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stylesharrys · 2 days

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special smokes [weedrry]

summary: harry and y/n struggle with their self-control after sharing a joint at niall’s house party.

word count: 3,774

warnings: mentions and consumption of marijuana (smoking a joint) and alcohol, smut; kissing, teasing, swearing, dirty talk, oral (male receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, cream pie, light spanking

a/n: at first i had no intention of following up on weedrry and y/n but so many requested it and the more i considered it, the more ideas i kept getting hehe. they’re probably one of my favourite couples to write at this point and i have some other ideas in the woodwork for them aswell!! this is technically part two of special brownies but it can also be read as a standalone :) anyway, i hope you enjoy darlings and happy belated 420 hehe <3

They promised to never talk about it again. But that didn’t stop either of them lying in bed at night, reminiscing how each other tasted. It didn’t stop Harry from thinking about his roommate as he touched himself in the shower and painted the tiles with his come. Just like it didn’t stop Y/N from pretending her thick dildo was Harry’s cock when she got herself off at three in the morning.

Neither of them was aware of the other's shenanigans. Harry thought Y/N was too embarrassed to think about it and Y/N thought Harry just forgot. Of course, Tom’s none the wiser to anything that’s happened. Even living with the two, he’s yet to notice that slight shift in the atmosphere – that tension that seems to follow wherever they go together.

And tonight is no different. They’re both slightly turned on at the thought of one another as they sit huddled around the fire in Niall’s garden. He’s one of the few friends who was sensible enough to apply for a house rather than an apartment, and Harry is always sure to reap the benefits of it.

It’s nearly ten o’clock and the house party Niall threw for his birthday is in full swing. Y/N recognises a few faces, not nearly as many as Harry (who’s known to have been a bit of a serial dater in the past), but it doesn’t change her mood in the slightest.

She’s been perched on a sun lounger for the past forty-five minutes, five drinks in and slowly starting to feel the buzz of the alcohol. She promised herself she wouldn’t drink too heavily tonight – not when she knows how sleepy she gets with alcohol. She doesn’t want to be found passed out on some random person's bed that Niall houseshares with.

Harry’s been sporting the same beer for the past half an hour. Much like Y/N, he also wasn’t really in the mood to get shitfaced, despite it being his best friend's birthday. He has a job interview tomorrow afternoon and he cannot deal with cradling a hangover at the same time.

His eyes have been on her body most of the night. Despite living together, he’s hardly seen Y/N at home in the past two weeks since… well… you know. At first, he thought she was just busy, but now he’s starting to get the idea that she’s avoiding him.

Harry’s sure it’s down to embarrassment, and as much as he wants his friend back, he promised he wouldn’t bring it up again. He doesn’t want to embarrass Y/N any further. It hurts his ego a little bit if he’s honest. Harry struggles to understand if she’s embarrassed she slept with her friend, or if she’s embarrassed because she slept with him.

If he pulled his head out of his ass, he might realise that it’s the former. Mostly. Because the other half of what she’s feeling is pure lust. Y/N struggles to even look at Harry the same since they hooked up two weeks ago. When she looks at him, all she sees is him naked – so she’s certain he sees the same when he looks at her.

She takes another swig of her drink in an attempt to drown the groan that tries to escape. God, it’s criminal how even just the thought of him naked manages to get her worked up like this. He’s her friend for crying out loud. She needs to get her thoughts in order.

Harry’s telling himself the same thing. Struggling to think of anything other than kissing up her smooth, exposed thighs and burying his head under her little sundress right there, in front of everyone to see. His cock stiffens slightly in his pants and he shifts a little in his chair – as discretely as he can.

“Who’s up for a round of spin the bottle!”

The group in the garden chant a groan in unison at Niall’s suggestion. “We’re not fifteen, Ni… nobody wants to play spin the bottle.” Alfie pipes up from his crisscrossed position on the patio floor.

Niall rolls his eyes and places an empty wine bottle in the middle of the group anyway. Involuntarily, everyone begins to form a circle around it, knees knocking as they do. Y/N remains on the deck chair, pulling the back up so she sits upright like Harry who’s still opposite her.

Niall gets comfortable on the ground, his eyes alight like a kid on Christmas. He’s about to take his turn when he furrows his brows and begins to pat down his pockets like he’s forgotten something.

“Anybody got a smoke?”

“Nah,” Jessie calls back, “I’ve got a couple of joints, though.”

Harry and Y/N’s eyes find one another as their bodies grow paralysed at the mention of the one thing that got them in this situation in the first place.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Oooh,” Niall grins, “Jessie’s got the special smokes… come on then, lad. Light ‘em up and pass ‘em around.”

Y/N’s heart begins to thump against her ribcage as she tears her gaze away from Harry’s. There’s no way in Hell this is happening right now. She tells herself to calm down, that she doesn’t have to have a pull of the joint.

But as it makes its way around the circle until it’s between her fingers, she finds herself taking a long, deep drag of it anyway. It burns the back of her throat, as weed always has, but she holds it for as long as she can before slowly exhaling and passing it back down to Niall who sits in front of her.

When she lifts her gaze, her eyes lock on Harry’s. There’s a shit-eating grin on his face as he holds the second joint between his fingers – like he knows they’re going to end up in the same situation as last time and he’s more than okay with that. Harry takes a drag just as Y/N had and passes it off to Genevieve next to him.

Harry manages to hold it in longer than Y/N can and he keeps his eyes locked on hers when he slowly exhales. When the joint makes its way back to Y/N and she’s taking her second pull, she’s giving in to all the dirty thoughts in her head. Her wicked smirk matches Harry’s now and the game of spin the bottle begins.

Niall starts first, landing on Genevieve who he kisses quite happily. Gen spins and lands on Jessie. Then when Jessie spins, he lands on… Y/N.

Her eyes are quick to flicker between him and Harry as she registers the situation. There’s a third and fourth joint passing through the group and for a moment, she’s too stoned to realise what’s going on.

There’s a look on Harry’s face, though – an unamused one. His jaw is set tightly and his brows are gently pinched as he watches Jessie approach Y/N with a lopsided grin. He doesn’t understand why anger begins to bubble in the pit of his stomach. And Y/N doesn’t understand why she feels so weird about being kissed by someone else in front of him.

But she welcomes Jessie’s lips against hers anyway. It’s soft, gentle. He’s not a bad kisser, but after a few seconds, he pulls away and hands her the joint before returning to his seat. She looks to Harry again with pursed lips and he’s chewing at the inside of his cheek.

Y/N takes another pull for the joint and reaches for the bottle when Niall’s hand on hers stops her.

“I have an idea to make this more interesting.”

She looks at him, eyebrow raised.

“You have to hook up with the person it lands on.”

Her eyes widen and a laugh rumbles from her chest. “Niall, you can’t make me hook up with anyone. That’s not how this game works. You’re not fucking Cupid.”

Niall frowns, displeased by her attitude. He crosses his arms over his chest and pinches the joint from her fingers, huffing. “Fine.”

Y/N spins the bottle, leaning back as she watches it rotate until it lands on Harry. His eyes are on hers, hungry. She takes a deep breath and clears her throat, stepping between people as she approaches him.

Harry cranes his head up, still not entirely happy that she kissed Jessie, but he welcomes her mouth on his instantly. They’re lustful, almost forgetting their surroundings as Harry swipes his tongue across her bottom lip. She’s about to do the same, to tangle her fingers in his hair when whistling and cheering breaks them apart.

They’re both incredibly flushed and hot as Y/N moves back to her seat, licking over her bottom lip for another distant taste of him. Harry’s no better, his cock beginning to swell. He clears his throat and leans down to take his turn.

There’s a resounding gasp as it lands on Y/N and they're forced to kiss again, this time Harry approaching Y/N and kissing her a little hungrier. When she spins her turn, it lands back on Harry and the group is growing both tired and a little suspicious of the game.

It gets harder and harder for them to keep their hands to themselves. The stolen kisses feed the fire in their bellies and Niall is quick to call off the game and suggest some truth or dare instead, like the fifteen-year-old he seems to be.

Both Y/N and Harry hardly listen to the game unfold. Both are too stoned and lust-filled to pay attention to anything. They’re stealing glances from across the circle, sharing knowing looks that they’re both desperate to escape everyone else and hide away together somewhere.

It goes on like this for another ten minutes and pinching the joint from Niall’s hand, Harry takes initiative and stands from his chair. “Y/N, shall we go and sort out Ni’s present now?”

He’s got a brow raised expectantly and her eyes widen at his little fib. They both miss the way Niall looks between them with a beaming smile full of excitement.

“You’s got me a present?”

Y/N blinks, finally looking at her friend. “Oh, yeah! Sorry, we completely forgot. Do you mind if we get it sorted? It’s not quite finished yet.” She lies through her teeth.

Harry’s smirk grows tenfold at the way she plays along with the little game and Niall nods his head.

“Thanks, Ni,” Harry says kindly, voice a bit condescending but Niall’s too stoned to notice. “Do you mind if I smoke this in the house?”

Niall waves his hand dismissively. “I don’t care, I do it all the time.”

Harry looks back to Y/N, tilting his head to the door with a smirk. She follows him inside, giddy with lust and anticipation. He takes her hand in his, guiding her as he weaves through other party-goers until they reach the stairs. It’s a little quieter when they reach the top, Harry opening doors and quickly closing them when he finds they’re already occupied.

He’s growing frustrated, only one room left that he hasn’t checked – Niall’s room. He tugs them both inside when he realises it’s empty, closing and locking the door behind them. Harry takes a pull of the joint and leaves it hanging between his lips as his fingers work on the buttons at the top of Y/N’s sundress.

She’s full of adrenaline and arousal, unable to think clearly – her mind far too consumed by lust. Harry pops open just enough buttons to reveal her bare chest, breasts exposed to his hungry eyes and he groans.

Taking the joint from his lips, he brings it to Y/N’s, encouraging her to take a hit. She does as instructed as Harry’s hands find her tits, kneading softly before he leans down to envelop her left nipple in his warm mouth.

She exhales the smoke a bit prematurely, taking another pull to make up for it and with her free hand, her fingers tangle into his brown locks.

“Harry,” she breathes and it’s like crack to him; hearing his name tumble off her lips like that. God, he wants that on repeat in his mind forever.

He nips at the underswell of her breast, pinching the perk nipple between his fingers. “What do you want?” he mumbles against the fleshy skin.

Y/N tugs at the roots of his hair, forcing his head up until their eyes are level. She places the joint between his lips now and slowly begins to sink to her knees.

“I want to taste you.”

Harry’s eyes are blown and bloodshot as she begins to unbutton his pants, shimmying them down his thighs just enough to allow his cock to spring free. He’s bigger than she remembers him to be; thick and full and his ruddy tip begins to leak with arousal.

Y/N laps at his slit, allowing herself a taste. It’s an unholy sight – the way her breasts gently move as she closes her mouth around him. In Harry’s intoxicated state, everything feels so much more heightened. Her mouth feels warmer, wetter… the whole thing feels filthy and he loves it.

She’s pressing slopping kisses along the length of him, angling her face to take his balls into her hot mouth as she pays them a little more attention. She pulls off him with a gentle kiss, staring up with doe eyes and a devilish grin.

“Fuck my throat.”

Harry could’ve come there and then, hearing those words fall from her lips. He takes another drag of the joint before pinching it back between his fingers and placing his open palms on the side of her head – the smoke from the joint no doubt clinging to her hair.

