago, who was further up the trail.

You, Benny, and Will exchange glances, the brothers deciding to give up whatever argument they had between themselves and began walking when Frankie gave them another wave of his hand to keep them going. Determined now to get off the side of a deadly mountain.

---

About two hours later as Frankie is scaring off the animals and you’re sitting on top of the ridge with Tom you decide you have to talk out your differences. It’s been a hard mission for everyone and it wasn’t fair to throw those words in Tom’s face. Not when he had a point, it could have been anyone of you that fell with that mule. With the way the rope pulled you and stung your hands, you remember it could have been you.

“Look, I talked a lot of shit back there. I didn’t mean that.” You say in between hard puffs of breath. You had after all just finished lugging over 100 bags of cash over a rocky ridge.

“Don’t worry about it.” Tom says shaking his head as if begging you not to bring it up any longer. Normally you would have just dropped it there, but call it your guilt for disappearing or your closest brush with death you wanted to make sure this time you cleared the air. “No, no its...this is on me. I could have talked Pope out of calling the team down here. But I didn’t, I knew it wasn’t just a recce and yet I let him bring you down here with only that information.” You take another breath, and Tom takes advantage of the pause to cut you off.

“No. I’m on the hook for this. You know? It is what it is.” Tom tells you as you hear Pope climb up next to you both.

Having caught the end of your conversation he interjects. “I am a bit of a dick, you know?” Giving you a tap on your leg so you can move out of the way he looks at Tom and says, “it is what it is, but also, Tweets is right. Sorry about earlier.”

Tom gives a small laugh agreeing with him as he gives you a hand while you climb over a boulder to move out of the way. Giving your hand a gentle squeeze before he lets go entirely. You know in his own way Tom has forgiven you both, you only hope that later, he can forgive himself.

After everyone has made it over the ridge and you’ve managed to pile the bags in a semicircle you pull out the last MRE envelopes in your pack. Handing one to each of the men, “It's mangoes only after this, boys.” You tell them as they each take an envelope.

“You could freeze an eskimos asshole out here.” Will says as he settles down to lean against the bags.

“I demand a fire.” Benny grunts out as he sits between Pope and Tom.

You laugh at the absurdity of Will’s statement. Shaking your head you decide that one argument was enough for today, no need to tell him that the Inuit people of the north wouldn’t agree with his word choice.

“We cold camp.” Will tells his brother as the group begins to settle in for the night.

Benny, ever the trouble maker reaches for one of the bags. Curious you watch his movements, as he pulls out a wad of bills and lights it on fire. “Fuck you.” he says holding the wad of cash looking directly at Will. “This is my ‘fuck you’ money.” Pope lets out a laugh next to you, his shoulders bumping into you gently.

“Dude what the fuck are you doing?” Will asks his brother as Benny waves the money torch in front of him, the warmth reaching you even with Santiago sitting between the two of you.

With a chuckle Tom answers for him, “Not enough men to carry all this money so we might as well be warm.” That was all Benny needed to keep going. He placed the bill in the center of the semi circle and reached for more, lighting it up as well.

“Jesus Christ” Frankie says on the other side of you, laughing at the absurdity of watching money go up in flames.

“Este loco” Santiago says, elbowing you as a smile finally appears on your face once you feel the warmth reach you.

Will looks apprehensive, at the growing flame. When suddenly Tom stands, opens a suitcase and throws the entire contents into the flame. Watching the bundles light up the boys begin laughing a bit harder.

“That’s a fire!’ Benny exclaims as the warmth begins to creep up your bodies. Will still looking apprehensive refuses to join in the laughter but does scoot a bit closer to feel the warmth radiating from the center.

Once you see that the boys look adequately warm you lean back against the bags and fight the edges of sleep. You still haven’t agreed to who will keep watch for the first half of the night and you don’t want to fall asleep without knowing what time you should be up.

“Rest your eyes, I’ve got your six.” Frankie tells you leaning back to lay against the bags next to you, his hand coming down to rest on your knee. “I’ve got the first shift.” He answers the question left unsaid. With a smile in his direction you rest your head on his shoulder and drift off. You’re asleep before you can feel his arm wrap around you and pull you closer.

----

About halfway through the next day you’ve made what seems like less progress than the days before. The rocky terrain has made it harder to move the bags. Despite your best efforts to make the process go faster you hate that the team is so exposed in certain areas. Just as you were about to ask how many bags you still had to get through in order to change your positions, you hear the unmistakable sound of a gunshot ricocheting against one of the boulders.

The team drops below various rocks within seconds. The sound of two more shots echo through the air and you climb around the boulder, you were crouched under, pulling your weapon into position and using the scope to focus on the ridge above you.

“Fuck!” You can’t tell who yelled out but you hear more, “Shit, shit shit!” below you where the boys had been lined up throwing the bags down.

“I’m hit!’ You hear Benny shout somewhere below you. Quickly you follow his voice and push the scope above his position trying to follow the trajectory of a bullet from his position.

“Benny you alright?” Will shouts.

“Yeah I’m fine, just grazed my shoulder!”

You catch Pope’s eye from your position, and send him a hand signal. You’ve got eyes on one of them. Nodding his head Pope lets you know he’ll draw fire so that you can get a clear shot.

“Shooter’s up on the ridgeline!” Pope shouts. The men don’t have to be told twice, they aim towards the ridge as you continue to creep up. Pope starts climbing the ridge on the other side, while Frankie begins to climb up towards you.

Shots keep raining down on your team as you climb up your side of the trail, just as you’re about to yell out and give away your position Tom shouts up, “Since they like me so much let me draw out their fire, Pope, Will, try to flank either sides, make sure there’s not another!”

Deciding you can count on the others to make sure there's not another, you find a good spot to take a shot at the person above you. Looking through your scope and waiting for the shooter to pop out again. Sure enough after the men below you pause their shots to take on their new position a head pops out and you take your shot. Clean hit.

“Got one!” You shout as you look down to where Frankie was following you, to let him know you've got him. Although when you see him, you notice he's lifting his gun in your direction, but you're too late. As you spin back around in the direction Frankie is aiming, time seems to slow down. Above you you see the kid from the village, the one that refused to let Tom through, how did you miss him? He’s wearing a goddamn yellow shirt for Christsake! His gun was aimed in your direction, but you knew it wouldn't be a deadly blow from that position. That should have motivated you to get in position faster, to swing your rifle forward just a bit faster instead of what happened. You later think that you should have tipped just a little bit forward, then the bullet would have hit your vest, a bruise or even a broken rib would have been better than what happened. But you didn’t lean forward and it didn’t hit your vest. Instead you watched as the bullet grazed the outside of your right arm and then you heard the thump behind you. A single shot was heard after and then silence.

“RED! Tom!” The shouts were raw emotion as they clawed their way out of you. You attempt to scramble off the boulder towards the one where Tom was laying out on. Benny got to him first, you had struggled to climb down when your arm was refusing to hold your weight as you made your way towards Tom. Frankie was right behind you.

“Tom! Come on, Tom!’ Benny cried as he pulled Tom into an upright position. But you could tell from the bullet hole, that Tom was gone. You stood there shocked with your left hand grabbing your arm. You hardly felt the blood that was quickly staining your fingers until Will pushed past you to get to Tom and his brother.

Pope reached you next seeing Tom’s body he pulled off his cap and let out a whispered “Fuck’ next to you. You were still in shock. Death was no stranger, your last romantic partner died during one of your raids gone wrong. Yet here you were, still as a statue unable to feel the pain of your own injury as you stared at Tom’s body and the Miller brothers crying over your fallen teammate.

“Lets get him wrapped up we need to keep moving.” Will finally says as he pulls himself back up and directs his words up at you and Pope. You vaguely remember your motor skills and nod your head agreeing with him. It's not safe here, you’re too exposed.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Benny cries from the floor. “You’re a heartless son of a bitch!” He yells at his brother, refusing to let go of Tom’s body.

“It was your little fire that got him fucking killed!” William spits back at his brother, his voice lifting into a shout. After a beat Benny launched himself at his brother, throwing failing punches and pinning him against another boulder.

“Stop this shit, STOP THIS SHIT!” Pope yells as he pulls Benny off his brother with a grunt. His shout as he pushes past you breaks you out of your daze. Pulling yourself together you reach them and insert yourself between the two, using your weight to keep Will from retaliating with any punches now that his brother was successfully pulled away from him.

“Fuck you Benny, FUCK YOU!” Will shouted over your head as you struggled to press your weight against him. Your arm was searing with pain, but you held your ground. You knew you wouldn’t be able to hold him too long and the way you can feel his chest rising you knew he had enough fight left inside him to push you off. Thankfully Frankie reached you in time to pull Will further back. Between the both of you, you managed to get Will to sit down on the rock behind him.

“It wasn’t the fire that gave us away!’ Santiago’s voice carried. “That kid was from the village. He’s been tracking us for days. He obviously wanted a clear shot at Tom. He wanted him.” Pope says emphasizing his point when he pulls you over and points out your wounded arm. “He had a clearer shot of Tweets, but he chose him.” You hiss lightly when your hand comes back up to check on the torn skin. “We do have to get the fuck out of here, and we are taking all that money with us!” Pope points at the duffles, now sitting below you. “Tom’s family deserves it!’ his voice cracks as he says that last bit. “And so do we.” Taking a deep gulp his voice evens out once more, “Alright let's wrap him up. We carry him down.”

Frankie is the first to move and begins pulling Tom’s gun off his body and switching the safety on. You decide that your arm injury can wait while you help. Tom needs to be wrapped up. Once Tom's body has been wrapped and has joined the bags at the bottom of the rocky landscape you sit down on a pile of bags.

"Let me." Frankie holds up a med kit as he kneels next to you.

"Thanks, Cat." you mumble out as he begins to pull out a syringe and gauze, "Wait, use mine." You begin to tap down your pockets noticing that your own med kit was missing. You don't recall using it.

"Umm...I already used it to patch up the cuts you had from the crash." Frankie tells you as he struggles to roll up your sleeve.

"Oh." You didn't even realize your cuts from the landing had been that bad. But then again you weren't exactly conscious for a bit after the rough landing. "Here, wait." You stop Frankie's movements and decide to help him reach your wound by removing your jacket and the shirt. You weren't expecting the look from Pope as you pulled the long sleeve shirt off your right arm, you ignored him, its not like you were stripping off everything, you still had another tank top under.

"Yeah." Frankie cleared his throat, "That's...easier." His voice came out in that raspy tone of his that made your skin tingle. You couldn't keep your eyes off his hands as they carefully inserted the syringe into your arm. "Sorry." Frankie let out when he saw your skin lift up with gooseflesh.

"It's fine." You almost didn't hear your own words as they slipped past your lips. Your eyes tracing his face now that he was focused on cleaning up your arm and wrapping your arm with the gauze and medical tape. You smile to yourself when you realize his hat has survived the trip. His curls poked out from under his cap, his face had a coat of dirt. The cut on his own face was starting to scab and another angry red scratch was poking out near the collar of jacket. Without thinking you lift your left hand and trace the scratch, "You didn't patch up your..." Your voice trailed off when you realized his eyes were staring back up at you. His soft ministrations on your arm had stopped and you suddenly felt a flush of heat rush up to your face. What were you thinking? You can't just reach out an touch him! "S-Sorry!" you quickly stammer out and pull away from him.

"I-" Frankie's eyes won't leave your face, the heat of embarrassment must be obvious. "It's...It's alright." He finally lets out, in that raspy voice of his. At that point you don't even know if the heat you're sure is radiating through your skin is from embarrassment or from desire.

You don't know if your glad or annoyed at the throat clearing from one of the guys behind you. It manages to break the trance you had fallen into as you stared into Frankie's eyes. Had they always been that soft? Mentally shaking yourself you quickly begin pulling your arm into the sleeve of your shirt, now that Frankie has let go. You're so caught up in buttoning up your shirt you miss the way Pope wags his eyebrows at Frankie as he walks back towards them.

---- As night falls once more you start assessing the amount of days you’ve been on the mountain. The boat waiting for you had been waiting five days, if it was still waiting. Looking down from where you stood you can see a few lights twinkling within the reflection of the ocean.

“How late are we to catch the boat?” Santiago asks you as he meets you after dropping the last of the bags by the pile next to you.

“About five days.”

“Jesus, you think he’s still there?”

