#tybtm

[intheorangebedroom]

Tonight you belong to me, prologue

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. 

This is the beginning of what you wished had no end.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, orange besties 🧡 See series masterlist for extensive a/n blurb and especially for trigger warnings. Tread carefully. Ily 🧡 Please be gentle, I'm terrified 🫣

Word count: 5.1k

[series masterlist] * [next]

Prologue: In The Beginning

He comes to you every Friday. 

He gets in after dark. He is gone before dawn. 

In this shady motel on the outskirts of town, where no one will recognise your car. The curtains are yellow, and the carpet is brown. There’s a dollar store painting of the Appalachian above the bed, and the tap runs either trickling and scalding or high pressure and cold. 

You hated that in particular, in the beginning. Now you don’t care. You don’t wash him off your skin anymore. Not until you’ve got no other choice. 

Because he can’t mark you, you’d been firm on that point, he likes to come on your skin. 

When he’d finally spoke, that very first time, he’d told you he was Frankie, but you assume it’s not his real name. Which is fine, you didn’t give him your real name either. 

“Frankie” had been far subtler than you, regretful, perhaps, you like to entertain the delusion, when he’d hinted that you couldn’t leave any trace on his body. 

And, in the beginning, you couldn’t imagine that it would ever matter. 

You were wrong. 

You were wrong about a lot of things, in the beginning. 

—

Friday night. Again. 

The swinging door creaks on its hinges to let in the regulars at random intervals. Mostly men, mostly middle-aged, mostly unshaven. Mostly clad in the working-class uniform of jeans, boots and t-shirt. Few of them sit around the round wooden tables. The bar isn’t large, there’s only four of those.  

When they come in small parties, the men favour the two pools on the right. They’re lined with blue felt. The casing is made of plywood. No one ever plays darts, no one ever feeds the jukebox. Its electric cord lays unplugged on the floor, coiled like a sad sagging tail. 

If they walk in alone, they tend to sit at the bar. Head turned toward the giant television screen hung on the wall to their left, where younger men in more colourful uniforms fight, run, kick or throw balls in all shapes and sizes. Its noise is at the forefront, the middle-aged men’s conversations a low humming sound that falls into the background. 

The long and angled bar itself takes up most of the rectangular room’s space. The counter is stripped-down to the bare minimum. Stainless steel, easy to clean, practical. Four beer taps and a gambling machine and beyond the counter, a large mirror with three rows of dusty liquor bottles. 

Food is served, occasionally, as evidenced by the paper napkins dispensers and the two yellow and red plastic condiment bottles on each table. 

The barman runs the place on his own. You drink here every Friday evening, and you’ve never seen more than six customers at once, you included. Admittedly, you might not be very observant. 

Being observant requires endurance, far more than you possess and are willing to deploy and direct towards others. You’re not selfish, not in the least. But you’re tired. You’ve been tired for years. There’s no rational explanation for your exhaustion. No honourable, awe-inspiring, valid ground. You don’t even know what wears you out. It might be sadness, disappointment, or boredom. Or all three in equal parts. All you know is that, come Friday night, your head needs the support of the gray wall behind you.

The creaking noise on your left signals the arrival of another customer, stomping in with a sure gait. Your eyes stay shut. You don’t come to the very aptly named Hole in The Wall seeking the company of other people, whoever they may be. 

You come here to hide for a few hours, between the styrofoam ceiling and the dusty carpeted floor. To drink your week away in peace, but not in nerve-racking silence. Alcohol, you found out at a young age, has interesting properties: it blurs out the sharp edges of your dark thoughts in just the right amount. 

Back in spring, when you stepped in here for the very first time, you looked comically out of place in your corporate attire, and you did raise quite a few eyebrows from the other patrons. Five months later, they must have learned to see past the charade of your overpriced clothes, because none of them pays you any mind anymore. It’s better than anonymity: it’s casual indifference.

You loosen your grip around your tall cocktail glass and let the condensation drip down onto the cardboard coaster. Reluctantly, you lift your weary eyelids to locate the square napkin lying somewhere on the table and dry your fingertips on it.

That’s when you see him taking a seat at the counter, directly across from your small table. 

Years from now, you will still remember the precise circumstances of your first, brief encounter, even though you’re not fully paying attention yet. Nothing indicates tonight will be any different. Nothing suggests you are about to live through a pivotal moment in your existence.

Details will stand out, however. Mostly visual, surprisingly, given the dim lighting of the place. The back of his trucker hat, midnight blue plastic mesh, flattening the dark curls on his nape. The washed out denim of his shirt, worked-in, greenish in the diffuse artificial light, pulled taut across his back, as he sits facing away from you. 

The square shape of his shoulders is backlit against the bar’s mirror. Your empty gaze finds the solid slope of his broad silhouette, and you let it rest there, lazily following his movements whenever he picks up his glass. It’s the same comfort you find when you rest your empty head against the hard wall. It’s aimless, inconsequential.

Later, on different kinds of Friday nights, the sight of his muscles bunching as he tugs off his shirt will bring you back to this very moment. The thought will reshape into a sharp, wistful ache deep inside your heart. What would have happened, to you, to him, if he had chosen to stop for a drink at another bar, somewhere further down the road? What if you had done the same, back in April? 

For now, your mind is blessedly blank.

Does he catch your reflection in the mirror? Does he feel your gaze on the back of his head? 

