writefightandflightclub - Tumblr blog

writefightandflightclub · 6 days

Text

Ride or Die (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader): Chapter Eleven (of 11 - COMPLETED SERIES)

Series summary: Together, you and Santiago have been “soldiers” then “friends” then “lovers”; but will you ever figure out what comes next, especially when Santiago can’t (or won’t) stop running?

Genre: a LOT of angst, (some) smut, best friends to… lovers?

Warnings: see collated series warnings, here.

Series info: this is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are written and queued. Posting schedule is here (includes series master list).

Author’s note: THIS IS THE FINAL CHAPTER YOU GUYSSSSSS. I'm emotional!

It has been a journey. As always, I would be super grateful for any comments / reblogs / asks you may wish to send. ILYSM!

Word count: 6.4k for this part.

Weeks pass following the sojourn at the beach house, and you return to your new, blooming life. The strange, suffusing peace you’d felt when you and Santiago finally said your farewells - in more than words - has faded, a barbed tension instead taking root. The sense of resolution has all too quickly transitioned towards sleepless nights. To worrying about how the Lorea job will pan out, and whether Santiago and your other, dear squad mates will make it out unscathed - if at all.

Your usual pleasures and distractions are little comfort, and it is worst when you are alone. You don’t even have the other dumbasses to lean on, the rub of all of them being gone at once hard to take.

The nights are when you worry most intensely. When the world folds in on itself, the outside dark and the interior of your own thoughts all you have to rattle around in. Your house has never felt more empty to you, in fact, than in these moments. Most of all though, it feels empty without him; even though he’s never set foot in it. Your hard-won sanctuary feels, with each revolution of the clock, more and more like a collection of rooms and corridors boxing you in, and less and less like it had ever held the potential to feel like safety.

Anything that you do in attempts to quell this gnawing worry only makes the hole inside you grow more and more apparent. The more you tend your porch planters, the more friends you have over for game day, the more you try to tell yourself that you have everything you need, right here? The further from the truth it all feels.

The truth, in this moment, is that you’d burn down the entirety of this new life you’ve built if it would get him back safe. Back home safe. And it only makes you more certain that there is no “home” without him. No true feeling of sanctuary or peace while he is in danger.

The more time that passes too, the more your worries for the mission eat away at you. Some nights, you find yourself sitting bolt upright in bed, the damp sheets tangled constrictively around your heat-tacky skin. Heart thudding hard in the roll cage of your chest. In these moments, that’s when you come closest to abandoning your new life entirely. To hastily stuffing a rucksack and jumping on the next plane to Colombia or Brazil, for all the damn good it would do.

But you can’t do that. You can’t let yourself be dragged back into his world of danger.

You’d gotten out, and wasn’t that the point? To stay out?

You know it’s for the best. Best for you.

Still… there is something which really scares you about this mission. You can’t shake the sense they won’t come back quite the same after this. Can’t shake the impending sense of… finality about it. Santiago has always pushed for more. One more job. One more mission. Has always sought to go big or go home. You’ve always wished he would choose the latter option, by the way, and for some damn reason, he never has. Maybe he thinks he has nowhere like that to go. Maybe the bastard truly will run and gun until it kills him, and the thought of him ending that way…

The thought of him ending at all…

It sends cold shivers down your spine. Spins a tight knot in your stomach which becomes denser by the day.

You are mildly ashamed when you tuck Santiago’s old rosary beads beneath your pillow, fingertips unconsciously snaking under it during the night to grip them tightly. To hold something of his within your grip, when he seems so out of reach, is priceless to you. He’d gifted the beads to you years ago. For protection. Now, you curse yourself that they aren’t in his possession. You don’t even believe in any of that, for Christ’s sake. But it sure would comfort you all the same, you reckon. If he had some reminder on his person of how loved he is. Of the people counting on him to make it back.

Of course, you’ve been checking your phone constantly. Even though they’d warned you repeatedly when they were about to go dark. You’ve braced for it. For a shock. A collision. Bad news. You’ve been unable to eat, sleep, think. And so, even when you finally receive Frankie’s cursory text that they’ve made it out -a simple helicopter emoji and a thumbs-up delivered from a burner cell- you can’t fully trust it.

That night, you still wake in a cold-sweat, chest heaving with ragged breaths. Feeling like the momentarily relief you’d felt must have been a dream, and that the visions of Santiago lifeless and cloaked in red are far more likely to be real.

You won’t fully believe it, you think, until you hold him in your arms once again. See him with your own two eyes.

You need to see him again.

The problem is, Santiago has never excelled at coming home. Has never excelled at joining the dots to realise he even has one at all.

You don’t know when the next opportunity to do that -to see him, hold him - will be. Don’t know whether he’ll simply keep running into yet another mission, then the next and the next and the next, his path leading him further away from you all over again.

You don’t imagine that he’ll find his way back any time soon.

Turns out, you are wrong.

***

You are baking in your kitchen when you notice him, the window forming a perfect frame as he appears, stood at the mouth of your driveway. His head is tipped up towards the eaves of your house. A hold-all is slung over his shoulder. His unseated ball cap is clutched solemnly in folded hands - as though he’s rocked-up outside of church after a long absence, ready to repent his sins.

You aren’t able to tear your gaze away from him. It feels as though if you blink, he might simply vanish all over again, like you are so used to him doing.

Feet planted to the tiles, and without turning your head - without even blinking - you say your sister’s name out loud. Like you used to when you were small and afraid you’d heard a monster in the dark. And, coming to your side, just like she’d always done then, she follows your fixed gaze through the window. Right to the spot where Santiago stands, bathed in golden fall light like an epiphany - nothing monstrous about him.

“Oh, honey,” she says, placing a hand on your shoulder.

When she does so, you realise you’ve been holding your breath. Realise that your ears are ringing and your pulse is thudding in your neck. When you finally suck in air, its passage is stunted, your chest fluttering around it.

“Come on, kids,” your sister motions to your nephews, shooing them towards the living room with promises of cartoons and brownies. “We’ll give you some space,” she whispers across to you as she seamlessly shuffles the troops out. “Will you be okay?”

You finally turn to her then. Manage to tear your eyes away from him. When you do, whatever expression is rendered on your face causes her to shoot you a look of sympathy.

At first, no sound comes out when you try to respond, your lips quaking around the words. You try again, and it is better, though still croaky. “I have no idea.” You don’t know what you are feeling. All you know, is that when you settle your hands on the edge of the counter, they are shaking.

After a quick visual check, across the hall to the kids, once again your sister slots in at your side, squeezing your shoulder in reassurance. She dips to give you a quick kiss on the cheek, cupping the crown of your head. “Here. Splash your face,” she encourages, turning on the cold faucet and guiding you until you oblige, the shock of the cold water pooling in your cupped palms bringing you back to your body. The pleasant cool against your cheeks providing you some relief. You dry your face off on your sleeve. Rub your palms against the legs of your worn jeans. “I’ll be right in there.” She nods her head in the direction of the living room. “Any funny business, I’ll kick his damned ass all the way back to Colombia. Alright?”

It occurs to you that you love her dearly.

You nod and, satisfied, your sister vacates the kitchen. You watch her disappear through the mouth of the door frame, and, by the time you look back at Santiago, he is taking his first steps down your driveway.

Pressing your palms to your cheeks, you look helplessly back and forth; between him, and the door through which your sister had retreated. You don’t know what to do, exactly.

You weren’t expecting this.

Santiago “Pope” Garcia never comes home.

Santiago is never walking towards you; he is only ever running away. And now, here he is about to walk through your door? To make the house you’ve bought sing, for better or worse, with the pain of all the empty space still contained with it?

Like the Lorea job, this moment has a dreaded sense of finality to it, you think. Like this completely insignificant - yet wildly momentous - occasion is either about to slot everything you’ve ever wanted into place; or, to make any hope of it crumble into pieces.

Until so very recently, you’ve never had to think about how your story ends. Whether it will end up happy. You’ve simply been trying to survive the fraught middle.

Well, here Santiago is. He’s made it back to you.

You feel like you’re about to find out once and for all.

And so, you do the only logical thing you can think to do.

You run.

***

This is the one, he thinks as he pulls up to park, checking the mailbox numbers against Frankie’s text. This is the house.

He sits in the rental truck a good few moments longer than necessary before climbing out, grabbing up the navy hold-all from the backseat and turning towards the mouth of your driveway.

This is the house.

It’s the kind of house he’s always feared for what it represents - a commitment - and yet, now that he is stood here, looking-up at the structure in the flesh, it doesn’t look quite so fearsome as he’s always imagined.

He gives it a scan over, looking for signs of you. Sure enough, he notes that your lawn is the most unkempt on the block. That your porch hanging-baskets, filled with colourful lantanas, are bursting and full. Your drive is cluttered with strewn kids’ bicycles. And, the front door is painted in a bold hue that only you would have picked out, stood in stark defiance of the glum, muted tones along the rest of the row.

This is the house.

And it is perfect.

It is somehow still you, already - even from the outside. Santiago always thought that moving forward meant changing - losing something of yourself - but he is pleased to note he still recognises you in all of this. That, despite the white picket fence surrounding your garden, it no longer represents a perimeter he dare not cross.

Even so, Santiago freezes there for a moment. He finds his feet won’t quite carry him willingly over the threshold from the street to your property. He takes a moment to drink it in instead. To look at what you’ve done for yourself. What you’ve created. What you’ve chosen. Santiago has always, on some level, worried that he couldn’t give you the life you deserved; but it’s clear to him now that he didn’t have to, because you’ve built that for yourself.

As if anything could stop you.

You have a yard. You have a white fucking picket fence wrapped around it.

He half-snorts to himself. Shaking his head softly in disbelief.

Still, it is there in the back of his head. That small, constant niggle. Even now, Santiago has half a mind to run. This house, to him, represents a place of innocence. Represents a new start and a freshness - one that he would never wish to soil with his bloodied hands. He tries to imagine being inside the house, with you, and yet all he can envision is himself dragging his red, bloody palms all along your pristine white walls. All he can see is him staining this life you have built. Bringing the blood and the dark inside, the way it inhabits the interior of him.

He almost does too. Almost turns away.

Old habits die hard.

All of his fears and insecurities reliably surface, and he imagines the hold-all he is arriving with is the weight of all of his past baggage. He considers - for a moment - whether he would rather have the memory of you from the beachouse, asleep and naked, bathed in golden light and sea breeze, to be the last one he ever holds of you. Wonders if it might be eminently easier that way.

He thinks about it; but then, he sees you through the window. In the kitchen. Turned away from him, but still unmistakable.

He smiles wistfully. And he starts walking.

He knows he can’t possibly turn away from you now. There’s no damn way that the back of your head can be the last image of you he sees; and so, he is driven onwards. Now, more so than ever, Santiago knows he needs to face you.

He fixes his eyes on the path ahead, then. Continues walking, his thoughts abuzz with how he’s going to greet you. How he’s going to explain himself for turning up unannounced, somehow both early and overdue all at once.

His thoughts are cut short and his plans entirely foiled, however, when a body slams up against him. For a split second he wonders whether he is getting football tackled to the floor, but he knows, even as you are crushed up against him and your face is indiscernible, that it’s you. He would know the weight and shape of you against his body anywhere.

You run to him and you hug him, your cold cheek pressing up against his own. Your hands clawing into the back of his navy bomber, and your arms squeezing him with enough force that he abruptly - a bit winded from being body-slammed - drops the hold all to the floor like he’s finally letting go of all his bulllshit. Drops this precious cargo like there’s something far more precious to cling on to after all.

You pull away from him as he coughs emphatically from the chest-slam, clearly examining him to see if he’s in one piece. Your eyes rove over every inch of him - like they used to do when you would “buddy up” to check for injuries in the field. Instinctively, he attempts to mentally catalogue his own injuries too. He finds that he doesn’t feel hurt at all, no; but that he does feel entirely raw. Vulnerable, like a singing open wound as he sees your face again, emotion shining in your eyes like a sea at the edge of his land.

“You asshole! You’re okay? You’re really okay?” You tug on his lapels, hands fisting there like you’re trying to shake some sense into him.

“Went off without a hitch,” he reassures, hoping you don’t notice the way his voice breaks as you drag him back into your arms again. This time, too, Santiago’s arms loop around you in return, his eyes slowly closing as he takes a deep inhale from where his face tucks neatly into the crook of your shoulder, your familiar scent unravelling the tight knot in the pit of his chest. He wasn’t hurt, no; but nor was he okay. Knew that he wouldn’t really be okay until he was by your side again. That he never really had been.

“You got out clean?” you ask urgently, this time pulling away to smooth your palms over his lapels, undoing the disarray you’d caused.

He nods. “We don’t leave messes,” he opts to say assuredly, channelling Benny for a boost of confidence, as though luck hadn’t had a considerable amount to do with it.

“Yeah?” You examine his face for any sign he is smoothing over the truth of things, and he breathes a sigh of relief as his contrivedly neutral expression seems to satisfy you. “You got fucking lucky, you know that? Nothing got hairy?”

“Oh, it got fucking hairy. Cat almost tanked the chopper, for one thing.”

You tut emphatically. “Bull shit. That’s Cat slander and I won’t have it. Tell Ironhead to get the bastard better equipment next time, huh?”

Santiago likes this. Likes that no matter how long it’s been, you always greet one another like you’re mid conversation. Like despite the miles and countless moments which have passed, you were just in the middle of something.

Still… the suggestion of a “next time” drives a wedge through the space between you.

Next time.

One more mission; then another, and another, and another. Right?

Running in goddamn circles. Chasing his tail.

You sniff, and he watches your valiant attempt to shake it off, still staring at him with a misty look in your eye like he’s come back from the dead. You fold your arms across your chest, perhaps in efforts to subdue your initial, reckless affection. You toss your head over your shoulder, towards the wide open front door. “So. Y’ coming inside?” You nod down at his hold-all. “Or… do you have somewhere else to be?”

Santiago purses his mouth. Drops his gaze to the hold-all and stoops to wrap his fingers around the rough, looped handles. He feels the itch in his feet again. The urge to run. Sees the window open - his chance to escape. It wouldn’t take much. An easy, casual: yeah, I have a flight to catch. His age-old tricks. But at the same time he sees that window open, he sees your open door in view. The warm glow and invitation of your house beckoning him inside. The warm glow and invitation of you.

How could he possibly have anywhere else to be?

“I’d love- I mean, yeah. If I’m not intruding.”

You simply roll your eyes and -he’s pretty sure- mumble “idiota” under your breath. But, before he can wonder, you are taking him by the hand and leading him into the house.

He follows.

It’s a while since he’s followed you anywhere, but he does it now without a second thought.

Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Still. It should be a relief of sorts and yet… He feels his pulse quicken. Feels nerves twist in the pit of him - and he knows fine well it’s illogical. Knows it makes zero sense to fear a physical building.

But… no, that’s not quite it, is it? That was never it. His whole adult life, Santiago has been afraid of something far deeper than that, hasn't he?

Those feelings and fears, however, begin to drop away like leaves from a fall tree the moment he steps inside. From the moment you fuss his jacket off of his shoulders and hang it on the single empty coat hook, as though there’s been a space reserved for him all along. From the moment the wafted scents of home-baking and you fill his lungs he feels…

He feels… not quite ready to name what he feels yet; but he does acknowledge the lump lodging in his throat when he crosses the threshold, enveloped by the life you have been living without him.

You beckon him further inside, trying, to no avail, to prize the hold-all from his grip, so instead, tutting and letting him hang on to it anyway. Tugging the baseball cap from off of his head and throwing it in a spot right next to the key bowl, right before you instinctually ruffle his flattened, graying curls free.

You chat aimlessly - a natural and familiar commentary. He listens, but he’s also scanning, as per usual. Observing. Drinking the details of this house in. Taking in each framed photo arranged along the hall, curling up the stairs in a timeline of sorts. A record of your life. And, as he assesses, he stops dead in his tracks in front of one particular photo. It’s a buddy from years back. A friend you’d both lost to an IED. Above that, there’s a picture of you and Will standing jubilantly on top of a humvee, which makes his face split with a grin even as tears are balling in his eyes from the prior flood of memories. Beside that, there’s a goofy picture of you and him together, taken at his late mom’s 60th birthday. That one, in particular, makes him unsure whether to laugh or cry or both.

You come to stand beside him. Silently. Solemnly - as he saws a hand self-consciously across his stubble, not knowing quite how to feel amidst the concoction of varied emotions lodging in him like schrapnel. Fragments.

Meanwhile, you bump his shoulder with yours, before joining him in concentrating wistfully on the wall of photos suckering his attention.

Then, he finally places the feeling. He feels… like an idiot. For not seeing it before.

It’s your life, he realises. All set out here. Summarised. Catalogued.

But it’s his life too. It’s a shared life. He recognises most of the faces, events, occasions, and locations pictured. Feels the memories and emotions attached -his and yours, first-hand, second-hand - as his eyes tick over the display. Christ. He’s spent so long trying to run from you, hasn’t he, that he’s neglected to recall all the times you have walked side-by-side. He’s spent so long in staunch refusal that he could give you the life that you deserved that he’s neglected to realise that all this time, you were already building one together.

And oh boy. What a messy and complicated and hard and fucking beautiful life it has been.

All of that - he realises - is exactly why. Exactly why being here with you now, in this house he’s never even set foot in before, feels exactly like coming home.

For a moment, he looks at you, and -struck by you, like a gut punch - Santiago doesn’t know what to say. Quickly though, he remembers. Remembers that with you, it always feels like you’re right in the middle of a conversation.

He takes an emphatic sniff. “You’re baking?”

“Heh. Yeah.” You nod towards the living room door, from behind which a kerfuffle of cartoons and chatter is sounding, he clocks. “My nephews are here.” You place a finger over your beautiful lips and lean in, like you’re telling him a deep, dark secret. “I bought a packet mix.”

Santiago can feel his eyes glowing at you like headlights as your cheeky, full-beam smile shines back at him, but suddenly, he’s no longer particularly inclined to hide it.

“So?” You press gently, as his knuckles almost whiten from gripping the hold-all so tight. “What brings you to this neck of the woods, anyway?”

His mouth drops open wordlessly. For a moment, Santiago legitimately forgets. Forgets that he hasn’t always been here. He forgets, in fact, that he’s here for anything besides falling to his knees and clinging to you. Anything besides weeping for joy with his head buried against your stomach. Holding you so tightly, to make up for all of the times he’s so willingly let you go.

Fortunately, the weight of the hold-all tugging at his arm reminds him of one more reason, which, now that he’s here, actually feels a hell of a lot more like an excuse. “I’ve brought something for you.” He nods towards the kitchen. “Can we..?”

The kitchen is the heart of the home. It’s the heart of your home, and it’s the place where so far - recently - Santiago has tried to possess you, claim you, blame you, plead with you, and appease you. As though your body carries the memory of that you nod, tension pinching your face, and he clocks a swallow of apprehension darting abruptly down your throat. Still, you gesture for him to enter, and he follows closely behind.

“It’s weird that the kitchen’s at the front of the house, right?” You waffle, banaly. “But I like it. Feels more open. I like looking out at the front yard when I-”

“-Cook-up a storm?”

You scoff; not likely. “Throw away my pizza boxes.”

With your quip, mirth lights his eyes; yet - as ever - Santiago remains laser-focussed on his mission. He lifts up the hold-all, and plonks it down right on top of your kitchen island. “Here.” He nods towards the bag as you eye it sceptically.

“What? Did you bring me your fucking laundry?”

“Christ,” he scolds, even as your comment raises a warm chuckle. “No. It’s your share.”

You exhale softly through your raised palms as realisation dawns on you. “Santi. What the fuck?”