“I can’t see shit.” This time it was Will who replied instead of you, his binoculars dropping from his face. Standing up he continues, “We need to get one of us down there. Think one of you can make it? There and back?” he asks the team as you all look over towards the ocean.

“I’ll go” Benny pipes up before anyone else can say anything.

“Your spanish sucks, Benny.”

“I got it.” Benny says as he picks up his gun and checks his ammunition.

“You sure?” Pope asks. “Three?”

“Yeah.” Benny’s determination is evident on his face.

“You’re looking for the Hijo Prodigo” Santiago says as he hands Benny the map the team has been using.

With a nod Benny takes the map and begins walking.

“Benny, watch your six.” You call out after him.

He turns at the sound of your voice. You’ve been relatively quiet since the moment you and Frankie shared. “You watch yours.” He calls back, before continuing his trek down towards the ocean.

With a thud you finally let yourself sit on top of the bags at your feet. Wincing at the sting of the movement you pull the strap of your gun over your shoulder and make yourself comfortable. Benny will be a while might as well catch a bit of sleep, you’re most likely going to be reaching the ocean overnight.

With a huff you hear Santiago behind you, “Alright guess I’ll take first watch.”

You swear you haven’t been asleep more than an hour or two when you’re awoken to Frankie’s voice cutting through the silence.

“I’m going to say something. Are you listening?” His voice held that commanding tone that you knew never to interrupt.

“Yeah.” You hear Santiago reply. Wondering if you woke up halfway through a conversation or if it just started, you didn’t know if you should be listening too.

“We gotta get back on our game. Enough of this. It stops now. You understand?”

“Copy that.” Santiago replies dryly.

So it was a conversation between the two of them. Even so, you felt a bit scolded. It was your fault too that the team was down here. Deciding that Pope shouldn’t have to hold all the blame you pipe up with a, “Yes, Sir.”

Will lets out a soft laugh, and Frankie sighs out a “Good.” before falling silent.

The silence after is cut short by Will’s question, “How many people do you think you’ve killed?”

You furrow your brow, that’s not at all what you expected to hear from Will. It seems that neither did Frankie, because he asked, “What?” in a somewhat surprised tone.

“You heard me.”

“As many as I had to.” Frankie’s voice sounds rough.

“Why would you ever want to know that?” This time it was Pope who asked.

“Forty-three.” Was the unexpected response from Will.

“Jesus Christ!” both you and Frankie exclaim at the same time.

“Confirmed.”

“You keep count of everything, huh?” Pope responds.

“Yup.”

“How’s your sleep?” Frankie asks.

“I guess better than it should be.”

With that hollow answer you get up from where you had been sitting and make your way to Will. Despite everything you’ve seen and been through you can’t help your bleeding heart from making an appearance. Settling back down next to him you whisper. “I’ve got your six. Get some sleep.”

Will looks over at you trying to figure out if you were saying it to hurt him. Whatever he found in your expressive eyes made him lift his hand from his gun and tap your knee twice before returning it to his gun and closing his eyes.

"Seventy-nine." You whisper into the night, you were a good shot and an even better sniper. Remembering that number was going to keep you up tonight.

----

You heard him before you saw him. Gun pulled up and trained in his direction when he finally popped up behind a rock.

“Whoa, it's just me.” Benny made a show to put his hands up in surrender. With a grunt you push down your gun. You’d been on edge throughout your entire shift on watch.“You alright?”

After a brief nod to answer your question Benny debriefs, “The boat’s there. I gave him half the money. I hope he waits.” As he reaches you the others get up. “I didn’t go into town, but it looks like whoever is in charge there has a...kindergarten army that’s looking for us.” He rips off his pack and gun and lets them drop to the floor once he’s in the middle of the circle you had formed with the bags.

“How many of them?” Will asks.

“Two or three pros, 20 heavily armed teenagers.”

“What about the next town over?” Frankie’s voice cracks from disuse.

“It’s over a 100 miles to the south.” Pope replies.

“I’m sure they have every town covered anyway.” Will shakes his head.

“Must be what's left of Lorea’s guys.” You find your voice again, thinking out loud. “Or...It wasn’t just his money we stole.”

“So we go through them.” Pope says his hands on his hips as if saying that's that.

“Through them?”

“What, do you mean we just mow them all down?” Frankie’s tone hints that that is not at all what he would be doing.

“What's the alternative here?” Pope shrugs his hands still firmly set on his hips.

“I’m not prepared to wipe out every teenager in that town.” Will speaks up, “Just to get through with this cargo.” he gestures at the bags stacked around you.

“This cargo?” Santiago points at the bags. “What about that cargo?” he yells as he points towards Tom’s wrapped body. “Would you do it for him?” You knew that tone of voice. You knew where this was going, you tried shaking your head at him but he continued anyways, “Tom died for this money, and we’re not leaving this country without it!”

Benny snapped, “He didn’t die for that money, he died because of it!” Pope turned his back on the group, running his hand over his face and walking a few paces away. Benny turned to the rest of the group, “They are just kids, man. Can’t we just carry it out through the dark?”

“It’s over 100 bags, man. There's no way.” Will tells his brother.

“Let me talk to him.” You finally found your voice again.

Without waiting for them to answer you, you trudge up towards Pope. Stopping when you can reach out and place your hand on his elbow. “Benny says these are kids, Santi.”

With a few quick shakes of his head Pope looks at you, “I can’t believe...I can’t believe I let this happen.” he struggles to find his words.

“We did.” you remind him squeezing his elbow, “The team came down to support us because we asked them to.” You fight down the little voice inside your head that sets the blame of Tom’s death on you, this was about Santi not you, you can deal with your own guilt later. Right now you had to get the surviving members of the team out of here. You know you won’t be able to handle it if another one of them...

“Yeah… Yeah but I thought- I thought we could do this!”

“Yeah. We both did.” You look down at your shoes to blink away your emotions, “And we got what we deserved.” With a deep breath you force yourself to look up at him. “Santi, we did some awful shit down here when it was just you and I. But we kept telling ourselves it was okay because the end justified the means. Yet, here we are hauling our brother’s body out of the fucking mountains.” Your voice cracks at the mention of Tom. “Santi, we have to get everyone else out, we won’t be able to live with ourselves if we risk another life for this dirty money.” You give his elbow another squeeze when he doesn’t answer right away.

“Yeah...Yeah your right.” Pope looks at you for a second, and just as you start turning on your heel to rejoin the group he stops you. “Just in case…”

“No.”

“No, really.” This time he's the one squeezing your arm, letting you know he won’t let go until he says his piece, “He’s been in love with you for much longer than you have been with him.” You look at Pope with wide eyes, knowing exactly who he was talking about but needing more information. Thankfully he keeps going, “Vanessa left before their one year anniversary, he wasn’t very forthcoming with why, just that she was gone. I know you hate my meddling when it comes to these things, but he’s still in love with you. Don’t let him get away this time.”

With that Pope turns and walks towards the others and you can hear him talking to the group again. But you're frozen in that position. Your hand was still in the air from when it was sitting on Pope’s elbow. A million questions were flying through your head, but most of all you were struck with the one thought that you had to get the fuck out of here before you could begin to ask any of those questions. Dropping your hand you turn to rejoin the group.

“We just have to get Tom home.” Will was saying when you joined them. Benny gave you an odd look, but you just shook your head at him as if your heart wasn’t just singing with hope, as Will finished with, “that’s all that matters.”

“How are we gonna do that?”

“We keep carrying him down.” You find your voice in time to contribute with the conversation at hand, even if your thoughts are chaos within your skull.

“I agree with Tweets.” Pope piped up, “We fill our day packs with...With whatever we can carry and that's it.”

“What do we do with the rest of it?” Benny asks once more.

------

“Put him down for a second.” You hear one of the boys say behind you when you put your fist up in the air. Your gun is pulled up in position. Due to the wound on your arm you’ve been point guard, your gun held steady in front of you, making sure to clear a path towards the ocean as the others carried Tom’s body behind you. Benny left the group about thirty minutes prior, to make sure the boat didn’t take off without the team, once the horizon began to turn pink with the rising sun.

You hear Frankie whisper your name in that raspy tone that made your tummy flip then, “What is it?” as he joins you with his gun also pulled up into position. You motion in the direction of the truck you noticed peeking out of the tall grass.

With a nod, he begins to creep forward. Your height helps hide you within the grass, one of your advantages as point guard, but Frankie was almost a head taller and when he stepped closer to the truck the lights turned on, momentarily blinding you, “Fuck!” you let out a curse as you crouch lower and grip your gun a bit tighter.

“Stop!”

“Manos Arriba!” [Hands up!]

“Wait, espera espera espera!” [Wait, wait, wait!] you hear Santiago’s voice towards the side of the truck, While you and Frankie had gone towards the front of the truck Pope had flanked behind it. Catching the teenager, with a rifle that looked too at home in his skinny arms, off guard. “Oye, Hermanito, ¡ten cuidado con esa arma! No me apunte.” [Hey, man. Careful with that gun, don’t point it at me!] Pope lowered his pistol as he began to talk to the kid.

Your finger on the trigger is twitching at the way the kid is gripping the rifle. Any other day you wouldn’t hesitate to do the same as Pope, but you’ve lost too much already, your heart feels like it might fall out of your butt any minute, and you keep your scope on the kid in front of you. Out of the corner of your eye you see Frankie making his way towards the drivers side of the truck.

“I speak english!” The kid yells, “What’s in the bag? What is that?” he gestures towards Tom’s body with his gun.

“That’s our friend” Will’s voice is just a bit to your left. Your focus is still on the gun the kid keeps failing about in the air. “He’s dead.”

“I call Boss” The kid says, you can see the fear in his eyes as the team continues to take small steps closer to him.

“No, No, ¡No hagas eso!” [Don’t do that!] You yell out at the kid, aiming the scope on your gun towards the kid’s leg. The kid looks in your direction, it seems your voice took him by surprise, not expecting a woman behind the automatic weapon that was trained on him. “Contigo no tenemos ningún problema. Right guys?” [I have no problem with you.]

“No problem.” Will answers, as Pope gets closer his open palms facing the kid, too close for your comfort. Your finger leaving the trigger guard and getting dangerously close to the trigger once more.

“I’m taking the shot.” You hear the words leave you, but you’ve closed off the part of you that would have done what Pope is doing. The instinct to survive taking over. Frankie looks at you from his position to your right and gives you a miniscule nod.

“NO!” Pope shouts one of his palms facing you this time. “No, don’t do that!”

You let out a frustrated groan, your finger lightly squeezing your trigger, not enough to release a bullet, but you know if the kid makes one abrupt movement he’ll drop. Thankfully you don’t have to. With a swift push, Pope knocks the gun out of the kid’s hand. However you were so focused on the gun that you didn’t notice the finger the kid was pushing down on the walkie until he shouted, “Habla 16! 16 necesito ayuda!” [This is 16, I need backup!] as the force of Pope’s push made him hit the ground.

“Pendejo!” [Asshole!] You growl out at the kid, as Pope pulls him up to his feet and pins him down against the hood of the truck.

“¿Dónde están las llaves?” [Where are the keys?] Frankie grunts out as he lowers his gun and begins to rifle through the cab of the truck.

“No se, me dejaron solamente con el coche y el radio.” [I don’t know, they just left me with the truck and the radio!] The kid struggles to breathe as Pope keeps his arm around the kid’s throat.

“FUCK!” You hear Frankie’s frustrated yell inside the cab.

“Seguro?” [You sure?] Pope asks the kid as he and William begin to zip tie the kid’s hands and feet together.

“16, 16 estás ahí?” [16, 16 are you there?] The walkie on the floor lets out.

With a huff you kick the radio into the grass and walk over to Tom’s body hauling his torso up you begin dragging him closer to the truck. Feeling the weight lift considerably once Will reaches you and helps you haul him into the bed of the truck. Just as Frankie managed to get the engine running.

“Yes! Fuck Yes!’ Pope slaps his hands against the hood of the car, as you jump into the flatbed and take a position behind Frankie. “Lets move lets get outta here!” Pope shouts at no one in particular seeing as he was the only one, other than the kid, not in the truck.

“Shit his radio!” You tell the guys realizing your mistake you jump out of the flatbed and retrieve the radio, from where it was in the grass.

“Un consejo,” [A piece of advice.] Santiago's voice drifts up from where you grab the radio, “Alejate de esos hombres.” [Get away from those men.]