After a while, how long, you cannot tell, he pivots slowly on his stool, grounded and dense. Slowly, like a mountain would if a mountain came to life and decided to walk into the ocean. He doesn’t turn around completely, just enough to look at you, one of his arms still propped on top of the counter. 

The right side of his face is darkened by the shadow from the brim of his hat, but you can make out the pronounced crease in his brow. His eyes are black, and unfathomable, like the ocean at night, but alight with a bright glimmer. They find yours instantly. 

Something shifts inside your rib cage, something close to the heart, close to pain. 

You feel exposed, entirely bare. Your breathing subsides, you cannot move, trapped in a nightmare-like stretch of time as he glares down at you, immobile, impressive, gigantic. Dark eyes boring into yours. You’re drowning in them. 

You don’t want it to end. 

Inevitably, he breaks eye-contact, and swivels back toward the mirror. He sits still for a few seconds, before grabbing his glass to finish his beer in long gulps. 

You watch him lift his hat and brush his hair to the side with a large hand, and he’s out the door less than a minute later, without so much as a glance in your direction, a conscious choice, given the minute proportions of the place. 

He leaves you sitting there, with your brow pinched and your empty drink, struggling to understand the rippling effects of his massive presence on your body and your brain.

You bring your fingers to your chest and rub them over your sternum, where the shifting sensation continues to prickle. 

Neither a second drink nor a third helps dull the feeling, but a fourth one is not an option if you want to get home without a DUI. 

It follows you into the darkness of the deserted parking lot, on the drive home and into the glass prison of your clinically clean apartment. It’s there when you get into bed, when you lie wide awake at 3am next to your sleeping fiancé, and it’s still there when you wake up, hungover and sore, four hours later. 

Nestled between your lungs. The memory of his cold hard stare. Of his soft sad eyes. 

It bypasses your most foolproof diversions of painful pleasure and pleasurable pain. Your attempts at hard work and your compulsive distractions. It robs you of your appetite, of your lucidity, of your ability to rest. It corners you in the first floor toilet of your office building on a Thursday morning, on the verge of a panic attack, until you consider calling your sister for help. 

Ava would figure it out. She’d get you out of that loop in which you’ve locked yourself up, she’d know what to say. With her crude words and her unforgiving formulations, she’d admonish your silly overreaction and dismissively rebuke your daydreams over a mundane interaction, probably throwing in something about your heteronormative fantasies. 

Dude, you’re all worked up because of a staring contest with a rando in a dive bar? she’d say. She’d toss the rhetorical question at your face, you can hear her as if you’ve already sweated through the conversation. 

She’s often harsh but she’s always right. 

And normally, you’d be seeking that out. For your little sister to bully some good sense back into your nebulous brain. 

But something has shifted. 

Dark curls, thick fingers, flexing shoulders. Solid arms. Cold, hard stare. 

He abraded something on the surface of your skin, and you don’t think you’re capable of withstanding Ava’s sarcasm in your current state. 

By the following Friday, you feel so vulnerable you consider going to another place, or not going out at all. 

Only, the alternative is worse. 

You walk into The Hole in The Wall convinced that your unsteady gait is betraying your apprehension, squinting to adjust to the dim light of the place. The bar is nearly empty, as always, save for a couple of bearded graying men you vaguely recall having seen here before. They all look the same to you, anyway. Another thing you hate about yourself.

The barman tells you to sit while he prepares your drink. The gesture is kind but uncustomary, and it only serves to increase your uneasy feeling. 

Within an hour of waiting, because that's what you've been doing, you register with an icy trickle of shame dripping down your sides, you realise he won’t be coming. 

That man’s presence here last week is the very definition of sheer happenstance. Nothing more. Nothing else. If anything, you’ve been a nuisance to him, ogling him while he was simply trying to unwind with an afterwork drink. 

You’ll never see him again. 

And it’s fine. You’ll move on, drift back into drifting, avoiding at all costs to process what happened to you when you met his gaze. The tree hiding the forest. 

When you walk up to the counter to order your second drink, the question slips away from you. 

“Can I have the same thing the man in the trucker hat had last Friday, please?”

The barman looks up at you from the tray of clean dishes he's pulling out of the dishwasher and he huffs. He’s handsome, by most standards, you notice for the very first time. Very tall, and broad, green-eyed with a three-day stubble. He’s probably a couple of years above forty. His head is shaved bald. He’s manly in a burly, albeit fatherly way. 

“Oh sweetheart, d’you know how many guys with a trucker hat I see here every day?”

It’s not meant to make you feel small, his tone is gentle. It’s a straightforward, factual answer. 

“What do you wanna drink?” he asks when you don’t answer. “Tired of that G&T yet? Cos I got good beer. This is a beer place, you know? Wanna try a light blonde, to start? Something stronger? An IPA?”

What do you want. You’ve been drinking gin all your life because that’s what your mother always has. Starting at 5pm in the afternoon. Would you, indeed, like to try a light blonde? Something stronger? An IPA, to start? 

It’s a brand-new world unfurling in front of you, a yellow brick road paved with what-do-you-wants.

“Sure,” you nod, “I can try an IPA.”

—

The barman goes by the name of Mark. He’s also the owner of The Hole in The Wall, you learn. Bought the place two years ago, after a painful divorce. A cliché, he adds, with a charming, self-deprecating smile.