You cross to the bag and unzip it, mouth dropping into an “o” and eyes bugging as you reveal stacks and stacks of neatly bundled cash inside. Immediately, you shake your head, holding your palms up in the air and thrusting them away from your body. “No. Hell no.” His face drops. “I didn’t do anything to earn this.”

Oh, that’s your issue? On the contrary. You’ve earned this a hundred times over. “Oh, really? Remind me. How many times did you get shot, huh?”

You peer down to the bag again in disbelief. Santiago would continue to emphasise all that you deserve; but he can tell that you’ve already tuned him out anyway. He can transparently see the calculations ticking over in your head. What this money might mean for you. What you could do with it. Conversely, the strings that could feasibly be attached. The blood on it.

“It wasn’t just me. We all agreed.” He nods decisively, brows pinching down. “You and Tom get a share too. We wouldn’t be anywhere without you.” His voice breaks. “Shit. I wouldn’t be…” He simply couldn’t picture his life without you. Doesn’t even want to begin to try.

You drag both hands back over your head, elbows jutting out at sharp angles. “Santiago. I can’t keep this.”

He steps closer to you. Waits until your arms drop and cups your elbows with his sure palms. “So donate it. Set up a college fund for the boys. Whatever.” His eyes grow big and unusually earnest as he searches yours. “But would you please take it?”

He knows it’s hardly a drop in the ocean. That there is no way he could begin to repay all you’ve done for him. All he knows is that he wants you to have it. All he knows is that you deserve anything and everything he can give you, even if it’s never going to be enough.

Your hands are shaking slightly when you bring them up to your mouth, but he can see the beginnings of the cautious, giddy smile which eventually claims you. As you begin to accept this is really happening.

“You brought cash? Seriously? You motherfucker.”

His throat bobs with a deep chuckle. “Why not? Wasn’t it you who said you always wanted to fuck on a huge pile of money?”

“I’m almost 1000% confident that was Benny.”

“Meh. Doesn’t hurt to have the option,” he teases, but once again, you’re no longer listening to him - not really. Your fingers are carefully gripping the lip of the bag and peeling it open, finally letting it sink in.

“Thank you,” you say resonantly, dragging your eyes up to him only after you have managed to push the words out. Crossing to him. Wrapping your arms around him, your fingers tracing over the ridged scar at the back of his neck, your voice turning wet. “But… You know that this means nothing to me, right?”His hand moves slow and steady, up and down your back. “You know that all I wanted was for you to come back?”

He holds you more tightly then, as your emotions begin to spill over, tiny fractures in your voice. You subdue it, though. You clear your throat. Compose yourself a little too quickly for his liking, his body missing the warmth of you immediately as you pull away.

“Since we’re doing gifts though. I’ve actually got something for you too.” You clasp your hands together, pleading. “And you have to promise me you’ll take it.”

You move only once he’s nodded, your serious expression compelling him into acquiescence. You don’t need to go far to retrieve it. Instead, you reach to fumble something out of your jeans pocket.

His eyebrows leap up towards his hairline. “Fuck me. Are these-?”

It knocks him for six as you unfurl a string of familiar black rosary beads, the loop penduluming from your thumb as you hold them out, offering them to him. Offering them back to him.

“You remember?”

He scoops his forefinger and thumb around his mouth, stubble bristling. He answers your question without even answering. “You kept them.”

“Well. Yeah.” You grab hold of his hand. Fumble his palm open and thrust the beads into it, curling his fingers back around them until he grasps on to them tightly. “And I don’t want you to be without them anymore, okay?”

Santiago is lost for words - his mouth agape. He shuffles from foot to foot in disbelief for a moment, before clamping his hand over yours, his grip as warm and sure as it’s ever been.

God.

You’ve loved him, haven’t you? You’ve loved him whether he believed that he deserved it or not. You’ve loved him every single step of the way. You’ve loved him even when he was difficult and stubborn. When he was in the throes of grief. When he was bleeding out from a stab wound.

You have loved him at his best and at his worst; and goddamn it, he has loved you back.

He didn’t do so before, when the thought had first occurred to him, but he does now. He does drop to his knees on the cold, tiled kitchen floor, wrapping his arms around your middle. He does bury his face in your stomach, holding you as tightly as possible.

He drops to his knees as though he’s finally repenting of his ‘sins’. He holds you now, to make up for all of the times he so willingly let you go. To show you - he hopes - how he never wants to let you go again.

Meanwhile, his gesture appears to punch the air from your lungs. Your hands hover -uncertain- just moments from him, and then, as you inhale, you must find you already know what to do. Your fingertips dip into his hair. Your palms cradle his head. He feels tears wet his cheeks as he buries his face in your soft, sweater adorned stomach. He silently rues every single time he thought he needed one more mission - and the next, and the next, and the next. Wonders how he’d believed all this time he was built for brutality, when, although his hands were trained to kill, they were made to love you gently.

“Santiago.” He screws his eyes shut at the softness in your voice as you sound his name, a roughly hewn sob gently wracking his chest. You say his name in a way he’s never heard it spoken, and before he knows it, you are on your knees with him, tipping his chin up with careful fingers until his wet eyes meet your soft, warm, bathtub gaze.

You stroke your palm down the side of his face and you nod, slowly, tears beading in your eyes too.

He knows what your touch is telling him now. What it has been telling him all along even whilst he was still too stubborn to hear it.

It’s telling him… That this is what safety feels like.

That he’s home.

You are his home, and what’s more; he is welcome.

He surges up onto his knees, pressing his chest to yours, winding his broad hands into your hair to pull you into an achingly raw, desperate kiss.

Your lips are a door. Your mouth a corridor. Your heart is a room. Your chest is his roof. He wants to live in you. Bury himself inside you. Wants to walk barefoot on your tender carpet. Wants to fill his chest with the warm rumble of a kettle. Wants to step into you like a warm bath. To be covered by you. Held by you. You are his walls. His sanctuary. All roads lead here to you, to this house; and they always have, even when he’d felt so lost.

He has never been home before; but this must be how it feels, he thinks, to finally stop running.

He kisses you, his urgency dissolving into softness like sugar into water. You kiss him back. It’s a sweet, tender thing, as delicate as the tears beading in his lashes.

“Santiago. Christ, your knees. Get up. Please.” You’re crying too, he realises. Crying as though you’re as glad as he is that he has finally arrived somewhere that does not ask him to wound himself. You cup his face again, concern in your eyes, but he slides his hand over yours. Tucks the rosary beads into his pocket, an item far more priceless than the - now forgotten - bag of money on the counter.

It has been a long road.

It has been a long time.

It has been a lifetime, and he sees now, that his road was always leading him to you.

Your gaze flits all over his face. “Heyyy,” you soothe, with a softness he finally feels he deserves. “You okay?”

“Y-Yeah. I…”

“What?”

He fumbles a tear away from his cheek, a bright feeling bursting out of his chest. “Can I…?” He laughs, it feels so preposterous. “Do you mind if I… stay for a little while?”

Your eyebrows briefly pump up in surprise; but even so you smile fondly at him, answering his question without answering. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

You rise together to standing, chest to chest and still hovering moments from a kiss; and yet, neither of you are closing the distance. Not yet, not now, and it’s… actually a wonderful thing. To wait. It feels suddenly like there is time now. For the first time in Santiago’s life, it feels like there is a future. A future for him, instead of isolated moment after moment, grasped in haste. Instead of one mission to the next, to the next. So, instead of kissing you again; more; deeper; Santiago reaches up, the crook of his curled forefinger gently tracing the line of your jaw until you flutter your eyes at him bashfully. Until his mouth twists into a lopsided, disbelieving smile.

Then: “Oh-my-God-I’m-sorry-” your sister blunders as she unceremoniously cracks the door, poking her head rather unsubtly around it. “We were, uh, just wondering what to do. We were gonna put a movie on but…” - she looks pointedly between the two of you and clocks your proximity - “We can always clear out if loud sex is about to ensue.”

Next, she catches a glimpse of the bag full of money and her eyes bug, though she abruptly tries to cover it.

You tut loudly at your sibling. “Jesus. Would you either come in or get out? You’re like a little floating head.”

She opts to step gingerly around the door, looking all the more awkward for it.

“Hi,” Santiago greets warmly, moving in for a heartfelt hug which catches your sister even further off-guard.

“Oh, hi!” she says (as though she’s only just noticed him) before asking - maybe with malice, or maybe through sheer force of habit - “How long are you sticking around for?”

Santiago looks sheepish for a moment.

After all, he doesn’t want to tell you just yet.

No - he doesn’t want to tell you that he’s signed a six-month lease on an apartment downtown. That he’s arranged to get therapy from a guy Will recommended. That he’s started working his networks and shifting his money around so he can finally make the leap into consulting. That he’s pretty sure - as sure as he’s ever been about anything - that he wants to marry you.

Of course, he isn’t seriously entertaining the idea that he can simply turn up and upend your life. Doesn’t expect -would never expect- to have everything laid out on a platter for him. But, this time, he at least has the strength to stick around. To find out once and for all what might be next, after so long going round in circles.

That’s why he doesn’t even want to tell you at all. Not yet. Not now.

Instead, he simply wants to show you.

“A movie sounds good.” He twines his fingertips with yours and your sister’s eyes bug harder at that than they had at the hold-all. “I mean. If I won’t be intruding?”

He looks to you for approval, and he hates that, right now, the prevailing emotion he can read on your face is surprise.

“You can really stay?!”

It’s a far bigger question.

That much is obvious. A question he realises you’ve been asking him for a long time, in a whole host of different ways.

Looking at you, here and now, it’s so alien to him that he wouldn’t. That he would ever run from you; bail out; seek out other women; skip town; bury his feelings. All of that bullshit.

In his time, Santiago has jumped out of planes; has run into burning buildings; launched himself towards enemy fire. But has he ever let himself love you so wholly and recklessly? Has he ever been as brave as that?

So, Santiago simply gazes back at you. Smiles, rehearsed crinkles radiating from around his warm, good-morning eyes.

This time, he answers your question. He thinks you finally deserve to hear it. After all; you deserve everything - and so you definitely deserve this.

“I can stay.”

You don’t even respond -not in words - and it might be because finally, finally, there is nothing between you which remains unsaid. You simply squeeze his hand, just a little tighter.

Santiago has known you for so many years. Has known you as a soldier; a friend; a lover.

He finally has the courage to see you all at once, and, in the years ahead, he can’t wait to know you in all the other ways there are.

You lead him through the door; and he follows.

It always was easy to follow you. To love you. It was the running that was hard.

He doesn’t know exactly what will happen next; but one thing’s for sure.

You’ll always be his Ride or Die.

THE END

#one more reblog!#thank you so much for the interaction #I’ll respond as soon as I get some proper time!

77 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 7 days

Text

Ride or Die (Santiago "Pope" Garcia x fem!reader): Series Masterlist & Warnings

Posting schedule and Series Masterlist

This is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are queued.

Chapter One: POSTED

Chapter Two: POSTED

Chapter Three: POSTED

Chapter Four: POSTED

Chapter Five: POSTED

Chapter Six: POSTED

Chapter Seven: POSTED

Chapter Eight: POSTED

Chapter Nine: POSTED

Chapter Ten: POSTED

Chapter Eleven: POSTED

BONUS content: PLAYLIST (TBC)

Series Warnings (below the cut):

To avoid chapter by chapter spoilers, this time I'm providing general, series-level warnings of the main themes covered throughout. This may also mean the list is non-exhaustive. If you need more information in order to safely avoid a trigger/topic, or to enhance your reading experience, you are welcome to DM me / send in an ask. Also, if you spot something I missed that you think should be included here to aid other readers, hmu!

Please note, the whole series is NSFW, MDNI (18+). Minors or ageless blogs interacting will be blocked.

Smut: EXPLICIT, CORE THEME e.g. fingering, unprotected sex, rough sex, casual sex with other non-pairing partners implied off-screen.

Angst: A CORE THEME. Relationship angst. A lot of arguing / yelling (not trying to romanticise this at all!). Some toxic jealousy. Conflicts with friends. Abandonment fears. As well as this central relationship conflict, side characters are dealing with individual issues, such as those referenced in canon (divorce, prior violence, drug misuse etc.).

Drugs / alcohol mentions: reader participates in casual social drinking throughout, some heavier drinking in one chapter (party context). Smoking (one chapter). Brief mentions of drug use (cocaine).

Food mentions: casual, frequent.

Mentions typical of canon / e.g. wartime, US army, bullet wounds, car crash, injury, fear of mortality, violence (no graphic descriptions).

Mental health: implied past trauma typical of canon. Brief mentions of nightmares, possible PTSD.

Reader descriptions: fem!AFAB reader. Uses she/her pronouns. Reader’s hair is described a couple of times as being e.g. “pulled”. No hair texture / colour / style / other details specified or implied. Reader has a family who appear in a couple of chapters (sister and nephews). No physical descriptions of them are supplied. Mentioned that reader grew up with her sister, though not specified whether biological / adoptive / found family.

Spanish language: reader understands / speaks Spanish, though not specified what her first language is (or isn’t). I have avoided lengthy Spanish translations / text as I am not a native speaker. Some Spanish language is included, limited to terms of endearment and the like. I am always happy to be corrected. I research, but some mistakes are likely.

Sexual health / pregnancy: mentions of reader using birth control, including mentions of emergency contraceptives / slip-ups. Not a core theme.

Religion: mentions of Catholicism.

Other: contains significant Tom. It’s pre-canon, I’m so sorry.

#Masterlist up to date!!!!!#it’s all over 😭😭😭

306 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 7 days

Text

Ride or Die (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader): Chapter Eleven (of 11 - COMPLETED SERIES)

Genre: a LOT of angst, (some) smut, best friends to… lovers?

Warnings: see collated series warnings, here.

Series info: this is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are written and queued. Posting schedule is here (includes series master list).

Author’s note: THIS IS THE FINAL CHAPTER YOU GUYSSSSSS. I'm emotional!

It has been a journey. As always, I would be super grateful for any comments / reblogs / asks you may wish to send. ILYSM!

Word count: 6.4k for this part.

But you can’t do that. You can’t let yourself be dragged back into his world of danger.

You’d gotten out, and wasn’t that the point? To stay out?

You know it’s for the best. Best for you.

The thought of him ending at all…

It sends cold shivers down your spine. Spins a tight knot in your stomach which becomes denser by the day.

You won’t fully believe it, you think, until you hold him in your arms once again. See him with your own two eyes.

You need to see him again.

The problem is, Santiago has never excelled at coming home. Has never excelled at joining the dots to realise he even has one at all.

You don’t imagine that he’ll find his way back any time soon.

Turns out, you are wrong.

***

You aren’t able to tear your gaze away from him. It feels as though if you blink, he might simply vanish all over again, like you are so used to him doing.

“Oh, honey,” she says, placing a hand on your shoulder.

You finally turn to her then. Manage to tear your eyes away from him. When you do, whatever expression is rendered on your face causes her to shoot you a look of sympathy.

It occurs to you that you love her dearly.

Pressing your palms to your cheeks, you look helplessly back and forth; between him, and the door through which your sister had retreated. You don’t know what to do, exactly.

You weren’t expecting this.

Santiago “Pope” Garcia never comes home.

Until so very recently, you’ve never had to think about how your story ends. Whether it will end up happy. You’ve simply been trying to survive the fraught middle.

Well, here Santiago is. He’s made it back to you.

You feel like you’re about to find out once and for all.

And so, you do the only logical thing you can think to do.

You run.

***

This is the one, he thinks as he pulls up to park, checking the mailbox numbers against Frankie’s text. This is the house.

He sits in the rental truck a good few moments longer than necessary before climbing out, grabbing up the navy hold-all from the backseat and turning towards the mouth of your driveway.

This is the house.

And it is perfect.

As if anything could stop you.

You have a yard. You have a white fucking picket fence wrapped around it.

He half-snorts to himself. Shaking his head softly in disbelief.

He almost does too. Almost turns away.

Old habits die hard.

He thinks about it; but then, he sees you through the window. In the kitchen. Turned away from him, but still unmistakable.

He smiles wistfully. And he starts walking.

“You asshole! You’re okay? You’re really okay?” You tug on his lapels, hands fisting there like you’re trying to shake some sense into him.

“You got out clean?” you ask urgently, this time pulling away to smooth your palms over his lapels, undoing the disarray you’d caused.

He nods. “We don’t leave messes,” he opts to say assuredly, channelling Benny for a boost of confidence, as though luck hadn’t had a considerable amount to do with it.

“Oh, it got fucking hairy. Cat almost tanked the chopper, for one thing.”

You tut emphatically. “Bull shit. That’s Cat slander and I won’t have it. Tell Ironhead to get the bastard better equipment next time, huh?”

Still… the suggestion of a “next time” drives a wedge through the space between you.

Next time.

One more mission; then another, and another, and another. Right?

Running in goddamn circles. Chasing his tail.

How could he possibly have anywhere else to be?

“I’d love- I mean, yeah. If I’m not intruding.”

You simply roll your eyes and -he’s pretty sure- mumble “idiota” under your breath. But, before he can wonder, you are taking him by the hand and leading him into the house.

He follows.

It’s a while since he’s followed you anywhere, but he does it now without a second thought.

Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

But… no, that’s not quite it, is it? That was never it. His whole adult life, Santiago has been afraid of something far deeper than that, hasn't he?

He feels… not quite ready to name what he feels yet; but he does acknowledge the lump lodging in his throat when he crosses the threshold, enveloped by the life you have been living without him.

Meanwhile, you bump his shoulder with yours, before joining him in concentrating wistfully on the wall of photos suckering his attention.

Then, he finally places the feeling. He feels… like an idiot. For not seeing it before.

It’s your life, he realises. All set out here. Summarised. Catalogued.

And oh boy. What a messy and complicated and hard and fucking beautiful life it has been.

All of that - he realises - is exactly why. Exactly why being here with you now, in this house he’s never even set foot in before, feels exactly like coming home.

He takes an emphatic sniff. “You’re baking?”

Santiago can feel his eyes glowing at you like headlights as your cheeky, full-beam smile shines back at him, but suddenly, he’s no longer particularly inclined to hide it.

“So?” You press gently, as his knuckles almost whiten from gripping the hold-all so tight. “What brings you to this neck of the woods, anyway?”

“It’s weird that the kitchen’s at the front of the house, right?” You waffle, banaly. “But I like it. Feels more open. I like looking out at the front yard when I-”

“-Cook-up a storm?”

You scoff; not likely. “Throw away my pizza boxes.”

“What? Did you bring me your fucking laundry?”

“Christ,” he scolds, even as your comment raises a warm chuckle. “No. It’s your share.”

You exhale softly through your raised palms as realisation dawns on you. “Santi. What the fuck?”

Oh, that’s your issue? On the contrary. You’ve earned this a hundred times over. “Oh, really? Remind me. How many times did you get shot, huh?”

You drag both hands back over your head, elbows jutting out at sharp angles. “Santiago. I can’t keep this.”

“You brought cash? Seriously? You motherfucker.”

His throat bobs with a deep chuckle. “Why not? Wasn’t it you who said you always wanted to fuck on a huge pile of money?”

“I’m almost 1000% confident that was Benny.”

“Since we’re doing gifts though. I’ve actually got something for you too.” You clasp your hands together, pleading. “And you have to promise me you’ll take it.”

You move only once he’s nodded, your serious expression compelling him into acquiescence. You don’t need to go far to retrieve it. Instead, you reach to fumble something out of your jeans pocket.

His eyebrows leap up towards his hairline. “Fuck me. Are these-?”

It knocks him for six as you unfurl a string of familiar black rosary beads, the loop penduluming from your thumb as you hold them out, offering them to him. Offering them back to him.

“You remember?”