“Did you just give the kid money?” You ask him, almost angry that Pope was being so reckless when you’re in hot water.

“Let’s move!” Frankie’s voice cuts through the tension between you and Pope, “Vamos! Los dos!” [Go, both of you.]

Rushing back to the truck you hop back into position behind Frankie and Pope takes the seat next to him as the truck jerks into gear. You grab onto the bar above you as the unforgiving dunes force you and Will to bounce within the back.

“Did you just give that fucking kid money?” Frankie berates Pope as soon as the truck you're in begins moving towards the ocean with more speed. “We should have killed the kid the minute he saw our faces.”

“We are not killing anymore people!”

“I’m telling you right now if we get to that beach and Ben isn’t there. I’m fucking killing people!”

“He’ll be there, alright!” Will cuts off the arguing that is going on within the cab of the truck.

“Fuck!” You yell out as a truck collides with the one your in.

“Tweets! The fuck you waiting for!” You hear Frankie yell at you when he pulls the truck back into a straight line.

You answer him with a squeeze of your trigger, your shots hitting their mark into the cab of the truck that was trying to collide with you again. “Drive, Fish!” you spit out as the truck following you stops moving, and another comes towards you.

“¡Miren, nos pegaron! Cuidado se van para la playa!” [Look they hit us! They are headed towards the beach!] The voices coming from the radio you have clipped on your belt.

“Oh, shit!”

“GO, GO, GO!” Will’s shout competes with the sound of the gear shifting. “What are they saying?”

“More are coming.” You notice that he’s out of rounds, handing him the pistol you have strapped to your thigh Will takes it and aims at the new jeep that spun around and began to chase you. “There’s two vehicles!” You shout behind you into the cabin as you train your gun at the one gaining on your right. Will was shooting at the one to your left.

“Alright, it should open up onto the beach any minute.” Pope says as he flashes a light on the map.

“Tweets, Shoot!” Frankie yells as you see the truck full of kids gaining on you. “Shoot the driver! I know you can! Take the fucking shot!”

With a deep breath you squeeze your trigger once more, but this time you're aiming at the front tire, deciding Pope is right. After looking at those kids, you know you won’t be able to sleep for a while if you mow them all down.

“Despacio que nos están disparando!” [Slow down they are shooting at us!] The voices on the radio keep shouting orders to the trucks behind you, urging them to slow down, but keep you within sight. “Quedense atras!” [Fall back!] Fruitless really, you hit your mark and watch as one of them spins out into the grass the second vehicle stopping.

“Nice!” Will gives you a grin when he realizes that it was your shot that spun out the truck.

“Eyes up!” Two more trucks meet you. However, these two begin shooting at you and before you can reciprocate fire, Frankie starts swerving through the grass to avoid being hit.

“Where are they?”

“Left! Left!”

Just as Will’s shout makes you turn your body, you feel the impact of the truck as Frankie slams into its side. Without taking proper aim you let out a few shots and watch as the truck flips over and a burst of fire lifts from the cab.

“Watch out!” Pope shouts as the other truck begins raining fire in your direction.

“All right here’s the beach!” Will’s deep voice reaches your ears, a small bud of hope blossoms in your chest. We just need to get to the beach.

“Where is he? Do you see him?” You shout your heart thumping hard against your chest as you keep your gun trained on the truck that has fallen a bit behind you.

“No, but the cove where we have to meet him is about a mile up this beach!” Pope yells.

You’re panicking once more, a mile? The truck that was behind you disappeared when it swerved behind a dune. Leaving you and Will searching the beach. The sound of an engine revving makes you point your gun at a dune to your left and you see the truck pop up closer to you than you expected. A woman in the back gave you an awful smile before shooting at you with a small handgun.

“Fuck!” You squeeze your trigger but your shots miss as Frankie swerves once more, her shots dangerously close to your head.

“Tweets! Kill them! Just kill them!” Frankie’s voice pulls you out of your thoughts of a close call, determined not to add to your numbers, you to take careful aim of the tires once more. They are just kids, you remind yourself even though those last few shots could have been fatal had Fish not swerved.

Will shouts “There he is!” somewhere to your left, but you’re focused on your targets. First you hit the tire on the driver’s side of the truck and then you hit the exposed radiator. Making the truck come to a complete stop. With a sigh you twist around and look over towards the beach where you see Benny waving from a small boat.

“Over the dune!” Pope shouts, as the truck catches air and Frankie drives it into the water. The water quickly fills up the cabin as Fish and Pope jump out. You shove your gun down as you begin to wade through the water and help Will with Tom’s body.

“Here.” Frankie’s rough voice reaches your ears as you swim towards him. He helps you haul Tom’s body onto the boat, and then gives you a push as you throw one leg over the side and pull yourself up as well.

You still hear the gunshots the teenagers are shooting, but Frankie had pulled you under him as the boat sped away, shielding you from harm with his own body.

"Cat" You mumble against his arm, "Fish its okay." You try again when his arms won't release you.

"Right. Sorry." He straightens out, he was about to scoot a bit away from you on the small bench when you grab on to his hand and give it a tug. Without thinking too much about it because you know that if you did you'll chicken out, you reach up with your other hand and pull him back.

"Tweets-" You don't really know what he was about to say because with help from the bumpy waves you're propelled forward and your lips bang against his.

Before you could pull away and apologize for the horribly aimed kiss, Frankie has wrapped both arms around you once more, this time though he pulled you on to his lap. One of his arms, wound tight around your waist held you firmly on his lap, while the other snaked up your back allowing his hand to hold the back of your head to tangle his fingers in your hair. His lips were surprisingly soft, with a slow drag of his tongue against your lower lip you opened your own and let him explore you in a way you had fantasied about for years. Distantly you could hear a muttered "Finally" and a whoop that let you know the guys had looked back and seen the two of you. But you were totally lost in the feel of Frankie's lips, the taste of salt as your tongues tasted each other.

When you finally broke the kiss to breathe, Frankie spoke, "I've waited years for this." His panting breaths tickling your lips, the hand on your neck keeping you close enough that your lips are still brushing against each other, "If you'd have me, I'm yours."

Taking in a gulp of air you brush your lips against his, "And I'm yours."

----

You stared up at the colorful buildings surrounding you as you waited outside of the bank with Will, Benny and Frankie. Your hand is wrapped around Frankie's hands his arms wrapped around you as his chin rests on the top of your head.

“Where to then?” Pope’s voice pulled you out of your thoughts.

“We need to get home.” Will speaks for both himself and his brother.

“You’ll need these.” Pope hands them their passports. You don’t miss the way he holds on to yours and Frankie's as they pat him on the back and leave.

You look expectantly at him when he finally turns around and looks at you and Frankie. A smile breaks out on his face as he takes you both in, standing there like a pair of love sick fools.

“So, are you finally heading home?” Frankie’s question is directed at Pope.

“I...I have a friend in Sydney.” That makes you break out into a smile. You didn't think Pope was really going to find her, not after everything.

“Heard she just came into some money.” You wink at him.

“Yeah, I heard the same rumor.” He reaches out and gives Frankie both your passports but doesn't let them go once Frankie has a grip on them, “Ahora te toca cuidarla.”[It's your turn to take care of her.]

Frankie gives Pope a smile, his eyes crinkling, “Creo que ella me cuidara a mi.” [I think she'll be the one taking care of me]

You feel the way Frankie's arms squeeze you just a bit tighter. As Pope meets your eyes, "Acuerdate lo que te dije." [remember what I told you.]

"Oh, I'm not about to let him get away this time." You say as you give Frankie's arms a slight squeeze, letting him know to let you go so you can give Pope a parting hug.

“Have fun getting home you two.” Pope says over your head as you pull away from his hug and Frankie reaches over to give him one as well.

“Wait ¡No te vayas tan rápido!” [Not so fast!] You place a hand on his arm to stop hims from leaving as you dig through the bag that's slung over your shoulder, with the other. “Tell Yovanna que le mando saludos.” [I say hi] You slip a piece of paper with coordinates into his palm as you quickly push yourself up on your toes to place a kiss on his cheek. “And thank you, Santi, for everything.” With one last smile, you pull away from him and pull Frankie along with you as you both disappear into the crowded street away from Pope.

“So dinner?” You ask the man you adore.

“Yeah. Yeah dinner sounds good.” Frankie gives you a lopsided grin as you take both your passports from his hand and shove them into your bag.

"Although, I don't mind a few more hours in that hotel room." Frankie's low and raspy voice reaches your ear, his lips brushing it slightly. Your entire body responds to his voice. The sensation of his lips against your skin have you heating up.

"Francisco!" You gasp in mock shock, "How fast do you think we can get there?"

#frankie morales x reader #latina!reader #triple frontier #Idk what this is guys #I've never shared my writing here so pls be nice to me #my writing #dee writes #Running

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mandoalorian · 3 years

Note

Hi 👋 hope your staying safe! Can I request something with Santi, please? Could you write something where Santi and reader used to be friends as kids, Santi having looked out for reader when she was picked on or if she fell over at school, but then after he graduated they lost contact until years later reader reaches out to him randomly and they reunite, maybe fall in love??

Sorry if it's strange, I'm going through something similar but I'm trying to get the guts to reach out to the guy, it's nerve wracking!! 😳😨 Maybe reading something will give me a boost 😂

Tinder [Santiago Garcia x F!Reader]

Word count: 1,700

Rating: 18+ I guess? I don’t know. Nothing explicit, it’s just Tinder is an 18+ app.

Warnings: food mention, tinder mention, allusions to sex

Masterlist

Tinder. It was so tedious. An app that had gained it’s reputation for being nothing more than a “hookup app” or even a “sex app”. It was associated with superficiality and laced with sexual innuendos. It was the app that had been accused of igniting modern day hookup culture. It was the app that Santiago Garcia frequented every damn day. The man even paid a premium! It was a quick and easy way for him to meet girls for drinks and a quick fuck. It’s all a man like Santiago had time for. Falling in love wasn’t an option for him. It was something he’d never considered until Games Night last week.

Once upon a time, Will’s small living room was just filled with him, Santiago, Frankie, Benny and Tom, but the head count had grown extensively over the past few years. Tom had reconciled with Molly, Yovanna and Benny had something going on, and now even Frankie was engaged to the blonde haired, blue eyed girl who sat quietly in the corner sipping tea and doodling in her sketchbook.

Santiago didn’t mind the girls. In fact, he actually enjoyed their company, but their presence only had him yearn for something more. He’d never been one to think about settling down or starting a family of his own, but he felt an indirect pressure. Maybe trying out one long term relationship wouldn’t be so bad after all? But he was so used to his flings. How was he ever going to grow out of his commitment issues and find someone he could really connect with.

Truthfully, he’d already found her, about fifteen years ago.

You and Santiago Garcia were the best of friends. You used to do everything together; walking home from school hand in hand, singing and dancing when you thought no one was around, playing LEGO and building up jigsaw’s. He was your soulmate, in every sense of the word. But you can’t stay young forever and eventually Santiago left your small neighbourly town to join the military. And you never saw him again.

Which is why it was a surprise when you, half asleep at 2 am, and drooling on your pillow, lazily swiped right on his profile. You weren’t even paying attention. Just another tanned skin man with dark brown hair and chocolate eyes. It was a haze, and your desperation to move on from your ex boyfriend had you yearning to meet someone new. You groaned tiredly, deciding you were never going to find someone as good as your ex, switched your phone off and shoved it under your pillow before finally getting some sleep.

At around 3 am, Santiago still wasn’t asleep, thanks to his roommate Frankie and his fiancée keeping probably the whole apartment complex awake. He pulled out his phone from his nightstand and checked Tinder. That’s when he saw you. Before even checking your name, he could tell it was you by that familiar sparkle in your eyes, and the way your perfect lips curled into a smile. It might have been fifteen years since he’d last seen you, but just looking at your photo made it feel like yesterday. He couldn’t contain his wide grin as he flicked through your photos. You looked just as beautiful as ever, and Santiago recalled the crush he had on you when you were both kids. He wondered how come you hadn't settled down already. He knew you always dreamed of getting married and having kids, with a big house and a big dog. So why were you on Tinder?

In a simple spur of the moment, Santiago swiped right.

‘It’s a match!’ the words blew up on Santiago’s screen and illuminated the dark bedroom. Streamers and confetti exploded around your photo; the typical thing that always happened when he matched with women on Tinder, only now it actually felt like celebrating. This meant that you must’ve swiped right on him too.