The interaction’s short and altogether not unpleasant, and the beer, to your surprise, is fresh and enjoyable. It’s much tastier, in fact, than the cheap, tepid gin you’ve been sipping so far. It gets you drunk just as fast, but this time when you leave the bar, your mind is quiet, if not at ease. 

The following week, a heatwave hits the Tampa Bay. The melting asphalt sticks to your leather soles, like your sweaty clothes to your clammy skin, like your brooding mood to your dampened dreams. In a couple of days eventually, August will draw to an end, but the summer won’t end with it. It never truly does. It taunts you all year round, a sweltering reminder of how much you hate living here.

And if it wasn’t for the humidity, you’d be jogging the short distance between your car and the cool haven of the air-conditioned bar. 

You push the swinging door forward, eyes shut in anticipation of the blinding darkness and you stand in the entrance for a few seconds. The familiar and comforting smell of moldy dust mixed with beer yeast greets your senses as you take in the chill air grazing your naked arms. 

And then you reopen your eyes. 

He’s here. 

Trucker hat, blue jeans, gray T-shirt. Different clothes, same silhouette. He’s sitting at your table, his position a magnified echo of yours two weeks ago, hand loosely wrapped around his pint, seemingly asleep with his head propped against the wall. 

Mark looks at you and tilts his head in his direction, wiggling an eyebrow with a silent question of “Is this the guy you were asking about?”

Your breathing’s so loud you think everyone must hear it over the droning television. Mark’s brow furrows with incomprehension at the alarm widening your eyes, and you anchor yourself to his face, walking toward him in slow motion, climbing on the first high stool you reach.

“Hey. You ok?”

You stretch your lips in a wince of a smile.

“So? What will it be today? Wanna try a Free Dive? It’s local.”

You nod in silence, but then he grabs a large glass, and you ask tentatively, “Can I have only half a pint?”

Fuck, your mouth is so dry.

Behind you, to your right, you feel more than you hear the man shift in his chair.

Mark sighs, his left hand paused on the tap handle. 

“I don’t have beer glasses this small, sweetheart. Get a pint, the first one’s on me, okay?”

You reiterate your silent nod. He places the beer in front of you, and you swallow the first swigs too quickly. The back of your throat throbs with the fast flowing intake of the cold liquid, or perhaps it’s because of the frantic beating of your heart.

He’s getting up now, you can tell by the friction sound of the chair dragging on the carpeted floor, and your frightened expression turns downright pleading as you hear him close the distance between you.  

He’s at your back, sliding his thick naked arm past yours to return his empty glass to the counter. His movements are slow, deliberate. You get a whiff of his scent, a masculine musk, with a faint smell of laundry detergent, it’s wholesome, safety, comfort. You turn your head. He’s looking at you. Looking at you with intent.

He’s so tall you have to lift your chin to hold his gaze. Hard cold stare, soft sad eyes, it’s swirling violently inside your exhausted chest and he’s leaving again already, walking toward the door like nothing just happened.

He pulls it inward and you watch him exit the bar into the dusk light.

Did he come back for you? Are you going insane? 

Sixty-seven seconds. Sixty-seven seconds is the time it takes you to decide your next move. The one that’s going to forever change your life. The one that could be everything or turn out meaningless. 

“I’ll be right back,” you tell Mark, sliding your handbag on the counter and you stand up to follow him outside.

The sunset sky is a pink shade of orange. Shadows are stretching long onto the asphalt, drawing a distorted world upside-down. 

He’s not here anymore, you waited too fucking long. You quickly scan the parked vehicles on the other side of the road to your right, and the parking lot in front of you, but it’s empty, save for your anthracite sedan, a black truck and what you assume must be Mark’s old SUV, because you see it every week. 

“Fuck,” you breathe out, pressing your fingers to your sternum. 

You look to your left, where the parking ends. There’s a white utility vehicle advertising a plumbing service and a dark blue city car. Beyond them, the lot extends into a narrow stretch of gravel behind the small rectangular building. There’s a pile of junk, and the tailgate of a red truck.

Your hand drops to your side and you start walking toward it, going around the white van. 

He’s there. He’s waiting for you by the front of the red truck, behind the building. His hands propped on his waist, head down, hidden under his cap. 

You keep walking toward him, the sound of your shoes on the dirty ground grating your ears, but you stop short when he raises his head, fuck he looks even taller at this distance, with his elbows spread.

It’s like he senses your apprehension, or perhaps he shares it, because he folds his arms over his chest, hugging himself. 

For the very first time, you can fully make out his face. Strong features, a strong curvy nose, a patchy beard peppering a sharp jaw, and plush lips. Your gaze follows the solid column of his neck down to his suprasternal point peeking above the V-collar of his worn-out t-shirt, before it’s drawn back to his eyes.

He stands there perfectly still for you to detail.

Above you, the sky has turned a rusty blue. The humidity is stifling. It’s Friday the 30th, 2019, 8.17pm.

“What do you want?”

His voice is deep, and low, barely louder than a murmur yet intense, his words full and round. 

The question, however legitimate, hits you square in the solar plexus, right under your aching sternum. You fear that if you don’t speak fast enough, he’ll leave you again, alone with the memory of his soft sad eyes and his hard cold stare. 

“I don’t know,” you whisper, and god, if it’s true, what are you doing here? 

He huffs, and it’s the very sound of disillusion. His eyes grow dimmer, you think you’re not the one darkening them. Unfolding his arms, he removes his hat and takes a step closer, then another. You could touch him, if you reached out with your arm stretched. 