If she was sober, she’d tell him off for it. But she’s not and she doesn’t.

Instead, she relaxes her jaw as her mouth opens and her tongue lays flat as Harry guides his cock back to the waiting hole. Taking a shaky breath, his hips slowly begin to move, getting her used to his size until he picks up momentum.

Y/N’s eyes begin to sting, tears welling and his head hits the back of her throat, knocking the air from her lungs. Harry grows faster, eager. His chest is heaving and his lips part as he fucks into her.

It’s obscene, the noises her throat makes as he shoves himself further down with every snap of his lips. Strings of saliva begin to drip from the corners of Y/N’s mouth as she gags around him, her throat contracting as she splutters on his cock.

“Taking me so fucking well, baby.”

The praise goes straight to her cunt, wetness seeping through her little panties with every syllable he throws her way. Her eyes are shut tight now, unable to keep them open as Harry uses her for his own pleasure.

It’s sloppy and messy and needy. Neither of them have experienced anything so fucking sexy in their lives. The sex was good before, but this time – sneaking around and much higher than previously – it’s even more intense.

It doesn’t take much for Harry to near his end. And when Y/N cradles his heavy balls in her hand, fingernails ghosting over the divots of skin, Harry’s certain he’s about to meet his maker.

He pulls out of her mouth harshly, not giving her the chance to tell him she needs his cum drowning her throat. His arousal is too quick to paint her chest, coating her nipples in creamy ecstasy as Y/N struggles to catch her breath.

He comes, a lot, but his stamina doesn’t falter. She’s barely given chance to admire the artwork he marked her with before he’s tugging her up by the crook of her elbow. Y/N’s shoved against the foot of the bed, legs spread and ass in the air, tummy on the mattress.

Harry’s hands are hungry on her hips, bunching up the bottom of her sundress until it rests on her lower back. He feels over her subtle asscheeks, offering three spanks to her left and whimpering as the fleshy skin wobbles.

“Harry, please.”

She’s whining now, eager to be filled again. Harry tugs her little thong to the side, her cunt glistening and puffy from neglect. He wants to taste her, spend an eternity between her soaked thighs but the way Y/N wiggles her hips and backs up against him suggests she needs something more right now.

“I just wanna taste you for a bit,” he says.

She’s shaking her head, despite how badly she wants to feel him lapping up her pussy. She’s far too soaked and horny to settle for his tongue right now.

“Next time.”

Harry’s heart races a little at that. Next time? So, she plans for there to be. Not that Harry has a problem with it. He’d be more than fucking happy to make this a regualr thing if she wanted it.

Listening to her request, he lines his head with her entrance, pushing through her folds to coat himself in her slickness. Her legs are trembling in need, face smushed into the blanket and she knows she’s ruining it with her makeup and the come that covers her tits, but she cannot bring herself to care.

With the joint still between his fingers, Harry brings it back to his lips for another drag. He lines himself back with her puckering hole and gentle sheaths inside. She’s tight – tighter than he remembers – and her walls are so fucking slick it feels like he’s being swallowed whole.

A shriek escapes Y/N’s mouth at the familiar intrusion, the way he stretches and fills her to the brim. Her mind feels dizzy, vision dotting with white lights as Harry begins to fuck the soul out of her.

It’s fast and deep, and she’s quick to soak his pubic bone with arousal. Harry leans over her body, guiding the joint to her lips, allowing her a puff. “Hold onto that for me, gorgeous.”

She takes it from her lips and stretches her arm above her head, wrist against the blanket and joint pointing in the air. His hands are back on her hips as he grips her tight.

“Good girl, angel.”

Smack!

His pace is criminal, balls slapping against her throbbing clit with every hit of his hips that he delivers. She’s struggling to stay coherent, unable to string a sentence together as she begs him for more, more, more.

Harry grips her hips hard, bringing her cunt to him as he fucks into her. Y/N’s body is limp — lets him use her as a toy for his own pleasure and takes whatever he offers.

She shouldn’t enjoy this so much, getting fucked by her friend, her roommate. But it’s too good to realise they’re stepping on dangerous territory. With the promise of next time.

“Tight little cunt was fucking made for me.”

“It’s yours! I’m yours!”

Her words are a struggle to speak, heart in her throat as her pussy drips for him. It’s too much for Harry. To see her so bare and willing and done for him. To know the affect he has on her, to be buried so fucking deep in her cunt that she can hardly talk.

His orgasm creeps up on him quickly, cock twitching within the tight confinements of her walls. She feels it, she feels everything. And it only spurs her release on, too.

Her cunt clenches around him, legs beginning to tremble and a wanton cry crawls out from her lips. “I’m gonna come!”

Harry keeps his pace steady, coaxes her through it with deep and precise strokes. The tip of his cock continues to pinch at her cervix, the curve in his length rubbing deliciously against her g-spot.

Y/N shudders around him, desperate to milk him for all he’s got as she explodes. She’s quick to bury her face into the blanket, muffling her screams as her vision spots black and white kaleidoscopes behind her eyes.

“Give it to me, baby. Come all over me… that’s it.”

He’s quick to follow, bursts of hot come painting the walls of her cunt and Harry stills inside of her, knees buckling as he tries to keep himself steady.

It’s quiet for a moment, save for their heavy breathing and wheezing chests.

It must be true what they say about post-nut clarity. Because as they come down from their highs, there’s a tension in the room that’s far too suffocating. And it only gets worse when Harry slowly pulls out of her cunt and leaves her bent over Niall’s bed, dripping onto the blanket beneath her.

Harry clears his throat as he tucks himself back into his pants and watches Y/N wobble to her feet as she stands. They don’t look at each other, at least not face-to-face.

Her tits are still out and his arousal on her chest has transferred to the blanket. She's quick to fix her dress and her underwear — more than a little uncomfortable with the feeling of Harry’s come dribbling out of her.

She gnaws on the inside of her cheek. “We should leave separately, so no one suspects anything.”

Harry’s not given much time to confer before she shimmies out of Niall’s room and down the hall to the closest bathroom. He’s left there, slightly stunned and a little embarrassed. It’s a bit confusing, it didn’t feel like a mistake after the last time. But now, with how quickly she wanted to leave, Harry worries she regrets it.

He scratches at the back of his head, wincing at the sight of Niall’s blanket. There’s come stains on the green fabric and the joint that Y/N was supposed to hold had been dropped mid-orgasm and burnt a small hole through the blanket.

Deciding it would be best to just replace it, Harry bunches the blanket up into a ball and shoves it in the trash can in the corner of the room — making a mental note to buy Niall a new one.

It’s the least of his concerns, though.

Because despite Harry’s worry about Y/N’s regret, he still craves her touch and her presence. And she’s just the same — cleaning herself up in the bathroom and splashing water in her face to try to calm down.

All she can think about is how much she needs him and it doesn’t feel just sexual anymore. For either of them.

What the hell have they gotten themselves into?

let me know what you thought :)

tags: @stilesissaved @kiwitsayedsugar @savannahwendel @triski73 @stylesfever @kissfromadove

#harry styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles smut #imagine harry styles #harry styles x you #harry styles x reader #harry styles oneshot #harry styles fluff #harry styles fic #harry styles angst

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softlyspector · 2 years

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Then and Now

Summary: The boys want a second pass at that fucking money. They need your help. The only problem is that you and Santiago aren't talking, not anymore, not since everything went so sideways.

Pairing: Santiago "Pope" Garcia x Reader

Word Count: ~15.5k

Warnings: angst, pining, canon level violence, lots and lots of cursing, PTSD and assorted metal health issues, smut (p in v), best friend Benny Miller (yeah it needs a warning), reader has a nickname (Blue) in the same way the others do (Pope, Fish, etc.) sparingly used

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please forgive anything that is militarily inaccurate/inaccurate to the ravine location, I changed some things to fit the story better. I am so very aware I'm basically writing in what is probably a dead fandom for a meh movie. That doesn't matter to me, what matters is all that Oscar Isaac ass and the fact that this is genuinely my favorite movie at the moment. That, and when @velvetofyourheart asks for something, I can't really say no.

Tanya, thank you so much for your wonderful idea and always encouraging my aquarius god-complex. This is your fic, you own it. This is your Santi, never let anyone tell you any differently. I love you. Happy very belated birthday.

Now

Fog is still rolling over your front yard when Benny Miller’s familiar jeep swings into your driveway, gravel crunching beneath the tires.

You sit down your cup of coffee, the many rings lining your fingers clinking against the ceramic, and huff out a breath at his audacity, showing up at your place so early in the day.

The morning is muggy but cool, condensation beading along the porch railing where your feet are propped up, booted feet crossed at the ankle.

The jeep’s headlights go out and the driver’s side door pops open. Benny smiles at you when he climbs out, giving you a big, exaggerated wave before he lopes over, all sweetheart golden retriever energy.

Benny is big feelings and big gestures in a body that would never be enough to trap it all inside, that could never cage all that wild energy.

“Well, fuck,” you say when he climbs the porch stairs. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

You haven’t seen him in a couple weeks.

Benny, who you used to see daily.

But not anymore, not since he came home beat to hell and looking like a lost dog. Not since he told you everything that happened in Colombia.

Not since he told you how Tom died, how everything they did was so fucked.

Wouldn’ta happened if you were there. You keep our heads on straight. He had told you that day, crying like you were kids again on your back deck in the setting sun.

Benny laughs and leans against the banister, a brown folder held in one hand. You eye the folder as you flick open the pack of cigarettes in your lap, knocking out a smoke and lighter. “Whatever it is,” you nod at his hand, “The answer is no.”

“You don’t even know what it is,” Ben says innocently. “And you know they say those things will kill you.”

“Fuck you, Miller, this is my one indulgence,” you say amicably as you light up, blowing smoke away from him.

Coffee and a cigarette on your front porch each morning before work, before driving half an hour into town to serve bitchy local teens still half coked out of their minds from the night before and surly truck drivers just passing through town - that was your indulgence, that was all you could allow yourself, all you could afford most days.

Benny reaches up to pull off his ball cap, runs a hand through his hair and replaces the hat backwards, before he sighs. “We’re going back for that money. We need you there. Can’t do it without you, obviously. First time you aren’t with us and everything goes to hell.”

You scoff, taking a long drag on your cigarette, holding in the nicotine for a long moment before you exhale through your nose, “You’ve gotta be kidding, Benny.”

“Not a chance,” Benny says, weirdly serious, “Not with this. Someone else is gonna find it and then what?”

“Suppose it goes to the next drug lord in line,” you raise a brow at him. “Y’all are really going back for that money? That got Tom killed? Didn’t you fuck it up enough already? Leave it lie, it's cursed.”

Benny winces and straightens, moving to drop heavily onto the wooden porch swing hanging from the ceiling. It creaks beneath him as he leans back and sighs, sounding more exhausted than you’ve ever known him to be.

“Redfly wouldn’t want that money falling into the wrong hands.”

“Yeah he’d want it in his hands,” you snap, feeling only slightly guilty about talking ill of the dead. “Or did you forget what happened down there?”

Benny doesn’t say anything for a moment, cornflower blue eyes staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah, well, he won’t be there this time.”

“So why go back? Pope’s greed eating at him again? You know you guys don’t have to do everything he says.” When Benny doesn’t say anything, you glance over at him, watch the way he sighs lightly and the circles beneath his eyes seem to deepen in real time. “Hey, I’m sorry, Ben. That was cruel of me.”