He scoops his forefinger and thumb around his mouth, stubble bristling. He answers your question without even answering. “You kept them.”

Santiago is lost for words - his mouth agape. He shuffles from foot to foot in disbelief for a moment, before clamping his hand over yours, his grip as warm and sure as it’s ever been.

God.

You have loved him at his best and at his worst; and goddamn it, he has loved you back.

You stroke your palm down the side of his face and you nod, slowly, tears beading in your eyes too.

He knows what your touch is telling him now. What it has been telling him all along even whilst he was still too stubborn to hear it.

It’s telling him… That this is what safety feels like.

That he’s home.

You are his home, and what’s more; he is welcome.

He surges up onto his knees, pressing his chest to yours, winding his broad hands into your hair to pull you into an achingly raw, desperate kiss.

He has never been home before; but this must be how it feels, he thinks, to finally stop running.

He kisses you, his urgency dissolving into softness like sugar into water. You kiss him back. It’s a sweet, tender thing, as delicate as the tears beading in his lashes.

It has been a long road.

It has been a long time.

It has been a lifetime, and he sees now, that his road was always leading him to you.

Your gaze flits all over his face. “Heyyy,” you soothe, with a softness he finally feels he deserves. “You okay?”

“Y-Yeah. I…”

“What?”

He fumbles a tear away from his cheek, a bright feeling bursting out of his chest. “Can I…?” He laughs, it feels so preposterous. “Do you mind if I… stay for a little while?”

Your eyebrows briefly pump up in surprise; but even so you smile fondly at him, answering his question without answering. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

Next, she catches a glimpse of the bag full of money and her eyes bug, though she abruptly tries to cover it.

You tut loudly at your sibling. “Jesus. Would you either come in or get out? You’re like a little floating head.”

She opts to step gingerly around the door, looking all the more awkward for it.

“Hi,” Santiago greets warmly, moving in for a heartfelt hug which catches your sister even further off-guard.

“Oh, hi!” she says (as though she’s only just noticed him) before asking - maybe with malice, or maybe through sheer force of habit - “How long are you sticking around for?”

Santiago looks sheepish for a moment.

After all, he doesn’t want to tell you just yet.

That’s why he doesn’t even want to tell you at all. Not yet. Not now.

Instead, he simply wants to show you.

“A movie sounds good.” He twines his fingertips with yours and your sister’s eyes bug harder at that than they had at the hold-all. “I mean. If I won’t be intruding?”

He looks to you for approval, and he hates that, right now, the prevailing emotion he can read on your face is surprise.

“You can really stay?!”

It’s a far bigger question.

That much is obvious. A question he realises you’ve been asking him for a long time, in a whole host of different ways.

Looking at you, here and now, it’s so alien to him that he wouldn’t. That he would ever run from you; bail out; seek out other women; skip town; bury his feelings. All of that bullshit.

So, Santiago simply gazes back at you. Smiles, rehearsed crinkles radiating from around his warm, good-morning eyes.

This time, he answers your question. He thinks you finally deserve to hear it. After all; you deserve everything - and so you definitely deserve this.

“I can stay.”

You don’t even respond -not in words - and it might be because finally, finally, there is nothing between you which remains unsaid. You simply squeeze his hand, just a little tighter.

Santiago has known you for so many years. Has known you as a soldier; a friend; a lover.

He finally has the courage to see you all at once, and, in the years ahead, he can’t wait to know you in all the other ways there are.

You lead him through the door; and he follows.

It always was easy to follow you. To love you. It was the running that was hard.

He doesn’t know exactly what will happen next; but one thing’s for sure.

You’ll always be his Ride or Die.

THE END

#morning reblog

77 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 8 days

Text

Taglist reblog:

@foxilayde @astroboots @fettuccin-e @othersideoftheparadise @poedameronloverx @reallyrallyauthor @nowritingonthewall @winchestershiresauce @whentheskyispinkandabitblue @runa-falls @nothoughtsjustmeds @criticalarchitecture @dameronshandholder @kitmon @vermillionwinter @/sylviantree @pimosworld @campingwiththecharmings @kaqua @spacecowboyhotch @itspdameronthings @legendary-pink-dot @for-a-longlongtime @usercecilia @clemdango04 @blackberries45 @strangerhands @beezusvreeland @phoenixhalliwell @missanthr0pist @sub-aro

Ride or Die (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader): Chapter Eleven (of 11 - COMPLETED SERIES)

Genre: a LOT of angst, (some) smut, best friends to… lovers?

Warnings: see collated series warnings, here.

Series info: this is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are written and queued. Posting schedule is here (includes series master list).

Author’s note: THIS IS THE FINAL CHAPTER YOU GUYSSSSSS. I'm emotional!

It has been a journey. As always, I would be super grateful for any comments / reblogs / asks you may wish to send. ILYSM!

Word count: 6.4k for this part.

But you can’t do that. You can’t let yourself be dragged back into his world of danger.

You’d gotten out, and wasn’t that the point? To stay out?

You know it’s for the best. Best for you.

The thought of him ending at all…

It sends cold shivers down your spine. Spins a tight knot in your stomach which becomes denser by the day.

You won’t fully believe it, you think, until you hold him in your arms once again. See him with your own two eyes.

You need to see him again.

The problem is, Santiago has never excelled at coming home. Has never excelled at joining the dots to realise he even has one at all.

You don’t imagine that he’ll find his way back any time soon.

Turns out, you are wrong.

***

You aren’t able to tear your gaze away from him. It feels as though if you blink, he might simply vanish all over again, like you are so used to him doing.

“Oh, honey,” she says, placing a hand on your shoulder.

You finally turn to her then. Manage to tear your eyes away from him. When you do, whatever expression is rendered on your face causes her to shoot you a look of sympathy.

It occurs to you that you love her dearly.

Pressing your palms to your cheeks, you look helplessly back and forth; between him, and the door through which your sister had retreated. You don’t know what to do, exactly.

You weren’t expecting this.

Santiago “Pope” Garcia never comes home.

Until so very recently, you’ve never had to think about how your story ends. Whether it will end up happy. You’ve simply been trying to survive the fraught middle.

Well, here Santiago is. He’s made it back to you.

You feel like you’re about to find out once and for all.

And so, you do the only logical thing you can think to do.

You run.

***

This is the one, he thinks as he pulls up to park, checking the mailbox numbers against Frankie’s text. This is the house.

He sits in the rental truck a good few moments longer than necessary before climbing out, grabbing up the navy hold-all from the backseat and turning towards the mouth of your driveway.

This is the house.

And it is perfect.

As if anything could stop you.

You have a yard. You have a white fucking picket fence wrapped around it.

He half-snorts to himself. Shaking his head softly in disbelief.

He almost does too. Almost turns away.

Old habits die hard.

He thinks about it; but then, he sees you through the window. In the kitchen. Turned away from him, but still unmistakable.

He smiles wistfully. And he starts walking.

“You asshole! You’re okay? You’re really okay?” You tug on his lapels, hands fisting there like you’re trying to shake some sense into him.

“You got out clean?” you ask urgently, this time pulling away to smooth your palms over his lapels, undoing the disarray you’d caused.

He nods. “We don’t leave messes,” he opts to say assuredly, channelling Benny for a boost of confidence, as though luck hadn’t had a considerable amount to do with it.

“Oh, it got fucking hairy. Cat almost tanked the chopper, for one thing.”

You tut emphatically. “Bull shit. That’s Cat slander and I won’t have it. Tell Ironhead to get the bastard better equipment next time, huh?”

Still… the suggestion of a “next time” drives a wedge through the space between you.

Next time.

One more mission; then another, and another, and another. Right?

Running in goddamn circles. Chasing his tail.

How could he possibly have anywhere else to be?

“I’d love- I mean, yeah. If I’m not intruding.”

You simply roll your eyes and -he’s pretty sure- mumble “idiota” under your breath. But, before he can wonder, you are taking him by the hand and leading him into the house.

He follows.

It’s a while since he’s followed you anywhere, but he does it now without a second thought.

Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

But… no, that’s not quite it, is it? That was never it. His whole adult life, Santiago has been afraid of something far deeper than that, hasn't he?

He feels… not quite ready to name what he feels yet; but he does acknowledge the lump lodging in his throat when he crosses the threshold, enveloped by the life you have been living without him.

Meanwhile, you bump his shoulder with yours, before joining him in concentrating wistfully on the wall of photos suckering his attention.

Then, he finally places the feeling. He feels… like an idiot. For not seeing it before.

It’s your life, he realises. All set out here. Summarised. Catalogued.

And oh boy. What a messy and complicated and hard and fucking beautiful life it has been.

All of that - he realises - is exactly why. Exactly why being here with you now, in this house he’s never even set foot in before, feels exactly like coming home.

He takes an emphatic sniff. “You’re baking?”

Santiago can feel his eyes glowing at you like headlights as your cheeky, full-beam smile shines back at him, but suddenly, he’s no longer particularly inclined to hide it.

“So?” You press gently, as his knuckles almost whiten from gripping the hold-all so tight. “What brings you to this neck of the woods, anyway?”

“It’s weird that the kitchen’s at the front of the house, right?” You waffle, banaly. “But I like it. Feels more open. I like looking out at the front yard when I-”

“-Cook-up a storm?”

You scoff; not likely. “Throw away my pizza boxes.”

“What? Did you bring me your fucking laundry?”

“Christ,” he scolds, even as your comment raises a warm chuckle. “No. It’s your share.”

You exhale softly through your raised palms as realisation dawns on you. “Santi. What the fuck?”

Oh, that’s your issue? On the contrary. You’ve earned this a hundred times over. “Oh, really? Remind me. How many times did you get shot, huh?”

You drag both hands back over your head, elbows jutting out at sharp angles. “Santiago. I can’t keep this.”

“You brought cash? Seriously? You motherfucker.”

His throat bobs with a deep chuckle. “Why not? Wasn’t it you who said you always wanted to fuck on a huge pile of money?”

“I’m almost 1000% confident that was Benny.”

“Since we’re doing gifts though. I’ve actually got something for you too.” You clasp your hands together, pleading. “And you have to promise me you’ll take it.”

You move only once he’s nodded, your serious expression compelling him into acquiescence. You don’t need to go far to retrieve it. Instead, you reach to fumble something out of your jeans pocket.

His eyebrows leap up towards his hairline. “Fuck me. Are these-?”

It knocks him for six as you unfurl a string of familiar black rosary beads, the loop penduluming from your thumb as you hold them out, offering them to him. Offering them back to him.

“You remember?”

He scoops his forefinger and thumb around his mouth, stubble bristling. He answers your question without even answering. “You kept them.”

Santiago is lost for words - his mouth agape. He shuffles from foot to foot in disbelief for a moment, before clamping his hand over yours, his grip as warm and sure as it’s ever been.

God.

You have loved him at his best and at his worst; and goddamn it, he has loved you back.

You stroke your palm down the side of his face and you nod, slowly, tears beading in your eyes too.

He knows what your touch is telling him now. What it has been telling him all along even whilst he was still too stubborn to hear it.

It’s telling him… That this is what safety feels like.

That he’s home.

You are his home, and what’s more; he is welcome.

He surges up onto his knees, pressing his chest to yours, winding his broad hands into your hair to pull you into an achingly raw, desperate kiss.

He has never been home before; but this must be how it feels, he thinks, to finally stop running.

He kisses you, his urgency dissolving into softness like sugar into water. You kiss him back. It’s a sweet, tender thing, as delicate as the tears beading in his lashes.

It has been a long road.

It has been a long time.

It has been a lifetime, and he sees now, that his road was always leading him to you.

Your gaze flits all over his face. “Heyyy,” you soothe, with a softness he finally feels he deserves. “You okay?”

“Y-Yeah. I…”

“What?”

He fumbles a tear away from his cheek, a bright feeling bursting out of his chest. “Can I…?” He laughs, it feels so preposterous. “Do you mind if I… stay for a little while?”

Your eyebrows briefly pump up in surprise; but even so you smile fondly at him, answering his question without answering. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

Next, she catches a glimpse of the bag full of money and her eyes bug, though she abruptly tries to cover it.

You tut loudly at your sibling. “Jesus. Would you either come in or get out? You’re like a little floating head.”

She opts to step gingerly around the door, looking all the more awkward for it.

“Hi,” Santiago greets warmly, moving in for a heartfelt hug which catches your sister even further off-guard.

“Oh, hi!” she says (as though she’s only just noticed him) before asking - maybe with malice, or maybe through sheer force of habit - “How long are you sticking around for?”

Santiago looks sheepish for a moment.

After all, he doesn’t want to tell you just yet.

That’s why he doesn’t even want to tell you at all. Not yet. Not now.

Instead, he simply wants to show you.

“A movie sounds good.” He twines his fingertips with yours and your sister’s eyes bug harder at that than they had at the hold-all. “I mean. If I won’t be intruding?”

He looks to you for approval, and he hates that, right now, the prevailing emotion he can read on your face is surprise.

“You can really stay?!”

It’s a far bigger question.

That much is obvious. A question he realises you’ve been asking him for a long time, in a whole host of different ways.

Looking at you, here and now, it’s so alien to him that he wouldn’t. That he would ever run from you; bail out; seek out other women; skip town; bury his feelings. All of that bullshit.

So, Santiago simply gazes back at you. Smiles, rehearsed crinkles radiating from around his warm, good-morning eyes.

This time, he answers your question. He thinks you finally deserve to hear it. After all; you deserve everything - and so you definitely deserve this.

“I can stay.”

You don’t even respond -not in words - and it might be because finally, finally, there is nothing between you which remains unsaid. You simply squeeze his hand, just a little tighter.

Santiago has known you for so many years. Has known you as a soldier; a friend; a lover.

He finally has the courage to see you all at once, and, in the years ahead, he can’t wait to know you in all the other ways there are.

You lead him through the door; and he follows.

It always was easy to follow you. To love you. It was the running that was hard.

He doesn’t know exactly what will happen next; but one thing’s for sure.

You’ll always be his Ride or Die.

THE END

77 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 8 days

Text

Ride or Die (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader): Chapter Eleven (of 11 - COMPLETED SERIES)

Genre: a LOT of angst, (some) smut, best friends to… lovers?

Warnings: see collated series warnings, here.

Series info: this is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are written and queued. Posting schedule is here (includes series master list).

Author’s note: THIS IS THE FINAL CHAPTER YOU GUYSSSSSS. I'm emotional!

It has been a journey. As always, I would be super grateful for any comments / reblogs / asks you may wish to send. ILYSM!

Word count: 6.4k for this part.

But you can’t do that. You can’t let yourself be dragged back into his world of danger.

You’d gotten out, and wasn’t that the point? To stay out?

You know it’s for the best. Best for you.

The thought of him ending at all…

It sends cold shivers down your spine. Spins a tight knot in your stomach which becomes denser by the day.

You won’t fully believe it, you think, until you hold him in your arms once again. See him with your own two eyes.

You need to see him again.

The problem is, Santiago has never excelled at coming home. Has never excelled at joining the dots to realise he even has one at all.

You don’t imagine that he’ll find his way back any time soon.

Turns out, you are wrong.

***

You aren’t able to tear your gaze away from him. It feels as though if you blink, he might simply vanish all over again, like you are so used to him doing.

“Oh, honey,” she says, placing a hand on your shoulder.

You finally turn to her then. Manage to tear your eyes away from him. When you do, whatever expression is rendered on your face causes her to shoot you a look of sympathy.

It occurs to you that you love her dearly.

Pressing your palms to your cheeks, you look helplessly back and forth; between him, and the door through which your sister had retreated. You don’t know what to do, exactly.

You weren’t expecting this.

Santiago “Pope” Garcia never comes home.

Until so very recently, you’ve never had to think about how your story ends. Whether it will end up happy. You’ve simply been trying to survive the fraught middle.

Well, here Santiago is. He’s made it back to you.

You feel like you’re about to find out once and for all.

And so, you do the only logical thing you can think to do.

You run.

***

This is the one, he thinks as he pulls up to park, checking the mailbox numbers against Frankie’s text. This is the house.

He sits in the rental truck a good few moments longer than necessary before climbing out, grabbing up the navy hold-all from the backseat and turning towards the mouth of your driveway.

This is the house.

And it is perfect.

As if anything could stop you.

You have a yard. You have a white fucking picket fence wrapped around it.

He half-snorts to himself. Shaking his head softly in disbelief.

He almost does too. Almost turns away.

Old habits die hard.

He thinks about it; but then, he sees you through the window. In the kitchen. Turned away from him, but still unmistakable.

He smiles wistfully. And he starts walking.

“You asshole! You’re okay? You’re really okay?” You tug on his lapels, hands fisting there like you’re trying to shake some sense into him.

“You got out clean?” you ask urgently, this time pulling away to smooth your palms over his lapels, undoing the disarray you’d caused.

He nods. “We don’t leave messes,” he opts to say assuredly, channelling Benny for a boost of confidence, as though luck hadn’t had a considerable amount to do with it.

“Oh, it got fucking hairy. Cat almost tanked the chopper, for one thing.”

You tut emphatically. “Bull shit. That’s Cat slander and I won’t have it. Tell Ironhead to get the bastard better equipment next time, huh?”

Still… the suggestion of a “next time” drives a wedge through the space between you.

Next time.

One more mission; then another, and another, and another. Right?

Running in goddamn circles. Chasing his tail.

How could he possibly have anywhere else to be?

“I’d love- I mean, yeah. If I’m not intruding.”

You simply roll your eyes and -he’s pretty sure- mumble “idiota” under your breath. But, before he can wonder, you are taking him by the hand and leading him into the house.

He follows.

It’s a while since he’s followed you anywhere, but he does it now without a second thought.

Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

But… no, that’s not quite it, is it? That was never it. His whole adult life, Santiago has been afraid of something far deeper than that, hasn't he?

He feels… not quite ready to name what he feels yet; but he does acknowledge the lump lodging in his throat when he crosses the threshold, enveloped by the life you have been living without him.

Meanwhile, you bump his shoulder with yours, before joining him in concentrating wistfully on the wall of photos suckering his attention.

Then, he finally places the feeling. He feels… like an idiot. For not seeing it before.

It’s your life, he realises. All set out here. Summarised. Catalogued.

And oh boy. What a messy and complicated and hard and fucking beautiful life it has been.

All of that - he realises - is exactly why. Exactly why being here with you now, in this house he’s never even set foot in before, feels exactly like coming home.

He takes an emphatic sniff. “You’re baking?”

Santiago can feel his eyes glowing at you like headlights as your cheeky, full-beam smile shines back at him, but suddenly, he’s no longer particularly inclined to hide it.

“So?” You press gently, as his knuckles almost whiten from gripping the hold-all so tight. “What brings you to this neck of the woods, anyway?”

“It’s weird that the kitchen’s at the front of the house, right?” You waffle, banaly. “But I like it. Feels more open. I like looking out at the front yard when I-”

“-Cook-up a storm?”

You scoff; not likely. “Throw away my pizza boxes.”

“What? Did you bring me your fucking laundry?”

“Christ,” he scolds, even as your comment raises a warm chuckle. “No. It’s your share.”

You exhale softly through your raised palms as realisation dawns on you. “Santi. What the fuck?”

Oh, that’s your issue? On the contrary. You’ve earned this a hundred times over. “Oh, really? Remind me. How many times did you get shot, huh?”

You drag both hands back over your head, elbows jutting out at sharp angles. “Santiago. I can’t keep this.”

“You brought cash? Seriously? You motherfucker.”

His throat bobs with a deep chuckle. “Why not? Wasn’t it you who said you always wanted to fuck on a huge pile of money?”

“I’m almost 1000% confident that was Benny.”