He looks at you like he’s already seen how your story ends. 

You could back away. You don’t. 

He moves slowly, thick body thrumming with undiluted strength and unreleased tension, eyes searching yours, giving you the time to leave, should leaving be what you choose, should you turn around and run before the hanging threat breaks like dark stormy clouds and drench you soaked. 

He slowly moves forward until he’s towering over you, until his chest touches your breasts, until the pilled cotton of his t-shirt catches at the satin material of your blouse. His scent floods your senses, he leans down into the curve of your neck and inhales you there, long, deep, unhurried. You hold your breath, still, in turn, for his exploration, nails digging into your palms, heart tripping.  

And then, he touches you. With his lips, a feather-like caress over the soft skin under your ear. Your eyes flutter shut, your thoughts are suspended.

“This what you want?” he murmurs.

His words sink under your skin, they harden your nipples, raise goosebumps on your nape in the muggy evening heat.  

“Yes.”

The cap falls onto the gravel. His hands go to your hips. Clutching you there with a rough grip and he’s tugging you closer, flush to his chest. He licks up a broad stripe along the line of your throat, pivots with you in his arms and backs you into the side of the truck, you have to grab his forearms to keep your balance. 

A guttural sound catches in his throat, like a grunt he tries to hold back, for your touch, for the taste of your skin, for your pliant docility.

Your head rolls back, you’ve gone weeks without a skin on skin contact, and now this man is hunched over you, his body swallowing yours, this stranger who’s infected your dreams with his cold hard stare and his soft sad eyes, his mouth roaming the expanse of your throat, short beard prickling your skin, and the shifting sensation inside your chest drops to your core where it catches fire.

His kisses are lips, teeth and tongue, rough and scraping at you raw in all the right ways, they trail up along your neck, under your jaw, and when they find your lips, he presses you harder into him. He tastes like beer, unfamiliar, you want to get used to it. 

The seams of your blouse strain when he pulls it out of your skirt with an impatient tug. His hands slither under the hem and find the naked skin of your back. His palms are strong, rugged and scalding and his fingertips calloused, they make your skin sizzle underneath their pressing, crackle like snapping wood, like fireworks at a summer county fair, like sweet candy wrapping. 

You're leaking hot and sticky between your hips, responding with your entire body, opening up for him, letting his tongue in past your lips with pathetic grateful little moans, winding your arms around his shoulders, over the cording muscles of his back, musky sweat dampening his t-shirt. The thick, solid shape of him, that got etched behind your eyelids.

You’re a want and a need and an empty flutter, entangled with him, whoever he may be, his tongue swirling inside your mouth, the scrape of his teeth on your lower lip, his splayed hands covering your back, his knee spreading your legs open. 

He’s voracious, harsh in his own need, snatching from you what you’re already willing to give, angling your head with a sharp pull on your hair to deepen his kiss, grunting his approval when you moan at the sting. 

Arousal keeps dripping down your fold where his thigh prods firm and brawny against the black material of your skirt that hinders the pressure. 

He growls, frustration rumbling low and menacing inside his throat. He grabs your ass and squeezes, thick middle finger pushing against the fabric of your clothes into the cleft between your cheeks and you jolt, leaping forward further into him. His belt buckle bites into the soft flesh of your belly, right where you're burning empty and wanting and shameless for him. You feel him hot and hard against your hip, and he tightens his hold, cages you within him. 

He’s big all over, larger than life proportions, you surrender to the fact with your lust-drunk mind, from the height of his frame to the girth of his sex, from his grip on your senses to the sorrow in his eyes. 

It blooms inside you like pain, blossoms of mahogany red spreading along your limbs in relentless waves, the power he already wields over you and you don’t even know his name.  

You buck between his arms, a first and very last attempt at freeing yourself, unconvincing with the scrap of your fingernails along the pebbled skin of his neck, and you press back into him again, squirming against his throbbing length, offering him some friction.  

He pulls out all of sudden, breaking the kiss, and you're left panting, ankles swaying, you’d drop to the gravel without the support of the truck, still sun-warm in the early evening, yet colder than his feverish body. 

He shakes his head with a silent no, his shoulders heaving, a wordless warning hissed through his clenched bared teeth. The simmering anger under the surface only makes you want him more, the unyielding restraint shining dark in his eyes.  

But it’s over. You know it. He gave you this, and took it back. With shaky hands, you smooth down the wrinkles of your blouse where he’s bunched it in his fists. You lick his taste off your trembling lip. You will not cry. 

He shakes his head again, you watch him through welling tears, confused, eyes flickering between his. 

Behind him, the city car’s engine revs up to a start, aggressive headlights backlighting him. His throat bobs up and down in chiaroscuro as he swallows hard. You know what you must look like in the crude white light. Supplicant, dependent, awaiting. Disheveled by his hand. Tires grate on the gravel as the car reverses away from you into the night, and with it the headlights, leaving you standing in the brown city night, urban semi darkness, and you see him shut his eyes. 

He smiles, a puzzling, sorrowful lift of his plush lips, and a new sort of ache washes over you. You raise forward on your tiptoes to peck a soft kiss at the corner of his mouth. His entire frame quivers for you. A muscle clenches in his jaw, the deepening crease in his brow redefines his traits in shadows. 