You spent the morning the same way you always did, laying in bed and checking the notifications on your different social media. Just before you were about to get up, you remembered how you’d impulsively installed Tinder the night before and, on a whim, you opened the app to see if you had matched with anyone.

You scrolled through the eight matches you’d gained through the night, frowning and twisting your face in disgust at some of the profiles. You really hadn’t been paying attention to who you were swiping.

Your eyes went comically wide when you read the name at the end of the list.

‘You have matched with: Santiago Garcia! Say hi!’

It was like time had frozen and you read the words over and over again. Santiago Garcia. Santiago Garcia. Santiago Garcia. You wondered how many Santiago Garcia’s lived in New York City - or more specifically, only three miles away?!

You hammered your thumb into your screen to view his profile and you were blown away as you went through his photos. That was definitely him. That was definitely your childhood best friend. Although his hair was once dark and curly, it was now short and slightly salt and peppered. He had a slight graze of facial hair in all of his photos, and in most of them, he was seen to be hanging out with a bunch of other guys. Wait- was that Francisco Morales too? They were still friends?

You were so nervous to say something. Truthfully, if you had come across his profile at any other moment where you weren’t half asleep, and hopelessly desperate for love, your fear would’ve stopped you from swiping right. You’d been in love with Santiago since pre-school. It had been over a decade but you still thought about him every single day and cherished those long lost moments you spent together.

But the reality was, that he’d swiped right on you too. He was interested in you as well! Which had to count for something. You took a deep breath and typed out the words “Hello :)” before quickly turning your phone off and throwing it across your bedroom.

You sat bolt upright in your bed for a few moments, contemplating what you had done. You told yourself it would be okay and asked yourself what was the worst that could happen. You sighed and forced yourself out of bed to get ready for the day ahead.

Turning off your phone was a good idea because you’d actually forgotten about messaging Santiago until about lunch time. You flicked through the television channels, holding a lazily put together sandwich in your free hand, and landed on a dating game show. You considered applying, thinking about how fun it might be, when you remembered you might already have a shot with someone else. Santiago. You dropped your sandwich on the coffee table in a frenzy, ran to your bedroom and turned on your phone. The painful minute it took to completely boot up sent butterflies rampant in the pit of your stomach.

Santiago: Hey! How you doing? I gotta say I was really surprised to see that we matched last night. It’s been a long time!

Oh my god. He’d replied. He’d replied three hours ago and you hadn’t said anything back. Shit. You wondered if you had already blown your chances, but little did you know, Santiago had been holding out for a message from you for a long time.

You: Right...almost fifteen years, I think! I’m okay. How are you?

You pressed send and took a deep breath. It was okay. Just casual small talk. It would be okay. You slid your phone into your pocket and went back to eat your sandwich. No matter how hard you tried to focus on the game show, you just couldn’t stop thinking about Santiago.

“Santi! You got a new message!” Frankie called from the other room, taking a huge, messy bite out of a candy bar and picking up his phone.

“Frankie! I’m literally on the toilet… can it wait?” Santiago cried, face palming and chuckling incredulously. Living with his best friend for five long years meant that Santiago had become accustomed to interactions like this.

“No, I don’t think so,” Frankie mumbled, knotting his eyebrows together as he read the notification that had popped up on the screen. “Hey, are you talking to Y/N L/N from high school?”

“Wh- what?” Santiago asked, feeling his cheeks flush.

“Oh my God you are!” Frankie gasped excitedly, typing in his friend’s passcode for his phone and getting inside. “On Tinder!”

Santiago finished up washing his hands and walked out the bathroom, an unamused scowl drawn upon his lips. Frankie swallowed at his best friend’s expression.

“This has to stop,” Santiago warned, taking his phone from Frankie’s hand. “I love you buddy, I really do. But you’re getting married next Summer. You can’t keep trying to talk to me while I’m on the toilet!”

Frankie laughed and rolled his eyes before getting back to his video game.

Santiago was shocked to be reminded that you had remembered exactly how long it had been since you last saw each other. He began to compose his next message. You practically screamed when you felt your phone vibrate at the notification.

Santiago: I’m well, thanks for asking. Would you be interested in meeting up sometime for a few drinks? I’d love to catch up.

Drinks. A catch up. It sounded perfect. You already found your mind racing as you wondered what to wear.

You: That sounds great!

Santiago’s reply came fleetingly.

Santiago: Are you free tonight? X

Tonight was so soon… but you were free, and it felt like you’d been waiting forever to reunite with your childhood crush. And he felt the same way. It was so exciting for both of you.

You: Tonight sounds great. See you then :) x

You and Santiago spent the rest of the day in anticipation to see one another. You didn’t know then, but the accidental Tinder encounter turned out to be the long lasting and perfect relationship both you and Santiago craved. The soulmates were reunited at last.

Taglists - let me know if you wish to be added!

Permanent: @supernaturalgirl @phoenixhalliwell @ah-callie @luvzoria @stardust-galaxies @wickedfrsgrl @goth-topic @nerdypinupcrystal @wonderfulfluffer @kiwi-the-first @pedroepascal @castiel-barnes @honeymandos @rocketqueen @ladycumberbatchofcamelot @dybalalover10 @girl-obsessed-with-things @elena-myth @moth-guillotine @pedro-pascal-love @hayley-the-comet @pinkninja190 @maxiarapamaya @autumnleaves1991-blog @artsymaddie @harrys-stan @kennedywxlsh @cripplingmoon @cheekygeek05 @mrschiltoncat

#santiago garcia #santiago garcia x reader #oscar isaac #oscar isaac x reader #pedro pascal #frankie morales #triple frontier #santiago pope garcia

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shakespeareanwannabe · 4 years

Text

New Beginnings

Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia x F!OC/Santiago Garcia x Rebecca Cooke

Summary: A year after leaving Colombia, Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia returns home, ready for something...more.

Warnings: References to death and PTSD, swearing

A/N: Hi everyone! I was blown away by the response to ‘Protective Instincts’, so I wrote a sequel that’s based off of part of one of clarke’s headcanons. This was so fun to write, and I’m really wanting to write more about Bex and Pope, and Pope and Frankie, and the baby, so I’m hoping you all enjoy this as much as you enjoyed the first one! If you want to be added to the tags, please let me know. I just used the tags list from ‘Protective Instincts’ for this one.

**********

In…Out…In…Out…

It was stupid.

This was stupid.

Why was he nervous?

He was being creepy. He needed to stop that. It was creepy enough when he stalked Tom down to the last condo he was showing and waited outside by his truck, scrambling to come up with a witty, cocksure line to make his old commanding officer laugh.

This…this was different. There were no ulterior motives this time around, no lies, no cash-grabs. Just an honest man who knew how badly he had fucked up, preparing to go hat in hand to the only person he thought would still give him another chance.

Would he still give him another chance?

In…Out…In…Out…

Of course he would, this was Frankie they were talking about. The man who, after he got their commanding officer killed, still cupped the back of his head and pulled him into a hug that was both amical and familial. The man who had always, always, had his back. Ride or die since day one. He wouldn’t hold Colombia against him…

Would he?

In…Out…In…Out…

They had parted ways fairly amicably, their farewell consisting of that hug that had almost brought him to his tired knees and back slaps and “take care of yourselves”.

Then again, Frankie had never wanted to go on the mission in the first place. He’d gone because Pope had used every tool in his repertoire to get his best friend to join him. And, when it had gone sideways, Pope had been able to see the exact second when that switch in Frankie’s brain switched from “civilian doing recon” to “soldier on the battlefield”. After so long away, after years of therapy and good old-fashioned love, Frankie had become a newer, better version of himself, and Pope had torn it all away with the promise of money that would benefit Frankie’s family.

But they had parted ways on good terms, right? That meant everything would be okay.

In…Out…In—

There he was.

Pope sat forward in the front seat of his new truck, eyes eagerly following his best friend’s movements.

Frankie was pacing the length of the porch, a baby perched in his arms. Even from where he was parked, Pope could hear the crying.

It probably wasn’t the best time. If Frankie’s kid was crying, then Frankie’s senses were probably all strung out. Plus, it was 6:30, so it was probably close to dinnertime. Frankie needed a schedule to help keep the wolves at bay, and he always ate around 6:30.

He should probably go. Dinner and a crying baby would have his friend all over the place. Not exactly good timing for the apology and ask of the century.

He should go…

He needed to go…

He couldn’t do this…

He needed this but he couldn’t drag Frankie back into his bullshit…

When Yovanna had told him, tears in her voice, that she couldn’t take it anymore, that he needed to go home, his mind hadn’t gone to a place. He wasn’t going to go back to his mother’s country of birth, or his father’s. He wasn’t going to go to Texas or Maine or New York. He was going to go to South Carolina. He was going to go to Frankie. The ballast of his ship, the eye of his hurricane, the—

“Santi?”

Pope hadn’t even realized he had been walking until his boot clipped the bottom step of Frankie’s porch, alerting the pilot to his presence.

“Hey ‘Fish,” he replied, a little too brightly.

“Jesus, man…” Frankie adjusted the whimpering, no longer crying, child in his arms and pulled Pope into a one-armed hug. “What are you doing here?”

Pope listened to the question, hunting for even a hint of suspicion or anger, and found none, only genuine curiosity and warmth.

“Was in the neighborhood…”

Frankie fixed him with a piercing look. “Thought you were headed to Australia to see a girl about a life?”

Pope shrugged. “Didn’t work out.”

Frankie nodded lightly. “Huh…” He looked down at the baby in his arms, no longer crying. “You settled now, mijo? You’re not gonna make Mamá tear her hair out by crying again?” The baby blinked up at Frankie and cooed, one chubby hand extending to pat Frankie’s beard. “Alright, kid. Let’s get you back to Mamá. Give me one sec, man.”

Frankie disappeared into the house and Pope took a deep breath. He still didn’t think he should be doing this, considering last time he interrupted his friend’s life, he had nearly gotten them all killed, but he couldn’t deny the calming effect Frankie was already having on him. Already, he felt like he could breathe easier and his heart wasn’t racing.

Frankie had always had that sort of effect on him. The cool, calm, and collected pilot versus the hot-headed, shoot first and ask questions later lieutenant. Their friendship, their bond, shouldn’t have worked. Like fire and water, oil and vinegar, they never should have gelled the way they did, but they did. Santi brought Frankie out of his shell, encouraged him to take control and step up when they needed his voice of reason. Frankie cooled Santi off, reminded him to stay grounded, to stay alive to fight the next fight, that he was still human underneath all the Kevlar and camo.

Frankie tempered Santi’s fire, and Santi boiled Frankie’s water. A perfectly balanced pair.

“You gonna take a seat and stay awhile, or are you gonna bolt?”

Santi turned back towards the door, not even realizing that he had been standing there with one foot on the porch steps while Frankie had been inside.

“That an invitation?” Santi accepted the beer that Frankie held out towards him and sat in one of the wooden chairs set out around a wrought iron table.

“You don’t need an invitation, cabrón,” Frankie scoffed quietly as he took the other chair and collapsed into it, cracking open his bottle and taking a long swig.

Santi nodded hesitantly. “You never know…things change.”

Frankie’s eyes jerked towards him. “They don’t change that much,” he replied with a warm firmness in his voice that somehow set all of Santi’s nerves at ease.

“So, that was the new baby, huh?” Santi nodded towards the house. “How old is…he?”

Frankie nodded, a small grin on his face. “18 months. Mateo James Morales.”

“Cute. And Charlie?” Santi had met Charlotte King when he had a brief month long leave and had crashed at Frankie’s old apartment. Charlie and Frankie had only been seeing each other for a couple of months, but it was clear that the physiotherapist was good for Frankie. She had that same fire that Santiago had, but in a way that cleared away all the bad shit in Frankie’s life, making room for all the good to come, instead of destroying everything in its path, the way Santi’s did. That, plus her kind heart and no-nonsense attitude, made her a perfect match for Frankie. It only took minutes of being in the same room with the two to feel the love they shared for each other and, because of that love, Santi came to love her too. Anyone who could make Frankie happy was a saint in Santi’s books.

“She’s good. She owns her own clinic now, which is nice. She sets her own prices and her own hours, plus she gets a cut of all the business that comes in, so we don’t really have to worry about money. Plus, she’s a lot happier now that she can spend more time at home with Mateo.”