“Since we’re doing gifts though. I’ve actually got something for you too.” You clasp your hands together, pleading. “And you have to promise me you’ll take it.”

You move only once he’s nodded, your serious expression compelling him into acquiescence. You don’t need to go far to retrieve it. Instead, you reach to fumble something out of your jeans pocket.

His eyebrows leap up towards his hairline. “Fuck me. Are these-?”

It knocks him for six as you unfurl a string of familiar black rosary beads, the loop penduluming from your thumb as you hold them out, offering them to him. Offering them back to him.

“You remember?”

He scoops his forefinger and thumb around his mouth, stubble bristling. He answers your question without even answering. “You kept them.”

Santiago is lost for words - his mouth agape. He shuffles from foot to foot in disbelief for a moment, before clamping his hand over yours, his grip as warm and sure as it’s ever been.

God.

You have loved him at his best and at his worst; and goddamn it, he has loved you back.

You stroke your palm down the side of his face and you nod, slowly, tears beading in your eyes too.

He knows what your touch is telling him now. What it has been telling him all along even whilst he was still too stubborn to hear it.

It’s telling him… That this is what safety feels like.

That he’s home.

You are his home, and what’s more; he is welcome.

He surges up onto his knees, pressing his chest to yours, winding his broad hands into your hair to pull you into an achingly raw, desperate kiss.

He has never been home before; but this must be how it feels, he thinks, to finally stop running.

He kisses you, his urgency dissolving into softness like sugar into water. You kiss him back. It’s a sweet, tender thing, as delicate as the tears beading in his lashes.

It has been a long road.

It has been a long time.

It has been a lifetime, and he sees now, that his road was always leading him to you.

Your gaze flits all over his face. “Heyyy,” you soothe, with a softness he finally feels he deserves. “You okay?”

“Y-Yeah. I…”

“What?”

He fumbles a tear away from his cheek, a bright feeling bursting out of his chest. “Can I…?” He laughs, it feels so preposterous. “Do you mind if I… stay for a little while?”

Your eyebrows briefly pump up in surprise; but even so you smile fondly at him, answering his question without answering. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

Next, she catches a glimpse of the bag full of money and her eyes bug, though she abruptly tries to cover it.

You tut loudly at your sibling. “Jesus. Would you either come in or get out? You’re like a little floating head.”

She opts to step gingerly around the door, looking all the more awkward for it.

“Hi,” Santiago greets warmly, moving in for a heartfelt hug which catches your sister even further off-guard.

“Oh, hi!” she says (as though she’s only just noticed him) before asking - maybe with malice, or maybe through sheer force of habit - “How long are you sticking around for?”

Santiago looks sheepish for a moment.

After all, he doesn’t want to tell you just yet.

That’s why he doesn’t even want to tell you at all. Not yet. Not now.

Instead, he simply wants to show you.

“A movie sounds good.” He twines his fingertips with yours and your sister’s eyes bug harder at that than they had at the hold-all. “I mean. If I won’t be intruding?”

He looks to you for approval, and he hates that, right now, the prevailing emotion he can read on your face is surprise.

“You can really stay?!”

It’s a far bigger question.

That much is obvious. A question he realises you’ve been asking him for a long time, in a whole host of different ways.

Looking at you, here and now, it’s so alien to him that he wouldn’t. That he would ever run from you; bail out; seek out other women; skip town; bury his feelings. All of that bullshit.

So, Santiago simply gazes back at you. Smiles, rehearsed crinkles radiating from around his warm, good-morning eyes.

This time, he answers your question. He thinks you finally deserve to hear it. After all; you deserve everything - and so you definitely deserve this.

“I can stay.”

You don’t even respond -not in words - and it might be because finally, finally, there is nothing between you which remains unsaid. You simply squeeze his hand, just a little tighter.

Santiago has known you for so many years. Has known you as a soldier; a friend; a lover.

He finally has the courage to see you all at once, and, in the years ahead, he can’t wait to know you in all the other ways there are.

You lead him through the door; and he follows.

It always was easy to follow you. To love you. It was the running that was hard.

He doesn’t know exactly what will happen next; but one thing’s for sure.

You’ll always be his Ride or Die.

THE END

#santiago pope garcia x reader #triple frontier #oscar isaac #santiago pope garcia #ride or die series

77 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 8 days

Text

1.5 hours(ish) to go until the final chapter of Ride or Die posts 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

#I’m not ready to say goodbye!

9 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 8 days

Note

This is special to me anon reporting to you from beyond the grave given that chapter 10 of ride or die has straight up killed me.

HONEY!!!! I feel like I need a PhD in literature in order to go back through the whole story and pick up on all the little moments and references to both previous chapters of this story and outside stuff (though if I am not mistaken, Nicole and Dio are referring to the NYPD blue episode Pedro Pascal was in right?)

But leaving all your glorious, mastermind references and story structure aside for now, I want to talk about language, emotion and characters for a second. First of all, your writing is always incredibly but MAN. This chapter is something else. It all has such a perfect heaviness to it. As if I can feel the weight of Santiago's emotions through the words. How his trauma l, his insecurities and his love are weighing him down. I don't know how to accurately compliment your writing for this chapter. It truly, truly is a marvel to behold. Second, there'e the emotions. The amount of feeling you were able to put in one single chapter, my god. Just reading this I feel the need to take a nap to recover (in a good way!! As in you wrote the emotions so realistically I could feel myself going through it with Santi!!). Which brings us, thirdly, to The character work here. First of all I loooooove a POV change and getting to see this night in particular through Santiago's eyes??? It recontextualises so much for me. I know we kind of got hints of that previously but really digging into how long Santi struggled with his feelings in this way just makes the previous chapters more heartbreaking. The parallels, or maybe I should say more in depth explanations to what we've gotten mentions of before?? Like Colin (he feels like a reference to something and I WILL figure it out at some point) telling Santi to marry her and the fight where she tells Santi she wants to marry him? I know there are other such parallels in this chapter but that's probably the one which hit me hardest. Also seeing how she, despite clinging to so much hope generally, didn't believe in a happy ending for herself when she was younger, to fighting tooth and nail for the happy ending she wants with Santiago now that she's older, to then accepting that there's not anything she can do to force that ending and she just has to leave it to fate, in a way? This chapter really gave such insights into who they were and how they've changed...

I really am in awe of your mind, your talent, your ability to take a fanfic-shaped knife to my heart and keep me coming back for more, week after week. Can't believe there's only one chapter left now. In my dreams, Frankie "on my king shit" Morales listens to her when she says not to bring Tom on the mission and they get Lorea's money without problems and come back unscathed and Rich and everyone lives happily ever after bc my heart needs that happy ending they're talking about in this chapter (also her telling Santi that he'd be a good endgame in this chapter and Frankie asking Santi what his endgame is and Santi replying that it's her? You, my friend, are straight up DIABOLICAL. That shit broke my heart)

⚠️ Ride or die chapter 10 spoilers ⚠️

AAAHHHHHHHHHH! Special to me anon!

Thank you for this ask!!!!! 🧡🧡🧡

Ha, I love that you got the Dio reference. Nicole is made up but Dio - even if we never locate him - is 100% a lil easter egg.

It means the world that you enjoyed the writing here, omg, and the character stuff, and the POV, and the parallels! I so appreciate you paying this such close attention that you have picked up on so many of the finer details. I feel like I wanted this chapter to recontextualise a lot of stuff and it was important to go back to “the beginning” to do that, so I’m so happy to hear it did that for you! 🥹

Colin is… not a reference, I’m sorry! 🙈 He’s brand new ☺️ I feel like he would have got on so well with Frankie though and they could have been like “these two idiots, am I right?” together over a drink 🤣🤣🤣

Anyway, I am actually pretty emosh that there’s only one chapter to go… and I just hope I pulled it off! 🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me and these two imaginary people 🧡🧡🧡 It’s been a blast for me!

#special to me anon is so special to me

1 note · View note

writefightandflightclub · 8 days

Note

Holy motherfucking shit I gotta talk to u about ride or die

I'm only on chapter 4 but omggg it's so good

The feels man the angst is so gooood and the smut aaaa

Anyways I also am in love with everything else you've written I think ur very cool :) 💚

🧡🧡🧡

#thank you so much!#me? cool? 😎#ILY! ��

1 note · View note

writefightandflightclub · 11 days

Text

SEMI-HIATUS!

Sorry I have / will be slow at replying with asks / comments.

#same goes #still slow #thank you for asks etc. and I will respond to whatever I can whenever I can!#also if you sent in a blurb request when I asked for them I’m sorry I haven’t done any yet ashdgjsjahsjahshsshj #I ended up being busier than expected but I will hang on to them for a later date b

7 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 13 days

Text

I don’t want Ride or Die to be over next week 😭😭😭😭

#I mean I’m excited to share the last chapter #but also 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

5 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 13 days

Text

Ride or Die (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader): Chapter Ten (of 11 - COMPLETED SERIES)

Genre: a LOT of angst, (some) smut, best friends to… lovers?

Warnings: see collated series warnings, here.

Series info: this is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are written and queued. Posting schedule is here (includes series master list).

Author’s note: Hope you like this next instalment! It’s a long one, and it’s a flashback, so it feels like a HUGE RISK to shove this in so far into the story. However, this memory of Santiago’s and reader’s is SO vivid in my mind I feel I could basically use it as a patronus charm. Therefore, if you’re at all invested in these two by now, I do feel like the payoff is worth it, and that it will set you up PERFECTLY for the next, concluding chapter! (Also: ooh, intrigue, as we get to see how they were with each other back in their youth, you know?). Anyway, as always, I would be super grateful for any comments / reblogs / asks you may wish to send my way. ILY :-*

P.s. there’s a timeline goof as a song mentioned in this, although recorded in ‘88, was not released until 2015. But we’re just gonna look past that, okay? 😝 In this world it was released early.

AND I have nothing against Philadelphia!

Word count: 16.6k for this part. (SORRY!)

Tag list info: will reblog separately tagging those on taglist. You can request to be added to taglist if you are 18+. Send me an ask, please, so I can keep track :)

Many years earlier

Santiago is tired. Ready to crawl into the cocoon of his bed and draw the covers over his head, refusing to surface again until he’s dragged feet first outta there. Unfortunately for him though, sleep is not on the cards.

Instead, he has a vitally important mission to attend to. And, in the face of a mission, this particular soldier never settles for anything less than completion. That doctrine is especially true - he has proven time and again - when it comes to taking care of you.

Tonight, Santiago is tasked with making your birthday a memorable one; or, as memorable as he can muster with the $40 he currently has to his name.

“Civilian aircraft, man. Where’s a goddamn helo when you need one?” you fruitlessly complain as he nods along in sympathy.

Evidently, sleep is the last thing on your mind. You’d been looking forward to cutting loose for weeks, with this night touted as “the birthday to end all birthdays”. Serendipitously, this was the first time your birthday had coincided with a period of leave since you signed up to serve and, thwarting all that, your connecting flight was grounded unexpectedly.

Santiago feels crushed - on your behalf - that the plans have gone so pear-shaped.

“One o’ these days, getting shot for the Motherland will gain me some fucking privileges, huh?”

Santiago flinches at that particular addition. He doesn’t like to think about that day. That day’d had him waking up in frequent cold sweats going on a year now. He’d put himself on the line countless times - no problem- but almost losing you had been decidedly different. Had been the single most terrifying moment of his career (and his life) to date, all told. Which sure was saying something considering the hairy situations he routinely found himself in.

Graciously, your present circumstances are considerably less dire. You’ve still been griping, of course. And, your complaints have not succeeded in changing a damn thing. It is now abundantly clear - if it wasn’t already - that the two of you are stranded for the night. So, here you are, holed up in a dingy and characterless airport motel in Philadelphia.

It beats enemy fire, for sure… but even so, Santiago is acutely aware of how much you’ve been looking forward to this. To the rare chance to catch-up with your far flung squad mates, scattered every which way across the globe since graduating basic. He knows too, that the anticipation of this reunion had acted as your glue - had held you together - through what had been a particularly brutal deployment.

“I haven’t seen Miller in months, man. I need to give that bastard some grief soon or I’m going to lose my damn mind.”

“We can call that pendejo tomorrow,” Santiago soothes, popping a stick of gum and beginning to chew obnoxiously. “Hey. We can even pool our insults, huh? Really get him going.”

You raise your palms, pressing the heels of your hands into your eye sockets. “Shit. I just miss the fucker, Santiago.” For the first time tonight he hears your voice break, your stoicism cracking apart and revealing your soft middle.

“I know. I know you do, sweetie.”

Santiago knows how crushed you are. And so, for whatever it’s worth, the man resolves to show you the best night he possibly can, all circumstances considered.

“Come on,” he encourages, kneeling before you as your lower lip quivers. He plants a hand on your thigh and jostles your leg gently. Meanwhile, you sit slumped on the long edge of the lumpy motel bed, beginning to feel rather more sorry for yourself. “You and me, baby. I’ll make this night special, I swear. Just give me a chance, huh?”

“How?” you sound, throwing your palms up and gesturing to your dismal surroundings. “This place is barely even a step-up from the barracks.” You eye a particularly suspect stain on the carpet with disdain. “Actually, I think it might even be a step down.”

Santiago’s face crumples obediently in a measured display of sympathy, but honestly, his first instinct is to chuckle. You look so forlorn in this moment, Santiago has to consciously suppress his smile. You are the most stubborn, ferocious, determined person he’s ever met. You are fucking tough. Hell, he’s seen Staff Sergeants buckle in a crisis before you’ve even come close to breaking - and yet here you are. Almost in tears because you can’t make your birthday party. It’s all a little incongruous to him that out of everything, this would be the thing to take you down.

At the same time though, of course. He understands it perfectly.

Santiago has understood for a long time now that you possess a (well-concealed) softer side. Knows it better than most others do, in fact. As you’ve gradually allowed him to sneak past your militia-guarded perimeter -only a soldier of his calibre capable of making it, he’d wager - he’s begun to catch more and more frequent glimpses of the achingly soft heart you guard within. If your tough exterior had initially magnetised him to you, it was your soft heart which ensured he’d stuck around.

Solemnly then, he pats your thigh in a consolatory gesture. Of course, Santiago gets it. He knows it isn’t the presents or the attention or fuss which you’ll miss tonight - though they would have gone over well too, he’s sure. He knows that it is your brothers (in arms, if not blood) that you are feeling the loss of. The squad mates you love dearly, and to whom you are loyal with a tenacity Santiago has rarely witnessed. A loyalty he too feels blessed -strictly in the lapsed Catholic sense - to be on the receiving end of.

Valiantly fighting back glassy tears, you pop your lower lip in a display of petulance as he rubs reassuring circles into your knee. “Philly sucks ass.”

This time, he can’t quite quash his smile all the way.

“Philly sucks ass, huh?” he repeats, buying himself time to think.

Santiago isn’t sure whether you know that for a fact. He isn’t even sure you’ve ever been to Philly before to assess how much ass it does or does not suck. But, he does know that, irregardless of facts, you seem altogether determined to wallow in your self-pity.

Santiago has noticed this about you. How you always developed an inalienable picture in your head of how you hope things will end up. It’s inspirational at times - your ability to visualise victory, for example, even in the most dire of circumstances, has held missions together. Has held him together. At other times though, it only set you up for disappointment. How could it not, when, through no fault of your own, you cannot reliably manifest the various futures you set your heart on.

It’s not as though you ever ask for a lot; but sometimes, in your profession, even asking for a little is asking far too much.

Still, it is brave, Santiago thinks, to hope for things. For his part, he has learned the hard way not to hope for anything much.

Your shoulders sag in time with his as he exhales a breath and, though your display is dejected, Santiago gathers a soft smile. You are stubborn, that’s for sure, but in him you’ve met your match - or so he likes to think. Santiago is perhaps the only person who could reasonably claim the title of being twice as stubborn as you are, and (while he realises deep down he probably shouldn’t wear that as a badge of honour) he has often pushed his theory to its limit. And so, stubbornly, refusing to give up, Santiago rises to standing. He fishes around in his jeans pocket, yanks out a fistful of dimes and small bills, and brandishes them victoriously.

He waves them enticingly in front of your face then, but you forlornly swat them -and him- away. However, he knows from the dull, reluctant spark in your eyes when he makes his pitch that he is finally on to something. “I saw some peanut butter cups in the hallway vending machine,” he sing-songs, with a hopeful raise of his eyebrows. He knows fine well they’re your favourite, and he can’t believe he’d forgotten his secret weapon: chocolate. “We can clean them out, take a cab, find some shitty ass dive bar, and have ourselves a sweet ol’ time. Whaddya say?”

Nothing else had worked, and so Santiago is eminently thankful when a smile finally twitches your mouth. Honestly, he’d been about one attempt away from offering to eat you out all night - and he hadn’t been sure whether that would’ve made you happy, or would’ve resulted in you verbally lambasting him.

On balance, he figured it was probably best that he didn’t risk either kind of tongue-wagging.

“Fine,” you concede whilst swallowing a mischievous grin, not at all eager to let on that Santiago has finally cracked you. “But don’t you be expecting to muscle in on my Reese’s, understood?”

Santiago chuckles warmly, slipping into Spanish. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Birthday Princess.”

You snort at your newly bestowed title, playfully adjusting an invisible crown on your head, and you extend your palm towards his to shake on it. The gesture, as Santiago’s palm over-enthusiastically clasps yours, causes dimes and bills to scatter chaotically to the floor. A shit-eating grin etches itself across his face and meanwhile, your boisterous laugh rings out through the tight space. “Shit, Pope. Don’t drop it on this grim-ass fucking carpet.”

“It’s been worse places, trust me.”

“Yeah. Your fucking pocket?”

“No shithead, I won it from Catfish.”

“And you don’t know where the hell he’s been?”

“The opposite. I shared a bunk with that hijo de puta, I know exactly where he’s been.”

With easy laughter eddying between you now, you both crouch, carefully gathering up the spoils of the latest Pope/Catfish wager to change hands.

“I really need to meet that guy.”

“Sweetie, you’ve met him.”

Your hand brushes Santiago’s as you transfer him a mess of coins, sending a trail of goosebumps shivering up his arm. It always surprises him how soft you feel to the touch, accustomed as he has become to his own calloused hands - and to those of even rougher men than him.

“Garcia. I swear to you I’ve never clapped eyes on the bastard.”

“You just don’t remember him.”

“Shit. Well maybe he’s not very fucking memorable. Jog my memory. What did we talk about?”

His shit-eating grin is back. “I dunno. But I bet you talked for the both of you.”

“Hey!” you protest, batting Santiago lightly -more or less- in the upper arm.

“I just mean he’s quiet. Takes a while to warm up, that’s all. But he’s a good guy. You’ll like him, I promise.”

“Okay.” You shove the remaining dime into Santiago’s palm.

“Okay?”

“He’s clearly special to you, so he’s special to me too. Introduce me to him. Again.”

Santiago smiles at you, gentle crinkles forming around his eyes. He’s already told Frankie so much about you, and he really thinks the two of you will get on. “Deal.” You both stand, and Santiago once again extends his cash-filled hand towards you.

With a cheeky grin you chide him, not eager for a repeat calamity, but your tone is fond. “Don’t you dare shake on it, idiota.”

Your smile digresses to your eyes. You extend your palm to pat him on his stubbled cheek - in a gesture weighing heavily with affection. Your lips animate, and Santiago wonders whether something sentimental might actually come to the fore.

You whisper, low. “You have thirty seconds to get me my peanut butter cups.”

He chortles and, for the first time (perhaps since imagining his head between your legs), Santiago is eminently excited to see where the night will lead him.

Safe to say, he might be dog-tired… but he finally feels like staying awake.