He leans into you, like he wants you but he doesn’t want to want you, like he’s giving in but not entirely, because giving in would be the end of him, of you.

The flat of his palm to the swell of your breast, and he kneads your soft flesh, slowly at first, growing urgent. The back of your head hits the truck’s window when he pinches your nipple, hard, with two fingers, and you bite down a moan. 

He’s engulfing you again, lips latched around your other nipple, tongue swirling and licking through your blouse and your thin bra and you hold on to him, you cling to his frame when he bunches up your skirt around your waist, leather boot nudging your foot to the side, cock throbbing on your hip, slick dripping down your walls. 

“Stop me,” his mouth brushes the shell of your ear. It’s not a dare, it’s not a plea, it’s your last chance to back down before the free fall. 

Your pulse stutters, you arch into him without hesitation, but he pins you back against the truck with his chest, cupping you through your underwear and he curses into your neck at the sticky leaking mess he finds there.

Your naked leg hitches up rigid and tense against his leg, curled fingers, curled toes, and he hooks his index into the cotton of your panties. 

A brief stroke of his knuckles into the soft, smooth dip between your sex and your inner thigh, unexpectedly tender, before he parts your soaked lips with his two middle fingers, coating them in your sticky slick desire, and he sinks them inside your empty cunt. 

You crumble around the intrusion, forehead hitting his collarbone, slack-mouthed, a short exhale of a silent “oh.” He brings his left hand to the crown of your head and cradles you there, while his fingers pump in and out of your heat fast and rough. His thumb glides through your folds and starts rubbing at your clit, deft and precise, and you shudder between his arms, you slump into his hold. 

He keeps stroking your hair, gentle soothing sounds murmured into your ear as he fucks you raw with his hand, attuned to your moans and your every reaction, gauging what you can take before his fingers curl deeper inside your cunt, merciless, thumb pressing tight circles on your bud at an increasing pace.  

Your breathing comes in ragged and short while his intensifies. It’s pouring into your ear hot and overwhelming and you’re dissolving. Sweat beading at your temples, heat raising from his exerted muscles. 

You focus on the sensation of his flexing muscles under your clawing hands to stave off your building orgasm, it’s growing bright and blinding, searing and violent but it’s inevitable, and soon, too soon, your release flows hot and sticky into his hand. Your whines resound inside his chest but he keeps going, low husks of shhh, come on now, that’s it, until your trapped body trashes with the overstimulation.  

It’s like he can’t let go, pressing his nose heavily to the side of your face, and you struggle to resurface, blood thrumming in your veins, his angry cock pulsating against your hip. 

You let out a dry sob when he slides out of you and the rubber band of your panties slaps your sensitive skin. You don’t miss the flat drag of his tongue licking your taste off his palm, you furrow your fingers deeper into his arm with a short clench of your eyes. 

“Fuck,” your hear him quietly groan, and his fingers disappear into his mouth. 

You want to stay tucked up against him, curled up into his hold. You could live the rest of your life there, you think, between his hands and his scent, between his chest and his truck. 

You lock your ankles and your knees, hoping they will not fail you and you stand, pushing away from him and into the side of the truck. You readjust your skirt, slide it down, palm it smooth. Brush the damp hair from your forehead with the back of your trembling hand.

In your peripheral, he’s leaning down, picking up his hat from the ground and combing his fingers through his hair before he sets the cap back on his head.

You look up dazed and heavy-lidded and you brace yourself before meeting his gaze, cold hard stare, soft sad eyes, and he says,

“I’m Frankie.”

****

Bonus (having déjà vu? that's normal 😝 Gonna use this gif at the end of every first chapter I manage to yank out of my crazy in love brain):

Taglist (thank you 🧡 if you don't wish to be tagged anymore, just drop me a DM 🧡): @elegantduckturtle @mashomasho @lola766 @nicolethered @littleone65 @the-rambling-nerd @saintbedelia @pedrostories @trickstersp8 @deadmantis @hbc8 @princessdjarin @harriedandharassed @girlofchaos @gracie7209 @mrsparknuts @mylostloversbookmarks @its-nebuleuse @flowersandpotplantsandsunshine @all-the-way-down-here

#tonight you belong to me #happy frankie friday #tybtm #Francisco Catfish Morales #frankie morales #the pilot™️ #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x ofc #frankie morales / fem!reader #frankie morales / you #frankie morales / ofc #triple frontier fic #triple frontier #pedro pascal #pedro pascal character fic #frankie friday #will miller #benny miller #santiago pope garcia #william ironhead miller #triple frontier fanfiction

[henrysglock]

Okay so what exactly happened in the scene with Henry and El? (Tfs). Was it similar to the scene where they sat down and talked in the show?

Their scene is actually super interesting. Henry supposedly meets her fresh out of being released from his ball gag chair, and he kind of approaches her with wary-cat vibes? almost like he's not quite sure how to approach her. his lines at the end are particularly interesting. "I'm here to help" is the same thing Brenner says at the end of Act 1 when he is being introduced to Henry while Virginia sings TYBTM...and then Henry also sings TYBTM to El. Just all around shrimpy "both mother and father" vibes!

Here's the scene so you can see for yourself:

#asks #henry creel #el hopper #st: tfs #stranger things: the first shadow #stranger things

[mitsybubbles]

Doodled some Dead Money!Arcades while watching @burningfromtheashes play dead money lmao

#arcade gannon #fallout new vegas #dead money #TYBtM #I love drawing Arcade lol #misty arts

[intheorangebedroom]

Tonight you belong to me, chapter 1

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. 