“And you,” a warm voice added. Charlie stepped over the threshold and sat on the arm of Frankie’s chair, wrapping her free arm around her fiancé’s shoulders as she cuddled Mateo close with her other arm. Frankie craned his neck up to place a gentle kiss on her shoulder and Santi looked away.

He didn’t begrudge his friend his happiness at all. Frankie deserved it after helping Santi wade through the muck and grime over the past decade and a half. But he wanted exactly this. The family and the home and the warmth and the love.

“Hey Santi,” Charlie called, her warm eyes sparkling as she reached across the table to squeeze his hand.

“Hey Chuck,” he greeted with an impish grin, causing her to laugh.

“Wow, it’s been a while since anybody has called me that.”

Santi grimaced. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Charlie shrugged delicately before passing Mateo to his father. “You can make it up to me by staying for dinner. I’m making that mushroom chicken that you liked so much last time.”

“That’s alright, I don’t want to impose—”

“Hey, cabrón. What did I say about invitations?” Frankie interjected, his harsh tone at odds with the silly grin on his face as he bounced his son up and down on his knee.

“I—”

“It’s settled. You’re staying,” Charlie ordered, a soft smile on her face as she stood. “Keep Mateo busy while I cook, flyboy?” She bent to nuzzle Frankie’s nose before placing a sweet kiss on his lips.

“Sí, mi amada,” Santi heard Frankie whisper softly before Charlie stepped away and disappeared inside, winking at Santi over her shoulder as the door swung closed. The boys sat in companionable silence for a few long minutes. Santi was desperate to say something, anything, for things to feel like they used to, but that wasn’t Frankie. Frankie was always content with silence, especially between friends. He didn’t need to fill up silences with platitudes or useless trivia. If he found someone he could sit in silence with and feel fulfilled, that person became incredibly important to him. He and Santi used to have that, and they could both feel the ghost of that bond floating just overhead, desperate to possess them again. But after a year apart, and the way they had left things, neither knew if they were capable of such a relationship again.

Luckily, it was Mateo who broke the silence, giggling loudly as he reached across the table towards Santi.

Santiago’s eyebrow cocked up as he glanced from the baby to Frankie and back again. “Friendly kid.”

Frankie chuckled. “Gets it from his Mamá.” Frankie considered his son for a moment before looking up at Santi. “Here.” Frankie stood and moved around the table, placing Mateo into Santi’s lap before he could refuse. Santi’s hands immediately came up to steady the chubby baby that had suddenly been plopped in his lap, eyes wide open in shock.

“Frankie, what the f—”

“Watch it, man. Young ears,” Frankie replied loftily, waving at his son, who was giggling and squirming in Santi’s lap.

“It’s not like he’s gonna remember,” Santi scoffed. Mateo was shocked into silence by the voice, only a questioning coo escaping the baby’s lips as he craned his neck around to look at Santiago. The baby and the soldier stared at each other for a long moment before Mateo squealed excitedly, clapping his hands, and grinning up at his father’s friend. He began babbling excitedly and crawling around to face him. He reached out to grip the neckline of Santi’s t-shirt and used the leverage to start pulling himself up to stand.

“Frankie…” Santi peered around the baby to stare at his friend, who was seemingly unperturbed by the events unfolding in front of him.

“18-month-olds learn about one or two words a week, hermano. If the F word is one of Mateo’s first words, I’m telling Charlie it’s on you.”

“And…uh…this?” he asked, Mateo now eye-to-eye with him and pulling at his greying curls.

Frankie sighed and sank deeper into his chair, pulling his cap further down on his forehead. “Just don’t drop him.”

Santiago sat stock still as Mateo tugged at his hair, pulled on his ears, and ran his hands up and down Santi’s stubbly cheeks, giggling all the way. Finally, the baby huffed and slapped his hands down on Santi’s shoulders and stared into his eyes.

The quiet slap could just as easily have been a thunderclap.

Santiago was transfixed.

This wasn’t some kid from a village in Colombia, or a baby that he happened to smile at in Afghanistan. This was his best friend’s son, his brother’s son. As close to his own flesh and blood as he had at the moment. A child born of love that relied on Frankie and Charlie for everything. A child who, if he hadn’t been such a dumbass, wouldn’t have spent the last 18 months not knowing his face. A child who might, if Santi was lucky, grow up calling him Tío Santi.

Santiago drew in a shuddery breath and gently pulled Mateo into a hug, giving the child lots of time to voice his displeasure, but it never came. Instead, the young boy cooed and rested his head against Santi’s shoulder. Santi blinked back the tears that had unexpectedly pooled in his eyes and met Frankie’s gaze across the table.

His old friend, his best friend, gave him a soft smile and an understanding nod as he watched his son bond with his uncle for the first time.

**********

“So, Santi, I’m not gonna lie. I was surprised when Frankie told me you were outside,” Charlie commented as she placed the last serving dish down on the table and took her seat next to Mateo’s empty highchair. “I thought Frankie said you were living in Australia now.”

“Didn’t work out,” Santi deflected, watching as Frankie entered the room after putting Mateo down to sleep.

“Her loss, man,” Frankie comforted lowly, giving Santi’s shoulder a squeeze as he sat down next to him and pulled the dish of chicken towards him.

The adults quietly passed dishes of roasted chicken smothered in mushroom cream sauce, mashed potatoes, almond green beans, and strawberry spinach salad and began to eat.

First bite, Santi groaned. “Oh my god, Charlie…”

Charlie laughed brightly. “You regret staying away for so long now, bud?”

Santi nodded; eyes closed in pleasure. “How hasn’t my boy here gotten fat with you cooking like this?”

Frankie chuckled under his breath. “Who says I haven’t?”

Charlie smiled lovingly at him and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “You’re definitely not, handsome. But even if you were, I’d still love you.”

Frankie pressed a kiss to the back of her hand before releasing her to eat their dinners. “She does her best to keep me in shape. Hiking and swimming and shit.” Santiago winced at the thought and Frankie nodded commiseratingly at him. “Well, at least your knees haven’t given out on you yet, man.”

“If you were in the area, I’d get you set up at my clinic, Santi,” Charlie added. “I don’t know how much good it would do, but there are some exercises and stretches that might help ease the ache a little.”

Santi swallowed his bite of chicken and washed it down with a gulp of white wine before clearing his throat. “Actually, that’s kind of why I’m here.”

At his announcement, both Charlie and Frankie looked at him, dinners abandoned.

Santi swallowed down his nerves.

In…Out…In…Out…

“I, uh…I found a house about ten minutes away that I was thinking of buying,” he stated in an even voice that belied his nerves. Charlie set down her fork and Frankie turned his whole body to face him. “I sold my company in Colombia,” he explained, meeting Frankie’s eyes for a long moment. In actuality, he had sold his stash of weapons to the police force and taken a fairly large payout from the private contractor he had been working for. “And I worked for a security firm in Australia while I was there. But now…” Santi shrugged. “I just think it’s time for something permanent. But I didn’t want to buy so close to you guys without talking to you first. I know there might be some hard feelings, or that you might not want me around Mateo, but—”

“Santi, will you shut up please?” Charlie stood and marched around the table to stand in front of him. “Get up.” Santi glanced over at Frankie who just shrugged and jerked his chin at him. Slowly, hesitantly, Santi stood in front of his best friend’s girl and prepared for the worst.

Odds were, Charlie knew all about Colombia. Santi knew that Frankie didn’t keep secrets from his lady, and didn’t begrudge him at all, but he knew that this could only go badly.

Charlie didn’t want Frankie to go on the mission in the first place. The team had returned one man short and without the promised money. Frankie would have returned home carrying all the guilt and blood that he had worked so hard to shed since his honorary discharge. And the person who dragged him back in was now asking to live in the safety of their shadow.

Santi wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to see him again, never wanted him to hold her child again, never wanted him to see his best friend again, never—

Santi melted into the warm arms that embraced him, one around his back and the other coming up to cup the back of his head, pulling him down to rest against her shoulder.

When Frankie had told him that Charlie was pregnant, Santi was shameful to say that he laughed. Spitfire, no-nonsense Chuck was gonna be a Mom? Are you kidding? She could match the squad drink for drink, curse for curse, any day of the week. She bullied men twice her size into following her exercise regimen for a living, twisting and manipulating their bodies into working properly again. Yet, now, Santi could see that there had always been a touch of motherhood to her. Her warmth and her kindness were what had drawn Frankie to her in the first place. Santi loved her for that, but now he loved her for so much more.

Finally, she pulled back and, much like her son, rested her hands on his shoulders and looked directly into his eyes. “If you even thought of moving somewhere else, I would take you out at the knees myself, bud.”

Santi chuckled, and if it was a little watery, nobody mentioned it.

Frankie stood and wrapped Santi up in a hug, pulling back only to say, “Welcome to the neighborhood, hermano. Mateo’s lucky to have his uncle around.”

**********

Santiago cleared his throat as he approached the front desk. The red-haired receptionist looked up and greeted him with a smile.

“Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?”

“My name is Santiago Garcia. I’m supposed to have an appointment with Charlotte King?”

The receptionist tapped a few keys and nodded. “She’s just with a patient right now, but if you’d like to take a seat in our waiting room, she’ll be with you in a moment.”

Santi nodded and thanked the lady before moving into the small purple alcove off the reception desk and took a seat.

It had been a month since that dinner, and Santi was settling into his new routine nicely.

The sale of the house had gone as smoothly as it possibly could have (meaning, not at all), but the small old colonial style house was officially his and he loved it, despite it being quite the fixer upper. In fact, he loved it because it was a fixer upper.

At Frankie’s urging, Santi had reconnected with Benny and Will, who had taken it upon themselves to become his construction crew. Whenever Will wasn’t giving a speech or Benny wasn’t losing a fight, they were at the house, doing whatever needed to be done. Every Wednesday and Saturday, when he wasn’t teaching flying lessons or spending time with his son, Frankie joined them. Friday nights, he had dinner with Frankie and Charlie. Every Sunday, the whole crew got together and hung out at Frankie’s house. Charlie would cook something delicious, Santi would sit with Mateo in his arms, the Miller’s would do the dishes, and Frankie would hover around them all, making sure his family was safe and happy. It was everything Santi had wanted when he moved back home and more.

“Hey, Santi, sorry about that,” Charlie greeted as she appeared in the doorway of the waiting room.

Santi stood up and gave her a hug. “No worries, Chuck. I know you’re busy.”

Charlie smiled and gave him a friendly pat on the cheek. “If my staff starts calling me Chuck, I’m blaming you.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful,” he teased as he followed her out into the gymnasium-looking clinic. Long massage tables were set up around the periphery of the room while a series of gym apparatuses took up the bulk of the middle. A giant machine sat half-hidden behind a partial wall, and Pope could smell chlorine in the air.

At the end of the square gym was a long hallway, the therapy pool built into the wall on one side and a row of consultation rooms on the other.

Charlie pulled back the curtain on one of the consultation rooms and ushered him inside. Santi slid himself onto the massage table while Charlie sat on the circular rolling chair.

“So, listen…” Charlie began with a sigh. “I tried like hell to change things around and shuffle some patients up, but I wasn’t able to fit you into my schedule.”

Santi felt his heart sink a little. He wasn’t looking for a miracle. Hell no, his last ‘miracle’ surgery had only made things worse. But he had been hoping for at least a chance to live without chronic pain. “No worries, Chuck. Honestly. It was nice of you to—”

“Would you shut the fuck up and let me talk, please? Jesus, Santi, you’re worse than Benny sometimes,” she huffed, rolling her eyes. “I can’t fit you in with me, but I can get you in with Steve. We met when we were doing our DPT program, and he co-owns the place with me. You’ll like him.” Charlie met Santi’s wary gaze and smiled. “Listen, Santi. If you’re not comfortable with him, I’ll see what I can do about fitting you in with me sometime next month. But, please, give him a shot? For me?”

Santi felt himself soften and he grinned, nudging her knee with his foot. “Is that how you landed Frankie, Chuck? You flash him those puppy dog eyes?”

“The puppy dog eyes may or may not have played a part in getting him to put a ring on it. Then again, that might have been the three days of on and off labor to bring his son into the world,” she quipped as she rolled to the door to stick her head out through the curtain. “Hey, Steve! Your new patient is here!”

A shadow crossed the curtain as Charlie stood up, winking at him as she whispered, “You’re gonna be fine, hun.”