You stub out your near finished cigarette and grab your cup of coffee, crossing the porch to slide down next to him and knock your cup into his leg. “You look like you could use this.”

He takes the mug from you, drawing a long swig of coffee before he hands it back to you.

He eyes your hands, taps one finger against yours. “You still wear Santi’s ring.”

Santi’s ring.

It wasn’t an engagement ring, no, you’d have to be in a relationship for that to have happened. He’d picked it up at a flea market somewhere, polished it up himself and presented it to you like it meant nothing.

I know how much you like rings, he had said simply, nodding at the many rings that lined your fingers.

You never take it off.

You sigh and lean back, your shoulder brushing Ben’s as you both stare up at the cobwebbed ceiling. “Just because he hates me, doesn’t mean I feel the same way about him.”

He doesn’t comment on that and the silence stretches between you for a long time.

Ben eventually says your name and you roll your head toward him to meet his eyes. You can tell he’s thinking exactly the same thing you are - that you both look exhausted. You’ve known Benny since forever and reading him is like looking at a jumbotron at a Marlins game - so fucking obvious it was painful sometimes.

“You really wanna keep doing this forever? Stay in this shithole town and do nothing? Serve the fuck ups at that diner?” Benny pumps you, poking your sore spots. He knows you hate being trapped, hates the stupid town you live in. “Treated like shit? Making no money? No thanks for the sacrifices you made?”

You roll your eyes, “You sound like Pope. Save it, Ben.”

“Maybe he’s right about some things. Listen, we paid our dues to Tom’s family. We went through hell and everything is still the fucking same. Maybe we deserve that money.” When you don’t respond immediately, he continues, “Think about it. Hard part is already done. Money’s already stolen, we just gotta go pick it up.”

“Actually got a plan this time though?” You ask, knocking your knee into Ben’s. “Shit went so sideways last time.”

He looks away from you, bangs a fist against his thigh and stands, pacing around your porch as you watch, the Florida heat finally starting to creep in for the day. “It’s gotta be easy. In and out.”

“Aren’t Lorea’s men still in the area? Or whoever’s running the place now? Didn’t half the fucking town see your faces?”

“Who says we need to go into that town at all?”

“Ah. So there is no plan.”

“There is,” he nods at the folder he’d left on the swing next to you. “Santiago’s got something started.”

Santi.

An image flashes through your mind, of him standing on this very same porch, the roar of thunder and rain in your ears as a midnight storm passed through, the din of it so loud as Santiago stood there and hollered at you.

“You really won’t do this with us?” His voice had been harsh, a lingering accusation on his tongue. “When one of us bleeds out and you aren’t there, that’s going to be on you.”

You had recoiled, felt that sting like a slap. “Fuck you, Pope.” And you saw him flinch at the use of that name. You never called him that, you always called him by his true name. “Don’t blame your greed on me. Don’t pretend this is about anything else than that money. Lorea is a sideshow at best to you.”

“And don’t you fucking pretend like this life is enough for you! Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t do anything to get out of this fucking town!”

His hair had been damp, sticking to his forehead, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “I already did, Santiago. We’ve all been to hell and back already.” You had shaken your head, “And this is my line. I’m not fucking up those communities anymore than they already are.”

Santi’s face hadn’t changed, but his eyes had burned hotter, scorching into you. You’d touched a nerve and you knew it. “You’re a coward. I’m not even asking you to take fire. Not like before. Something happens to one of us, don’t bother coming to the fucking funeral. You’re leaving us a man down and without med support.”

“So that’s all you want me to do, huh? Come with you and play nurse? Fuck off, I’m the best shot of any of you.”

“Yeah and shit at everything else. There’s a reason we stuck you out as the sniper. Keeps you away from anything important. But now you’re leaving us without cover.”

And that, that fucking stung, you’d recoiled from him and said quietly. “Fine. I was useless all those years. My answer is still no.”

And without another glance at you, he’d walked off your porch and out of your life.

Only when Benny showed up after Tom was already in the grave did you find out what happened.

Now, you shake your head and glance at the folder, you can see the edges of a few documents poking out. “Did he send you?”

“No. No one knows I’m here. Except Will.” Of course, anything Benny knew, Benny had already shared three times over with his older brother.

“I think you’ve forgotten, Ben. Pope hates me. It’s all my fault shit went sideways for y’all.” You swallow, “According to him anyways. I left you without cover.”

It’s what you know Santi would say to you, if he’d talk to you again.

“You know he didn’t mean any of that shit. He was just pissed he wasn’t getting his way,” Benny says, still pacing the porch, floorboards creaking with every long stride. “He was just pissed he couldn’t get all of Delta back together. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

But as much as you miss Tom, as much as you had mourned him, you can’t help thinking about how much worse it would have been if it had been Benny or Will.

Or Santi.

Fuck, Santiago could have died, and that would have been on you.

A member of your family had died and you hadn’t been there, you hadn’t even been allowed to mourn.

You roll your eyes now and pick up the folder, sliding the edge of your nail beneath the thick cardstock.

But the pain in your heart lingers as you think about the anger in Santi’s eyes that day. The knowledge now that your absence might have caused a rift in the team, that Tom’s reckless play for more money than any of them could handle and Will’s wounded side slowing them down might be your fault for throwing off team dynamics.

“I get why you couldn’t do it then. But now? No one has to get hurt now. Someone worse finds that money, then what happens?”

You’d grown up with the Millers, met Santiago when you went with Benny into the army and eventually got recruited to Delta.

It had been the only way to make it out of your small town, with no money for college and no scholarship opportunities despite your grades, you’d felt it was your only chance. And going with Benny to the recruitment center to follow Will, who’d left a few years before, hadn’t seemed so bad.

You had stuck by Benny and to your surprise, or maybe to no one’s surprise, both of you were good at it. Good at shooting and killing and clawing bloody tracks into the ground beneath your feet. Good at ruining and destroying, good at being disciplined and regimented and hard. Good at following orders and being better than everyone else.

You and Benny were to become the babies of Delta Force, the younger pair that always seemed to lag a bit behind the other four more mature and experienced guys. If it weren’t for Will, you might not have been placed in the same unit. But Will had been adamant about recommending both of you, about placing both of you with Delta.

And the superiors had gotten tired of fighting with him.

Benny and Will were the brothers you never had, the family you always wanted.

Santiago and Frankie and Tom only pulled you in tighter, only made you cling on harder, gave you something solid to hang onto.

Santiago. God, Santiago.

You wanted him the moment you saw him, with that curling hair that grayed as the years wore on, with those crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled that deepened every year, with the way that he stared at you like you held the secrets of the universe, with a gaze so feverish and consuming it was hard not to be pulled into his orbit, right to the center of his world.

Santiago pulled a little too hard, loved a little bit too intensely. You’d known the second he showed up at your place that stormy night that whatever he had to say to you was about to break you, that he was about to rip the thread that he had wound around his fingers since the second you met him right out of your heart.

Something about Santi was so magnetic, so intense, you couldn’t look away, pull away, if you wanted.

He annoyed you to no end, shielded you from nothing despite your awards and metals for excellency in the field, despite your being on a fucking special ops team, and one of the only women to do so no less. He and Tom had taken one look at your record the day you were reassigned to them, and advocated for your shooting skills, that you worked best at a distance, and had taken you under his wing.

You wanted to slap him and you loved him and he was so complicated that you wanted to cry just thinking about it.

Santiago was also lonely, lonely in the same way you were.

You could be in a room full of people, surrounded by those you loved, and still feel separate, apart, alone.

Santi was the same - and so you drifted together.

You were something undefined for years and maybe that was the problem.

There was a tension neither of you dared address when you were in the service together, not when things were so terribly dangerous at all times, not when feelings could get everyone killed, could have the team that was like a family pulled apart by superiors.

When your time was up and as your honorable discharge along with the rest of Delta approached, things got more real, too real. Santiago was always there at your periphery, like a wraith you couldn’t ignore.

He was the nucleus of your world, the center of your universe, and you wanted to hate him for it.

“You and Miller gonna shack up after all this, hermosa?” He’d asked one of those last few nights together, at a base canteen.

You’d looked up from the beer you were nursing. “Which one?” You tried to joke, but it didn’t land, and the tension between you thickened until you felt you might choke on it.

You had never wanted to kiss someone so bad, Santi tilting his head toward yours until he was all you could see, everything else blotted out, until the smell of his aftershave threatened to drown you or resurrect you.

“C’mon Blue. Ben seems keen on it,” he notes.

“Benny’s got more than he can handle as it is.”

You don’t know why you hadn’t just denied it, you knew there was something between you and Santiago, that he bred feelings in you that you didn’t know what to do with. But it felt too close to the truth, like something too close to your heart. So you didn’t correct yourself, and gave a hollow laugh, like it was all a joke.

It was only when you got home and things got restless and bad that it happened. Will attacked some guy in a grocery store, you had to bail Benny out of jail for bar fights twice. Frankie and Tom disappeared into their families.

And Santi…when you called, he came.

He came and he held you while you cried and wondered where everything had gone wrong. You’d escaped the town, gone farther and faster than you ever thought you would, and yet here you were back again, with a broken heart and a broken soul, and friends and brothers you couldn’t help, a listlessness settling between your bones that you didn’t know how to name.

You were still so young, and had seen and done so much, and had nothing to show for it. You had seen and done things you could never come back from.

And then, you were back in the same town, with the same people, and no prospects.

You’d had half a mind to join Benny in his bar fights, just to feel something, just to make the ache inside your bones go away. But then Will would have had to bail you both out and neither of you wanted that.

The loss of your routine, your regimented military life, sent you and the Millers spiraling for a while.

But you and Benny tended to follow Will, and when he pulled his head out of his ass, so did the two of you - group counseling, hobbies, jobs, - things that gave you meaning and routine, that kept you from spiraling into the worst kind of crisis.

Compartmentalizing became key.

But you never really figured out how to compartmentalize Santi, never knew where to slot him in your mind.

He’d been there for you, the violence and reintegration into civilian life hadn’t seemed to phase him, and maybe that was because he’d never returned to it - working with independent contractors and security services abroad, right back into the fray.

He came and went, but he always came back to you.

When you called, he came.

He had come with groceries or take out, stayed with you for a weekend. He’d refuse to let you back away from the violent feelings inside you, fucking them right out of you sometimes, letting you use him or him use you, depending on the mood.

You were something close to a relationship, but not quite.

Things got better with Santi around, with doing group therapy at the VA, your job at the diner, and taking up boxing as a hobby. Poker nights started up, bar nights, going to Benny’s fights together when he started MMA.

And when Santi was in town - even better.

You watch Benny pace around your porch now, and flip open the file. “I’ll take a look, Benny,” you say gently. “You’re gonna wear a hole through my floor.”

You couldn’t lose all of that, you can’t let your family do something so stupid without you again.

“Think about it, sweetheart,” he says, suddenly dropping next to you on the swing again, causing it to jolt and rattle your teeth. “You could do something so good with that money. Someone else finds it first, it's just gonna have more blood spilled on it.”

You laugh, “Fuck you, Benny.”

“And be set for fuckin’ life,” he says. “C’mon, what’s not to like?”

“Pope won’t like it.”

“Fuck Pope. He’ll get over it. We all miss you.”

You miss them too, and you can’t let them go alone again.