Guilt is a wild trip, but so is desire. How the hell did you end up in this divvy motel? And now, what's next?

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, orange besties 🧡 PLEASE, see series masterlist for extensive trigger warnings. Now I'm off to disappear for another month, heehee. To anyone who celebrates anything, happy whatever you celebrate. Ily 🧡

@frannyzooey And to you, Kelli… Thank you 🧡 Thank for your help on this chapter, without you it wouldn’t exist. Arguably, without you I wouldn’t exist (my gothic ass) and without you I would certainly not be writing at all. You’re the kindest, most generous, most beautiful person I’ve ever met, you shine so brightly and I love you more than all the Frankies from all the universes put together 🧡✨

Word count: 6.5k

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Chapter 1: Dirt

Guilt, you’re about to find out, is an interesting feeling. 

A viscous, gluey business that sticks to your skin and clings to your frame. It’s a prickling tickle under your armpits, a rigidity in your legs. It’s a tightness in your shoulders, and it pulls on your face. It has a density, and it’s tangible, not only do you feel it, you see it in every mirror, every reflective surface. 

A pervasive, shape-shifting torment that unfurls gradually, and comes in many colorful shades, when you begin to take in the gravity and the ramifications of your actions. 

The first wave is darkened by fear, black as petrol, trickling down your insides when he says his name. 

Frankie.

Like an invitation, an opening. Gaping, abysmal, pulling you in and you remain silent, struggling on the edge of it, grasping for balance. Drawn in, but too stunned to let go and dive in yet.

It’s a violent crimson, next, shame creeping over you when you walk back inside the bar to retrieve your purse. 

Facing Mark is difficult, but talking to him is beyond your strength. You gesture toward the handbag waiting for you on the other side of the counter. He hands it to you in appraising silence, judgmental, surely, and you smile, or you wince, you can’t even tell. With shaky hands, you fumble inside it for your wallet, his green gaze strained on your face. 

You know that your entire appearance gives away the narrative of what just took place in the back lot of his establishment. Your face is flushed, your lips swollen, your hair undone. Your clothes are rumpled and in his eyes, you will from now on and forever be this woman. 

After what feels like several minutes, he takes pity on you, and reiterates his offer. You’re good, he says. Sweetheart. The first pint’s on him. 

You don’t stay long enough for a second drink, however. 

Back outside into the muggy night, you crumble onto the passenger seat of your car. The polyester lining of your skirt clings to the bare skin at the back of your thighs, damp with sweat and what is left of your inconsequential desire, and you feel appallingly filthy, bone-deep disgusting. 

Guilt washes over you in blue waves of regret, welling under your eyelids when you notice that the red truck is gone. And with it, the gaping, abysmal possibilities of another you, reinvented with him. 

The shaking starts as you’re driving, trembling hands gripping the steering wheel. A brutal, chilling comedown, guilt experienced in bright and blinding yellow at the belated realization of your betrayal. 

How easily, how rapidly you forgot, trapped under Frankie’s gaze, coming undone between Frankie’s hands, that your life isn’t truly yours. That it has never been. You’re not on your own, no matter how much you long to be. You have never been afforded the privilege of independence, nor do you possess the necessary strength to break free from your family. 

And who has Frankie betrayed? What faceless, nameless woman has he gone back to? Remorse blends in with envy and resentment, painting green ring-shaped stains in your peripheral vision as you get out of your car and into the lobby of your building. 

Eyes to the floor, you step into the elevator, this oversized coffin lined with mirrors reflecting your image with a silent scoff. There’s dust from the gravel on your leather pumps. 

Inside your apartment, the clickety-click of your heels on the tiled floor bounces off the walls of your skull. You hate that sound, eminently cold and giving away your presence. 

The living-room television is on, probably set to a news channel, most likely broadcasting a financial show in which white men over 50 listen to the sound of their own voice and debate about obscure economical regulations you’re supposed to care about. 

Adrian’s already here. Uncharacteristically early. Friday evenings usually mean late night poker or whatever his own excuse is to get away from your cribless home.

Hoping to go unnoticed so as to avoid him, you take off your shoes, but it’s too late. He calls out your name from the kitchen, his intonation surprised but cheerful. 

Head hanging low, heartbeat picking up, you make a silent dash for the upstairs bathroom, remorse so pungent you fear no shower can ever wash it off your skin.  

Under the scolding high-pressure stream, you scrub your body raw with a soapless loofah, but there is no scrubbing away the feeling of those hands over your skin. 

Eyes drifting closed, you lean your forehead against the anthracite marble of your Italian shower, and let your chest heave around a suppressed sob. 

Guilt, shame, and remorse are powerless to outweigh your want, undeterred, unabated, unquenched. 

Back in the parking lot, it had been a moment before you were able to push away from the side of the truck and stand upright. He stood there, silent and immobile in front of you. Waiting, as if to shield you from the street and the rest of the world. Silence hanging charged and heavy between you, as you wouldn’t offer your name in return. 

When you started moving toward the bar’s entrance, he stepped aside, and that’s when your body moved of its own volition. You took his hand in yours, palm against palm, trembling fingers wrapped around his knuckles.

“Can I see you again?” you asked, pleaded, begged. You didn’t recognize your voice.