***

Despite your very vocal distaste for the music, and the clientele, and…well, just about everything in the first dive bar you and Santiago stumble across, the combination of cheap beers and even cheaper shots has succeeded in getting you efficiently merry. And, despite your earlier reticence, you now seem plenty eager to continue the party.

Considering he could only afford cab fare from the motel to a dead neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city, it wasn’t going too badly, he thought. Though, Santiago had hastily steered you outta the first joint when a group of creeps had started leching on you. He knows you can handle yourself and he wouldda been happy to back you; but tonight especially, conflict is the last thing he wants for you. He figures you’ve had more than enough of that to last a lifetime. That you finally deserve a little peace. So, instead, he links your arm in his to keep your tipsy ass steady as he steers you down the main drag, desperately searching his mind - and scanning the unfamiliar streets - for what to do next.

His mission, as it stands, is to satiate your threefold desire - for drinks, dancing, and good music. Tricky, given that he is already down to $10 dollars, give or take - and he’ll need that for the cab ride back to the crummy motel.

Truth is, as he ambles with you for a few blocks, he is running out of ideas for how to show you a good time. What’s more, ever since he first entertained the idea, in his desperation, all his dumb ass can come up with is to offer to eat you out until morning. It’s pretty much becoming an intrusive thought at this point and, as the sordid image of you spread out for him further invades his mind, he quickly tries to blink it away.

He doesn’t want to be that guy. You receive more than enough unwarranted attention as it is. And besides, Santiago would never want you to misinterpret that the reason he hangs around is to -eventually- get in your pants.

You are so much more than that to him. Sometimes, he even has to keep his distance, so that in moments of weakness he doesn’t forget it.

You’d held him at arms length for a while there too.

Soldiers; not friends.

He hadn’t won you over, he knew, because of his sparkling wit and charm. You’d been drawn to him because he was competent. Surprisingly level-headed for someone so baby-faced. You’d wanted people you could work with. People you could trust to get the job done; because you had to trust them with your life.

The two of you have some undeniable chemistry, that’s for sure. At least, on his end, he’d felt something fierce and magnetic right out of the gate. Even so, from the outset, and even as your friendship had deepened, the two of you had seemed to quickly forge a tacit agreement.

Friends; not lovers.

You had made the assessment quickly, jointly, unconsciously. After all, under the rather intense circumstances in which you’d met? You’d each needed a friend - a genuine friend - far more than you’d needed a lay. For you especially, as he understood it, the former had been far more difficult to secure than the latter, especially as a woman in a highly-charged cesspit of toxic masculinity. And for him? Well, as talented as Santiago is at gaining connections, he doesn’t find all too many people he is willing to go deep with. To trust - and he trusts you with his life.

When he’d found you then, he’d grabbed firmly on to you, and had resolved that nothing would get in the way of the friendship you’d forged. Not even - or perhaps especially not - his own… urges.

Still. It’s not like he’s never thought about it. Not like you’ve never gotten him a tad… flustered. Indeed, as the rhythm of your steps marching in time beside him lulls him into calmness, feeling safe, his mind wanders in precisely that direction.

So what though? He’s only human, right? Prone to fantasising; like he is now, he supposes, as he thinks vaguely about licking and kissing down your enticing, bare expanse of stomach. About popping the button on those low slung jeans. Shimmying them down over your hips just enough to sink his mouth over the mound of you and suck.

Fuck. Focus, pendejo. You need something.

He swallows then, feeling guilty for being such a horndog, and he turns to you. You seem to be perfectly content. To be enjoying the hit of fresh air, the apples of your cheeks sheened, with a subtle glow, from the exertion of your dance moves back in the dive bar. And honestly? Looking at you? As guilty as he feels for thinking about you like that, Santiago can’t muster a single better idea of what to do with you.

He pushes it down, of course. Chalks it up to being just a tad pent-up following a seemingly endless deployment. That’s all it is, right? His dick is just looking for a little relief, and you are the closest, attractive body capable of providing him a warm welcome?

Sure, he rationalises. That’s all it is. He can find a girl one night soon and take her home, like he’s done plenty of times before to work out his urges. Except for the fact that seeing you out of those (helpfully) modest fatigues is reminding him you are exactly his type.

“You’ve gone quiet, Pope,” you frown as he -no doubt- looks at you dopily. “What are you plotting?”

With your question, Santiago tears himself violently from his thoughts as you interrupt their increasingly feral trajectory. Still, in scrambling for a deflection, all he is able to land on is something else deep and wet. “The Mariana Trench,” he fumbles.

Hell. Maybe he isn’t quite as smart as he gives himself credit for. Or, maybe all the blood is simply rushing to his crotch instead of his brain - for some reason.

Even so. He urges himself to get his mind out of the gutter and to focus up. You deserve so much more than bearing the brunt of his accumulated sexual frustrations. So. Much. More.

You laugh at his response though, oblivious as you are to his inner monologue, even linking your arm into his more tightly - as though he isn’t a huge perv. Your bright, infectious, beer-addled laugh bounces off of the surrounding asphalt and concrete. And, whilst it ricochets off of everything else, it sinks into him, mixing just a little more of you into his generic, rapidly dissolving fantasy. It offers a luminous gilding around the edges of his hazy desire, stirring in a vivid and more golden want than he has strength in this moment to acknowledge - never mind name.

“Okay, weirdo. Sure. You’re thinking about the butt crack of the ocean? Miller been feeding you National Geographic documentaries again? You guys do know pay-per-view exists, right?”

“Fine. You got me,” he confesses, your paces slowing as you gradually halt by the crosswalk, the two of you realising you have no particular destination in mind. “That was bullshit. I was actually thinking about what the hell I’m gonna do with you next.”

Well… That isn’t a lie. Not exactly.

Santiago looks you up and down where you stand, out of habit more than anything - a result of that now familiar “buddy up” system soldiers make use of to check each other for injuries. Sometimes, with the adrenaline and the shock, you don’t even know you’re bleeding out. This time, thankfully, the only ailment Santiago notices is the goose flesh prickling your skin, and he wishes that he had a jacket to offer you to keep you warm.

“Oh?” You turn your body in to face him. Sway just a tad, eyes a little bleary, and Santiago instinctually plants his hands around your waist to keep you stable, touching on the smooth, bare skin where your ratty old band tee fails to meet your waistband - by approximately the width of four thick fingers. You shiver even though his touch must be warm. “Okay. Well what are you going to do with me, Santiago?”

You blink at him then, your eyes wide and - dare he say - hopeful, one eyebrow arcing in idle curiosity.

You are typically the decisive one. You are always clear on what you want. Tonight, however, it is evident that you are counting on him to lead you somewhere.

Even though he doubts his ability to take the lead, rather fortuitously, Santiago does (miraculously) manage to stumble upon one single idea outside of the realm of cunnilingus… “Hey, come here,” he coaxes, taking your hands in his. “Close your eyes.” You oblige him, folding your grip around him, firm and sure. His heart swells a little at the instant, implicit trust you exhibit - no hesitation. “Do you hear that?”

Santiago’s eyes remain open, observing you as your eyes blink clumsily shut. You slide your soft hands up his forearms, bracing yourself with a gentle “woah”, no doubt as the closing of your eyes makes your alcohol-saturated world sway and swirl just a little more intensely. “Listen, cariño,” he scolds good-naturedly, cupping his palms at your elbows. “Do you hear it?”

He can’t help but smile as your face scrunches in adorable contemplation. Then, he can’t help smiling even wider, as you begin to tap his arms and jump excitedly up and down on the spot. You hear it too then. The distant thud of music bouncing off of the tall buildings.

“Music!” you exclaim excitedly, opening your eyes and grinning at him, still bouncing on the spot like an excited kid.

The full beam of your unfiltered smile knocks him for six for second. It has been a while, honestly, since he’s seen it glow that bright. Turned all the way up. You’d gone through some shit on this deployment. Blood, horror, pain; rinse and repeat. Some of your spark had understandably dulled, and honestly, he had worried -in part, a little selfishly- that it might never come back to its full strength.

Boy. He’s glad to be proven wrong.

Santiago had quickly come to learn that you possess a singular combination of character traits - and not only the magical ability to piss him off more than anyone else could. No, in fact, he’d learned quickly that you possess a singular kind of zest for life. One which he’d feared was too pure to survive long in the dark. Honestly, he’d believed your optimism and your joy was naive at first. Something to be knocked out of you in boot camp. But he was wrong so far. At every turn you endure. At every turn, you shine. As he feels increasingly bogged down, saturated with inky, oily shadows, you are bright. His guiding light, always calling him home from the edge of the dark, shadow-coiled path he skirts.

“Do we follow it?” you ask excitedly, the glint of adventure in your bright eyes, and in that moment he could swear he’d follow you anywhere.

“Yeah. Of course we follow it. It’s our goddamn duty to follow it.” Santiago stomps his boot and waves his arm in a sloppy military salute - the kind that would earn him fifty push-ups back at base. You follow suit, even more sloppy, but entirely resolute in your faux seriousness.

“Tonight, I swear my oath and pledge my allegiance to music, so help me God.”

Santiago stomps emphatically again, for effect - an overblown, cheesy action-movie-style salute, his strong jaw set in an overly caricatured display. You beam again, a face-splitting grin, and he…

…realises he is having fun.

In this moment, you are giddy. You are bright. Full of life, and Santiago briefly wonders if this is how things could be. If it could be like this all the time if only you could get out. If you could leave the military behind. God. You are the last person he wants to lose from his side, but a knot twists in his stomach at the thought you should get out while you still can. Before it drags you down like it is him. Before he drags you down with him, since you’ve seemingly tied your fates to his with red bloodied ribbons, wound between your bones and his.

He doesn’t have much time to consider those things though. To let the blood seep into the edges like it always does; because you start running. You take Santiago’s hand in yours and run towards the distant thud of noise, leading him behind you and laughing and whooping as you do. Making a grey night in a grey part of town feel vibrant. Making him feel vibrant by association. He realises only then how numb he’s felt lately. How your buoyant smile had been the only thing to feed his own these past months.

You are so much more than a throwaway fantasy to him.

You truly are the friend he’s needed so desperately, and feels so, so lucky to have found.

He runs with you, and he hopes, silently, selfishly, somewhere in the pit of him, that your paths never wind in different directions.

He’ll follow you anywhere.

***

After a few, giddy, chaotic minutes of tracing the ricocheting sounds, you find yourselves in the lobby of a seedy hotel, breaths sawing in and out of your lungs and mirthful, intermittent giggles spilling out of you.

“I’m on the guest list!” you insist with a hiccough, trying your utmost to blag your way into the wedding party contained beyond the double doors; the established source of the music.

Your assertion is much to the chagrin of the teenaged, stoner-looking kid on the front desk, who is clearly milking his new-found authority for all it’s worth.

“Sure, lady. Then what’s your name?”

Santiago looks at you expectantly, his arm slung casually around your shoulders, his chest already shaking and nose scrunching with a mildly tipsy, sleep-deprived concoction of mischief.

“The name’s Trench,” you deadpan, and the poor fellow actually begins to skim his index finger down the alphabetised list. “Mariana Trench.”

Santiago eyeballs you. Honestly, half of him is awed by your balls, even as the other half is despairing of your chosen (and completely unnecessary) alias. Still, he sees the funny side, of course, and has to swallow a hearty laugh by faux coughing into his fist.

There are not many factors helping your case here; especially the fact your body is already unconsciously bopping along to the music. Santiago has to physically encourage you back to your spot with his arm around your middle, and, as the rhythm continually beckons you forth, he hastily tucks you into his side in a fruitless attempt to subdue you.

By the time Santiago’s gaze flicks back to the kid at the desk, he’s folded his arms over his chest like a stern math teacher, clearly enjoying his upper hand. “Dude,” the kid probes sceptically, perhaps sensing that Santiago is the more sensible (or at least more sober) of the two of you. “What are the names of the bride and groom?”

“Nicole and Dio,” Santiago fires off smugly, causing you to first gasp and - second - to gawk at him like a fish (which is funny, because for all you know he’s made those up too).

“How did you know that?” you hiss-whisper, thinking you are being oh so subtle, and Santiago elbows you discreetly in the ribs for your trouble. This time though, he is unable to stifle his laughter entirely, a throaty chuckle shaking out of him, and the crinkles around his eyes rehearsing deeper future furrows.

Meanwhile, whilst the kid at the desk continues to eye him sceptically, he cannot refute Santiago’s knowledge. The soldier silently praises his undeniable powers of observation - and the fact the kid seems to have entirely forgotten about the huge fuck-off sign standing in the entrance lobby.

“Yeah. Still no.” This kid is a tough nut.

“Shit,” you plead. “Well can I at least use the restroom?”

“I guess that’s fine,” the kid concedes with an eye roll, gesturing towards the left hand side of the lobby.

You saunter off, beelining towards the door with such ferocity that you whack your hip off of the doorframe on the way in there.

Santiago winces in time with your “ouch!”, but as you throw your arms in the air, triumphantly insisting you are fine, he turns his attention back to his mission; to get you whatever you want for your birthday.

Sporting the friendliest smile he can muster in the full knowledge this kid behind the desk hates him already, Santiago mosies up to the counter.

“Come on, buddy. Hook us up,” he reasons. “It’s a Tuesday night and everywhere else is closed by now.”

“Dude, your attempts to get laid are not my issue.”

“No. No, it’s… She’s my friend. It’s her birthday and-”

“-Then take her to a fucking Chilli’s, bro. Still not my problem.”

Santiago huffs, still trying to keep his face neutral. Non-threatening. He needs to step things up before you return from the restroom.

“Listen, buddy.” The kid scowls at him then as if to confirm - I’m emphatically not your buddy. “Do you know what it’s like to be shot in service of your country?”

“What?!”

He nods behind him, in your general direction, his eyebrows pumping up towards his hairline (and reaching for a hasty explanation before the kid presses the under-desk alarm button). “Because she does.” Santiago rests his folded arms up on the counter. Leaning-in. Going all out with the eye contact. “When I tell you she’s had a shitty time of it? Lying on the ground, bleeding out. So, look, man. I just want to give her a good time tonight, alright? Would you please help me out, man? She’s fucking earned this.”

A gulp trails down the kid’s neck, and he tucks his long, straight blonde hair behind his ears. “You’re intense, bro. Anyone ever told you that?”

Santiago opens his mouth again, wishing to further embellish his case; but before he can do so the kid caves, waving his palms in total surrender. “Fuck, man. Do what you want, but for the love of God, would you just stop talking to me?”

“Great. Thank you. I mean it.”

“Yep. Whatever. Don’t get paid enough for this shit, bro.”

Santiago hears the door swing behind him, and joins you just in time to lead you further into the building, pleased that he is able to report victory. He’s almost forgotten about the front desk already - until the kid calls after him, growing bolder the further you two retreat, apparently. “This is why I’m a pacifist, dude! You might wanna think about it.”

“Sure thing,” he calls back over his shoulder. “I’ll give it some consideration.”

Then, Santiago gently ushers you into the corridor leading towards the party, taking a moment to celebrate his “smooth-talking”. Before he can even think about bragging though, you throw your arms up in the air in a tada gesture and exclaim “you are welcome!”. He doesn’t have the heart to tell you you’d had no part in getting past the gate, and so instead, he opts to finally vent his quashed laughter. The fact you’d name-dropped Mariana Trench, specifically, supplies a giggle hearty enough that it makes his abs ache.

“Oh. By the way. How do I look?” you question, when the two of you are just shy of making an entrance to the main hall.

Santiago turns to you and looks you up and down. Notices the fresh application of smeared red over your plush mouth. Surveys your jeans and tee with approval, as though you are outfitted in a gown. “Good, chica.”

“Good!” You step forward then, towards him, and lay your palms flat on his upper chest. “Now. You know what I wanna do?” For a split second, with your proximity, and the husky thrall of your voice, Santiago finds himself imagining what you might want to do to him - if he should be so lucky. “I wanna dance. Will you dance with meeee, Santiaaaaggooo?”

Santiago feels a lump lodge itself in his throat. Tries hard to forget that… well… red lipstick and dancing? They are - more often than not - your highly decipherable code for being horny. Shit - he wonders if you are as pent up as he is.

“You got it!” he musters, getting himself quickly in check. Christ, he needs to prioritise getting laid - just as soon as he is no longer wholly dedicated to your birthday.

“Yay!”

You lead him by the hand and, once again, Santiago does not complain. Then, swinging open one of two double doors, plastered with unsightly fire regulations, you enter the fray.

The doors open on a busy room, bathed in beams of chaotic coloured light. In reality, the interior is drab. A sad, grey, carpeted room. A few busted ceiling tiles up top. The circular event tables are flanked by a sorry stage at one side - fronted by a sticky, modest square of dance floor - and a small bar at the other. Finally, the far wall is edged with a rather depleted buffet, and intermittent bowls of greying macaroni. Whilst the room itself is nothing to write home about, however, the jubilation inside makes it feel positively wonderful.

Santiago feels only for a split second like he is intruding. Within moments, he is all wrapped-up in the buzz. Enveloped by it. The band’s amps are turned up far too loud. The dance floor is awash with couples gyrating on each other and groups of singles circling each other, looking for an in. Throngs of friends and family are grouped throughout the room, laughing and chatting, taking photos on disposable cameras and clinking glasses, and when the two of you enter, matching smiles plastered on your faces, no-one even bats an eye.

“We’re really doing this?” Santiago raises his voice above the tremor of the music. “Crashing a fucking wedding?”

“Relax! It’s not the worst thing you’ve ever done, Garcia. It’s not even against the Geneva Convention.”

“Jesus! I’m not a fucking war criminal!”

“Relax, Santiago,” you encourage, tone soothing and your hands massaging into his shoulders; and, finally, he lets himself. For once, he lets his guard down. So, as you travel deeper into the room, Santiago begins to move a little less like a soldier on patrol, and allows his gait to loosen up. Allows himself to approach the room not as a soldier on high alert, but simply as some guy with his buddy, looking for a good time. “Attaboy,” you encourage, seeing him visibly unclench - a rare thing. “We’re good, alright? Hey. I’ll even leave a pack of Reese’s on the table. That way, we even brought a gift.”

“And you’ll keep a low profile, right?”

“Of course!” You flash him a faux innocent grin, which he sees right through.

Yeah, figures, he thinks. Honestly, he isn’t sure you are capable of blending in - stealth ops aside, of course. But here? Without your camo and a distinct lack of a gilly suit? Baby, look at you, you’re gonna be noticed.

“Alright. We dance. Just keep it low key or-“

“-Sure, sure,” you dismiss, waving your hand through the air as though to erase his plea. “But first, tequilaaaa!”

Evidently, you are ignoring him completely, and yet the beaming smile on your face is so utterly worth it that Santiago could care less. “Eh. Whatever you say, Princesa.”

You wink at him. “Now you’re getting the idea.”

Santiago watches you skip gracelessly over to the bar, making zero attempt to blend into the crowd (unsurprising). You order up two shots, downing one instantly and handing the other to him with a jubilant, mildly devilish grin. At this stage, Santiago is deliberately a few drinks behind you, having wanted to remain sober enough to take care of you. So, he figures he has a little wiggle room remaining before he reaches the point of no return. Egged on by your encouraging nods, he tips it down the hatch.

“Cheers!” you exclaim, clumsily clinking your little plastic shot glass against his. The remains of the amber liquid still glisten on your mouth, lending an appealing shine to your red lips. As you mop the drips away with the back of your hand, you slightly smear the shade towards your cheek.

Before Santiago can rectify the situation for you though, you’ve once again taken his hand and trailed him behind you, clumsily weaving through the crowd as he interjects “sorry!” each time you bash - either your body or his - into someone else’s. Before long though, the two of you are safely tucked right in the midst of it all, adding to the messy, merry throng on the compact dance floor. The amateurish but jubilantly played rock covers from the band began to vibrate all the way through his chest as you position right next to the speakers.