Then

The third time you break down after you’re stateside, you call Santi, because he’s your life line, your hook into reality, your tether to the Earth.

Santi always comes when you call, he always knows exactly what you need.

The first two times you called, he came with takeout, with a movie, and sat with you on your couch for two days straight because you had so much fear built up inside you, you couldn’t move.

Going into the military wasn’t the hard part, you found, it was coming home.

The third time, he finds you in the bedroom of the apartment you rented as soon as you were back in town.

“Hey,” he crouches down across from your place on the floor, curled between your nightstand and the edge of the bed. “You okay?”

“I don’t think I can do this, Santi,” you mutter, feeling like your lungs are collapsing, like you can’t breathe. “Fuck, I don’t think I can. Everything - God, it's so loud, but it's too quiet. Everyone is just going around like everything is fucking normal - like - like - ”

Like you hadn’t killed and bled and fought and cursed and -

Santi nods, “I remember my first time on leave was like that. Just sat in my fucking bedroom for two weeks straight because I didn’t know how to be anymore.”

Your frantic eyes seek his out, his intense gaze that was heavy enough to feel like a weighted blanket against you, soothing the ache inside you a little, before he holds his arms out to you.

You crawl across the carpet to fit yourself into his lap when he falls to his ass with a groan. You breathe hard and fast, his scent like catnip to you, fingers tangling hard into his shirt.

“Thought you were gonna hole up with Ben.”

“Fuck you, Santiago. You know Ben is like my brother,” you grit out, pulling so hard on his shirt that you think it might rip in your fingers. You tuck your head under his chin, feel the slow slide of his touch up your side, listen to the steady beat of his heart.

His touch is warm, it grounds you, makes you feel so very safe.

His comment about Benny reminds you of something, of something you should have told him that night weeks ago at the canteen.

“Maybe I shouldn’t say it now, but Santi I -,”

Before you can continue, he presses a finger under your chin, to tip your head up. He doesn’t do anything, doesn’t say anything, just stares at you - just pins you down with that unwavering stare, brown eyes like chips of amber.

“I know,” he says simply, so gentle and cocksure as the corner of his mouth quirks up. “I know, hermosa. Me too.”

You suck in a breath but whatever you’re about to say, dies on your lips. Santiago presses a hand to the back of your neck, holds you firm and doesn’t let you look away, his eyes flicking down your face. “Tell me you want me, baby. I’ll give it to you. Help you shut out the world.”

You’re so drunk on his gaze, at the way he holds you hard and soft and tight and fucking perfect - that you don’t hesitate when you say, “Please, Santi, I want you.” Your voice is barely above a whisper, but he hears you.

One strong hand cups beneath your chin, fingers tight against your skin as Santiago kisses you for the first time.

It’s not a gentle kiss.

It’s like breathing in smoke, like choking down hot coal, but you revel in the pain, you take pleasure in the way he fights to consume you, in the way his strong jaw juts forward in a harsh pass of his lips against yours.

He’s rough with you, that first time, because he knows it's what you need, that you can handle it, that you’ve had worse.

But you’ve never had better, will never have better again.

Santiago kisses you like a man possessed, he bites you, he tears his fingers into your flesh, down into the marrow of your bones. He pushes you down into the carpet and doesn’t waste time with helping you out of your clothes.

He shoves his hand down the front of your cotton shorts without preamble, his fingers expert in seeking out your wet heat. His mouth stays on yours as you tug at his hair, pull and pull until he hisses and shoves a finger inside you.

You forget about the world, about how you don’t recognize your town and recognize it all too well - how the ordered madness you were used to sustaining you was gone.

The pain you feel is subsumed by Santiago’s heavy presence, the way he pulls back from you but hardly lets you breathe - his fingers in your mouth, the taste of yourself in your mouth, his hand insistent on the back of your neck.

You claw at his back, raking your nails over him as he licks into your mouth, holding your head still with a hand on your neck, beneath your jaw. He pinches your nipple through your shirt so hard it stings but all you can do is arch up into him.

Santi pulls back from you, a whine you can’t control rattling out of your throat.

“Fuuuck,” he groans into your skin, “Fuck. Fuck.”

He pulls back and yanks on your shorts, “Off.”

You scramble to remove your hands from him, to push your shorts down your legs until they get caught up on your ankles.

Santi doesn’t bother with undressing, just yanks down the zipper of his jeans until he can free himself. He sits back with a groan, knees protesting, so he can yank your shorts off your ankles before he slots himself back over you, his dick slipping against you.

The heat of him clears your mind, the anxiety and the thoughts you couldn’t stop from consuming you before, washing away until your mind is pleasantly empty, a blank white space that only Santiago can fill.

The town doesn’t exist, the past doesn’t exist, none of the things you’d done exists, you are purified, you are only the tips of your toes and the edges of your fingers, one long nerve ending.

His mouth is back on yours and you curl your hands back into his hair again, groaning into his mouth when he roughly yanks up the hem of your shirt to your armpits, large calloused hand palming your tits roughly, his mouth skating down your throat to your chest, until he can pull one stiff nipple between his teeth and tug.

You can only moan, fisting your hand into his hair to jerk his lips back to yours.

“Santi,” you murmur against his mouth. “Santi.”

“That’s it, hermosa. Say my name,” he breathes into your skin as he notches his cock at your entrance. “Say my name,” he demands when you don’t immediately answer.

“Santiago,” you whimper, pathetically needy, the air punched out of your lungs when his hips snap forward. He’s fully seated within you in one hard push, your thighs burning, the stretch of him so painful you cry out. “Don’t,” you hold onto his arms, force him to stay where he is when he starts to pull back. “Fuck, don’t, feels so good.”

Santiago doesn’t need anymore encouragement, hips drawing back just far enough to slam into you again, pushing you up the carpet.

He sets a brutal pace, your cunt stretching to accommodate him, the burn easing and the pleasure settling in.

Santiago whispers to you in Spanish and even though you speak the language well enough, you can’t make yourself understand what he’s saying.

The heat builds inside you until you feel like you might scream, until you feel like your body might give out on you.

But Santi always knows what you need, always knows you.

And so he slows the pace of his hips, dips his mouth to your neck and presses a finger through your folds, tracing circles around your clit until you come with an earth shattering force.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he’s muttering against the sweat slick skin of your throat, the only thing real in the whole world to you in that moment him. “Look at you, fucking soaked my cock, baby. So perfect.” And then he’s whispering in Spanish again, something about so fucking perfect, all mine. You’re fucking mine.

You don’t let Santiago pull away from you, the hot weight of him against you drowning out every horrifying thought in your head. You feel him seeping out of you, feel the grip of his fingers against the fleshy part of your hip, tangled in the hair at the nape of your neck.

He doesn’t move, doesn't try to, and stays buried inside you. Santiago whispers sweet as sugar words right into your hairline until he’s hard again, and then he fucks you so softly - you’re sure its what love should feel like.

And so, for a while after you come home, that’s all your life is, fighting and fucking and hating the world for chewing you up and spitting you out, and not being strong enough to fucking take it.

The fucking is by far the best part.

You feel best when Santiago is with you, when his cock is buried so deep inside you it’s the only thing you can think about - when you’re cockdumb and sex drunk.

That’s when things feel normal again.

That’s when your brain finally shuts the fuck up.

But then Will pulls it together, starts getting real help, and inevitably you and Benny follow suit.

It doesn’t stop you and Santi from fucking like rabbits, but it makes it softer, it lets you round out the edges of your heart against his.

The thing between you stays undefined, but it comes somewhere close to ownership. Santi is yours and you are his, though it’s never said out loud.

He dances with you around your kitchen, spars with you in your backyard when you put a down payment on your house, cooks you breakfast, and asks for input on his consulting jobs.

Santi tries to get you to come with him, back to those places you’d left behind, back to the fight, back to the guns and blood and drugs.

But you can’t do it, at least not yet.

For a moment in time, you are content, content with that small town, your little job.

Will starts giving speeches to recruits, Benny starts MMA, Frankie gets married, Tom spends more time with his daughter.

You and Santiago - your worlds revolve around each other, when he’s in town and when he isn’t, how quickly he can drive from the airport to your house, how he catches you in the front yard in his arms and spins you around.

Sometimes, you don’t even make it inside.

You have no neighbors for several miles, and the front porch steps were a good a place as any to fuck.

Unfortunately that’s the same day that Will decides to swing by with your new boxing gloves you’d asked him to get you. Will gets a full view of Santi’s ass, but he never pulls out, never stops fucking you.

“He’s seen worse,” he laughs into your ear, nipping at your skin as heat pools embarrassment around your bones, the man who was like your brother doing a one-eighty to hightail it back down the road. “Don’t worry about him, cariño.”

It’s then as he laughs and kisses you, kisses away the annoyed groan, that you realize that you love him, really love him.

And that you’d probably never love anyone else.

Now

“Hey, there she is!” You hear Will announce as soon as you slam the door of your truck shut, parked against the curb outside Santi’s place.

“Hey Blue,” Frankie calls when you approach the group sitting around a picnic table, a canopy of emerald green shielding them from the sun and prying eyes. A cooler of beer popped open, burgers on the grill.

You smile and accept the hug Frankie offers you, moving quickly to Will and then Benny, despite seeing the Millers often enough, now that you and Ben were back to seeing each other daily.

Santi can’t even be bothered enough to turn from the grill. He says nothing and a fissure of pain cracks open your chest, your heart bleeding all over again, just like that.

“How’re you Frankie? How’s the baby?” You slide into the open space next to him on the bench, accepting the beer he reaches down into the cooler at his side to hand you.

Will automatically starts constructing a burger for you, disregarding the onions and adding extra pickles and an extra slice of cheese, without you having to ask.

It makes your heart hurt to be with them. These were the people you’d been through so much with, who knew so many little things about you.

No onions, extra pickles, extra cheese.

You feel the absence of Tom suddenly, like a hole in the middle of your little family.

Santi’s disregard does nothing to help the feeling.

“Good,” Frankie says. “They’re okay.”

“That’s great-,”

“So,” Benny interrupts, ever tackless, “We gonna talk about this thing or not?”

“Jesus, Ben,” Will says. “Let her settle in.”

Benny raises his brows and looks at you, “You settled?”

“I’m good,” you nod, “Always.”

“There ya go, girl’s all settled up. Let’s talk.”

Santiago joins you at the table then, plate of freshly grilled burgers deposited in the center of the table.

Will passes you the burger he’d assembled for you.

Silence descends, awkward and piercing for a long moment as you look around at them. Pope holds your gaze when you meet his eyes, and for the first time in years, you can’t read the look in them.

You glance away, back at Frankie who you haven’t seen since forever and Will who you infrequently saw these days. “I missed y’all,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself.

The heckling that immediately follows breaks the ice surrounding the group of you, Frankie cooing sarcastically at you as Will laughs and Benny breaks open a bag of chips that you know he won’t share with anyone else.

“Fuck you guys,” you say without venom.

“We missed you too, kid,” Will says, Frankie throwing an arm around your shoulders.

“Yeah, sister,” Frankie intones, “When are you finally gonna come meet my kid?”

You take a sip of your beer, “As soon as you invite me, Fish.”

“So you take invitations now?” Santiago’s voice cuts through the chatter, his eyes are still glued to your face when you look back at him, the coolness in his voice matching the ice in his eyes.

Something in your chest crumbles and you can’t make yourself keep his gaze this time.

