#*concorona fic

James’ love never fully arrives. It proceeds slowly and silently; so much so that she fails to notice it’s happening. Remarkably, it doesn’t seem as if it will ever settle in or take its shoes off. Growing and changing all the while right under her nose.

The reality is, she’d more or less deluded herself into thinking that he’d actually said it already. It was only after she heard it that she realized no, not in so many audible, vowel-laden words.

Which is absurd of course—he absolutely had (an innumerable amount). With every bullet and broken bone. Every utterance of, You okay? Every glance from the driver’s seat, the desert rushing behind him in a blur of stars and sand. And really, what does it matter whether he speaks the words or not? She had felt it—had been feeling it all this time, and while it might be important for some, it was less so for her. The woman with the tail of a snake in her mouth, wondering what love is supposed to even taste like anymore. 

And what would they even be if not for their silences? His love for her had taken up shop in their silence; it thrived on her careful slowness to speak. Lived in his hands tangled up in her hair. She had barely spared a thought for what it would sound like coming from his mouth until it did. Until he was leaving one morning on some routine errand and her heart had stuttered and stopped and it was like she was just a drug-dealer’s girlfriend again—in love and powerless at the whims of some other man’s violence.

“Love you,” he hummed into her ear with a swift, thoughtless kiss—as if his body had done it without his brain’s permission. Habitual. Maybe, she thought, maybe he was suffering under a similar delusion. “I’ve said it hundreds of times,” she imagines he might have thought, “what’s one more?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says with a smile and a wink, his shoulders loose and relaxed. He slides into the driver’s seat like he has so many times before, and there’s no betrayal in his gait or his gaze of a feeling of panic, as if he has no awareness of what he’s just said.

She doesn’t think for one moment to correct him—to draw attention to what some might consider to be a momentous, cosmic shift in the universe of their relationship. He’s said it before, of course. And love is in the returning.

When she leans into the open window, her forearms burn some from the heat, but she savors it. She wants nothing so much as to remember this; all of it. The way the heat rose from the blacktop beneath her feet; how his hair curled over the top of his ears. How ordinary and infinite.

Maybe that’s why the first time she sees him get well and truly hammered, it’s because he’d already come to her on his knees. Maybe he figures there’s nothing left to lose. The fact that he’d gotten on a plane at all revealed a hand she wasn’t prepared to decipher. Let alone the pleading, wounded look on his face, asking her to forgive him—to “let him in.” For James, she knows it doesn’t get much more vulnerable than that. What more could he possibly do or say that would further convey the depths of the humility he’s shown in the last few weeks?

Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that they’re in his house. This gorgeous, minimalist structure that he’d chosen and to some extent designed. It had awoken in her an unexpectedly pleasant feeling. To discover a new, undeniably charming aspect of his character. Something decidedly non-violent, not laced with yet another piece of dark, impermeable personal history that leaves her spiraling, aching for more. No, all it really does is endear her to the fact that James craves safety—that he loves windows; that he wants to feel free and safe all at once. It feels familiar.

They’re in his house, alone (aside from the armed guards wandering around somewhere, sight unseen), drinking some favorite, dark liquor of his, sitting out by the pool as the sun sets behind them, and at some point she begins to notice the softness of his gaze—how his posture has suddenly slackened; how his words feel a little less deliberate. How he keeps staring at her hands wrapped around her glass. Is this it? she thinks, trying to keep from grinning, Is this the James with nothing to hide?

A drunk James allows his laughter to escape in a way that sober James does not. She’s heard James laugh before, but it’s almost always laced with bitterness or disbelief—the chuckle she hears now, quiet and quick, is devoid of nothing but good humor. It is laughter for the sake of laughter. Drunk James throws his hood over his head and burrows into his sweatshirt like a teenager. She has to actively ignore the sudden, all-consuming fantasy that occurs in her own head—how it would probably fall to just above her knees. How it would be warm with his heat, or how it might smell like his aftershave. He’d give it to her if she asked, she knows, but she’s worried about breaking the spell they seem to have fallen under.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” is what she says instead, taking another fortifying sip of her own drink.