The curtain opened and a hulking man blocked a good portion of the light streaming down from the fluorescents. Stepping into the room, Santi blinked for a minute to let his eyes adjust, not even seeing Charlie slip out of the room.

The man was big. Bigger than Will and Benny, which was saying something. Not tall, but broad and muscular, a sleeve of tattoos decorating both arms. Bald with a gold stud in his ear.

What the fuck was Charlie thinking? This dude looked like he was about to break his legs, not help fix them.

Steve (and sweet Jesus, his name was Steve? Did his parents even think before naming him?) took the stool that Charlie had been sitting on and straddled it, rolling over to the table Pope was sitting on.

“Hey, man. I’m Steve,” he grinned brightly, holding out a hand for him to shake.

When their hands clasped, Pope understood why Charlie thought they would get along.

“Where did you serve?”

Steve laughed. “Two tours at a VA hospital in Germany after I got my Bachelor’s degree. Couldn’t afford to get my DPT without Uncle Sam footing the bill. How’d you know?”

Santi laughed. “Spent the last 14 years shaking hands with the brass. It gets pretty easy to tell who has a military handshake and who doesn’t.” At Steve’s questioning look, he continued. “Delta Force. Been all over kingdom come.”

“Ah, so you served with Frankie, huh?”

“Known ‘Fish ever since basic. Been close ever since,” Pope nodded.

Steve nodded with a laugh. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple like that. I’m sure it’s different because we never saw a battlefield, but I get it. Knowing you’re on the same side, being with the same people for years, it forges something.” Pope nodded thoughtfully for a moment before lapsing into silence. “So, I’m guessing all that running around for the good of our nation did some pretty serious damage to your knees, huh?”

Pope smirked, thankful for the out he was being given as he dove into his medical history.

**********

45 minutes later, Steve led Santi out to the main gym and pointed at one of the massage tables along the wall.

“Go hangout there for a minute. I’ll grab the printout of those exercises I was telling you about and a couple of cryo cuffs.”

Pope nodded and settled himself onto a table as Charlie guided her patient onto the table next to him.

“So, how did it go?” she asked as her patient unsteadily eased herself onto the table.

“Oh c’mon, Chuck, you know you were right.”

She shrugged with a tiny smirk on her face. “Well, yeah, but it doesn’t hurt to hear it every once in a while.”

Steve returned and Pope spent the next few minutes setting up his first appointment time, going over the home stretches Steve was giving him to work on, and allowing Steve to wrap both his legs in puffy blue leg braces that he then filled with ice water.

“Alright, man. Hang out here for as long as you want. Just give me a call when you’re ready to go.”

“Sure thing, thanks Steve.”

Pope gently lowered himself onto his back, head cushioned by a thin pillow as he allowed the frigid water to wash away the ache in his knees.

“…Alright, turn over onto your tummy and I’ll get the heating pad for your back,” Charlie informed her patient.

“Oh, you’re actually being nice today and letting me relax to finish off the session,” a playful voice responded, slightly muffled as she turned herself onto her stomach, facing away from Pope so he could only see her hair.

“I’m always nice,” Charlie snarked with a smile as she moved to the steamer and removed a thick heating pad, quickly wrapping it in a cloth and draping it over her patient’s back.

“Don’t let her fool you,” Santi piped up, grinning at his friend. “Charlie’s an awful human being. Stole my best friend and everything.”

The responding giggles sent shivers up his spine as the patient turned her head towards him and he met her eyes for the first time.

“Don’t I know it,” she teased, but Santi barely heard her.

Warm, provoking eyes were framed by long dark lashes that just skimmed her cheekbones when she blinked. A small smile played across full lips, framed by soft looking skin. In short, she was stunning, even with her sweat soaked brow and her slightly hitched breathing.

In…Out…In…Out…

“Yeah, okay Santi,” Charlie’s teasing voice pulled him from his stunned reverie. “I’m so awful I was about to ask if you had dinner plans. You could come see your best friend and your nephew, but I guess I’m too awful of a person to do that.”

“What’s cooking?” he asked, pulling his eyes away from this woman who had definitely caught him by surprise.

Charlie shrugged. “We were just gonna order some pizza and wings. Frankie texted me and said Ben has some sample tile for you to look at for your bathrooms. Will offered to bring beer.”

“Sounds good.”

“Sweet. Now stop being a dick and tell everyone how wonderful I am.”

“Yes ma’am,” he called, laughing under his breath as she sauntered away. He brought his eyes back to the woman lying next to him and found her watching him with an amused look that was peeking out through the space between her hair and her shoulder. “She isn’t that great,” he joked.

She laughed again, and Santi found himself scrambling for another witty comment so he could hear the sound again.

“Trust me, I know,” she responded, adjusting her arms so that they still pillowed her head, but she could now see properly. “She’s been beating on me for weeks.”

“That sounds like Chuck,” he laughed.

She giggled again and Pope preened under her gaze. “Oh, I am so calling her that now.”

He winced with a smile. “She might actually kill me if you do.”

“Oh well, we don’t want that,” she smirked, raising her head a little. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure physiotherapists have to follow the whole ‘do no harm’ thing too. I’ll make sure she can’t hurt you.”

“Thanks, I feel much safer now,” he smiled softly, crow’s-feet crinkling happily at his eyes. He reached a hand out into the empty space between their tables. “I’m Santiago, but most people just call me Santi.”

She smiled and shifted so she could free one of her arms to shake his hand. “I’m Rebecca. It’s nice to meet you, Santi. What are you in for?”

**********

Tags list (open): @darksideofclarke, @writefightandflightclub, @eternallyvenus, @rae-rae-patcha, @himbopoes, @sophoclese, @phoenixhalliwell

#dad!pope #santiago pope garcia x oc #triple frontier #triple frontier fanfiction #oscar issac #pedro pascal #frankie catfish morales

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shakespeareanwannabe · 4 years

Text

Play by Play

Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia x F!OC/Santiago Garcia x Rebecca Cooke

Summary: Santi gets in way too deep with this woman that he barely knows, but finds that sometimes a leap of faith can be worth it.

Warnings: References to parental issues, age gap in a relationship (both participants are well over the age of consent), child abuse/child trauma, misogyny, swearing, PTSD, low self-esteem

A/N: Hi everyone! So, I started writing this story way out of order. Started with Protective Instincts, jumped to Best Laid Plans, went backwards to Strange Comforts, then came all the way back to the beginning with New Beginnings. But that’s because I was just writing them as they came to me (or, if I’m being honest, as @darksideofclarke provided me with golden headcanons that I just expanded on). But now, I’ve sat down and written a general plan for this multichapter story that is turning out to be so astoundingly different from everything else I’ve ever written.

So, I’ll be posting in chronological order now, and I’ll make an announcement here in the A/N about where Protective Instincts, Strange Comforts, and Best Laid Plans fit into the whole scheme of things.

Anyway, here’s chapter 2!

**********

“Hey Jackie,” Santi greeted as he strolled through the front door of the clinic.

“Evening, Santiago. How’re you?” the red headed receptionist replied with a smile, looking up briefly before resuming her typing.

“Same old, same old,” he replied, eyes scanning the clinic. “How’re John and the kids?”

She smiled brightly at him. “Lorelai got accepted to Clemson with a scholarship!”

“That’s amazing, you must be so proud,” he replied, turning his attention back to her when he didn’t find who he was looking for.

“Why is Jackie proud?”

He smiled and felt his face heat up as he turned to face Rebecca, who was just slightly limping through the front door. She was dressed in her usual artfully professional work attire and toting a gym bag that was undoubtedly stuffed with her workout clothes.

“Hey Bex,” he greeted as he slid over to her. “Want some help with that?”

“Ugh, please,” she whined. “I spent the day running after three kindergarten classes, and my hip and back are aching.”

Santi relieved her of the bag and offered her his elbow, a slight tremor running up his spine as she leaned into him.

Three months. That’s how long he’d been going to physiotherapy with Steve. It also happened to be exactly how long he’d been working up the courage to ask Rebecca out.

That first day they met, he’d assumed it was the same kind of visceral reaction he’d had with other women in the past. She was stunningly beautiful, sarcastic, and witty. In other words, just his type. But he wasn’t looking for anything at that moment. He’d just gotten out of a year of trying the domestic thing with Yovanna, and it had crashed and burned spectacularly. He had a new home; he had his friends surrounding him once more. He was good. He was solid. He decided then and there not to do anything to screw up the upward trajectory he was on. That, plus he didn’t want to make things awkward for Charlie, who had a business to run.

So, he’d ignored it. Pushed down the desire to engage and romance, and focused instead on trying to get his knees back under him. But then, their appointment times had lined up and they spent their entire sessions chatting with each other and sassing Charlie. Then it happened again. And again. And, before long, Santi found himself listening in on Rebecca when she booked her appointment times with Charlie so he could book the same slots with Steve.

Three times a week for three months, he spent two hours talking and laughing with this resilient, funny, and kind woman.

That first week had been the introductory stuff.

**********

“So, what are you in for?” she asked, a sly grin on her face.

He grimaced. “Does a lifetime of poor choices count?”

She snorted, burying her face in her arms in an attempt to hide her embarrassment at the unladylike sound. “I’m pretty sure that’s why most of us are here.”

He nodded slowly in acquiescence. “Even you?”

She sighed as she settled further into her table, the heat from the heating pad soothing her sore muscles. “I got into a bad car wreck seven months ago. Idiot driver T-boned me when I was on my way back to work from an in-school art class. Fractured my hip, got a nasty concussion, and a wicked case of whiplash. I got lucky when the concussion symptoms stopped after a few weeks, but I had to come here to get my butt kicked to fix my hip and neck.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say. Being military, it was sometimes easy to forget that the civilians they were trying so desperately to protect could also be taken down by something as simple as crossing the street or taking a drive.

Rebecca leaned herself up on her elbows to fix him with a thoughtful look. “You know what? You’re the first person to say that to me.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded slowly as she relaxed back into the pillow beneath her. “My mom took the ‘Woe is me, my poor baby is hurt’ route and the doctors were more concerned with making sure I was physically okay than checking in on my emotional state. So, thank you for that.”

He shrugged as easily as he could lying down. “My buddy Will always says that sometimes the best thing you can offer someone are words, so they know you’re there.”

“Will sounds like a smart guy. How’d you two meet?”

“We were put into the same squad in the military. Worked together for years.”

“Ah, I shoulda guessed you were military,” she groaned as she shifted slightly, moving quickly to catch the heating pad before it slipped. “You’ve got that kinda look.”

“You mean the beat to shit look?” he sighed, turning his head away from her to stare at the ceiling fan rotating slowly above him.

A poke in the arm startled his attention back to her. She had strained herself across the gap between the tables, barely able to poke his arm with her middle finger without sliding off.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she replied gently. “I just meant that you look like the kind of guy who has seen too much bad in this world. Which isn’t fair. Nobody should have to carry that kind of burden.” Santi struggled to swallow; his emotions all caught up in his throat and his skin tingling from the slight brush of her finger against his arm. “I’m not gonna say ‘thank you for your service’, because I feel like that’s just an empty platitude at this point. But I will say that I hope you find a way to make that burden just a little lighter.”

He looked over at her again and smiled. “Thank you.”

**********

Okay, so the introductory stuff got heavier than Santi anticipated. Parental problems, traumatic events, talk of his service. He was in heavy with this girl and he didn’t even know her last name.

That came in week two.

**********

“Basketball or baseball?”

“Baseball. Same question.”

“Baseball. Hockey or football?”

“Football. Same question.”

“Hockey. Cats or dogs?” Rebecca grunted as she kicked her leg out, struggling against the sliding weights attached to her injured leg by a cuff and a cord.

“Dogs. Same question to you,” Santi replied, voice distorted as he squatted on the FitVibe.

“Dogs. You know, you can’t just say ‘same question’ every time it’s your turn. It kind of defeats the purpose of the game,” she gasped as she finished her first set, twisting around to grab her water bottle from the chair behind her.

Santi shrugged as the machine stopped vibrating, giving him 90 seconds to rest before his next set started.

“Did you have a dog growing up?” he questioned as he sipped from his own bottle.

She nodded as she gulped down her icy water, Santi trying and failing to keep his eyes off her delicate neck and chest, which were gleaming with a sheen of sweat. “A St. Bernard. Cookie. I loved that dog, but I hated his name. I mean, really? Cookie Cooke? What were my parents thinking?”