You glance away.

“Pope,” Will warns, a threat lurking in his voice. “You wanna start us off?”

Santiago finally looks away from you, his jaw clenching, before he rattles off the strategy he’d devised - a one day plot to get the money.

You sit and listen without looking at him, thinking of all the ways this plan can go sideways. Again.

Thinking of all the ways you could lose another one of your boys, how the group might not survive losing another member.

You hear the others take up threads, concerns - namely how you would get the money out of the ravine, how it could be transported without notice to the beach. They would hire the same boat as the last time, to transport the money off the coast and out of the country, to the same bank setting up the off-shore shell accounts.

“Can you approach the ravine from any other way than through that town?” You ask.

“Not unless we’re goin’ over the fuckin’ Andes again,” Benny answers you. “And I’m out if that’s the plan.”

“No,” Santi confirms, “Through the town is the only way.”

You consider quietly, biting into your burger as Will details the town’s layout, where you could expect areas that would probably cause issues for you.

“And weapons?” You inquire. “We need to be armed.”

“There’s a shipping freight -,” Santi offers.

“Oh, fuck, you’re not seriously considering arms trafficking on top of everything else, are you? That’s so fucking tracable.”

“You got a problem you can fucking go,” Santi bites back at you. “We don’t have the benefit of time to go scrambling for arms sourced in-country.”

You bite the inside of your cheek and consider for a moment wondering if you should offer or if Pope would just bite your head off again. “No,” you say quietly. “I think I might be able to help there. Contact that might be able to make a drop for us. Something locally sourced.”

Will is nodding, smiles at you, “So no arms trafficking. That’s something.”

Santi reluctantly nods, shoulders loosening.

You might be at odds at the moment, but he does trust you with things like this, knows you would never suggest something that might put the team at a real risk. “I’ll reach out and let you know when it's confirmed.”

Pope saws a hand over his chin and nods, and you recognize that gleam in his eyes, that intensity that said he was starting to believe in this plan, he was starting to see the fruits of this labor.

It's akin to the way he used to look at you, when he would make promises to you that he eventually broke.

The rest of the conversation passes you by, rappelling gear and fuel and rations and passports and how to move the money once it was out of the ravine - but you can’t stop looking at Santi.

He’s always been beautiful, since you first met him all those years ago, when you and Benny had just passed the ASVAB and were then recommended to join Delta by Will.

Anything to keep the siblings together.

He’d been beautiful then with wild dark curls and brown skin darkened by sun exposure, solid and sure and steady.

But now, with the pepper of gray in his hair and the darkness in his eyes, the kindness that he showed every stranger, the slightly startled way he always laughed, his creaky knees - well, he’d only gotten more beautiful.

Age suited him well.

The conversation closes - with you assigned to the arms issue and Will sorting out local transport, if the money was even possible to retrieve.

Benny pokes you in the side as he helps Frankie ball up the used paper plates and gather empty beer bottles, and tilts his head toward where Santi stands fiddling with the grill.

You roll your eyes and shove him back but take the hint and stand.

Santi doesn’t turn when you stop next to him, watching as he meticulously cleans the grill.

“We gonna hate each other forever?” You ask, stepping close to him, his shoulders going stiff beneath his t-shirt.

“I don’t hate you,” he mutters, glancing up but not quite meeting your eyes as he drops the scrub brush in his hand, folding his arms over his chest.

“No? Sure seems like it,” you muse. “Didn’t even invite me to Redfly’s funeral.”

Santi says your name, a sigh that makes your stomach curdle. “We didn’t want you implicated. Everything had went so fuckin’ bad and you knew way more than I should have told you.”

You nod, like it makes you feel any better. “Yeah, I get it.” You almost don’t ask, but you can’t help the question that slips out, “And after that? Why didn’t you come home after that?”

Santiago finally looks at you, his intense gaze locking onto yours and you freeze, pinned down by that heaviness, that stare that is so soft and piercing. The ice in his eyes has curiously melted down into a warm brown, his brows tugging together. “I’d done enough damage.”

And he leaves it at that.

Santiago always comes when you call, and you call him for the first time since he left your porch that last night before things went to hell.

Benny’s already at your place, parked on the couch in front of the TV with a beer in his hand and a bag of cheetos spilling onto the worn fabric.

“Hey Benny boy,” you hear Santiago say when he comes in the back door. “Our girl around?”

Our girl - something all the guys used to teasingly say, something that had annoyed you to no end because you just wanted to be, be a part of the team and the family. It was only after a year being with Delta that you’d realized that was exactly what it meant. That you belonged.

“Blue’s in the kitchen,” you hear Benny say through a mouthful of what you’re sure is toxic orange cheeto dust drifting down onto your couch.

Santi laughs and his footsteps sound on the linoleum, tracking closer to you. “Hey,” he says. “Benny’s fucking up your couch.”

“Yeah nothing new there,” you say, turning from the counter where you’ve just finished rolling out premade pizza dough onto a tray. “It’s a Friday tradition at this point. Beer and fucking up the couch with crumbs.”

Santi stands in the doorway, gazing around with a stricken expression for a moment, and you wonder if it's jarring for him - to be back in this house with you, after spending so much time in it and then leaving it abruptly behind.

You’d quit each other cold turkey, and the separation had not been easy for you. Especially not when traces of Pope lived all through the house, not when he’d fucked you in every room, made you laugh in every room, carried you from the couch to bed, cooked meals together, danced together.

But when Santi meets your eyes, his gaze goes intense, assessing, like he’ll never know everything about you. But sometimes, like now, that ferociousness also feels like it's concealing something, hiding something.

“You had an update?” He prompts, leaning against the door jam with his arms crossed, ball cap shading his eyes as he scuffs a booted toe against the floor.

“Yeah, thought I probably shouldn’t be sharing over the phone,” you wipe your hands on a dishtowel and try not to feel his gaze lingering on you from beneath the bill of his hat. You turn to the fridge and dig out the pizza sauce you’d made earlier in the week with the tomatoes that Santi had once planted in your backyard, various cheeses, and the toppings Benny had brought over.

He had a bizarre palate that you didn’t try to understand - so one side would be Benny and the other just cheese.

“My contact got back to me. He can make the drop. But only to me,” you hip check the silverware drawer closed after grabbing a spoon and turn back to the pizza, spooning sauce onto the dough.

“I’m thinking this,” you continue, “I go into the town alone, do the weapons pick-up, get the transport Will is arranging, meet y’all down the coast and we go around and up into the mountains. I know it's a way longer route but it's probably worth it for you guys not to go through the town. In the meantime, you guys just have to sit tight in that cove's cave.” You nod at a folded map at the end of the counter. “If we can get enough fuel arranged, there’s a way around that I mapped out. Roads shouldn’t be too much trouble this time of year.”

He doesn’t move to pick up the map.

You finish with the sauce and start sprinkling cheese, feeling Santi lurch away from the doorway and approach you slowly, until he’s beside you and every muscle in your body is tense and hot. “Fuck, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“It’s a good plan,” you say, tearing some fresh mozzarella. “Keeps you boys outta the town. Gets us weapons that were sourced in-country, fuel, and a ride.”

“And puts you right in the firing line. You’d haveta land and be without weapons until the drop. What if your contact doesn’t show?”

“I’ll be fine. I’m the only face that won’t be recognized.”

Santi rolls his eyes, “They’ll know you’re a foreigner and that might be enough.”

“I’ll be careful.”

You can feel Santiago’s irritation building. “Why are you so gung-ho to do this now? You’ve always been shit at infiltration. There’s a reason you’re the sniper.”

Since one of you died! You want to shout.

“Fuck off, Pope,” you say instead as he takes his hat off and tosses it down, leaning his forearms onto the counter next to you before ducking his head and running his hands through his hair. “You know why I didn’t want to do it the first time around. And now -,”

And now you were terrified that if you didn’t go, another member of your family would come home in a bodybag.

And you wouldn’t even get to go to the funeral.

And this time it could be Santi or Benny or -

You clench your eyes shut, the heat of Santiago next to you too much suddenly. You suck in a sharp breath and try to get the panic bubbling up under control.

“Hey -,”

His voice is too soft, too close.

“Whatever,” you cut him off. “What-fucking-ever, Pope. I’m shit. I was never valuable to Delta. I get it, okay? But this is your best shot. Unless you wanna go coordinate shipping arms into some backwater town through cartel territory.”

Santiago stares at you, his gaze wide and shocked, so unlike the hard stare he usually sported. His mouth softens a fraction but you turn away, adding the gross shit Benny wanted onto his side of the pizza.

“Yes or no?” you ask. “This is it. This is how we do it.”

“One of us stays with you. We split two-three.” You open your mouth to retort when he continues, his voice strangely quiet. “I understand you have to go to the drop by yourself, everything else doesn’t haveta be. You need someone watching your six.”

You heave a sigh, picking up the pan with the finished pizza to stick in the oven. “Jesus, what the hell does that kid eat?” Santi asks, noting the toppings.

“Shit,” you answer, snapping the oven door closed. “Who?”

“Frankie. He can make up for your shit Spanish.”

You quickly catalog another thing you’re deficient in, swallowing thickly.

“Fine.”

Santi nods and keeps staring at you, staring at you standing in the middle of your kitchen with your arms crossed.

And you feel the sudden urge to cry, to break down and scream.

Your breath is heavy in your chest, and the weight of Santi’s eyes on you doesn’t help.

“We should talk about it,” he says.

You shake your head, grab a beer from the fridge and walk out of the kitchen, down the hall and past the living room where Benny was invested in a baseball game, and out onto your back deck.

Santiago follows you, snapping the screen door closed after him. “C’mon.”

“No. You left it the way it is. We don’t need to talk about it,” you knock the bottle cap off the beer with one well placed smack against the edge of the deck railing.

But you can’t find it in yourself to drink it and so you set it aside.

Santi’s jaw clenches and he runs an agitated hand through his hair, pacing a line back and forth before he stops and cups a hand over his chin. “Don’t be stubborn about this, Blue.”

“Fuck off, Pope.”

He rolls his eyes and approaches you, stepping right into your space, crowding you against the banister, bracketing his arms around you, palms against the railing behind you. He tilts his head over yours, his nose nearly touching yours. “I missed you. I wanted to come back. I didn’t know how.”

You scoff. “It was easy. You could have walked through the door.” You grit your teeth, “Would you have even told me Tom died? Or would I have seen it on fucking Facebook from his widow months later?”

Santi flinches at your accusation but doesn’t back down, his eyes still boring into your, his voice quiet. “Yes. You’re our family. You know one of us would have, if Ben hadn’t.”

“Right,” you say disbelievingly. “It hurt the most that I didn’t hear from you. Did I ever really mean anything to you? Or was I just a liability to the team? Another whore to get you through the night?”

“What?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Santiago. You never came home. And I know you were fucking people when you were out of town. I always knew.”

His eyes are so dark they read black in the fading evening sunshine. “Is that what you think? That I was sitting around here playing house with you for fun?”

Your belly lurches. “Get away from me,” you snap, shoving at his shoulder. “I don’t need you to call me stupid in my own house. I got it, Santi. I wasn’t good enough for the team and I wasn’t good enough for you. I get it.”

He makes a noise of frustration and doesn’t move. “Stop being so fucking hardheaded.”

“Okay,” you sniff. “Go ahead then. What do you want to say? About that night, about why you never came home? About what you said to me?”