He laughs, “You mean without the stick up my ass?”

“No,” nudging his shoulder playfully, “happy.”

“I’m… happy,” he insists with a somewhat comical frown, his nose twitching in painfully familiar way. What he says next, it’s quiet and mumbled, so, she wonders if she’s heard it at all, but she could swear it was something like, “I like being around you.”

But there’s this same fear that she’d felt earlier—that exposing him to the truth of what he’s revealed will only send him back towards whatever place he had retreated in the past. Before he drank himself into a compromising position that could’ve put his life at risk. She can’t really blame him. A sharp, bitter anger towards Camila Vargas rises in her throat as if it were bile and she finishes off the rest of her drink in an attempt to ignore the sound of the woman’s voice in her head.

“You alright?”

While the look of him in his hood had been cute and all, transforming him into some petulant, drunken teenager, the look of him with it suddenly removed—the way his hair sticks in all directions, how his face has morphed into a look of concern she’s seen quite a few times before—this is worse. Harder to resist.

“Your hair is a mess,” she says, quiet, reaching out to try and tame the wayward strands. It’s the first time she’s actually touched his hair. She’s already begun to memorize the feel of it, as if she’ll never get another chance to do so again.

He grunts, sniffs—his eyes are halfway closed, and she’s begun to think he’s fallen asleep when he speaks again, only somewhat less coherent than before, “I like your hair,” she freezes. “It’s pretty.”

“Thank you,” she answers, slowly, yet again unsure if she’s actually heard him correctly. Forcing herself to keep her wayward hands away from his head for the time being, lest she do something really stupid like kiss him. Which she suddenly realizes, to her growing horror, is something she almost desperately wants to do in this moment.

After a few minutes of largely comfortable silence, wherein they listen to chirping crickets and the pool water lapping against the concrete, she makes the, what she believes to be, wise decision to remove herself from the dangerous situation she seems to have gotten herself in. “I should head to bed,” she starts, standing and stretching her back, “will you be alright out here?”

What had only moments ago felt like a wise move becomes almost immediately laced with regret at the sight of his somber expression. “Yeah,” he replies, grabbing her hand where it hangs near to his face, which would’ve been bad enough, but it’s when he tugs her a bit closer, just enough to rest his forehead against the back of it, that her heart stops. “Thank you.”

It’s the safest form of gratitude he could offer. Easily confused for her immediate concern, the question of whether or not he’d be okay out here on his own, but it’s the earnestness, the way his voice sounds rougher than usual, that she feels the enormity of his words. She’s overwhelmed with the sudden urge to cry, but manages to release a breath instead, realizing that she’s been holding it for longer than she thought.

“You’re welcome,” is what she manages to say, instead of the tears, instead of placing a gentle, torturous kiss to the top of his head.

He pulls away suddenly, dropping a swift, instinctive kiss to the back of her hand before returning to the drink he’s left alone too long, “Good night.”

“Night,” she answers, somehow, blinking once, twice, trying to find her way back to the reality that existed before she’d heard his laugh, or felt his hair, or his lips against her skin.

 Stage 1: Silence. Marvelous, how the brain can register the absence of noise when it is barely cognizant of the fact that it is awake. Of course, complete silence is an impossibility. There’s always some form of noise which allows the silence to be observable at all. The silence is punctuated by a muffled wind beyond the windows; the soft, gentle ticking of a clock; slow, even breaths. When you wake at a slower pace, you are afforded the luxury of drawing an obvious conclusion from each observation as they arise. No need to panic. Your heart is beating, as it should, comfortably, inside your chest. Do you remember the wind against the windows? The wind against the windows means shelter—safety from the elements. The clock is ticking and time is passing, but you’re not worried about it moving from one minute to the next, because after the clock you could hear his breath, which brings you to—