As the vibrations tickle through him, bass inflating like a balloon in his rib cage, drowning out his thoughts and his heartbeat, you dance. With his thoughts silenced - or, rather, out-volumed- he slips into his body as if it is his own again. As if it belongs to him, and not just to some notion of God and country.

You, for your part, dance as if compelled to. As though, after living for so long with your body following orders, exercising control, being disciplined, staying in line, you can finally let it be free. Can finally let it express itself.

You move well, Santiago notes as he allows his own body to limber, freeing up his arms and his hips and feeling the buzz of the music and the alcohol thrum pleasantly through his body. It all feels somewhat alien to him now, his body stiff and lacking muscle memory for such imprecise, unplanned movements. You though? You move with abandon. With joy, like you never forgot how to feel it, belting the lyrics right from your chest. Jumping and waving your arms when the guitar solo drops.

It makes him deeply happy to see you like this. What’s more, amidst the dance floor of preened, deliberate women encircling your space, their movements seemingly contrived to be appealing, alluring, sexual, your reckless expression is far sexier to him. You feel freed, wild - and it almost feels dangerous to him. This clear absence of regiments and rules and barriers feels dangerous, even the barriers between your body and his disintegrating as you dance closer, the beat shaking you together like sand on a drum skin.

Indeed, your bodies are pushed ever closer and closer as the surprisingly heaving crowd compresses you tighter and tighter in the minimal, sticky-floored maneuver room. And so, after you’ve suffered one too many bumps and restrictions from stray shoulders and elbows, you finally give in to it, looping your arms around his neck and choosing to dance with him.

Instinctually, automatically, Santiago’s hands fall to your hips, gripping you there as your body sways and rolls in time to the music, the raw, dirty hard rock vocals moving through you and bedding down into your body.

At first, when your body presses up against his and the hot breath of your laughter fans over his neck, Santiago thinks about adjusting. About sliding his hands back up to your waist, where -perhaps- the gesture may seem less intimate. May allow for a little more room and a little less contact.

It isn’t as though the two of you are strangers to touching. You are both tactile people, and besides, you’re often in close quarters. You’ve slammed each other to the mat plenty of times. He’s had your sweaty, writhing body all over his. Your grunts of submission sounding in his ear. Huffs of exertion fanning against his neck. Thighs locked with his. His hips pinning you. But this? This is a little different. It isn’t precise, technical touch. It isn’t objective-driven. There are no clear rules, besides friends not lovers, and even that distinction is starting to feel a little blurry.

No, this kinda touch is something else. It is raw. It is instinctual; and that scares him, in truth.

However, it doesn’t scare him nearly enough to want to stop.

He does not move his hands from your rolling, swaying hips. Can’t bring himself to. Instead, he gives in to it. To the music. To the feeling. To you. And, when does, he finds himself surprised by how fluidly your bodies move together. Symbiotically. Like a team. Like you do in battle, sure. In the field. Like it is the most natural thing in the world; but this time, your combining is not at all driven by survival. It is driven by living, and Santiago could swear, in this moment, that he has never felt quite so alive.

The room is getting hot. The undulating crowd of bodies surrounding you is only adding to it. Exertion is glowing on your skin. He can feel it up against him, your sweat bleeding through your damp t-shirt where your breasts press into him. Can feel it beneath his fingers, tacky and slick, as he wraps his hands around that bare flash of skin at your midriff. God, you are smooth, and soft, and slick, and he is momentarily transfixed by a bead of sweat sinking down the centre of your chest, disappearing beneath the “v” of your shirt.

Someone else’s body briefly presses up against his in the crush and he cringes away from the feel of their slick skin… but you? Yours? You feel good to him. He doesn’t mind it.

That scares him too; but still, not enough to stop.

With a joyous, unfettered laugh you claim back some space, spinning Santiago underneath your arm, your dance moves growing increasingly outlandish. Of course, Santiago follows your lead. Always does. And, before long, the two of you can barely dance from laughing and can barely laugh from your insistence to keep dancing.

It feels good. Good to push your respective bodies to their limit on your own terms for once. To be with each other, side by side, in a scenario which could not be further from life or death; but that feels a thousand times more vital and central to being alive.

Seeing your smile strobe as the blue party lights slip and flash over the planes of your face, the beats and riffs pulsing through his body, Santiago feels giddy and he feels bright. With laughter bobbing in his throat and aching in his sides, he feels goddamn luminescent, and so he can’t help but wonder. Can’t help but wonder if this is how he would feel all the time. If he got out. If the two of you could just be people, instead of soldiers.

Santiago holds on to it. He holds on to you. To the feeling of freedom. Of pure, unfettered joy. Of this strange peace amidst the blurry, heavy noise.

He holds on to it while he can. He smiles with you until his face hurts. Laughs with you until his breath wanes. Dances with you longer than he should, song after song. Dances until he is sweating through his t-shirt, a dark “v” of sweat trailing down his chest. Dances, long after that now familiar heat in his newly ailing knees has crossed into discomfort. Dances closer and closer to the speaker until the music is indistinguishable from him, beating through his chest and down into his bones, and still; the two of you move your bodies. The two of you cling to each other like your life depends on it - and perhaps, precisely because of all the times it has.

When you lean forward, cupping his ear, your lips almost pressed right to his skin to be heard over the din, a warm snake travels down his spine. “See! We still haven’t been found out!” You draw back to flash him a mischievous grin, your eyes glinting with a spark far more warming than the heat which already slickens his skin.

You are most definitely up to something. You dip forward again as he strains to hear you. “Wanna be a little bolder?” There is a dark and delicious lilt in your voice. A tempting thing, enticing him into trouble - as per usual.

He does though. Wants to be a little bolder.

He wants to kiss you, in fact. To test the limits of just how well your bodies can move together. But… just like all the other times tonight he lets that desire atrophy. Pushes it outside of his body. You are so much more to him than the tingle in his dick. Offer him so much more than whatever parts of you he could seek out with his hands and his mouth, skin finding skin, finding deep, dark wetness.

If you wanted it, hey, it’s not like he would say no. He isn’t that strong; but he’d decided long ago that when it came to crossing that line, he would simply follow your lead.

“What did you have in mind?” Santiago asks, dipping his own lips towards your ear.

Your response is not quite what he expects. You simply throw both arms up into the air, your eyebrows jumping up with them. “Karaokeeee!”

It is a pleasant surprise, to be honest. He loves to see you like this. To see you have fun. Chasing your whims. Getting to be damn silly. For so long, everything has been so grim and so serious.

However, even if your suggestion - at first - inspires a broad, nose-crinkling smile, Santiago looks up at the freestanding mic in horror next - when he realises exactly what you are about to do. “Shit. Sweetie. It’s not-”

-It is already too late. You are already clambering up on stage and taking your position by the vacant mic spot. “…It’s not karaoke,” Santi mumbles under his breath, mentally readjusting his level on how wasted you are.

“Come with me, Pope!” you shout down to him, making grabby hands towards him. Next, you commandeer the mic pole as the frontman - who had simply stepped out for brief swig of water - looks on in confusion.

Santiago sighs and slides his palm over his face, for he knows, fine well, exactly what is about to go down. That, after all the times you’ve saved his skin, tended his wounds, and -damn- even been shot to keep him safe, he for sure isn’t about to let you make a fool of yourself. At least, not alone.

Cringing already from the forceful embarrassment of commandeering an entire stage at a wedding he’s just crashed, Santiago sets his jaw in resignation and hops semi-gracefully up there, rising to stand right next to you.

“What happens in Philadelphia…” he mumbles, before bracing himself and accepting his fate.

He raises his arm as a shield against the intense spotlight, and can suddenly see that the whole party is looking by now, heads whipping around following your triumphant “woop” into the microphone.

He makes a mental note to explain to you what the words “low profile” mean later, as clearly, you’ve completely failed to grasp that concept.

Santiago gulps as he looks out across the confused sea of faces, his mouth suddenly bone dry as he prays that no-one will actually yell “who the fuck are you?” Then, not for the first time this evening, he desperately attempts to conjure up a plan of action. Once again, he is pretty sure that cunnilingus won’t quite cut it here either.

His goal right now is two-fold. To enable you to sing on stage, like you want to, and to avoid being forcibly removed from the venue. It is unfortunate that the former goal seems to void the latter, but hey. He’s been in stickier situations. And, with luck, Santiago remembers one useful thing. The fact that -according to damn near everyone- he’s a charming little fucker. Now, he supposes, is as good a time as any to put that theory to the test.

“Nicole and Dio.” He gestures to the bride, and motions to gesture towards the groom too. That is, before realising he has no idea who “Dio” is in the crowd, so instead, he lets his arm flop uselessly back to his side. Next, he takes what he feels is a well-earned moment to let the feedback from the microphone die, wincing slightly at the noise, and becoming acutely aware of the sizzle of nervous sweat burning off of his forehead. “I think it’s safe to say,” he ventures with a little more confidence, straining to remember his cousin’s wedding and every platitude he might repeat, “that a love like yours comes around once in a lifetime. I know I speak for both of us when we say we’d like to wish you a lifetime of happiness together to enjoy it.” You helpfully lean forward in that moment and give another celebratory woop. “Thanks for that, sweetie,” he deadpans, wiping his brow just as urgently as he scans the room, searching for something -anything- he can pull from to meet his twinned objectives.

Suddenly though, against all odds, he actually spots his way out. Emphatically, triumphantly, he points towards the Irish flag proudly adorning the far wall, and dearly hopes he is on to something. “A million tiny things had to align for you two to come together. You could even say it was fate. So, in tribute to the miles travelled by your ancestors, here it is. This one is for the Irish-Americans in the house!” Firstly, he is relieved, to say the least, when that statement earns a hearty cheer from the crowd. “Let’s hear it for Metallica; Whiskey in the jar.” Secondly, he is relieved when that statement earns further cheers, particularly from you.

Next, Santiago looks confidently to the band, deciding he will simply stare at them pointedly until the drums kick in. “For Nicole and Dio!” he adds with a flourish after an uncomfortably long moment of inaction; and, as the crowd gets behind Santiago, who on earth are they to deny him?

“Everybody on the dance floor!” you add, with an enthusiasm so overblown it can’t fail to be infectious.

Still, when Santiago finally thinks he has it nailed, you turn to him with a sudden and pronounced wash of horror on your face. “Garcia. Shit. It’s not karaoke!”

“Princesa,” he soothes as the band kicks in, wrapping his arm firmly around your waist to avert your knees buckling in fright. “If it’s not karaoke, why the shit do I have a mic and a backing track, huh?” You still look unsure. “Come on, sing it with me. You’re hot as hell up here, don’t go shy on me.”

Santiago turns, forgetting the crowd entirely as his mission revolves wholly around you.

He begins to sing to you, gaze soft and encouraging until you relax back into it, your broad, electric smile returning. He tugs you closer into him, snug and safe until you grow bold enough to sing along with him into your one shared mic, gradually letting go and -bolstered by him- giving it increasing amounts of gusto.

The pool of guests at your feet are going surprisingly wild for it too, almost every one in the room having now descended on to the dance floor.

“Here,” he encourages, as soon as he feels you’re ready, handing the mic off to you for the remaining verses of the song. “You got this, sweetie.”

He lets you have your moment in the spotlight, cheering you on from the sidelines as you sing and air-guitar your way through the final chorus. You aren’t necessarily singing at your best after belting out lyrics at top volume, but what you lack in vocal ability you sure make up for in spirit. You have bags of that, and you perform it with plenty of showmanship, throwing yourself all over the stage and making Santiago’s face split with joy as he whoops along with you, fist-pumping enthusiastically.

You even end the song by taking a knee and exclaiming “Nicole and Dio!”, raising your mic arm triumphantly in the air like the rock star you are - which is a huge relief to Santiago, as it had looked for a moment like you were about to stage dive into the completely unsuspecting crowd.

You wrap it up to what Santiago will later describe as rapturous applause. You milk it for all it's worth, before relinquishing the mic to the actual band and skipping over to your biggest fan.

“Was I fucking amazing?” you ask, bundling him into an enclosing hug.

“Holy shit. Felt like I was watching Kerrang.”

You punch him playfully in the arm for his shit-eating grin. “Dickhead.”

“What’s next for the Birthday Princess?” Santi asks, hopping off of the stage and guiding you safely down too.

He’s secretly praying you’ll say “back to the motel”, but it doesn’t surprise him at all when you throw your arms jubilantly into the air and yell: “more dancing!”.

Santiago brings the pad of his thumb up to the corner of your mouth, finally smoothing away that damn lipstick smear he wishes he’d gotten to before your impromptu stage show. “Go for it, hermosa,” he insists fondly. “I’ll be with you in a sec, yeah? After pulling that shit, I don’t think we have long before we get busted. You gonna be ready to hustle soon?”

You nod, fist-bump him, and skitter off to the dance floor, your seemingly boundless energy carrying you right the way through towards dawn.

Santiago will give this track a miss, he thinks. His knees need a goddamn time-out; but his eyes still linger on you, shining fondly as you are folded into the crowd.

***

“Touching speech, lad,” a low-timbre voice sounds to Santiago’s left. “But who in the devil are ya?”

Santiago, who is sat blissfully nursing a glass of ice cold tap water, immediately swivels on his barstool. This puts him face-to-face with an older gentleman, of considerable stature.

The man’s crinkled, bushy-eyebrowed face is stern; but not unkind, even as his chin juts up in challenge. Santiago rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. There is no point trying to wriggle out of this one, and he’s already sure of it.

“Okay,” he responds, his voice slow and low and his palms raising defensively in the air. The man might be both older and frailer than Santiago, but he exudes a certain authority which trumps his own youthful confidence. In short, Santiago certainly doesn’t want to piss him off. “You got me. It’s a long story, and we weren’t technically invited… but we don’t mean any trouble, Sir. And, hey, we did bring a gift,” Santiago adds for good measure, not entirely convinced that the mushed up peanut butter cups in your jeans pocket will make any shade of difference now - but hoping.

The man presses his lips together and hums, as if mulling over the guilty party’s fate. After a moment of contemplation though, the older gentleman unceremoniously releases some of the rigidity from his body, slumping down into Santiago’s neighbouring bar stool with a sense of resolution. A gulp trails down Santiago’s neck all the same. “You a military pair, kid?” the man asks casually, making-out like he’s thoroughly absorbed in rolling his cigarette papers, but his sharp eyes still finding time to needle Santiago incisively. “I know the type.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hmm. Well.” The man licks along the long edge of cigarette paper with the tip of his tongue. “You came clean, I’ll keep quiet. Besides commandeering the stage(!), you two don’t seem like too much trouble.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“I’m Colin, by the way. Nicole’s granddaddy.” The man extends a hand and Santiago shakes it.

“Santiago. And hey, congratulations.”

Santiago would’ve allowed some of the tension to seep out of his own rigid body by now; except for the fact he can sense the man is not quite finished with him. He lights the tip of his cigarette with a battered-looking, engraved lighter, smoke swirling around him and becoming one with his white-gray, thinning hair. “Since I’ve been so generous, lad, how’s about you explain to me the circumstances that brought you to crash my granddaughter’s wedding?”

From the man’s unwavering stare, Santiago knows fine well this is a demand and not a suggestion. He rubs his sweaty palms together, finding himself reluctant to spill but with little apparent choice in the matter. Still, as his gaze flicks back in the direction of you, he feels a softness overcome him. “It’s her birthday. We’re on leave. Had a big trip planned to reunite with some buddies but the airport-“

“-ah. All shut down.” Colin nods in partial understanding, taking a long drag on his smoke.

“Yes, sir. So I, uh. Well, I had to improvise.”

Colin’s eyes flutter briefly closed. Then, a small flicker of a smile appears, as he - apparently - achieves a fuller understanding than Santiago’s divulgence should have allowed. An understanding which Santiago isn’t sure he has attained himself, as it stands. Is he missing something? “I see. You wanted to show her a good time.”

“Yeah. Yessir.”

To Santiago’s utter surprise, the man’s hand clasps down on top of his closest shoulder, the cigarette still pinned precariously in between his forefingers, and the smoke tangling around Santiago’s curls like future grays attempting to stick. “What are you drinking, lad?”

“Uh. Water,” Santiago replies simply, recalling the glass sweating on the bar top.

“Not any more.” Colin signals the bartender with a barely perceptible raise of his chin, and manages to convey his order simply by raising two of his fingers in the air.

Santiago watches as a bottle, sporting an affixed yellow post-it note, is grabbed-up from its secret hiding spot under the counter. Must be the good stuff.

When served, Colin slides one glass over to Santiago with the back of his age-spotted palm. “You don’t have to drink it, o’ course - I’ll just think you’re a rude fecker if you don’t.”

“Thank you, sir.” The two men swivel on their stools to face the bar and Santiago takes a sip, doing his best to hide his reaction to the intensity of it.

Colin guffaws. “Yeah. That’ll put hairs on yer chest.”

Santiago splutters, attempting to quickly smooth himself. “Cheers. To Nicole.” He hoists his glass in the air.

“Aye. Here’s to that.”

Santiago smiles, clinking his glass with Colin’s and hoping against all odds that you might come and rescue him soon.

You don’t, but mercifully the chat is suspended for a moment as the man coiffs his cigarette and his drink, and Santiago even suspects he has been forgotten entirely as another guest draws Colin into niceties and conversation.

Therefore, after a few warming swigs have slipped down his throat, each one followed by a grimace, Santiago turns, realising it has been a minute since he’s had eyes on you. He quickly locates you on the dance floor, boogying with some tall, white guy. A guy who is - with your encouragement - getting rather handsy. Seeing this, all of Santiago’s muscles tighten and he feels the vague urge to leap up off of his bar stool - that is, until Colin interjects.

“Can I give you some advice?”

Santiago’s initial thought is “no”; but he has a feeling Coilin may offer his unsolicited advice regardless. “Don’t crash weddings?” he jests half-heartedly, the lion’s share of his attention still on you and that guy’s damn hands.

“Marry her.”

Santiago’s gaze flips immediately towards Colin, his face the picture of abject confusion. “Sorry. Who?”

Colin chuckles to himself, evidently quite tickled, and nods his head gently in your direction. “Your lady friend.”

Santiago saws his palm over the five-o-clock shadow adorning his jaw. A weak, throaty chuckle bobs in his throat. He finds it funny. Preposterous. “With respect, Sir. That’s not gonna happen.” It is knee-jerk. Santiago had sworn off marriage long ago. Had long ago given up on the prospect of any form of happy ending. Besides, you and him? He doesn’t think so.

“Oh. Boyo,” Colin begins, his tone juuuust condescending enough to make Santiago stiffen. “You find someone who makes you as happy as that, you marry her. Trust me, lad.”

Santiago purses his lips. Tightens them into a thin line. “We’re not… together.” Not that it’s any of this guy’s business what you are to him; but he’s just not getting it.

“You love her,” Colin says softly. Almost gently, as though he’s breaking bad news.

”What?” Santiago shakes his head incredulously, blinking several times in succession.

“I can barely see past my own arm these days, lad, but I can see that much.”

There is that hand, clasping his shoulder again. This time it feels different. “You love her.”

The first time Colin had spoken these words, Santiago had bristled. Felt provoked. He should feel similarly now too - he knows it - but upon hearing them for a second time, a sudden clarity settles over him. In fact, he’s never felt less confused by a statement in his life.

He feels his mouth go dry. A sudden ringing in his ears. He could’ve sworn he had hands and feet earlier in the evening, but right now he can’t feel them.