Santi chuckled as his machine began counting down to start the next set. “Probably that it was cute? Who knows? Your turn…” He grunted as he carefully squatted as the pad began to shake again. He closed his eyes against the twinge of pain and missed Rebecca blatantly staring at his ass before beginning her next set.

“Star Wars or Star Trek?”

“Star Wars. Books or movies?”

“Both. Goonies or Stand by Me?”

“Can’t go wrong with Goonies.”

“Ugh, and here I was just thinking that you had good taste! Who in their right mind picks Goonies over Stand by Me?” she teased.

He shot her a glance out of the corner of his eye. Even blurry from the vibrations coursing through his body, she was the prettiest girl he’d seen in a long time.

“Never said I was in my right mind, sweetheart,” he winked and that giggle that he was so enchanted by escaped her lips again.

**********

Week three was when he really tried to pump the breaks on his rapidly developing feelings for her. Not only had Yovanna sent him a box of his stuff via airmail, but he became privy to some information that assured him that this thing between them would never work.

**********

“Don’t tell me you’re done already!” he called from the Kin-Com as Rebecca practically skipped over to the table closest to him. She had her good days and her bad days with her injured leg, and Santi liked chatting with her the past nine days, but he loved chatting with her on her good days. There was this spark, this energy she radiated when she was feeling good that he just wanted to bathe in.

“This is what you get for showing up late, Santi! You’re strapped into the death machine and I get a massage to wrap things up.” She shot him a bright smile before lying down on the table, just out of his range of sight thanks to the half partition wall that separated the machine from the rest of the clinic.

“Don’t tease the old man, Rebecca,” Charlie cautioned in a faux-mocking tone.

“Hey, if I’m an old man, what does that make you? Frankie is two months older than me!” he pointed out, pressing against the mechanical arm that was slowly manipulating his leg.

“Apparently the term is ‘panther’,” she replied, straight-faced. “Learned that one at ladies’ night after one of my friends had a few too many and found out Frankie’s 10 years older than me. Me, I call it lucky.”

“Yeah, you better,” he warned as the machine stopped moving. A quick look at the computer screen told him he had finished his set for the day, and he quickly unstrapped himself and hopped down, walking slightly creakily to the table next to where Charlie was carefully massaging and manipulating Rebecca’s hip.

“Your fiancé’s ten years older than you, Chuck?” Rebecca asked, her eyes closed as she tried to relax her aching joints.

Charlie shot Santi an unamused glare as he lowered himself onto the table and laid back, Steve approaching with the cryo-cuffs and ice machine.

“Yeah, Frankie’s 40 and I’m 30. Why?” she asked, an accusation hiding deep in her voice as her body tensed up.

Inwardly, Santi was nodding approvingly. Frankie sometimes got too in his own head about his age, especially in relation to his fiancée’s, and Santi knew how much Frankie doubted himself when it came to their relationship. Charlie was a successful business owner and college graduate. Frankie was a retired soldier who almost lost his pilot’s license because he’d been desperate for money when his girlfriend got pregnant and knew just how lucrative drug running could be. It wasn’t difficult to see why Frankie felt so insecure about the relationship, but Charlie was so good at getting him out of that headspace, and even better about shutting down anyone who had anything negative to say about her man.

“Nothing!” Rebecca was quick to reply. “I was just curious. Age is just a number, right? Besides, I saw you two together when he came to pick you up that one time, remember? You two are cute as hell. He just doesn’t look 40.” Rebecca rolled her head to look at Santi, and he felt his own hackles raise a little, suddenly self-conscious of his greying hair and his weak knees. Then, she smiled softly at him and, if he wasn’t fooling himself, a warm affection infused her gaze. “Neither do you.”

He felt all the blood rush to his face and once again had to bat down the idea of asking her out. A box full of old mail and knickknacks had just arrived on his porch that morning from Australia. Domesticity didn’t work for him, and even casually seeing someone felt like too much of an effort. Still, there was something about that look in her eyes, the easy repartee they had going on, the support they gave each other during their workouts, that told him that, if he was going to try again, she was the one to try with.

“Hey Becky!” a loud voice boomed across the clinic. “Where you at?”

Rebecca smiled apologetically at him and Charlie before raising her voice just a little to call back, “I’m over here!” She turned her attention back to them, looking almost sadly at Santi as she said, “Sorry guys, that’s my date for tonight.”

A tall guy sauntered over from the reception desk and Santi felt himself reacting instinctively.

He was tall, well over 6 foot, and wearing a fancy, well-fitted navy suit with a white button down underneath, no tie and the first two buttons undone.

“Ah, there’s my girl!” he leaned down and gave her a claiming kiss, almost like he knew that Santi was watching.

“Uh, hi Derek. I thought you were going to wait outside?” she asked, looking away from them all as she raised a hand to her cheek.

“I was, doll, but I’ve been out there for twenty minutes. Our reservation is set for 7:30, and it takes ten minutes to drive out there, so go get yourself cute and let’s go.”

“Uh…” Rebecca looked between Santi and Charlie while worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

Santi had never wanted so badly to punch someone he hadn’t even officially met. He wanted to speak up, tell Derek that Rebecca was already cute in her leggings and off-the-shoulder t-shirt. Tell him that he can’t just barge in and interrupt an appointment in a place of business.

Charlie leaned into his line of sight and subtly shook her head and, deep down, he knew she was right. If he punched him, or called him out, he would be just as bad. Plus, what right did he have? He’d spent a few hours with this woman and had zero claim on her time or her attention.

“It’s okay, Rebecca. We’re done for today anyway. You can use the staff bathroom to wash up if you’d like,” Charlie assured, helping Rebecca off the table.

“Okay, thanks Charlie. Santi?” He slowly slid his eyes up to meet hers and read the apology there clear as day. “I’ll see you next week, okay?”

He cleared his throat. “Sure thing. See you then.”

Rebecca smiled, a hint of relief overtaking her features as she sighed. “Good. Have a good weekend everybody!”

She headed towards the staff bathroom with her gym bag in tow and ‘Derek’ left, presumably to go and wait in the car like he was supposed to.

“Frat boy lookin’ douche,” Santi grumbled under his breath.

“Yeah, and the bag it came in,” Charlie muttered as she wiped down Rebecca’s table.

“Isn’t he a little young for her?” Santi asked rhetorically. “He looks like he just stepped off the stage at college graduation.”

“Dude, she’s like, 25. They’re probably the same age.” Charlie flung the white towel she had been using over her shoulder. “Don’t tell anyone I told you that. Patient confidentiality and all that.”

Santi felt his heart sink but told himself it was for the best. Now he had a good reason for not asking her out. What 25-year-old would want to date a broken-down old man anyway?

**********

Week four didn’t happen, and it was the one time Santiago Garcia considered himself a coward.

He’d promised. He’d explicitly told her that he would see her the following week, but he’d called at the last second and rescheduled with Steve for times when he knew she would be at work.

He just didn’t know how to face her. Yes, he had no claim to her time or attention. Yes, he’d spent a grand total of 18 hours in her presence. No, he had never explicitly asked if she was seeing anyone. And, yes, he had sworn off dating for a while, so he had no right to get his back up about her having a date.

And yet, the thought of seeing her, all smiley and happy after her date with ‘Derek’ made him sick to his stomach.

Week five he tried to reschedule again. He picked a time slot that aligned with the closing of the museum she worked at, knowing she often stayed a little longer after closing to chat with coworkers and stare at the art. He should have known, however, that things rarely ever turned out the way he wanted them to.

**********

“Have you been avoiding me?”

The soft voice made him trip over his feet, his left foot tangling in the rungs of the rope ladder he was currently working with.

He looked up and met Rebecca’s soft eyes, tinged with sadness. He sighed and walked around her, stooping to pick up his water bottle before perching himself on a padded wooden block.

“No. Why?”

“Because I haven’t seen you in a week and Charlie wouldn’t tell me why,” she huffed, wrapping her arms around her chest as she moved to lean against the wall across from him.

“I was busy.”

“Really? Huh,” she chuckled sarcastically. “So, this has nothing to do with Derek coming in here?”

He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “Nope.”

She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Okay, Santiago. Whatever…” She turned and began to walk away, out of the back room where he was working out and back into the main gym area.

It was then that he noticed her clothing. A really pretty black blouse with a purple and red floral pattern and a black pencil skirt that pulled his eyes straight to her ass, and no red gym bag hanging from her arm.

“You not staying to work out?”

She turned back to him and laughed humorlessly. “No. I called reception and asked if you were coming in today. Gwen wasn’t going to say, but then Jackie got on the phone and told me you were here. Apparently, she’s got a soft spot for you. So, I left work early because I couldn’t stand not knowing if you were mad at me.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he mumbled looking down at the silky fabric of his gym shorts, guilt beginning to gnaw at his core.

“Oh, I’m getting that message loud and clear,” she snapped, marching back over to him and getting right up in his face. “But I did. Because I was worried that I had offended you with my age comment, or that I made you uncomfortable by saying that you didn’t look your age, or that I somehow upset you by not telling you that I was, unfortunately, going on a date that night.”

He stood up, standing nose to nose with her. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, we both know you don’t owe me anything. I hope you and Derek had a wonderful time together.”

“Screw you,” she seethed.

Santi scoffed and shook his head, turning away from her to escape into the bathroom.

Once he had the door locked behind him, he sighed heavily and splashed cold water on his face.

This. This was why he didn’t want to seriously date anyone. He inevitably would screw things up. Or, worse, he’d ruin things before he even had the chance to really start with someone.

Fuck, Yovanna had been right. He somehow always managed to dim whatever light there was around him. Rebecca’s warmth and energy were so bright, so addicting, that he had thought it possible to bask in them without hurting her. She was like the Sun, drawing him in even when he wanted to stay away. Nobody could hurt the Sun. It was so warm and so bright and so uplifting that it couldn’t be damaged. Yet, there he was.

Santi sighed and stared at himself in the mirror, resolving to fix things next week. He’d switch back to his regular time and pray to a god he wasn’t sure he believed in that she would be willing to hear him out. That was his long-term plan. His immediate plan was to get through the day’s session and go home to drink that bottle of whisky he’d been saving.

Opening the door, he took two steps onto the rubber flooring of the back room and froze.

Soft sobs echoed in the airy space, and he felt his heart sink down to his toes as he followed the sound back to that padded block, finding Rebecca hunched over on it, a hand pressed delicately to her mouth as she tried to muffle the sound.

He grimaced to himself, knowing he was the cause of her distress. Hesitantly, he reached out and tried to place a gentle hand on her shoulder, but Rebecca caught sight of his shoes first and jerked back in surprise, looking up at him with tears gleaming like diamonds in her eyes under the harsh florescent lights.

He slowly crouched down in front of her, balancing on the balls of his feet.

“I’m an idiot,” he started, and felt his heart lift slightly as she choked on a laugh. “And I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head at him, desperately swiping at her tears. “No, you were right. We barely know each other, so we don’t owe each other anything. I had no right to get mad at you. For all I know, you had a family emergency that made you switch your appointment times.”

Santi was already shaking his head. “Your instincts were good, sweetheart. I did change times to avoid you, but not because I was mad at you.”

“The age comments—”

“Were sweet,” he finished for her, meeting her gaze for the first time since he had lowered himself down. “If you had said anything bad about Frankie, I wouldn’t have had time to argue with you before Charlie jumped down your throat.” She laughed again and his heart lifted just a tad higher. “And I appreciate you saying I don’t look my age. I always think the grey gives me away,” he added wryly.

“It suits you,” she rebutted quickly. “Not many people look good with the salt and pepper, grey thing. All I can think of are Idris Elba, George Clooney and you.”

Santi laughed loudly. “Well, I will take that compliment.”

“Good,” she nodded decisively. “Now get off your knees before Steve comes and yells at you.”

She shifted over on the block and he laboriously heaved himself to his feet, coming to sit next to her, a few inches of space between their bodies. They sat in a cloud of quiet calm, both knowing that there was more to resolve but unwilling to break the silence.

“Maybe it’s not my place, but I just think you can do a lot better than Douchebag Derek,” Santi finally said. “No offense,” he added quickly, silently berating himself for the slip.

She giggled at the nickname. “No offense taken. It was actually my first time ever meeting him,” she admitted quietly.