Santi gapes at you, clearly not expecting you to just give into him, “I - I -,” he flounders.

“Yeah,” you duck under his arm, snatch up your beer, and head back inside, “That’s what I thought.”

“You never went out there to see her? Fuuuck man, no wonder she’s pissed,” Benny says, offloading their tac bags into the sand of the cove from the dinghy, the walls of the cave-like outcropping reflecting in the shallow water.

Will moves the bags further up the sand and doesn’t say anything.

And Santiago - he doesn’t know what to fucking say about any of it.

Going back to that house, back to you, after everything he’d said to you, after he’d implied that any injuries they got would be your fault, after he told you that you were a weight to their team even though it was the farthest thing from the truth.

He didn’t know how to go back to you.

He didn’t know how to make things right, and so one month had turned into two had turned into six.

“She never said anything?” Santi asks Benny, almost afraid of what the answer might be.

“Not like we sit around talking about you, man. I wasn’t out there all that much for a while. Going through my own shit,” Benny says, jumping out of the boat to work on tying it down.

Santi thinks about Benny going out to your place, dumping all his shit on you and leaving. Of Will and Frankie visiting infrequently, because they were, as Benny so eloquently put it - going through their own shit in the aftermath of that mission.

All of them wrongly assuming that Santi had been to see you, that he was still seeing you.

All of them thinking that you were okay because Santi was always with you.

Fuck.

No wonder you felt abandoned. No wonder you believed him when he’d said -

He can’t think about that right now.

You must have felt like you lost all of them for a while.

“Check-in with Fish and Blue,” he snarls at Benny instead. “I want an update. They landed yesterday and should already be on their way here.”

Benny glances at Will but neither of them say anything as he fiddles with the comms.

Santiago makes a point of not looking at either of them, pointlessly cataloging the shit they did bring with them, mainly rappelling equipment, rations, and protective gear.

The comm in his ear statics and then Benny’s voice is reaching out for a status report.

Your voice comes back after only a few minutes. “Hey Ben,” you say, your voice clear but with a rift in it, a thick line of tension. “Heading your way. Should be there around 1900 hours. Sit tight.”

“Roger. Sitting tight.”

Santiago opens his own line. “Report,” he barks out, not satisfied with the way you sound, that slight crack in the edge of your voice.

“Cargo en route, Pope,” is the only response he receives.

“Roger, Blue,” he says. “Any trouble?”

There’s a long silence before you respond. “Minor incident. Intercepted in vehicle retrieval. One dead. No witnesses. Minimal injuries.”

“Injury report.”

“Fuck, Pope,” Will mutters, “They’ll be here in a couple hours. Leave it.”

“Fish is fine,” you say and Santiago’s heart seizes because that means - “I was grazed. Minimal impact. Over and out, see you soon Delta one.”

Your line clicks out, the static retreating.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck.”

“C’mon, Pope,” Will says, “Quit thinking with your dick. We’ve all been shot. She was only grazed. They’re fine and heading to us.” He sits back on the sand, Benny following suit.

He knows.

Fuck, he knows.

He tucks the information away - compartmentalizes it and hopes like hell it works.

You and Fish show up exactly when you say you will, radioing out to them when you were a couple klicks away.

Santiago and Will head up to help you hide the truck you arrive in, grab the duffle bags full of weapons.

The cache you’ve been provided with is well stocked and Will whistles when he sees it. “Fuck, Blue, you’ve got one hell of a contact.”

You smile tightly at him, limping around the front of the truck.

Santiago’s breath catches when he sees you.

It’s hell to see you looking like that again. Although you’re in jeans - the rest of the getup is similar enough to the fatigues you used to sport that it makes his chest tighten. Your hair is tucked back, a backward ball cap on your head, and he recognizes it as one of his, one he must have left at your place. Sunglasses are hitched up above your brow.

You have a strip of cloth tied around your upper thigh, and Frankie has one concerned hand under your elbow.

Santiago never wanted to see you like this again, never wanted to have to think about you being shot at again.

You ignore his stare and say to Frankie, “C’mere and help me calculate this fuel shit. We need to be sure it's more than enough to get us there and back with room for detours.”

Frankie opens the back door and lets you rummage around in another bag before turning back with a scrap of paper and pen.

When Santi just stands there staring at you, you turn and tilt your head. “Gonna help Ironhead with that shit, Pope?”

He flinches, can’t help himself when he hears you call him that, it takes him back to your porch, to the words he can never take back.

Santiago doesn’t say anything, catches Frankie roll his eyes as Santi turns and grabs a couple bags to drag down to the cove.

A few minutes later you and Fish make your way to the cave. “-wish we had a bit more but that should do.”

“It’ll be fine,” Fish assures you, sounding a lot less concerned than you.

“Uh huh,” you say, dropping next to Benny on the sand to take the canteen he offers you.

Will turns to look at you, his eyes flicking over the bandage on your leg. “What happened?”

“Exactly what I said. Some guy caught us grabbing the truck. He shot first, Fish took ‘im out.”

All cold practicality, Will answers, “Clean it properly.”

Fish laughs and raises a brow at you and Santi knows he had already told you to do it.

You roll your eyes and glance at Benny with an exasperated huff of breath.

Before, when you served together, Santiago would have read that look all wrong, would have seen something more than what it was. Now, he sees it for what it is - two younger siblings exasperated by their older brother.

You and Ben have been attached at the hip since the third grade, and have done nearly everything in your life together. You were best friends and nothing more than that. In fact the idea probably repulsed both of you.

He wonders what it was like for you then, when Benny suddenly wasn’t around anymore after the failed Colombia mission.

Santi hooks one of the hand guns into the holster on his hip, grabs a first aid kit, and crosses to you. “I got it.”

He holds out a hand and you hesitate for only a moment before taking his hand and letting him haul you up. He leads you a little way from the group while they continue sorting the weapons out, nodding for you to lean back into the edge of the beached boat.

“Shit,” Santiago mutters when he crouches down and peels the makeshift bandage off of your thigh. “This is more than a graze, you got ate, mi vida.”

“Only a little. No bullet in me.”

He shakes his head and briskly cleans the wound, dresses it with a proper bandage and a wrapping of gauze around your thigh. He slides his knuckles down to your knee and glances up at you. “Fuck, Blue, please. Be careful.”

“You think I got shot on purpose?” You ask, amused rather than pissed for once, as he stands.

He licks his lips and plants his hands on his hips, not able to keep his eyes off you.

Fuck were you pretty.

Even in fatigues and sweating from the humidity, you were so fucking beautiful.

And then he notices the rings on your fingers, notices the ring that he gave you years ago now, and his mouth goes dry, his heart pumps like it’s trying to break the cage of his ribs.

“‘Course not. Just saying. Be careful.”

“Okay,” you agree. “When should we head out? Frankie -,” you call and the other man glances over at the two of you. “We thought 0400 hours, right?”

“Right,” he confirms quietly, “Early enough that we’ve got a bit of light but it's still dark,” he agrees.

“There ya go, Pope,” you say.

He doesn’t look away from you, can’t quite manage it. “You’ve got my hat.”

“My hat now,” you snip. “Left it in my house.”

“You ever gonna forgive me?” He doesn’t know why he asks, it's not like he deserves it.

“Dunno, Santi,” you say. “You ever gonna apologize?”

He clenches his jaw and walks away from you, announcing, “We’re out at 0400 hours. Sharp.”

The sun is only really starting to blaze alive when you park the truck at the edge of a canyon. “We gotta walk from here, y’all,” you say, slapping the map down between Will and Santiago in the front seat.

“Hooah,” Benny intones, popping open his door so you can slide out behind him.

When the truck is hidden in the foliage and you’re all geared up, you say, “So, I was thinking, I can split with you guys here, follow the ridgeline up so I can see farther-,”

“We aren’t splitting up again,” Santi says, lowering protective glasses over his eyes. “You’ll be able to see plenty in either direction from the ravine.”

“Are you sure-,”

“Yes,” he grits his teeth. “We’re wasting time, let's go.”

So you wrap the strap of your rifle around your neck and go.

You don’t talk as you move through the canyon and through the mountainside, up the steep rocky crags, Santiago at the head with a GPS and the coordinates.

Finding the correct ravine is surprisingly easy, and you peer over the side to see a mountain of snow at the bottom. “Looks like you guys will be digging.”

“Wonderful,” Frankie says. “You wanna trade? I’ll man the horizon.”

You smirk, “Nah, I’m good here.” You screw a silencer onto the end of your rifle and walk away, scouting for a position where you could easily see in all directions to cover them while they worked.

“Not too far,” Pope says into the comms and you don’t bother to turn, waving a hand above your head to show you heard.

You settle down, between two rocks, adjusting the scope on your rifle to make sure you have a clear view.

“Blue, check-in,” Frankie’s voice comes over the comm. “Pope can’t see you and has his panties in a twist.”

You chuckle and respond, “That’s the idea. Present and accounted for. How’s it going, boys?”

“Benny and Santi rappelling down now.”

You don’t respond, focusing instead on your task, wondering how long it would take them to get all of it out of the ravine, if they would have to dig it out of the snow, if it was even still there, how long it would take to haul out to the truck.

Two hours pass in which the horizon in all directions is clear, and which the boys stay silent in your ear.

And then - “Fuck yeah! Money’s still here baby!” Benny nearly deafens you and the others. A long string of curses and hyena-like laughter follows.

“Shut the fuck up, Ben! Jesus,” Will mutters. “Just get it the fuck up here.”

“Keep your head on straight,” you say into your comm. “We’re not taking more than we can handle, got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Santi says. “Of course.”

“I’m serious. I will leave you here, Pope.”

“I’ll leave him here,” Frankie adds.

The rest of the day passes by slowly, and without incident. Occasional comments come through but nothing that warranted a response until near sundown, “Come on back, Blue,” Will says.

“Done already?”

“For tonight.”

When you approach the camp, duffle bags are strewn around.

Many more than you expected.

“Jesus, you sure this isn’t all of it?” You assess the amount of bags. “Think we might have to be okay with this.” You shoulder your M16, “We should start moving it to the truck now.”

The guys glance at each other. “C’mon,” you whine, annoyed with them. “Y’all really gonna let money go to your head again?”

“You don’t want any?”

“Any is more than none, which is what I have now,” you say. “And no, Ben, I don’t need a Ferrari.”

They all glance at each other, then, “One more run tonight and then we’re done. We’ll move the cash in the morning, and be on the boat by the afternoon.”

You roll your eyes, “Fine, whatever.”

Benny hoots and goes about getting strapped into the harness again, Will following suit.

“That was kind of you,” Frankie says, coming to stand next to you with arms folded across his chest. “We coulda used your level head last time.”

You feel your heart sink, surprised Fish would say anything about it to you. “Yeah,” you say softly, watching Santi help Ben and Will start down the cliffside. “I know it's my fault that it went down the way it did. I’m sorry.”

Fish is silent for a few minutes as you watch the boys, before he suddenly turns to you, “Wait, what? Your fault?”

You press your lips together, Will and Benny finally disappearing as the last light faded from the sky. “Threw off the team. Wasn’t here to-,”

“Hold on. We’re grown fucking men and you had the choice to say no. No one’s holdin’ that against you.”

You don’t answer, watching Santi, the broad line of his shoulders, the firm set of him as he keeps an eye on the ropes.

“Not everyone thinks that.”