Of course he loves you, he thinks, reaching for logic. For rationalisations. But it’s not like that. That’s simply what happens when you go through so much together. You bond, intensely. That’s all it is. All it amounts to.

Colin has this all wrong.

Santiago looks at you then. Really looks at you, as you grab your dance partner by the shirt and shove your tongue in his mouth, pulling away from the kiss with a wolfish grin. Some kind of feeling he can’t hope to name tightens like a fist in his stomach when you do that. “She’s…” Santiago wants to protest. Wants to say that no, he doesn’t. But those aren’t quite the words which find their way out. Instead, he says quietly, like he’s delivering bad news now: “she’s my best friend.”

“Ah,” Colin breathes, in a fresh tone of relief. As if satisfied. As if he has now achieved full understanding - even if Santiago has not. The older man stubs out his cig and downs the dregs of his whiskey, cheersing Santiago once more with a clink of his empty glass. “There you go then. Isn’t that the same thing?”

Isn’t that the same thing?

It is a blur from there. A blur as Colin once again outstretches his hand and Santiago obliges by shaking it, his arm feeling limp and useless like a bag of cotton-wool. It is a blur as Colin wishes him well with a jolly “take care, lad,” sauntering away with no concern for the destruction left in his wake.

It is a blur as you sidle over, as though the volume in the room has been turned down all of a sudden. It becomes gradually louder again as you approach.

You.

“Fuck, you okay, Garcia? You look like you’re about to puke.”

There’s nothing here.

Nothing with you.

Nothing he could have with you. No way.

“Seriously! You look queasy as hell.” You place your hand across his brow to see if he’s burning up.

“No. ‘M good. Fine,” he says tightly.

You nod, still looking sceptical but opting to buy what he’s selling. “You just tired? Too much dancing?”

”Heh. Something like that.” It is a struggle to push the words out, but he surprises himself. Gradually sinks himself back into the room. Back into his body.

Santiago notices the brief spark of an idea fleet over your face as you regard him and, in the next moment, you dip forward to chastely kiss him on the cheek. He feels a deep, blooming heat develop under his skin, his cheeks darkening with a crimson flush, and he resists the urge to clamp his palm over the spot your lips touched. “What was that for?”

A delicate smile dances on your mouth. “Thank you, butthead. I’m having a good birthday.”

It’s what you don’t say. It’s what your eyes are telling him. Your body language. Your touch. You’re telling him things you’ve been saying for a long time now. Things which, thanks to Colin, beg a whole load of new questions.

You slip your hand down his arm, grasping his hand in yours. For a moment he just stares, looking down at your hands clasped there together. He is vaguely aware of the track switching in the background, to a slower, more heartfelt tune, and, by the time he drags his eyes back-up to yours, he figures he’s got a head start already on what you’re about to ask.

He makes it so you don’t even have to. “One more dance?”

He stands, capturing your waist with his wrapped arm, leading you back towards the dance floor. The surprise and relief and glee on your face as he preempts you is almost too bright for him to look at.

“You even know how to slow dance, Garcia?” you ask as he maneuvers the two of you into prime position, right in the beam of a sweeping purple spotlight, the dancefloor filling exclusively with swaying couples as the tender, swooping song resonates through the room.

“Haven’t slow danced since prom,” he admits. “But I’ll follow your lead, Princesa.”

“You a’ways do, asshat.”

“You know? You’re not wrong. Now, come here.”

He holds his arms out and you step into his sturdy circumference, no hesitation. Trust implicit, your bodies moving in sync. You drape the loop of your arms gently around his shoulders, your twined fingers brushing the nape of his neck, sending a warm shudder through him. His hands hover helplessly for a moment, but he eventually settles them on your hips, drawing your body closer, tightening the space between you as you each sway together, cheek to cheek.

“I - I can’t believe you did this for me, you know?” Your voice is lower, dropped in your throat. Heavy with solemnity as though you are thanking him for taking a bullet for you or something. “Tonight. The karaoke. Everything.”

“Well,” he dismisses, against the shell of your ear. It’s not nearly enough.“You got shot for me, so...”

Your light, lilting laugh fans across his check. It isn’t funny at all, wasn’t a joke; except that it’s so tragic it kinda has to come full-circle, he supposes. “Fine,” you offer. “Call it even?”

Even?

It could never get close to even.

Santiago feels a surge of emotion welling in him. Like suddenly there is a mechanism dredging all the settled silt back up to the surface. It rises all the way up - into his chest, into his throat. He pulls back slightly until you are face to face, his expression far more severe than the situation merits; but he can’t help it. It feels barbed, difficult, coming out of his mouth, but it needs to be said. “You have no idea what you’ve done for me, you know?” His eyes are glistening, a telltale softness nestled beneath his thick brows, and his thumbs unconsciously rubbing circles into the meat of your hips. “You’re…. I… I mean. You’re… my best friend.”

You gawp back at him for a moment, visibly caught off-guard by his emotional intensity. Then: “oh no,” you whisper-shout into the space between you, as though if you push too much sound out, the emotions might overspill along with it. “Don’t get all soppy on me, you hear? You’re the only fucker who knows I have emotions, and I damn sure wanna keep it that way.”

His gaze flits all over your face. “Secret’s safe with me, Princesa.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He smiles at you - a smile that only reaches his eyes.

You nestle yourself back into the crook of his shoulder, your body pressed right up against his. One hand grasping at his back. The fingers of the other clasping his shorn head, dancing over the prickled hair of his army-issue buzzcut.

He holds you, and in turn you hold him even tighter. You hold each other tightly until you are no longer even dancing. Until you are simply an island in a sea of undulating couples, holding on to each other for dear life.

It scares him.

It scares him to his depths that he never wants to let you go; but not enough to stop.

As he pulls you close to him, buries his face in your neck and embraces you tightly, he thinks about it. He thinks about whether he believes in happy endings. He thinks about whether his, if he could be so lucky, would involve you.

Those thoughts are interrupted when he feels a wetness bloom on his shoulder. Feels you jerking and sniffing against him, and he experiences your sudden outpouring of pain as acutely as though it is his own.

“Hey. Hey,” he soothes. “What is it?”

”I’m not sad, idiot.”

”No?”

”No. It’s…” You sniff. “It’s just been so hard lately. And, you know. Tonight has been so… It’s been so…”

He thinks he knows what you mean. Thinks he understands you completely. “Perfect?” he ventures.

“Yeah,” you exhale. “Perfect.”

He holds you as you cry. And there’s not a chance in hell he’s letting you go.

***

Considering your intoxication level, the sudden onset of tiredness, and your tears, Santiago figures it’s about time to head. He manages to get you in a cab back to the motel eventually - only after you’ve visited the ladies restroom, become fast friends with an equally drunken Nicole, bestowed her with peanut butter cups, and promised to meet-up next time you’re in the city. By this point, you are already dropping, and the soporific movements of the cab have you falling asleep draped over Santiago’s lap.

He pays the driver when you arrive, stirring you with a warm hand smoothing up and down your back. He tries to be calm. Soothes you with his voice; because he knows all too well that for someone in the military, a rude awakening is no small thing.

He walks you to the room and helps you sit down on the bed. Tugs your boots off for you as you opt to bury your nose deep in your own armpit and sniff.

“Ew. I need a fucking shower.”

“Fuck that. You can shower in the morning.”

“I stink.”

“Trust me. You’ve smelled much worse.” He smiles softly as his comment earns an indignant snort from you, but the ire in your face is quickly snuffed as he looks up to you a little too softly. “Let’s get you dressed for bed, alright, birthday girl?”

“Mmm hmm. Okay then.”

He swallows a smile at seeing you in this sleepy state. It’s not often that you allow anyone else to take care of you. In fact, Santiago feels a strange surge of honour - a glow within his chest - that tonight, he is the one who has the privilege.

You unabashedly begin to strip off your jeans and top next, and Santiago quickly scoops up an oversized t-shirt from the gaping mouth of your hold-all. “Here,” he says, swallowing the tremor in his voice as he gathers the fabric up and guides the garment gently over your head to cover you. Gingerly passes your arms through the right holes. “That’s it. Put this on, alright? Can you get your bra out from under there?”

You maneuver the clasp and straps beneath the cover of the shirt until you are pulling the bra out from the confines of your tee, triumphantly flinging it across the room with a soft “woo!”, to which Santiago’s lips twitch in silent amusement.

“Need to brush my teeth at least,” you argue, holding your arms up and out - making grabby hands to signal for his help.

“Alright. Sure. Let’s go together.” Santiago helps you stand. Maneuvers and encourages you onwards. He wraps his closest arm around your waist, and his other hand catches the arm you throw out to him so he can keep you steady. Then, steps in sync, you pad the short distance to the bathroom, Santiago lightly directing you away from bumping your hip on the doorframe (again) as you pass through it. “That’s it. Little off course there,” he chuckles. “Almost as bad as Ironhead’s God-awful driving.”

You turn your head over your shoulder and scold him good-naturedly. “Ouch. Don’t remind me.”

“Yikes, sorry. Too soon?” You’d teased Will for the unfortunate humvee training exercise that had put you in med bay, but Santiago guesses you aren’t quite ready to have him joke about it yet.

“Never getting back in a car with that bastard in the driver’s seat, trust me. Fella takes off-road a little too literally, you know? Still have that goddamn tweak in my back too to prove it.”

“You do, huh?” Shit, you’ve certainly hidden it well enough - had insisted you were unscathed, in fact, when sober - and so Santiago mentally logs that information for later.

With a little bit of wriggling around, you squeeze into the tight bathroom space. When you reach the bathroom sink, Santiago is still behind you, his hands now clamped on your hips and keeping you steady. When you turn on the faucet and bend enthusiastically towards the stream of water however - hinging at the hips and dipping to splash your face with cold water - Santi punches out a strangled note. Which is natural, he thinks, given that your panty-clad, half-bare ass is thrust further into his hands (and his crotch), with decidedly no room in the cramped space for him to back-up. “Woah, Jesus. Keep it vertical, would you?”

“Shit, sorry. Liked that did you?” you mock, with a dirty, chaotic snigger.

“I’m only a man, Princesa.”

With a nervous twist in his belly, Santiago flees to the more expansive space of the bedroom, leaving you to complete your task. Feeling somewhat claustrophobic, he throws open the window, thankful when the relative cool of the night air kisses his skin. The room has grown hot and sticky all of a sudden. Too close. Lord knows why.

He perches himself inside the opened wooden square then, the flung-open frame an awkward perch. He rests with one leg hiked up on the ‘sill and one foot bracing him on the floor, his back reclining against the biting vertical edge.

Only when you reenter does he reluctantly drag his eyes away from the black night and into the soft, shadowed shell of the dreary room. Despite this dimness, he can barely bring himself to look at you in this moment. It is as though you are too bright for him, and so he quickly -and uncharacteristically- averts his eyes.

Still, you’re like a magnet, and his gaze quickly relocates you without much trouble.

“Feel like staying awake a little longer?”

Despite looking bleary-eyed - dead on your feet, even - you nod in response to his proposition and, much unlike earlier, Santiago suddenly feels he wouldn’t dream of sleeping. You perch yourself on the edge of the bed and flick on the lamp, casting a sallow glow throughout the room. It makes you look at once dream-like and infinitely more real to him, as the glare highlights the goose flesh trailing up your arms and thighs. The tired circles under your eyes. He doesn’t know how you make such details attractive, but as far as he is concerned, there is no bad light to cast you in.

You lay down, legs stretched out on the scratchy comforter, and torso propped against the stiff, unforgiving pillows. You make space for him to lie down alongside you, and yet Santiago opts to hover, not ready to relinquish his window seat. It’s as uncomfortable as it probably looks, however, and so he fumbles in his pocket for a smoke, figuring it as good an excuse as any to be sitting up there - instead of lying next to you. He stares out into the blackened parking lot with enough vigour to convince an onlooker it is entirely compelling - instead of looking at you.

You are quiet for a moment following and Santiago lets it hang, exhaling twists of smoke from his mouth to the window. Flicking his spent ash down onto the asphalt below. Then, you expel a blustery sigh.

“Shit,” you grumble. You click your tongue. Santiago turns to see you lying flat on your back now, staring contemplatively up at the dusty, motionless ceiling fan, arms folded behind your head. “That guy I made out with.”

Santiago takes an even deeper drag on his smoke; perhaps unconsciously hoping that if he is occupied long enough, he won’t be required to respond at all.

Your head lollops to the side, your gaze finding his. “Do me a favour and don’t tell Tommy I did that, okay?”

Fuck.

“Wait. Tommy?! You and Tommy?” The words are expelled faster than he would’ve wanted, almost making him choke on a cloak of hot smoke. “Tommy fucking Nelson?”

“Yeahhh. We’ve, um, sorta… been hooking-up lately.”

Santiago quickly inhales another drag, smoke seething out of his nostrils as he flicks the used cigarette butt down to the asphalt below. He is grateful that the lungful gives him a second to think before he speaks - yet apparently, it is not quite long enough. “Shit. The guy’s so stacked I swear he must have abs on his dick.”

You laugh; and Santiago decides that, based on the beauteous sound of it alone, Tommy fucking Nelson doesn’t even remotely deserve you.

“I dunno about abs on his dick… but he’s got enough to work with, know what I mean?”

Santiago continues to peer out of the window, and so you don’t see his face crumple with a frown. “So he’s good, huh?”

You scoff to yourself. “Oh. Fuck. Not really. He doesn’t do much of the work…” Your dirty laugh sounds out. “Fortunately, I’m a goddamn miracle worker when it comes to getting myself off.”

Strike two. Tommy Nelson definitely doesn’t deserve you.

You giggle. Giggle like this is a girls’ fucking sleepover. Like you are revealing some - far more innocent - secret to a best friend.

But… of course. Because that’s precisely what he is to you, right? Nothing more, nothing less. And that’s never bothered him before. Has never bothered him until precisely now.

What exactly has gotten into him tonight, then? Why does some old guy have his head in a spin? Why is he delaying crawling onto his side of the bed? Why can’t he look at you?

Further delaying the inevitable, Santiago pats down his pockets, hoping for another cigarette with which to prolong his diversion by the window. However, he comes up short. Has no other recourse left besides brushing his teeth, kicking off his shoes, stripping down to his boxers, and laying his body out alongside yours. The mattress dips as he settles on top of the covers, and you swivel on to your side to face him.

“Hey.” You prod him in the pec. “What about you anyway?”

“What about me?”

You reach down. Snap the elastic hem of his boxers until it pings back against his toned stomach. “Been getting any lately?”

He makes a vague, non-committal sound, hoping it will be enough; but, of course, you don’t stop there.

“Your dream girl… Let’s see.” Your eyes spark, far too animated considering such a long night. “Wait. Don’t tell me. She’s… nude. Huge breasts.” Santiago had wanted to roll his eyes at you, honestly, but he finds he can’t quite quash his smile. “She’s… I know… draped in the American Flag.” His face splits with mirth. “Reciting the Fifth Amendment.” You prod him emphatically in the pec. “Plus she plays bass in a Pearl Jam cover band and gives next-level blow jobs.” His gaze sweeps over your shit-eating grin like a paintbrush over a canvas. Like fingers down a guitar fret. Like it belongs there. Like he belongs here. “Well?” you’d needled. “Am I warm yet?”

“Wait, I think I know her.” Santiago snaps his fingers. “Hey. Yeah. Didn’t she hook-up with Benny last week?”

You twist as chaotic laugh spills out of you, throwing your arm over him and dipping your head towards his bare chest. It is a small thing. A minute, unconscious action. A brief touch. A single moment. Except… the way it makes his stomach lurch makes it completely undeniable to him. Undeniable that the only girl doing it for him is you.

He realises it all now though, as he looks at you. Realises he’s been seeing you in pieces. In fragments; because of course he has. Of course, because he’s been trying to survive, and if he’d dared to think, instead, about living? Well, then he’d have far too much to lose.

“Come onnn,” you purr, jutting out your bottom lip, entirely oblivious to the way the ground is disappearing from beneath him as you remain curled into his side. “Give me some gossip. It’s my birthday!”

He swallows. Tries to pull himself together. Tries to be exactly what you need him to be.

“Christ.” He nervously scratches at the stubble sprouting along his jaw. “Well. Let’s see. First of all, I’ve spent so long without any action but my own goddamn fist that even Morales is starting to look appealing.”

“Well? Do you think he’d be down?”

“He should be so lucky. Anyway. He’s got a girl back home. High school kinda sweetheart deal.”

You scoff. “What? For real?”

“Mm hmm. He’s in it too. His eyes mightta wandered occasionally - but as far as I know his dick never has.”

You pump your eyebrows like that surprises you. “Good for him.” And then: “It won’t last though.”

“Christ. You’re really that cynical already?”

“Something like that,” you smirk. “Guess it comes with the old age.”

“Oh yeah. Speaking of birthdays…” Santiago pushes off his elbow and swivels, reaching to fumble a tiny, square parcel from his jeans pocket. He settles back into position with a grin on his face, extending his gift toward you. You eye it sceptically, but with casual intrigue.

“Fuck me. Something else from your trousers that’s been manhandled to death, Santiago? You know how to treat a lady.”

He can’t explain why he feels nervous as you weigh the package in your palm. “It’s… for protection.”

“A fucking condom?”

“Ay, dios. Just open it, would you?”

You rise up, settling cross-legged on top of the covers, and Santiago shifts to mirror you, with a lopsided, self-conscious smile. You pause, looking between him and the package with a gentle, subdued glee. You gingerly peel the red tissue paper away, revealing the gift nestled within. As soon as you observe what is inside, however, the glee evaporates from your face. You look down at it, for once rendered speechless before you say his name, the sound as thin as the wisps of smoke still eddying up on the ceiling. “Santiago.”

He swallows. Saws his hand across his stubble, suddenly worried that the gesture is all off. “It’s-”

Your eyes snap up to his, your expression raw and soft. “-I know what it is.”

You look back down to the gift now, warmly. Lift them up, a string of black rosary beads unfurling. The beads his mom had gifted him for protection the day before he’d shipped out, clamping her hands over his and reciting a prayer he didn’t believe in, but which he’d felt all the way down to his marrow. The beads that he’d kept on him ever since, usually nestled in the pocket of his tac vest. The beads which his mother had prayed would keep him safe. Would protect him, when it had turned out to be you who had answered her prayer. You who had protected him, at whatever cost.

“But I can’t-“

Stupid. You’re stupid. Of course you can.

“It’s no big deal. I’m just a cheapskate,” he minimises.

You inhale, about to launch a protest, but you must read something altogether too earnest in his face, since any such argument is subdued as soon as you look at him. Instead then, you hold them up once more, your eyes glistening as you admire the cheap, plastic beads for far more than they are worth.

“But won’t your mom-“

“Be mad I gave them away?” You let the beads pool in one palm, the red tissue paper now strewn over your lap like swatches of blood. Santiago clamps his hands over yours, nestling the beads safely within, in a gesture which mirrors his mother’s own plea a little too closely. He empathises with her then. With her fear of being left behind. With her fear for his soul and its fate. “Are you shitting me? You saved her angelito. She’d probably sign the goddamn house over to you. I mean, shit - she’s already been bugging me to bring her new hija over for tamales.”

He hasn’t ever told you that before. Maybe that’s why you do it. Why you gently cup his face and dip to render a light, chaste kiss on the corner of his lips. When you draw back from him, you look almost as surprised by the gesture as he is.

“Santiago.” Your eyes well-up. “It really means a lot.”

He doesn’t have words for a moment. It does. It means a lot to him, and he’s struck with sentimentality when he realises that it means something to you too. He nods once, gaze gently dancing over your face.