Stage 2: Warmth. Smooth, warm flesh that leeches into your own skin, which is also bare. The body beneath your cheek rises and falls at an even keel, not unlike your own heart. It’s how you know he’s still asleep. There’s the hint of a hand against your back, and it’s warm there too. A feather light touch that reminds you of the evening before. How his hands had been… everywhere. How they had felt in your hair, around your waist, beneath your thighs and now, just—warmth and stillness. You wait, patiently, for his heartbeat to quicken, to have some sign that he’s waking up too, when you realize—

Stage 3: Pain. Not the kind of pain that throws you into a panic. Not the kind of pain you might feel waking up in chains, shackled to a ceiling. Just an ache or two. One of them pleasant, the other not so much. You focus on the more annoying sensation first, and realize that it is emanating from your hip, because your hip is digging into the floor, which is not carpeted, and therefore a bit harsh on the bonier parts of your anatomy. Still on the floor. Never made it to the bed. Flashes of briefly falling onto the sofa only to quite quickly tumble to the floor and onto his lap, with your pants shoved down to your ankles and his arms tight about your waist and that’s when you consider the pleasant ache. The memory of the top of his head between your legs and, oh, that would no doubt account for the slight twinge of pain where her thighs rest together—like a sunburn you can’t quite bring yourself to regret.

When she finally opens her eyes the room is still dark, and she smiles at the realization that there is still enough time to return to sleep. She doesn’t want to wake him, but as her hip is really starting to annoy, she does her very best to make it as enjoyable for him as possible. With a kiss to his chest, a hand brushing against his belly she feels his heart beat faster, and before he can awaken on a gasp of his own, she speaks—

“James,” whispering, her own voice swallowed up by the pre-dawn silence, “let’s move to the bed.”

He grunts, and despite the absurd fact that the sound of it seems to have made its way directly betwixt her legs as if it had no other place to go (of course, where else would it go), she laughs and sits up, trying and failing to move his dead weight with her.

“Please,” she asks again, doing her very best not to be charmed by the grumpy, tired man-child routine, “I promise you’ll thank me in a few hours.”

After a few more minutes of gentle coaxing they both manage to stand, stumbling towards her unmade bed, falling into the soft sheets with mutual sighs and groans of appreciation. Not quite so young as they used to be—one too many scrapes and bruises.

They’re quiet when they walk through the house, each of them wandering to their own private spaces, looking for some brief respite before all the blood and bone comes rushing back in a flood. Teresa used to treasure these moments, but ever since Guero’s death, she’s been wary of the silence. Being alone doesn’t necessarily help, but being around James and Pote seems to make it worse.

With Pote, it’s all she can do to not think about the way he’d crumbled in that bathroom in Malta—how one of the strongest men she had ever known had been driven to tears in front of her; how it had been her fault. How he had suffered, been tortured, had his identity stolen, and for what? For her? For this ridiculous quest she had undergone in a fit of childish vengeance? After Malta, it had been hard to avoid comparing herself to Camila—a woman who cared little for the people who had pledged their loyalty to her. In Teresa’s mind, having a person’s loyalty was not a thing to be taken lightly, or to take advantage of. It was to be held, kept safe, nurtured, and returned in kind. At the sight of him bruised, curled in upon himself, barely able to speak, How could she think herself any different?

The doors to the balcony have swung open from the wind, and the sight of grey, swollen rain clouds in the distance serve to match her chaotic, sleep-deprived thoughts. Her body hits the cushion as if it were made of lead, and she can hear the echo of Pote banging about in the kitchen, probably making breakfast. Not as if she’d be able to eat it. The thought of food these last few days, it’s hard enough to keep from vomiting at the very mention of it.

Down the hall she notes the squeak of the shower, and inevitably her thoughts shift to the bareness of him. Having seen him the once, it’s difficult to think of him, let alone look at him, and not remember. Like Pote there’s guilt, but it’s twofold. There’s the fact that she was sleeping with him while Guero had been held captive, silent—refusing to speak of her. And then there’s the crippling truth of his own loyalty, just as Pote had been harmed on her behalf, wouldn’t James be next? If it wasn’t today, it could certainly be tomorrow, or the day after that—a week later, a month later, it made no difference. They would all pay for her decisions, good or ill.