He swallowed hard, shook his head at you for the third time, and squeezed your hand in his bigger one. 

“I don’t think so. You know that’s not a good idea,” he said. 

—

Grief settles like dust over the first weeks of September. 

You are surprised, almost shocked, to observe how little your life has changed. You get up in the morning, you shower and get dressed, drink coffee, go to work. You attend meetings about maritime trade regulation, sitting at your father’s side, go over endless spreadsheets detailing import-export profit and loss, you pretend to understand them, and you pretend to care, like a pretty human puppet. 

You come home at night, skip dinner when you can. You lie in bed next to Adrian. You seek out warmth where there is none. You perform sex without satisfaction. 

There has been no question asked. No suspicion, no doubt cast. 

You wear the same clothes, drive along the same roads, walk around the same hallways. 

And no one seems to notice that you are different. That you experienced imperious want and incandescent pleasure. That you carry a secret. Nestled, dormant and quiet, between your lungs, like a wild and unknown creature. 

Whatever part of him you welcomed inside you transformed the hollowed spaces of your existence. It redefined the void, creating a place of your own where to curate your new desires. 

His lips on your lips, your body molded into his, and pressed against your hips, an unfulfilled promise for more. 

In the palm of your hand, the ghost sensation of Frankie’s hold, now forever gone and lost, and your highlighted loneliness feels like a barless prison. On your own, always, again, to divert the old familiar pain of being you.

Weeks go by. The guilt recedes, and sadness takes its place, like clockwork, like physics. Like a new sort of weight coating your limbs. A nostalgic longing without any object. 

In the idle moments of your day, when you’re stuck in traffic, in a meeting, or in a conversation, your mind wanders back to him. The solid slope of his shoulders. The strong span of his back. Muscles bunching up under your grip. His scent, his curls, his taste. An organic trace seared into your being. 

His rebuttal, after he’d given you so much, felt less like a rejection than like a refusal to heed a deeply rooted instinct. 

His stare was no longer hard and cold. It carried only sorrow and loss. 

Does he think of you like you think of him? Does he miss the contact of your skin, or the abandon of your kiss? 

Did he walk away from your embrace with something to keep, like you did? 

Day after day, summer fades into fall, the change hardly perceptible through the consistently sweltering weather. 

Day after day, focusing becomes tricky, finding sleep more and more difficult and your train of thought turns downright maniacal. 

Ava’s calls go straight to voicemail.

More often than not, you start drinking as soon as you come home to fence off the tears of exhaustion, hoping Adrian won’t notice. Another line you had promised yourself never to cross, and under the combined effects of the alcohol and the antidepressants, you feel drowsy and dizzy, increasingly disconnected from your reality. A nagging sting settles on the left side of your lower abdomen. But you don’t mind the pain as much as you mind turning into your mother.

Some days, you think you’d like nothing more than to give way, allow yourself to drown into the proven refuge of self-abuse. Whenever you indulge the thought, soothing images spring to mind, oil on canvas, deep green, tender brown. Ophelia, crowned with wild flowers and rings of violets, sleeping peacefully in a shallow stream. 

When you finally return to the Hole in the Wall, it’s only with the hope of hindering your impending tailspin.

In the parking, after turning off the ignition, you sit in your car for the whole of five minutes, staring numbly at the dark lot where the red truck had been parked.

Mark’s hesitant greeting puzzles you; by now you have lost most of your ability to read people’s reactions. 

You walk to the counter and choose to sit on one of the high stools. Somewhere deep down, you enjoy his distance; you relish the sadistic pleasure of reliving the humiliation you felt standing before him, freshly fucked dumb on a total stranger’s fingers. 

Besides, you’ll take the attention, however uncomfortable it may be.

“Long time no see,” Mark says, and you produce a poorly executed smile. 

“I don’t know… two weeks? I’ve been busy,” you add as a way of apologizing.

“It’s been a month,” he replies curtly.

You try a brown ale, this time, rich and bitter. He busies himself behind the counter, cleaning and wiping, while you drain your glass in silence. You haven’t eaten all day, and you’re drinking too fast. Nausea laps against your diaphragm. It’s the last missing scene from this scenario: you, throwing up in the toilet of his bar. 

You’re considering leaving when he speaks again. 

“Trucker hat dude came by.”

Your head shots up and you glare at him, eyes widening under your pinched brow, a new wave of sickness nudging further up. He gauges your face, twirling a towel inside a pint glass, waiting for your answer, but when you give him none, he goes on.  

“Did he…” he starts, and his eyes slowly go back and forth between yours, “he didn’t hurt you or anything? Cause if he did, if you wanna press charges, I can—“

“No,” you cut him off, “god no, I’m fine. I’m perfectly ok,” you add unnecessarily when his gaze narrows. 

He pauses for a moment, like he’s the only one who can judge if you are, indeed, perfectly ok, before he faces away from you to put back the clean glasses on the lower shelves behind him.  

When he’s done, he turns back around, props his hands low on his hips, and for the first time since you’ve entered the place, he stands perfectly still. 

“He’s been asking about you.”

Between your lungs, the creature begins to stir. 

“He came back,” you say, surprisingly matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Asked if you come here every Friday.”

Piece by piece, your mind starts swiveling, sluggish and blunt after being successfully dulled out by the past couple of weeks of excessive drinking. You picture his tall figure standing in the small bar, perhaps he sat on the stool you’re sitting on now? Did he lift his cap to comb his hair with his fingers before he spoke?