“I mean it,” you squeeze out through welling tears. “This is the sweetest thing-“

“-Shh. Oh no. No, no, no,” he captures your tears with the crook of his forefinger just as they spill over, motioning as though he is attempting to restore them to whence they came, a soft yet playful concern dancing over his face. “Quick sharp. Put these back,” he whisper-shouts, faux urgently. “No-one can know you feel things.”

His remark causes you to laugh through your tears, as you hastily lift a balled fist to scrub them away. The sounds dissolve into a pleasant yet taut silence, leaving the two of you simply looking into each other’s eyes.

You are the first to break it, dropping your gaze down towards your lap.

“Listen. Thank you.”

“It’s the least I could do.“

Your expression grows more troubled then, a divot notching in your brow and your head shaking softly side to side. “Santiago. I need to say this. You… you don’t owe me any debt. Okay? And… and don’t you even think -ever- about trying to repay it. You hear me?”

He owes you everything, and he’ll repay it however he can; but he isn’t about to argue with you. Instead, he simply nods. Forces an even, concessionary smile, leaning into a swift topic change. “You tired yet?”

“Yeah. Exhausted.”

“Let’s lie down then, alright?”

“Mmm.” You set the beads down so carefully on your nightstand that it constricts his chest, arranging them in a nest of tissue paper. “It’s just… I…”

“What?”

He flicks off the lamp and you lay down on your back, staring up at the ceiling fan, the room now illuminated only by the distant glow of the motel’s neon sign across the lot. It bathes the room in a purple-tinged dark. When your voice comes back, it is small. “It’s just that I… I don’t want this night to end.”

Santiago lays himself out, right next to you. “Then let’s try and stay awake, huh?”

“Yeah. Let’s do that.” You shiver; then, instead of crawling beneath the scratchy comforter like he expects, you curl into his side. Rest your head against his chest. Santiago’s arms hover over you for a moment, as though he doesn’t know what to do. In actual fact though, it comes far too naturally to him.

He wraps you in his arms, and begins to smooth one hand up and down your back - of course, being careful not to venture too low, even as you torque your body into his touch.

You exhale against him. Hum, up against his bare, tan skin. Drape your arm over him, and, reliably, there is that knot again. That fist, tightening inside his chest.

“Hey,” he croaks, voice smaller than it needs to be. “Birthday princess?”

“Mmm.”

“Do you…?”

“Do I what?”

He hesitates. Stares coldly and contemplatively up at the ceiling fan himself now even as he bundles the warmth of you in his arms. “Do you believe in happy endings?”

He feels your breathy expletive fan over his chest. “Fuck. That’s a big one.”

“Sorry. Forget it, you don’t have to-“

“-No. I do,” you say with certainty. “I do believe in them.”

Santiago hopes that you can’t feel his heart thundering beneath the shell of your ear. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Except… not for people like us.”

His brow tightens, mouth turning down at the corners. “Why not?”

“Well,” you muse, wriggling pointedly until his hand - stopped dead with suspense - resumes its ministrations over your back, his fingers obediently seeking out the knots and notches until your airy hum sounds again. “Because our hands are too bloody now to build anything good. Right?”

It’s strange because, right now, caressing you like this, he could almost forget that his hands are blood-soaked. Your touch is the only reminder he’s had in some time that his hands can indeed be loving. In fact, the whole concept of war feels so entirely incongruous to him while he’s holding you. Like it could not be further away, even though -in your lives- it is only ever around the corner. He pushes his response out from the depths of his chest. “Don’t you think that’s just a little bleak?”

“I dunno.” You shrug, and he doesn’t enjoy how sad your voice grows . How old you somehow sound all of a sudden. “It’s just… They told us we’d be heroes, Santi. But… When was the last time you felt like one?”

You’re my hero, he thinks loudly, in the achingly quiet room; but, he catches the words before they make it out of his throat. In the end, nothing more than a small, reined-in grunt manages to escape.

“Why do you ask, anyway?”

Because you deserve one. More so than anyone he’s ever met, you deserve one.

His fingers and the heel of his hand continue to massage the dink in your back, rooting out every source of tension. Learning how to take the pain apart for you like a weapon in his palm. “Dunno,” he lies. “The wedding. All that.”

“Pfft. I give ‘em a month.”

“You’re fucking brutal, you know that?”

“And you’re hilarious. Shit. Happy fucking endings? Man. At this point, I think I’d settle for a happy middle, you know? Before I go down in my inevitable blaze of glory.”

“Don’t say that,” Santiago scolds, his voice taut. “I hate when you talk like that.”

He doesn’t blame you. For being cynical or pessimistic - not really. Doesn’t blame you one bit. Not after you’d legitimately looked death in the face. He understands well enough what that can do to a person. How it can change them. How, even someone like you, who always saw a clear, bright path ahead, could begin to doubt the clarity of that vision.

Absent-mindedly, you circle the pad of your forefinger in the valley of his pecs. “What about you, then? Do you believe in all that stuff? Marriage? Happy endings?”

“Meh. Not so much,” he answers honestly, fissures in his voice. Maybe it is his ingrained Catholic guilt talking, but he certainly doesn’t feel like he deserves a happy ending. Not after the things he’s done. Not after all that blood.

“Then how about this, Santiago Garcia,” you begin, tone much more playful, like you’ve had a bright idea. “Would you settle for a lifetime of trouble-making with your ride or die?”

You extend your pinky towards him for the most sacred of all vows, and he curls his own little finger around yours.

He intends his response to feel light-hearted. Equally playful. He really does. But, when the words escape his lips they are heavy. Dripping and weighed with sentimentality. “With you, honestly, it doesn’t really feel like settling.” He suddenly feels like someone is sitting on his chest. Like the air is scarce and sharp with some incendiary cloud - about to ignite and burn everything he’s known to the ground.

“Kiss ass,” you poke lightly, and a wistful smile briefly dances across his features.

“It’s only what you’re due.”

“Oh?! A thorough ass-kissing?”

“Sure. Maybe you can get Tommy-abs-on-his-dick-Nelson right on that.”

You snicker chaotically. “Huh. Maybe.”

Santiago jostles you gently in his embrace. “Hey. Speaking of. Sorry you got lumbered with the sideshow tonight, by the way.”

“Fuck off, Pope,” you huff, like he’s just said something which causes deep offence. “Of all the chumps I couldda been stuck with, I’m glad it was you.” Santiago’s heart flutters, his chest blooming with a hazy, metered-out warmth when he hears you say those words. “Now. Wish me happy birthday one more time, and then sing me a damn lullaby, would you?”

Santiago crushes his chin down to his chest to get a better look at you, having decided that you must surely be joking. “Huh?!”

“We all knew about your guitar skills but you have a beautiful set of pipes too? Been holding out on me, Pope. Now, sing!”

“Jesus. You’re demanding, Princesa.”

“It’s only what I’m due, right? Come on, I haven’t got all night, asshat!” Somehow, the derogatory term sounds imbued with a deep fondness somehow, and it blooms through him.

“Alright. Alright. Keep your panties on.” Shit - you had better.

“Thank you.”

Santiago dips his chin so he can reach your hairline. Settles a chaste kiss there, which lingers a touch too long - but which he can’t possibly cut any shorter, his eyes closing as his lips brush your skin. “Happy birthday,” he breathes, completing part one of your demand. With any luck, he thinks, you might fall straight to sleep like this - before he even has to serenade you.

He stills as your eyes flutter closed, listening out for the slowed pace of your breathing. That is, until you open one eye and whisper-hiss up at him. “Sing.”

A resigned amusement twitches his plush lips and he finally obliges you. He begins softly speak-singing, hoping his soporific and sandy tones will lull you towards sweet dreams, his broad palm still sweeping up and down your back.

“She gives me everything

And tenderly…”

A soft smile graces your features as you note his song choice. “Cobain? You’re such an angsty little gremlin, you know that?”

“I can stop at any time,” he threatens, teasingly.

“No. No, please.”

He clears his throat. Lets his voice grow a touch more full and resonant, despite it being scuffed by tiredness and smoke.

“The kiss my lover brings,

She brings to me-ee,

And I love her.”

It is a little funny, at first. A little awkward; until suddenly, it isn’t . Until, suddenly, a weight settles in your brow. Until his voice begins to falter, cracking apart with emotion.

He hadn’t been able to say it. Clearly not even to acknowledge it.

He hadn’t been able to find the words to tell you what you mean to him. To explain the pit in him which had opened up when he’d almost lost you. Didn’t have the words to tell you you were the reason he’d prayed for the first time in ten years, pledging loyalty to a God he hadn’t believed in -hadn’t needed - until he was begging Him not to take you. He didn’t know how to describe the way it had felt for him to kneel by your bedside, his mother’s rosary beads clutched in his palm so tightly the cross has drawn blood - even as he’d openly cursed them for protecting him and not you, and had cursed you for the same.

He swallows the hard, tight knot which has gnarled in his throat. Wonders if maybe he can stop, because singing feels like purging himself of far too much of the pain and love he has buried, and fuck, it hurts on the way out.

He does consider stopping. That is, until your small, grief-laden voice sounds out as though it hurts you too; but that you need to hear what he is finally telling you. “Please. Don’t stop?”

It is a question, this time, not a demand; and yet, Santiago couldn’t dream of denying you.

And so, with a weight in his brow, he keeps on singing.

“Bright are the stars that shine,

Dark is the sky.

I know this love of mine,

Will never die.”

It is at this point his voice cracks wide open. It is at this point a single tear slips across the bridge of his nose as he sings it out loud. Something he’d known for a long time, in truth, but hadn’t quite found the words for:

“And I love her.”

The room seems eerily still as you each hold your breath. He doesn’t know where to go from here - but luckily, you always seem to know the way forward.

“You know,” you say softly, voice wet with emotion. “It’s a real shame. Because if you did believe in happy endings?”

“Yeah?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

“You’d look pretty good as somebody’s endgame, butthead.”

An emotion Santiago can’t name twists through his middle, like he is being wrung out. Like his blood-soaked soul is finally being purged. It is no wonder then, that his words come out dripping red. Soaked in cynicism. With a disbelief that anything good -for him - is deserved. “Let’s get each other through the happy middle first,” he says, as hidden tears glitter on his long lashes. “Then maybe we’ll see about endings, huh?”

You don’t speak for a moment. Simply swallow in the near-dark. But, it is not lost on him that you hold him just a shade tighter. Then, when he hears a gentle intake of breath from you, he knows your request before you even utter it.

Please.

He resumes his singing. Slower, more off tempo. Begins to repeat the lines, over and over, softer and softer, until your breathing is deep and soporific. Until your weight on him is heavier. Heavier from sleep, and heavier from this new knowledge he has gained.

And, there it is. The end of the night, and yet Santiago cannot dream of sleeping. Not yet. Can only watch you, hold you, listen to your soft breathing, his heart full with a new understanding. And understanding he didn’t invite, but a welcome guest all the same.

He resolves it then. Resolves that, even if he doesn’t deserve a happy ending, he will do everything in his power to make sure you get yours…

Even if that means letting all hope of you -for him- go.

So, as he cradles you in his arms and stares unsleeping up at the ugly ceiling fan, Santiago contemplates it.

Contemplates in great detail the four days with you that irrevocably changed the course of his life.

The day he met you.

The day he almost lost you.

The day he realised he was in love with you.

And the day he started running from that.

The first day had been two years ago, the second had been five months ago, the third had been today, and the fourth?

The fourth will be tomorrow.

Tomorrow, he will start running, because his feelings for you are far too deep and huge for him to handle.

He doesn’t even pause to wonder whether he’ll ever allow himself to stop. After all, once Santiago Garcia has a mission, he accepts nothing less than completion.

Maybe he’s no hero; but he always gets the job done.

#one more reblog

87 notes · View notes

writefightandflightclub · 14 days

Text

Ride or Die (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader): Chapter Ten (of 11 - COMPLETED SERIES)

Genre: a LOT of angst, (some) smut, best friends to… lovers?

Warnings: see collated series warnings, here.

Series info: this is a COMPLETED SERIES. All chapters are written and queued. Posting schedule is here (includes series master list).

AND I have nothing against Philadelphia!

Word count: 16.6k for this part. (SORRY!)

Tag list info: will reblog separately tagging those on taglist. You can request to be added to taglist if you are 18+. Send me an ask, please, so I can keep track :)

Many years earlier

Tonight, Santiago is tasked with making your birthday a memorable one; or, as memorable as he can muster with the $40 he currently has to his name.

“Civilian aircraft, man. Where’s a goddamn helo when you need one?” you fruitlessly complain as he nods along in sympathy.

Santiago feels crushed - on your behalf - that the plans have gone so pear-shaped.

“One o’ these days, getting shot for the Motherland will gain me some fucking privileges, huh?”

“I haven’t seen Miller in months, man. I need to give that bastard some grief soon or I’m going to lose my damn mind.”

“We can call that pendejo tomorrow,” Santiago soothes, popping a stick of gum and beginning to chew obnoxiously. “Hey. We can even pool our insults, huh? Really get him going.”

“I know. I know you do, sweetie.”

Santiago knows how crushed you are. And so, for whatever it’s worth, the man resolves to show you the best night he possibly can, all circumstances considered.

At the same time though, of course. He understands it perfectly.

Valiantly fighting back glassy tears, you pop your lower lip in a display of petulance as he rubs reassuring circles into your knee. “Philly sucks ass.”

This time, he can’t quite quash his smile all the way.

“Philly sucks ass, huh?” he repeats, buying himself time to think.

It’s not as though you ever ask for a lot; but sometimes, in your profession, even asking for a little is asking far too much.

Still, it is brave, Santiago thinks, to hope for things. For his part, he has learned the hard way not to hope for anything much.

On balance, he figured it was probably best that he didn’t risk either kind of tongue-wagging.

Santiago chuckles warmly, slipping into Spanish. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Birthday Princess.”

“It’s been worse places, trust me.”

“Yeah. Your fucking pocket?”

“No shithead, I won it from Catfish.”

“And you don’t know where the hell he’s been?”

“The opposite. I shared a bunk with that hijo de puta, I know exactly where he’s been.”

With easy laughter eddying between you now, you both crouch, carefully gathering up the spoils of the latest Pope/Catfish wager to change hands.

“I really need to meet that guy.”

“Sweetie, you’ve met him.”

“Garcia. I swear to you I’ve never clapped eyes on the bastard.”

“You just don’t remember him.”

“Shit. Well maybe he’s not very fucking memorable. Jog my memory. What did we talk about?”

His shit-eating grin is back. “I dunno. But I bet you talked for the both of you.”

“Hey!” you protest, batting Santiago lightly -more or less- in the upper arm.

“I just mean he’s quiet. Takes a while to warm up, that’s all. But he’s a good guy. You’ll like him, I promise.”

“Okay.” You shove the remaining dime into Santiago’s palm.

“Okay?”

“He’s clearly special to you, so he’s special to me too. Introduce me to him. Again.”

With a cheeky grin you chide him, not eager for a repeat calamity, but your tone is fond. “Don’t you dare shake on it, idiota.”

You whisper, low. “You have thirty seconds to get me my peanut butter cups.”

He chortles and, for the first time (perhaps since imagining his head between your legs), Santiago is eminently excited to see where the night will lead him.

Safe to say, he might be dog-tired… but he finally feels like staying awake.

***

You are so much more than that to him. Sometimes, he even has to keep his distance, so that in moments of weakness he doesn’t forget it.

You’d held him at arms length for a while there too.

Soldiers; not friends.

Friends; not lovers.

Fuck. Focus, pendejo. You need something.

“You’ve gone quiet, Pope,” you frown as he -no doubt- looks at you dopily. “What are you plotting?”

Hell. Maybe he isn’t quite as smart as he gives himself credit for. Or, maybe all the blood is simply rushing to his crotch instead of his brain - for some reason.

Even so. He urges himself to get his mind out of the gutter and to focus up. You deserve so much more than bearing the brunt of his accumulated sexual frustrations. So. Much. More.

“Okay, weirdo. Sure. You’re thinking about the butt crack of the ocean? Miller been feeding you National Geographic documentaries again? You guys do know pay-per-view exists, right?”

Well… That isn’t a lie. Not exactly.

You blink at him then, your eyes wide and - dare he say - hopeful, one eyebrow arcing in idle curiosity.

You are typically the decisive one. You are always clear on what you want. Tonight, however, it is evident that you are counting on him to lead you somewhere.

“Music!” you exclaim excitedly, opening your eyes and grinning at him, still bouncing on the spot like an excited kid.

Boy. He’s glad to be proven wrong.

“Do we follow it?” you ask excitedly, the glint of adventure in your bright eyes, and in that moment he could swear he’d follow you anywhere.

“Tonight, I swear my oath and pledge my allegiance to music, so help me God.”

Santiago stomps emphatically again, for effect - an overblown, cheesy action-movie-style salute, his strong jaw set in an overly caricatured display. You beam again, a face-splitting grin, and he…

…realises he is having fun.

You are so much more than a throwaway fantasy to him.

You truly are the friend he’s needed so desperately, and feels so, so lucky to have found.

He runs with you, and he hopes, silently, selfishly, somewhere in the pit of him, that your paths never wind in different directions.

He’ll follow you anywhere.

***

“I’m on the guest list!” you insist with a hiccough, trying your utmost to blag your way into the wedding party contained beyond the double doors; the established source of the music.

Your assertion is much to the chagrin of the teenaged, stoner-looking kid on the front desk, who is clearly milking his new-found authority for all it’s worth.

“Sure, lady. Then what’s your name?”

Santiago looks at you expectantly, his arm slung casually around your shoulders, his chest already shaking and nose scrunching with a mildly tipsy, sleep-deprived concoction of mischief.

“The name’s Trench,” you deadpan, and the poor fellow actually begins to skim his index finger down the alphabetised list. “Mariana Trench.”

“Nicole and Dio,” Santiago fires off smugly, causing you to first gasp and - second - to gawk at him like a fish (which is funny, because for all you know he’s made those up too).

“Yeah. Still no.” This kid is a tough nut.

“Shit,” you plead. “Well can I at least use the restroom?”

“I guess that’s fine,” the kid concedes with an eye roll, gesturing towards the left hand side of the lobby.

You saunter off, beelining towards the door with such ferocity that you whack your hip off of the doorframe on the way in there.

Sporting the friendliest smile he can muster in the full knowledge this kid behind the desk hates him already, Santiago mosies up to the counter.

“Come on, buddy. Hook us up,” he reasons. “It’s a Tuesday night and everywhere else is closed by now.”

“Dude, your attempts to get laid are not my issue.”

“No. No, it’s… She’s my friend. It’s her birthday and-”

“-Then take her to a fucking Chilli’s, bro. Still not my problem.”

Santiago huffs, still trying to keep his face neutral. Non-threatening. He needs to step things up before you return from the restroom.

“Listen, buddy.” The kid scowls at him then as if to confirm - I’m emphatically not your buddy. “Do you know what it’s like to be shot in service of your country?”

“What?!”

A gulp trails down the kid’s neck, and he tucks his long, straight blonde hair behind his ears. “You’re intense, bro. Anyone ever told you that?”

“Great. Thank you. I mean it.”

“Yep. Whatever. Don’t get paid enough for this shit, bro.”

“Sure thing,” he calls back over his shoulder. “I’ll give it some consideration.”

“Oh. By the way. How do I look?” you question, when the two of you are just shy of making an entrance to the main hall.

“You got it!” he musters, getting himself quickly in check. Christ, he needs to prioritise getting laid - just as soon as he is no longer wholly dedicated to your birthday.

“Yay!”

You lead him by the hand and, once again, Santiago does not complain. Then, swinging open one of two double doors, plastered with unsightly fire regulations, you enter the fray.

“We’re really doing this?” Santiago raises his voice above the tremor of the music. “Crashing a fucking wedding?��