#pdcoa

He lit her cigarette and she smoked in silence for a while, before turning to him and pulling him into a conversation. He couldn’t remember what they spoke of - dancing, maybe? - but he knew the alley seemed very small, suddenly, with how they gravitated closer and closer. She tipped her face up for him, and it was a nice face, fine-boned and sharp-edged—

“Mateo,” cut in Diego. Mateo startled. He hadn’t even heard the back door bang open. “There you are.”

He didn’t look happy, but Mateo mustered up a smile. “Hey! I was just talking with—”

“Fuck off, Rio,” said Diego, without looking at Mateo at all. It was like he hadn’t spoken. A muscle in Diego’s jaw worked, and Mateo’d never seen him so closed off.

“Good seeing you, too, Diego,” the redhead replied, smirking a lopsided little smirk. “See you around, baby. Thanks for the light.”

“Don’t,” started Mateo, but the woman was already slinking away. “Call me that,” he muttered, and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling - out of sorts. Diego’s glower settled on him, black and heavy. “What?”

“Steer clear of her,” he said. And gestured impatiently. “C’mon. Fly’s looking for you.”

“What? Why? She seemed—” Hot. Intense. Dangerous. “— fine?”

Diego huffed out a breath and slammed the service door behind them, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Well she’s not. She’s a crazy bitch and you’re better off telling her to fuck herself.”

“Why?”

Diego sucked his teeth, looking torn. But he rolled his shoulders and gave his head a shake, looking like he was getting ready for a brawl.

“Rico doesn’t like her,” he settled on at last. “She’s banned from The Cat.”

That drew him up short. “What? I thought you only banned, like, cops and Nazis. Is she a Nazi?”

“No.” Jaw tight, he waved Mateo on. “Go on. You know how he gets.”

So he went, confused, and the feeling lingered, even through the happy fog that being in Fly’s orbit always left him in. Dett seemed to notice, because she snagged him a little later, a tray of shots in one hand.

“What’s up, baby?”

“Don’t call me that,” he said, reflexive. Then, “Hey, do you know Rio? White girl, red hair? Kind of foxy?”

Dett narrowed her eyes at him, but jerked her chin. He trailed her awkwardly as she wound across the floor, making sales and gathering empties.

“She and Rico used to hang out,” she said on the way back to the bar, mouth a lipsticked twist of displeasure. The words felt forced, like maybe he’d yanked them out along with some teeth, maybe.

“They dated?”

“I don’t know what they did, except egg each other on. Like two sides of a fucking coin,” said Dett. “Fuck this - Fly! I’m taking my 15 and stealing your duckling!”

Engaged with a rowdy bachelorette party, flashing the flirty customer service grin Mateo hated, Rico only lifted a hand to wave her off. Mateo trailed her back out to the alley, feeling weirdly unsettled.

“I thought he didn’t date,” he ventured at last, settling down on an overturned milk-crate. That was his thing, wasn’t it? Unattainable, charismatic, painfully cool Fly Rico, who’d flirt with anybody but never follow through.

“Aw, ducky. He doesn’t date the babies. Everyone else is fair game,” she said, and patted his knee. “Buck up. So Rio was this spooky bitch who hung around for a while, back when we were younger and dumber. She loved to stir the pot and drag Rico into shit. Tagging a building wasn’t enough, she had to try and smash up a police station, that kind of thing, y’know?”

Something warm settled in the pit of his stomach. He leaned forward and watched Dett light a cigarette and blow a series of wobbly smoke rings. What were they like, back then? What was Rico like, young and wild and hungry for everything? It itched at him like smoke in his lungs, the curiosity.

But Dett drew up short and fixed him with a heavy, pointed look. “Hey. I’m only telling you this so you get th point. She’s bad news. I tell you, and you never bring it up again, never even breathe this bitch’s name, you got it?”

“I got it.”

“Swear,” she said sharply.

A lifetime of promises to Fina – sacred things, big and small – had him crossing his heart with the tip of his finger before he’d even realized his hand had moved. “I swear,” he said, and meant it. What was one more secret for the pile? He’d die before he told. But Dett only eyed him and smoked furiously for a few long minutes. Then she nodded, and seemed to relent.

“So one night we’re all out partying, and Rio disappears for a bit. Gets into a fight with some dick twice her size - and Rico jumps in to save her ass, break it up, whatever.” Dett blew out about sigh, sounding frustrated. “She got him knifed - or knifed him herself. I wasn’t there, I didn’t see. And you know him. He’d never rat. But. He nearly died.”

“What?” said Mateo, as if from a long ways away. The ember in the pit of his stomach turned to ice. He swallowed hard.