“What, Pope?” When you don’t answer he continues, shaking his head. “God, if I know anything about Santiago it's that he’s upside down, head over heels, makes him look stupid, in love with you. And he has been since you and that fucker Ben rolled up to Delta like you already belonged.”

You swallow, not sure what to say, your throat dry as you rub your hands together and then stuff them under your armpits to keep them warm in the cooling air. “Oh yeah? Helluva way of showin’ it. He said I was fuckin’ useless. Called me a coward. Said anything that happened to y’all was my fault. And then Tom died. And you all were never around anymore, not even Benny.”

“Shit, honey,” he says softly. “We thought Santi was still going out there to see you every chance his dumbass got.” He pauses and then looks over at you, shifting to cradle his weapon in his arms. “As for that other shit, Pope says some shit when he gets mad, and no one gets under his skin better than you. You know nothing that happened down here was your fault. It was our fault, our choices.”

You bite the side of your cheek. “Thanks, Fish.”

“You can call it stupid if you want. It was.”

“It was stupid and you’re all greedy bastards,” you say, knocking a shoulder into his.

He smiles, “Yeah. But it might just work out this time.”

The night passes easily.

You don’t start a fire, and the guys are curiously silent about the prospect though you know it's smarter not to start one and draw attention to your position.

Benny takes the first watch and you end up sandwiched between Frankie and Santiago.

It takes all your willpower not to curl into him, the smell of him exactly as you remember, the heat of him, the press of him against you.

Right when you’re about to fall asleep, you feel Santi’s fingers curl through yours and squeeze gently, his lips at your ear. “I’m so fucking sorry, mi vida.”

The next morning, at first light, with most of the cash already transported to the truck, you spot movement on the ridgeline, and when you lift your scope to your eye and see bodies traveling down the rocky mountainside.

You call out a warning just as the first shot slams into the ground several feet from you.

You duck for cover before coming up on a knee to squeeze your own trigger, the silencer muffling the sound of the shot.

Santi turns and watches a distant body fall to the ground, as he too falls behind one of the many boulders.

“Hey, hey, what the fuck are we shooting at?” Ben yells at you as you grab him and yank him down beside you.

“We gotta go,” you spit out over the comms as Benny lifts his body away from yours to take a couple shots of his own, clearly felling his targets by the look on his face, “Looks like somebody patrols this area now. Probably because of you fuckers.”

“Frankie, Will, stay where you are,” Santiago says over the comms.

“What’s going on?” Will snarls back.

“Fuck just -,”

You pop off another shot, using hand signals to tell Santi to start moving his ass toward the treeline. He’s closer to your exit route than you and Ben. “They’re all down the fucking mountain - we’re about to be cut off. We need to go,” you say into the comms. “Grab that shit and let's go,” you say to Benny, pointing to the last duffle bag at your feet before gripping his tac vest as you start moving forward together against the rocks as fast as you dare.

You look ahead and note that Santiago isn’t moving, instead standing his ground and shooting back at the ridgeline, covering the two of you.

It’s a stupid fucking move. There were too many of them, too many shots for it to make a difference. But he’s clearly waiting for the two of you, the babies of Delta, to make it back to him before he moves off. The rest of them had always been overprotective of you and Ben though none of them would ever admit it. They know you’re both more than capable but that didn’t stop them from double and triple asking if you were sure you wanted to do something, or making it a priority to intervene when one of you were in trouble, especially Will when it came to you and Benny.

And while you hadn’t been here before, you know.

This is where Tom died. This is where they lost everything.

Santiago doesn’t like to lose.

“Fuck!” You can hear him shout, directing Benny to stop with a raised fist, moving back toward you instead away from you.

They’re close enough now that you can hear shouts, and you meet nearer to the trees, all three of you pressed behind a rock.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Benny is screaming, the noise muffled in your ear, your concentration fastened back on the moving targets, the bodies, the people. You take a steadying breath and line up your shots. “You’re going to get us fucking killed!” Benny continues. “What the fuck, man! We had it!”

You always were the best shot of Delta, and the people closest to you fall.

You can’t tell if they’re dead.

The clip is empty and you take a moment to reload, slamming the cartridge into place with more force than necessary.

“You really must think me fucking useless if you think I can’t move six feet without you!” You shout at Santiago, who grabs the two of you and shoves you ahead of him, crouched down low. “You fucker!”

“Fuck! It’s not about that-,” he starts, but you ignore him moving quickly over unsteady ground.

You and Benny are younger than the rest of the team by years, and it shows now, Santi panting as you run and cuss without a hitch in your breath. Ben cursing in front of you the whole way.

“You stupid fucker,” you snarl again, Benny echoing your sentiment as you pause again, bullets richoching around you.

Santi pants as he leans back against the rock for a moment, letting you rage against him, fear eating your heart because he had just ran at you. He had ran back to you for no fucking reason and now he might die with you and Benny. You raise yourself up to shoot back again, Benny taking shots to the right.

“They’re closing in, we need to move,” Benny says, radioing over the comms to warn Frankie and Will to have the truck ready and waiting.

You and Santi are silent, taking coordinated shots.

“Fuck! Why are there so many of them?” You grit your teeth, the recoil of the gun against you starting to bruise.

“They knew we lost that money, they’ve been waiting for someone to come poking around for it so they could get it,” Santi says, his breathing even again. “Probably set up patrols here after we came though.”

You glance over at him to ask why he hadn’t shared that thought before this moment, and feel your heart stop. Up the rockside and to the left, there at the edge of the rocks, a kid stands with a gun sighted up on Santiago.

“Santi,” you whisper, voice hoarse. And then so loud, you hurt you own ears, “Santi!”

He starts to turn but you reach over and grab him by the back of his neck, jerking him down, and using the leverage to haul yourself up above him. The kid shoots at the same time you do.

Your bullet lodges between his eyes, but the shot that would have split Santago’s skull in two, lodges deep into the fleshy part of you between your shoulder and your clavicle. You wobble and then crash back between Santi and Ben, not entirely sure what just happened.

You look down at yourself, where the bullet perfectly caught right at the edge of your skewed tac vest, just above your heart

Panic surges up through you suddenly and your vision clouds as you grit your teeth against the pain.

Santi grips your jaw hard, those dark fathomless eyes boring into you, shouting something at you.

But you can’t get enough breath into your lungs to feel like you can respond. “Fuck,” you whisper, touching the blood on your hoodie. One of Santi’s old hoodies, you hadn’t realized until now. “I think I’m hit,” you say as Santi slaps your hand away from the wound.

Blood gushes out of the hole in waves. “Blue, look at me,” Santi says, a sudden pressure on the wound making you bite down a howl. His hands are covered in red. Blood, it must be your blood. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“Okay, Pope,” you whisper, the edge of your vision fading, “Fuck I think it hit my heart.”

You don’t hear his answer, the last thing you know is Santi and Ben leaning over you, dead panic on their faces but you can’t quite figure out why.

Carrying you to the truck, your eyes unfocused and glossy, feels a lot like carrying Tom’s corpse home.

Santiago doesn’t scare easy, but cradling your head in his lap while Ben cries his eyes out and snarls at Will to drive faster, scares him.

Frankie’s worried eyes turning back to assess you, scares him.

Will’s stoic silence, scares him.

But nothing comes close to the fear he feels at the prospect of having to carry home your corpse.

And suddenly that money, everything in the world, nothing matters to him but you - and it’ll be his fault if you die now.

He leans down over you, presses a kiss to the shell of your ear. There’s blood caked on your neck, crusting along the edge of your sweatshirt. Your ball cap and protective glasses are on the floor of the truck at his feet, stained a crimson that his brain can’t make sense of.

The graze of the bullet against your thigh was god’s warning to turn back, and he hadn’t heeded it.

Ruthless.

He’s always been ruthless.

And now maybe that ruthlessness really would get you killed.

He can’t really make himself understand it, why you would jump up like that and pull him out of the way.

“Santi,” you murmur, your breath sweet against his skin, your bloody fingers scrubbing against the stubble on his cheek. “Santi,” you whisper against his skin, the copper smell of you making him sick, makes him want to fucking vomit.

“Hold on, cariño,” he says gently. “We’re gonna get you home safe and sound.” But your skin is ashen, your lips chapped already and he knows there isn’t a chance in hell of you making it to the States alive without them addressing the mess that is your shoulder.

“Fuck,” he snarls when your eyes flutter closed again, your body going limp as you pass out. “Benny, grab that med pack. We’re gonna have to sew her up before she loses any more blood. She’s not gonna make it if we don’t.”

Pope rips back the straps of your tac vest, rips your sweatshirt open as Benny goes cool with determination, grounded and levelheaded even as tears slip down his nose. There’s no exit wound and so Benny passes over the supplies Santi needs to dig the bullet out of your shoulder.

He stuffs cloth in your mouth when you lurch and give a blood curdling scream, forceps squelching deep in the wound until he can finally rip the metal out of your shoulder.

He forces you to keep it in your mouth so you don’t break your teeth, bite your fucking tongue off, when they dump peroxide over the wound.

Benny holds you still after he hands Santiago the threaded needle, closes his eyes and takes a breath, before he unsteadily and messily sews your shoulder closed.

By the time he’s done with you, you’re so still he might as well have killed you himself.

Then

“Hey, killer,” Santiago says when you thrust open the front screen door with a toe.

“Hey yourself, old man,” you snipe at him, “Wanna help me out a little?”

Santi finishes wiping his hands on a dishtowel and moves to hold the door open for you.

You’re wearing ratty gym clothes, boxing gloves spilling out of your duffle bag, a couple of grocery bags fisted in your other hand.

Santiago gently takes the groceries from you and dumps them on the kitchen table as you wave out at Benny’s retreating jeep.

Ben obnoxiously lays on the horn all the way down the road, but it makes you laugh and so he doesn’t roll his eyes too hard at it.

“You weren’t here when I got in last night,” Santiago says when you beeline into the kitchen and dump your bag on the floor.

He doesn’t get a chance to say anything else because you kiss him, your palms against his cheeks, the line of your body against his. When you pull away you smirk at him and peer at the breakfast he has started on your stove.

“Don’t you have your own house to go to?”

“My own house isn’t where you are.”

You laugh, bell bright, but he knows you think he’s just fucking with you. “You stay at Ben’s?”

“He lost last night and was pouting about it,” you say, unloading the grocery bags. “Me and Will stayed with him. Re-watched Predator for the millionth time. Knew we’d end up at the gym in the morning together anyways.”

Santi tucks his arms around you and drags you back against his chest, pressing his lips to the nape of your neck and then the shell of your ear. “Left me high and dry here, honey.”

“Oh, I’m sure you managed to entertain yourself, Santi.” You turn your head and bump your forehead against his temple. “You’ve got a hand don’t you?”

He scoffs, “That’s fuckin’ cruel. Expecting pussy and getting a hand.”

You turn in his grip and wind your arms around his neck, smiling and stretching against him like a cat. “Lemme shower and this pussy is all yours, babe.”

“Shower, breakfast, then pussy,” he says. “I know you didn’t eat this morning.”

You roll your eyes, “Hurts my feelings when you ignore me like this Santiago.”

“The last thing in the world I’m doing is ignoring you,” he says, cupping his hands under your ass to lift you onto the counter.

You settle back against the cabinets and he slots himself between your legs, running his hands up your thighs, beneath the fabric of your gym shorts. “You’re so pretty. Have I ever told you that?”