Had that been the last time she’d rested? It must’ve been. Curled into his chest before it had all gone wrong, with his arm draped over her shoulder as if it had always been there. For the first time since they’d returned from Mexico, she takes comfort in her memories instead of allowing herself to be tortured by them. She promises herself to return for the guilt later, but for the moment, as she unzips her boots, shrugs off her jacket, she remembers how James’ skin had felt against hers and she doesn’t hate herself for it.

In fact, she finds her mind calling out for it; running towards the safety of the memory, hoping against hope that it will convince her body to settle, to quiet, to fall back into a real, useful sleep. A warm breeze swirls about the room and she feels her skin prickle; smells the rain on the air as her eyelids finally begin to grow heavy, her head drooping towards her folded hands.

“Teresa,” he speaks softly, and she jerks upwards, her senses rushing back in an almost painful burst. As if summoned by her thoughts he stands over her with a steaming mug of what smells like tea in his hand. She must’ve fallen asleep for more than a few moments, because the rain has begun to lash against the windows, and the sky has turned a foreboding purple shade. “Sorry,” he speaks again, putting the mug down on the end table, “Everything’s fine, I didn’t mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep.”

“No, no,” she answers before she can stop herself, wondering, in the back of her mind, why she isn’t telling him to go. The man who thinks he knows better than her—who convinced Pote to lock her in a goddamn basement. He doesn’t know a damn thing, hisses the voice of the Queen, but it lacks her usual wisdom, and Teresa can’t help but wonder at the defensiveness in her tone, the underlying panic she’s never really heard before. “It’s fine. What are you doing?”

He takes a breath, and she can tell he’s mulling over what to say, but predictably, he answers with a gentle, “Just making sure you’re alright.”

The sincerity with which he speaks, it seems to poke and jab at the open wound she already has, this gaping, bleeding thing that feels as if it will never heal. At any other time, his asking after her comfort would be just that, but the guilt and pain of losing Guero is too fresh, and she has to squeeze her eyes shut, or risk letting the sudden bout of tears escape. And this was how grief was, was it not? One moment, you feel nothing, and the next, it hurts to keep from crying.

He hesitates, but only briefly before she feels his presence at her side, warm and tense. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“How can you say that?” she spits back, the tears flowing freely down her reddened cheeks. “He’s dead because of me.”

“You didn’t kill Guero, Teresa,” and she can’t help the flinch at the feeling of his hand coming to rest over hers, “Camila did.”

He goes to move away, interpreting her discomfort as a sign he should go, but yet again, her mind and body betray her, and she stops him with a, “Wait, please, I’m sorry—”

“What are you apologizing for?” he asks, stunned, his gaze earnest and endless, “There is nothing to be sorry for.”

Maybe it’s the resounding thunderclap in the distance, or the small “yelp,” from Pote who has probably nicked himself on a knife; maybe it’s James’ closeness, the softness of his voice, his forgiveness, but in that moment, the sobs suddenly wrack her frame with a power that she would find frightening if she had the ability to think—her throat begins to hurt with the force of it, her eyes straining with the weight of all the tears she has refused to shed, and James, as if he has no control of himself, pulls her towards the shelter of his body. 

“It’s okay,” she hears him mumble, vaguely, his words lost in the sound of her gasps and the steady hum of the rain, “it’s gonna be okay.”

She must fall into sleep without realizing it—a restful one, if her steady heartbeat is anything to go by, the way the inside of her head feels less heavy. The rain is at barely a drizzle now, but she hears it, drip, drip, dripping down the glass doors, feels the late afternoon sun on the foot that’s peeking out from beneath the bedcovers. She’s not certain how she made it into bed until she opens her eyes and sees him asleep at her side, his body at a respectable distance from her own, one arm flung over his forehead.