“In the hospital, after - I’d never seen Papa so mad. Banned Rio for life, not that any of us were fighting for her. She took off, before the police and the paramedics showed up, while D and I - and all the blood. There was so much blood, that night.” Cigarette between her teeth, her gaze fell to her empty hands. She flexed them slowly, like she could feel the hot red stain there, still. Then she took a deep breath and swallowed. Visibly yanked herself back from the edge.

“She never visited - I would have killed her if she tried. After he healed up, she started sniffing around again, so Fly burned her, and now nobody fucks with her at all. So you steer clear of her, too. She only turns up trouble.”

“Okay,” he said, faintly. He’d thought she was hot and smooth, before. Smoking a cigarette and looking like she wanted to swallow him whole. She got him knifed. He nearly died. Attraction withered and died, there, in the alley way. He didn’t fight it, and he didn’t grieve.

A few days later, when he was taking a breather around eleven, Rio turned up again. Mateo ducked back inside without greeting her and couldn’t help sticking close to the bar, close to Fly, after. Like she was going to follow him in to finish what she started, maybe. Like he needed to see Rico whole and well and flirting carelessly for tips. It made his chest ache to see it, and his teeth hurt from clenching his jaw.

But he was fine. It was fine. Rico was perfectly healthy and what he did for his job was none of Mateo’s business.

She was gone when Mateo followed Fly out into the back alley a while later, anxiously curling and uncurling his fists. Even when Fly grinned at him, shoving his sweat-dark hair out of his eyes, even when he ducked his head to chase the lighter’s flame, Mateo couldn’t relax, couldn’t stop jumping at shadows. The pinpricks of light reflected in Fly’s eyes like distant stars, and the fire kissed his cheeks and turned his eyelashes to gauzy spiderwebs, and he watched Mateo, honey-slow, with a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth and he—

He still couldn’t relax.

It was a long night.

#

The door slammed behind him, the loudest sound in the whole world. Mateo stumbled, then staggered, then the wall surged up under his hands and he managed to stay upright, thank God. He didn’t think his legs would hold if he fell and needed to get back up, just now.

The world spun in a wobbly, nauseating blur. Mateo shut his eyes and tried to breathe through it, though he felt his stomach churning and his throat twitching like he was gonna gag.

He swallowed, and shut his mouth tight, and breathed. He didn’t wanna throw up. Not right now and not outside The Cat, where Rico was inside with some guy with a shitty haircut and his pretty hands all over the guy, laughing into his shoulder as they moved to the electric beat. The only two people in the fucking world, apparently.

Some night off.

Tears threatened, and Mateo tried to swallow those too. He laid his hot cheek against the brick and scraped it, feeling the roughness catch on his skin. It distracted him, and it was cool, and everything was terrible but at least he had this wall right here.

“Shit,” he mumbled, a slow-dawning realization. “Shit, I’m hammered.“

Absolutely soaked, crowed the little voice in the back of his head that sounded like Rico at his happiest. It felt like getting stabbed right between his ribs, hearing that. It hurt, it hurt. Hurt like Raul telling him, gentle and so damn kind, ‘Maybe you should give this a rest, huh?’ because he had his answer and Rico didn’t want him, wouldn’t ever want him. Mateo’s breath punched out in a ragged sob and then he couldn’t stop. The dam shattered and the tears and hurt poured out.

He wiped at his face with both hands, like he had when he was just a kid tagging along at the grocery store and so worked up about something that there was snot and tears everywhere and too many eyes watching and Tiago was getting frustrated with him again—

“You okay, baby?”

Mateo wanted it to be Rico so bad. So bad it hurt, even. He wanted Rico’s warm eyes and pretty hands and husky voice, and his arm around Mateo’s shoulders like the only thing anchoring him to the earth. The heat of him, and the smell of his sandalwood-and-spice cologne, and his quicksilver grin. Mateo wanted him. But it was only some girl with a fox face. He sniffled at her, and felt her hand on his arm like an afterthought. She was looking at him like -

Like she wanted him.

God, he wanted to be wanted. Just a little. Just a bit.

“No,” he told her, drunk and honest.

She smiled with one side of her mouth, and wiped the tears off his cheeks with both thumbs. Her hands were cool and sure. He leaned into her, and her smile widened with a flash of teeth.

“Well,” she said, “let’s see if we can fix that, huh?”

And then they were kissing and the world dissolved into heat and want and relief like cool sweet water on a parched throat. She wanted him, and it was simple and it made heat bloom in the pit of his stomach. Her back hit the brick and her mouth opened under his and it was good, God, it was so good. She tasted like mint and whiskey and he chased the taste of it while her fingernails raked down his back.