Pope’s mind rapidly went over the brief interaction and he felt his blood begin to boil. “But…”

She nodded sadly. “I know. He’s the son of the museum curator, so I felt like I couldn’t turn him down without affecting my job. And you know how much I love my job.”

He did know. She was the educational liaison for the local art museum. She led field trips that came through the museum, explaining different art pieces and their historical and artistic significance, while also leading the students through art lessons on how to either imitate an artist’s style or create their own styles. Occasionally, she would also make trips to low-income schools in the area through an outreach program, going into classrooms to teach art lessons and give the teachers a break. It was on her way back from one of those in school visits that she got into her car accident, but it hadn’t diminished her enthusiasm for her work. In fact, it had made her desperate to get back into the museum and back into the classroom.

“But he kissed you. And he called you Becky,” Santi commented, confused.

Rebecca allowed her head to fall into her palm. “I know…apparently his mom really talked me up and made me seem really desperate and really into him. Plus, he seems to think he’s God’s gift to women, so it was the perfect storm of misogynistic crap.”

Santi was shaking his head. “Next time, tell me. I don’t care if you have to do it in front of the guy, just let me know and I’ll get him out of your hair in ten seconds, tops.”

She sighed and shuffled closer to him. “Thanks Santi. It’s nice to know that someone has my back.” She ended up pressed right against his side and gently lowered her head to his shoulder.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

**********

That day marked the end of Santi sticking to his guns about not dating. After that, it became an increasingly difficult game that he was playing with himself.

Get closer to her, get to know her more, be that shoulder for her to lean on when she needed it, but don’t cross that line. Just because she said he didn’t look his age; it didn’t mean she wanted to be with someone his age. It didn’t reduce the 15-year age gap between them. She said it was nice to have someone have her back, so that’s who he became. Her constant cheerleader, her confidant, her friend. It was the first female friend Santi had had since Charlie. Before Charlie, never.

They exchanged numbers that day, and soon his days became filled with texting her different stories about his day, like how he ended up at the hospital with Benny because the idiot accidentally put a nail through his finger when he was helping nail down Santi’s new kitchen floor, or how he couldn’t move after a session where Steve had him in the therapy pool for 45 minutes. She’d send him funny quotes she heard her ‘kids’ say on field trips or in the classroom, or photos of paintings in the museum with ridiculous captions.

After she laid her head on his shoulder, he knew he loved her. After she sent him a photo of Queen Elizabeth the First’s portrait with the caption “wanna thank your mother for a butt like that”, he knew he was in love with her. And after she showed him a picture of her childhood dog Cookie and her at age 6, he knew he was drowning in her and that his only salvation would be asking her out.

Still, he kept drowning for months.

“Santi?” He turned his attention to Rebecca, still leaning gently on his arm as they stood outside the change room. “You okay? I lost you there for a second.”

“Yeah, Bex, I’m fine,” he smiled warmly at her and felt a silent thrill go through him when she got a little flustered. “Uh, Jackie was excited because Lorelai got accepted at Clemson.”

“Wow, good for her.” They both paused, a slight awkwardness hanging over them. “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you out there?”

“Oh…uh, yeah.”

The door closed with a quiet click and Santi wanted to kick himself. They had spent weeks dancing around this thing, and it was pissing him off to no end.

He had never been like this. Not since he asked out Libby Stiles in the fourth grade. Why was this one girl sending his head spinning? Okay, he knew why, but it wasn’t fair. He could ask out any girl he ran into, except the one he wanted.

“Hey!” Santi turned around at the hissed greeting and found Charlie pumping up an exercise ball behind him. “If you don’t ask her out, I am going to ask her out for you!” she whispered.

Santi took a cautionary glance back at the door before stepping over to her. “What are you talking about?”

“Cut the shit, Santi!” she huffed quietly. “You think I haven’t noticed that all of your appointment times line up with hers? Or that you spend more time talking to her than you do actually doing your stretches? Or that you get this sad sap look in your eyes when you look at her?”

“And what the fuck do you know about it, Charlie?” he snarled under his breath.

“Because it’s the same way I look at Frankie, you dork!” she smirked. “It’s the same way Frankie looks at me, it’s the way Benny looks at every fucking Ring Girl who walks by. Oh, and it’s the same way she looks at you when you’re not paying attention. Now, get this ridiculous sexual tension out of my clinic and ask her out!”

“How?” he exhaled. “And what do we do? Where do I take her?”

“Jesus, Santi…” she breathed, straightening herself and running her arm over her sweaty forehead. “Who are you and what did you do with Santiago Garcia?”

He rolled his eyes and stomped over to the stationary bike. A minute later, Charlie rejoined him after adding the exercise ball to the ball bin.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she murmured softly, one hand on his back.

“I know,” he apologized, grinning at her and nudging her with his elbow.

“It’s just clear as fucking day, Santi. What’s holding you up?” Charlie crossed her arms and leaned against the handlebars of the bike he was riding. “And don’t say it’s the age gap. Not to me.”

He rolled his eyes. “Is 15 years not a good enough reason, Chuck?”

She shrugged, leaning down to rest her chin on her arms. “Not to me it isn’t. Besides, Santi, that girl is into you.”

“Right, yeah. These looks she’s been giving me. Okay.”

“Jesus…” Charlie swore under her breath, Santi chuckling as he recognized a few Spanish curses mixed in with the English. Charlie really was Frankie’s lady. “Okay, you didn’t hear this from me, right?” Santi nodded, leaning in as far as the bike would allow him. “Those first few weeks, before you started stalking her schedule to get the same time slots? She would call in and ask Jackie what times you were coming so she could book the same times as you. That’s why Jackie told her you were in here that day you made her fucking cry in my back room. Jackie’s a hopeless romantic and has wanted you two idiots to get together from the start.”

Santi sat back, feeling like the wind had just been knocked out of him. “S-seriously?”

Charlie nodded, a smirk on her face. “Yep. And if you ask her out this week, I win the jackpot.”

“You guys have been betting on us?” he hissed, leaning forward again.

“Oh, please. Like you and the Millers weren’t taking bets on when Frankie would finally pop the question, and I know for a fact you pulled the strings on that one to turn things in your favor, Mr. Best Man,” she rolled her eyes. “Look, ask her out today and I’ll use the winnings to cover your tab at the Beer Garden tonight. Deal?”

Santi fixed her with a suspicious look. “Is this you wanting to win or is this you actually having my best interest at heart?”

Charlie gave him a light smack on the back of the head as she moved away to her desk, conveniently located between the main gym and the back room, with the therapy pool behind her.

“You know me better than that, Santiago. Now get your girl, please.”

**********

Charlie was right. She was always right. It was one of the things that drove Santiago up the fucking wall. Frankie and Charlie were the perfect pair because, between the two of them, they were right one hundred percent of the time. Ben needed advice for his next fight? Forget Will, he was going to Frankie and Frankie’s future wife. Will revamped his speech and needed someone to read it over? Send it to Mr. and Future Mrs. Morales. Santi needed to pick paint colours? He just handed the paint chips to the couple of let them go wild. When they argued, it drove Frankie nuts because his lady had a knack for being right about almost everything. (The one time she was wrong in all their years of dating was when she claimed that Mateo would be a little girl, and Frankie wasn’t going to let her live that down as long as they lived.)

This time, she was right about Santi having to ask Rebecca out, and Santi was sure that ‘Fish would have the same advice if he were to call him up. This hurry up and wait bullshit was driving him crazy, so he needed to do it now, for his own peace of mind.

“Hey, man,” Steve hustled up to him, worry etched across his face.

“Hey Steve, you okay?”

He was already shaking his head. “My brother just called. Our mom took a nasty spill down the stairs. I’m really sorry, but I’m gonna have to cut this short. You’re basically done anyway; I was just gonna do some laser work with you but we can do that on Monday. I talked to Charlie; she can set you up with the cryo cuffs.”

“Yeah, man. No worries. Hope your mom is okay.”

“Thanks, man.”

Santi watched Steve leave for a minute before getting off the glider and heading into the back room, where he knew Charlie and Rebecca were.

“Hey Santi,” Charlie called from the goalpost set up in the corner. “Did Steve talk to you?”

“Yeah. Shame about his mom.”

Charlie nodded emphatically. “She’s a sweet lady. I’ve got my fingers crossed for her.”

“Me too…” Santi watched as Charlie bent to attach a weight to Bex’s foot. “You want me to go grab a table, Chuck? No rush.”

“Sure, if you want,” she replied distractedly. “Or…I was just gonna have Rebecca kick some soccer balls to work on her range of motion. Maybe you could goal keep for her?” she shot him a sly smile.

“I’d love that,” Rebecca piped up, a touch of embarrassment washing over her at her too-enthusiastic tone. “I mean, if you’re free.”

“Sure. Yeah, I can do that,” he agreed awkwardly, moving across the room to stand in the net.

“Alright then. Rebecca, you’re in good hands. Have fun you two.” Charlie turned and sauntered away, turning back once to mouth “Ask her out, dumbass” at him.

“You ever play soccer, Bex?” he asked, adjusting his stance so he stood in the middle of the goalpost.

“Ha, no,” she replied, kicking the soccer ball over to him. “My physical exercise is limited to yoga and swimming. Anything involving a ball or a racquet or running? That would be a no from me.” Santi kicked the ball back to her as it reached his feet. “You?”

“I played some when we would go visit my cousins in Colombia, and I played for my fifth-grade team in school, but that was about it. Sometimes we would play with some of the village kids when we were in Afghanistan. Give ‘em a taste of normal for a few minutes.”

She smiled sweetly as she returned the ball to him, leg moving a little steadier this time. “That’s really great of you.”

“Not really,” he shrugged, sliding over a step to stop the ball before kicking it back to her. “We were the ones fucking up their country. It was the very least we could do. But, god, Tom hated when we did that.”

She scoffed. “Well, that’s not fair of him. Those kids deserve something at least a little fun after all the crap they have to deal with.”

Santi grunted in agreement. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Bex laughed once, low and devoid of joy. “Oh but I do.” Santi stopped the ball and meandered over to her, looking at her questioningly. “Santi, most of my job revolves around kids. You’d be surprised how many of them tell me that their daddies hit them or their mommies throw things at them or that their grandparents intentionally starve them for being bad.” Tears welled up in her eyes and Santi quenched the urge to wrap her in his arms. “I’ve made more CPS calls than I can count and, the worst part is, I never know if that kid is safe after I make the call. Santi, there’s a reason my trunk is full of kid sized snack packs, granola bars, juice boxes. The museum doesn’t cover any of it, but at least I know that, when I walk into a classroom or those kids walk into my museum, they’ll feel safe and loved, and they won’t have to worry about food for at least a day.”

“Jesus, Bex,” he sighed, a small, sad smile on his face. “And they call us the heroes.”

She let out a tear-filled laugh and wiped at the single tear that had managed to escape. “We all do our part, Santi. You play soccer with kids in war torn countries. I feed the ones who get left behind at home.”

Rebecca turned away from him, heading for the main gym when he reached out and grabbed her elbow gently, giving it a squeeze as he turned her towards him and doing his best to ignore the electricity that ran up and down his arm at her touch.

He sighed and released her, his hand coming up to rub at the curls on the back of his head.

“Look, stop me if this is way off base, but if I don’t say this I’m gonna go crazy. I…I really like you, and I’ve wanted to ask you out for a while but, uh…” he smiled wryly and chuckled, hating how she made him feel like an inexperienced teenage boy.

“Santi?” Rebecca stepped closer and entwined her fingers with his remaining hand, giving it a tight squeeze.

“Do you want to go to the Beer Garden with me tonight?” he burst, the words falling out of his mouth. “A, uh, a bunch of us are going tonight. My old squad, Charlie and Frankie. Would you like to come with us? I mean,” he felt his cheeks heat up. “Would you like to come with me? As my date?”

A sweet, giddy giggle surged past her lips. “I’d love to.”

“Really?”

She squeezed his hand, more laughter bubbling up from her lips. “Yeah. I…I’ve been trying to build up the nerve to ask you out for coffee for the last, like, month.”

“Maybe if tonight goes well we could go for coffee next week?” he asked hopefully.

She sighed and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I’d really like that.”

“Awesome,” he breathed. “I’ll pick you up at 8?”

“That sounds perfect.”

**********

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#santiago pope garcia x oc #santiago garcia #frankie catfish morales #triple frontier #triple frontier fanfic #fanfiction #oscar issac #pedro pascal

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