A grin splits your face, one he’s glad to see, one that had taken a year of counseling and fucking and boxing and bar nights to coax back out of you. “Sure,” you say.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

Santiago licks his lips, takes your hands in his, the dozens of rings that line your fingers grazing his.

It was one of the things you’d started wearing to feel more like yourself again, to recapture your identity outside the military, outside Delta.

He traces the rings carefully for a moment when your voice reaches out to him again, your hand touching his jaw. “Santi?” you ask.

“I brought something back for you,” he says, squeezing your knee gently. “Stay here.”

He looks up and meets your eyes, searching the gaze he knows so well, and still coming back empty, still confused about what it all means to you, what he means to you. “Okay,” you say, “What is it?”

Instead of answering, he ducks out of the kitchen to rifle through his own bag that he left in the front hall the night before.

When he returns to you, you have one heel up on the counter, a cup filled with coffee at your side, picking bits of food out of the pan on the stove.

He knocks your heel down, jolting you, “Feet on the counter? Really?”

“It’s my fucking counter, Garcia,” you snap at him, but you smile when you say it.

“Fucking counter, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“I mean I have fucked you there enough times, haven’t I?” He asks, watching you roll your eyes, tracking your every movement, unable to glance away from you.

You lift that same foot and shove at his shoulder as you sip your coffee. “Fuck off.”

Santi catches your foot, presses a kiss to your ankle and lets it drop again so he can slot himself between your legs again, holding up the ring he has pinched between two fingers in his other hand.

Your eyes lock onto the gold, lips parting. “Found it at a market in Bogotá. Polished it up on the way back. Thought you’d like it for your collection.”

Gingerly, as though the ring is made of smoke and not metal, you reach out to take it from him. “It’s beautiful,” you say, examining the stones embedded in the gold.

Santi takes it back from you, and examines your hands, the many, many rings that stack on your fingers. “Which finger you want it on, mi vida?”

You wiggle your right ring finger and he slips it into place. It's a perfect fit.

He looks up at you, he means to tell you in that moment, that there’s no one else, that there’s only you, that this thing between you is solid and real and he wants no one else, ever. That you’re his and he’s yours.

That you are his girl.

But the words die on his lips as soon as he looks at you, and then you’re sliding off the counter and kissing him so hard, he feels like he might bruise.

“Why don’t you shower with me and we can kill two birds with one stone?” You ask. “I get clean and you get pussy.”

He holds you so tight he feels you exhale a sharp breath, tilting his head over yours, brows pulled together as he watches you, watches the widening of your eyes.

“All for a ring?” he undercuts his own fucking plan, his own feelings.

“It’s a pretty ring.”

Now

They have to leave you in the hotel they check into, to meet with the bank, to deposit their fucking money.

Fifty million and it feels like nothing.

Benny and Will wait with you while he and Fish go to the bank first, and then switch places.

You’re awake when they get back and Santi wants to cry. Fish pretends there’s something he forgot in the lobby and leaves.

Santi pulls up a chair next to you and takes your hand. “What the fuck were you thinking?” He murmurs.

“Was thinking I didn’t want your brains all over me,” you say, weak fingers tightening on his. “You did a shit job stitching me up, by the way. But I think it saved my life.”

Santi says your name quietly, picking up your hand, your skin clammy against his. “Well our combat medic was out.”

He closes his eyes, gritting his jaw, trying to wash away the image of your prone body on two different boats, carrying you with Benny away from the line of fire like you were already gone from the world.

“Why?” He asks again. “Fuck, why would you do that?”

You grip his hand weakly, “Because. Because you - probably the same reason you ran toward me instead of away. Because I knew you were about to die and couldn’t let that happen.”

“And what if you fucking died, huh?”

“Guess I’d be dead then.”

He winces but doesn’t let you look away from him.

You swallow, “Help me sit up? I want some water.”

Santi hurries to help you sit up, listening to the way you groan tightly before he fetches a bottle of water for you and unscrews the cap.

Your hand shakes when you lift the bottle to your lips, and he has to cup the bottom of it to hold it steady for you.

When you’ve drunk your fill, you handle the bottle back and yank down the strap of your sports bra to look at the gauze webbed around your shoulder, the blood that slowly begins to stain through because of your movement.

You sigh and then fiddle with your rings, his ring on your finger, where it's never moved since he placed it there. “Santi,” you murmur. “I know we never said it - but I love you. That’s why it hurt so goddamn bad when you left. It just confirmed that it really never mattered to you. And this - this stupid fucking money - I know how you get. I couldn’t believe - couldn’t believe you just dropped me like that. I told myself you didn’t mean it. That we’re both mean sons of bitches when we’re pissed but then you never came home.”

You take a long stuttering breath, and his heart feels like it's stopped beating, like god has a boot on his chest. “I never woulda done that to you. You left it up to Benny to tell me what the fuck happened. I didn’t just lose you, I lost all of you. You know what that’s like? To have your best friend, who you’ve never been apart from for more than a couple days, just drop you? To have - to have you - for better or worse, the man I fucking love - abandon me?”

Is this what it takes to get him to spill his guts to you?

Having you half dead in his arms, your eyes lined with circles, your skin tone off by several shades, telling him things he already fucking knows?

He cups your cheeks in his palms gently, swipes away the tears that fall. Santiago hasn’t seen you like this in years, since you finally started coming back to yourself.

“Fuck, baby,” he whispers. “Fuck, mi vida, I’m so fucking sorry.”

Santi curls his arms around you, shifts you on the bed until he can lie down with you, the pressure off of your injured shoulder as you turn on your side to fit yourself against him.

“I can never take back those things I said to you. But you have to know - I didn’t mean a single word of it. Nothing that happened on that mission was your fault. Not a fucking thing. As soon as things went sideways the first time, the only thing I could think was thank god she’s safe at home.”

He presses a kiss to your forehead and you feel more tears leak down your cheeks. “You are the best shot we have - proved that a couple times over yesterday, I think. You were never just a medic, you know that. You’ve beaten me in hand to hand more than enough times, all the rest of those fuckers too. You’re the best of us, honey. I was just so goddamn scared you’d never forgive me for the things I was about to do - you had it right about Lorea and the money and my motivation.”

You feel the movement of his throat against you, arms tightening by a fraction, before he says, voice hoarse, “And I’ve always loved you. Always. I never knew how to say it. You’ve been my only girl for so fucking long.”

You shove his shoulder gently and feel him stiffen but you only bring his forehead to yours, peering into those eyes that were always so intense, that missed nothing, and read you like a book.

You scrub a hand over his stubbled cheek, the pull of the hair against your hand soothing. “You know I love you, Santiago.”

“I love you,” he answers sincerely. “Sorry it took so goddamn long.”

You pull him down into a kiss, your shoulder aching, a biting pain that lances across your chest. “Me too,” you murmur, gingerly unbuttoning his jeans, careful of the very messy stitches in your shoulder. You hiss through your teeth and Santi stops your hand.

“No, your shoulder-,”

“Yes,” you murmur. “Yes. You just have to be careful with me. You just have to be gentle.” You peer up at him, into those brown eyes that feel so like home to you, like the warmth of a summer forest. You touch the hinge of his jaw, “Just be gentle with me.”

Santi’s eyes clench closed and then he’s nodding and kissing your forehead, all resolve gone. You thought the strings of your heart had been wrapped around his fingers all these years. You never imagined that you held his too.

He pulls away from you to undress, since you won’t be able to do it for him in your state, and you use the opportunity to push your shorts and underwear off with your good arm.

And then he’s back, naked against you, one arm under your neck to support your head, the other curving around your knee to hitch over his hip, pressing so close to you. You feel the ridges of his cock against your pussy, already wet.

“Just like this,” he murmurs to you, never breaking his eyes from yours, his gaze just as steady and intense as it always has been, but now there’s a thread of vulnerability that makes you duck your head to press a kiss over his heart. Your good hand against his cheek, the other carefully skimming along his abdomen, the thick muscle and padding he carries.

You both watch as he slides into you, watch your bodies join slowly, the stretch of him so fucking good and heavy.

Your breath leaves you in a gust and Santi pauses, more gentle with you than he’s ever been. “Fuck. You have to tell me if I’m hurting you. Okay?”

You meet his gaze, rolling your hips against his, “Santi.”

He moves then, meeting the slow thrust of you. “Yeah, baby, tell me what you need.”

Instead of biting something out at him like you usually would, you cup both hands against his cheeks as he tightens his arm around your waist, bringing you that much closer.

Santi leans his forehead against yours, and neither of you shut your eyes. You can’t, you have to know he’s there and real and everything that he’s said the last few minutes is true.

He’d always been better at doing than saying and now is no different - his gaze unwavering, making love to you so softly you feel a tear bead and slip down your nose.

Santiago swipes it away with his thumb as he shifts the arm beneath your neck so he can cup the back of your skull, fingers digging through your hair.

The pleasure in your belly builds slowly, but that almost feels secondary to the other things you’re feeling - like you finally belonged, like you were no longer adrift, like you finally found your home.

You press your hand flat over his sternum and feel the thrumming of his heart against your hand.

“It beats for you,” he says, closing his eyes briefly to press his nose into your hair.

You almost want to laugh, at how corny it is, if you didn’t know for certain that he’s never said anything more sincerely.

Sweat beads along his salt and pepper curls, the smell of him like his cologne and cheap hotel soap and sweat.

You move your hips more frantically, Santiago matching you thrust for push, when you bury your nose in his neck and inhale sharply.

“I’m close,” you murmur. “Please, Santi.”

“Look at me, baby,” he says. “Lemme see those pretty eyes when you come for me.”

You meet his eyes, trace the long sweep of his lashes with your gaze when the pressure in your belly snaps and you cry out.

Santiago captures your lips, swallowing down your moan, as he presses a hand to the back of your neck, fingers slowly sliding down your spine. His thrusts become sloppy and slow and his brow is furrowed.

When you whisper, “Come for me, Santi,” he exhales sharply into your mouth and comes inside you, hips slowly stuttering to a stop. “I love you.”

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck, if I don’t love you more than I deserve to.” He tugs you close, careful of your shoulder which aches more than you’re willing to admit in that moment.

But you’ve been shot before, and it's not as bad as it could be.

“Yeah,” you coo. “But I want it anyway. I want all your fucked up love.”

Santi laughs and it sounds like a sob, and you curl your fingers through his hair tugging lightly. “I meant to - the day I gave you the ring. I meant to clarify that day that we - ,”

“Mhm,” you hum against him. “Is that what this ring means? You claimed me?”

“Means we belong to each other.”

You nod, “Move in when we get back.”

“I’m gonna put in a pool in your backyard, that deck is begging for one. Gotta have somewhere to keep the boys entertained when I need to fuck you.”

You laugh and then wince at the movement in your shoulder. “Backyard is all yours.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Just then someone knocks at the door. “We have the contract for you to sign if you’re done fucking,” Frankie calls, loud enough that the whole hall probably hears.

You groan but Santi just keeps gazing at you, lips pouted, “And a dog. We gotta get a dog. And a new couch, I’m done sitting on Ben’s cheeto dust.”

“Anything. As long as you’re there.”

His breath catches and he looks like he can’t quite breathe. “Yeah,” he murmurs, lips ghosting over yours. “As long as you’re there.”

Your heart beats so hard, you think it's trying to break free from your chest to join with his.

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