She groaned against his cheek when he hitched one of her legs up over his hip, grinding in close. It made him wonder dizzily if he could do it. If he could hike up her other leg and have her right here against the wall in front of God or anybody. Her pulse pounded under his tongue, and she arched into his hands, and she was so fucking soft and she wanted him and he wanted—

“Mm,” she sighed, and her head lolled back, and he mouthed at her neck like something starved.  “Find us a room, baby.”

“Nn?” Words were too hard. He was too hard. He lifted his head when she pulled on his hair and fixed him with a black-eyed stare. All pupil. She licked her lower lip in a flash of pink, and he dipped to do the same, but her grip on his hair tightened in a stinging flash of heat. He bit back a moan.

“A room,” she repeated. “A motel or something.”

There was one a couple of blocks over. The Sunset Motel. But even a couple of blocks felt like too far, with her pressed so close.

“Alright,” he panted, and stamped a messy kiss across her mouth. “Alright. C’mon.”

The Sunset was close, but there was an apartment above The Cat that would be empty this time of night, with two of its occupants working and one with his hands all over some guy with a shitty haircut. Mateo led the way, knocking the loose brick out of the wall and scraping up his fingers to get at the spare key. The inside of the apartment was dark, and the floor vibrated in time with the music pounding below. The girl laughed, low and husky and hot, and they were kissing again, tripping over each other and the coffee-table. Mateo managed to kick the door shut behind them, and then it was a scramble – out of clothes, into the nearest bedroom – and then—

Things got a little hazy, then. Clarity came in little flashes: one cold hand against his navel while the other rolled a condom down his length, the flash of red hair against a grey pillowcase, the ragged noise she made when he pressed his fingers – his cock – inside her. The smell of musk and sweat and sandalwood that clung to the skin of her throat where he pressed his greedy mouth.

After, he must have slept, because he woke reaching for her. The whole process repeated itself – once, then twice. Her hands, her mouth, the hot clutch of her body. The fevered intensity of her stare on his face, her mouth gasping “baby, baby” until he had to turn his face away, into the pillow, the taste of blood in his mouth from his bitten lip.

And through it all, the warm smell of sandalwood and spice.

He was muzzy, half-asleep, content with her skin against his and her head on his chest when a flicker at the doorway caught his attention and—

Rico.

Rico with one hand going white on the doorknob, still as death, the other clenched into a fist with something in it. His left thumb twitched, working the spinning loop of his fidget-ring frantically. His eyes – his eyes were—

Mateo sat up all at once, mouth dry, tongue clumsy. The air was blood-hot against his bare skin when the sheets fell away.

“Fly,” he said, drunk and stupid. He sounded surprised. “Fly, I uh—”

He stumbled, tripped, babbled. The girl. The girl didn’t say anything at all. He turned to her, hoping maybe—

It hit him, then.

Fox face. Red hair. Dark eyes. A crooked kind of smirk.

“Hey, Fly,” purred Rio.

Mateo shut his mouth, feeling like he’d missed a step on the way down the stairs. The gravity of the situation seeped into his pickled brain. His stomach iced over and his lungs locked up.

“Rico,” he heard himself say. Rico still hadn’t moved. He was always moving – tapping his foot, pacing, spinning his fidget ring – but now he was still, all but his wild eyes.

“Get out,” said Rico.

“Rico,” Mateo pleaded.

He moved at last, and something hit Mateo in the face. Surprised, he sucked in a breath, and a the stink of what he’d done – smoke-liquor-sweat-perfume – washed over him. It was his shirt. He must have dropped it, before.

He was vaguely aware of Rio sliding out of bed – out of Rico’s bed, fuck – and gathering her clothes, unhurried and unbothered and smooth.

Numbly, Mateo put on his shirt. He found his jeans, and he shoes and – and he was walking out with Rio, past a dumbfounded Diego and a glaring Dett in the doorway. He walked away and expected to cry. He even wiped at his dry eyes, like muscle-memory. But no tears came.

With each step, a hole ripped open a little wider behind his ribs, black and sucking as a chest-wound. He breathed in shallow little sips, expecting pain.

Diego was the one to shut the door behind them. The slam of the deadbolt locking felt – horrifically final.

Mostly dressed in the pre-dawn gloom, Mateo couldn’t help but look around. His head felt foggy, sluggish, and his throat thick. The beginnings of a hangover, probably.

“What do I do now?” he wondered, and the words were flat.

Rio touched his arm, and he didn’t flinch away.

“We get breakfast,” she told him.