Mark is talking again, and it’s a conscious effort to bring your attention back to his words.

“Asked if you always come on your own. If I know your name.”

“I never told you my name,” you panic, “what did you tell him?”

“I see your name every week on your AmEx Gold, sweetheart, but I kindly told him to go fuck himself,” he scoffs.

His sardonic tone snaps you out of your drifting daydreaming. Your face immediately hardens. You sit up straight, drawing further away from him and he seems to change his mind. He’s softer when he speaks next. 

“Look, I don’t know what’s the lowdown between you two, you understand? And anyway, I’m not in the habit of discussing my regulars with just about anyone. That kinda goes against the job’s ethics, you know what I mean?”

You shrug away the rational, albeit patronizing explanation with a huff of annoyance. You feel more alert than you have in weeks.  

“When was that?” you ask.

“Last week. Thursday, I think.”

“Shit.” 

Mark lets out a heavy sigh, resembling that of an exhausted father, and he opens the cash register. 

“He left a note for you.”

—

An address. Written in all caps, black ink on a white piece of paper torn from a lined notebook. No phone number, not date, no time… and no name. Just the address. Under the feeble cabin light of your car, the paper looks old, like it’s been carried around tucked inside a wallet for years, and time has turned it yellow. 

The coordinates on the dashboard GPS are identical to the ones on the paper. They were identical back in the parking, at the bar, when you typed them in; they were identical at every single red light you stopped at and checked. And they’re still identical now, glowing in blue letters, cold and synthetic, above the message You have reached your destination.

You raise your head again and stare at the building in front of you. 

It’s a motel. One floor, L shaped, slightly sloping roof. With wrought iron details, a porch hanging low and square wooden pillars demarcating each room, nine of them in total. On the right, underneath a bare bulb, a large ice machine gleams like a beacon for lost time-travelers, next to a pay phone with a cut-off cord and a missing receiver. On the rear end of the building, to the left, above what looks like the reception, a 4 feet tall sign spells MOTEL in red neon letters. 

At its height, the place probably looked nice. But that was a rough 55, 60 years ago, you estimate. Now it’s nearly derelict, with visible cracks streaking the yellowing walls, several broken drainpipes, and a missing number on the door of room 7. 

If you cared about these kinds of things, you’d figure that the diversion of the main road further south is responsible for the motel’s decaying state. 

Your attention is elsewhere, as usual. The parking lot is deserted, save for three vehicles. The red truck is here, parked a couple of places away to your right. Engine off. Empty. 

The drive here from the Hall in the Wall was nearly an hour long. The car cruised along poorly lit, narrow two-lane roads, lined with luxuriant vegetation, dense and confining in the pitch darkness of the suburban night. You’ve lived in Tampa your entire life and have never set a foot in this part of the Bay Area. Technically, you’re not even in Tampa anymore. 

He’s inside one of these rooms, somewhere. Waiting for you, and that thought alone makes your breathing difficult and your hands clammy.

What now? What’s next? Are you supposed to walk up to the reception and ask about him?  A tall man wearing a trucker hat? Frankie?

And what will happen, once you’ve found him?

This is ridiculous. Sordid. It’s gone too far, whatever that is. A motel outside of town. The worst possible cliché. The most degrading place. 

Between your lungs, the creature is clawing at your chest. 

You shift nervously on the creaking leather seat, exhaling long and shaky, no longer repressing the memory of his sturdy fingers curling inside your warmth, of his tongue swirling inside your mouth. The instant intimacy of your furtive encounter, that turning point, when he briefly relinquished his control. 

A chorus of voices rumbles like tumbling boulders inside your head, a cacophony of rules and guidelines, tacit and unspoken, ingrained and internalized. But with every passing minute staring at the bright motel sign, your resolve grows surer. 

The yellow curtains ripple behind the rectangular window of room number 2 and you quickly pull the key out of the ignition. Grabbing your phone from the dashboard, you stuff it inside your purse, which you slide under the driver's seat. 

Eyes locked on the curtains, you make a fast-paced beeline to the door. Around you, the night is bustling with the sounds and noises of the invisible wildlife. Revealing nothing, containing so much. 

With a quick rattle of your heels, you step under the porch, hand extended and ready to knock on the door when it opens for you. 

Oh he’s broad, so much broader than you even remembered, blocking the entire doorway with his frame, blue jeans, black shirt, and this goddamn hat that’s already haunting your dreams and your nightmares. 

Looking down on you, irate, defiant, daring you to push him aside and enter. Behind him, the room is plunged in darkness. Above you, the porch lights cast a warm hue on his face, that fails to soften his expression. The crease between his brow is deeper than your fears. 

You take a step closer, on instinct, but he moves to the side as if to avoid any contact with you and you enter the dark bedroom, carried by your momentum.

Guilt will come back to you later, sporadically, in episodes, but for the most part, you forfeit it wholly when you cross the threshold of room number 2.

He closes the door behind you and flicks up the toggle switch near the door frame. Two quaint lampshades blink to life on the headboard, casting a warm, subdued light. There’s no AC, or he hasn’t turned it on, and the atmosphere inside the room is already stifling, charged with his scent.  

“Took you long enough. Thought you wanted to see me,” he grunts, and the creature purrs inside your chest. 

“I did. I do.”

Stopping in the middle of the room, you turn around to face him. He’s standing tall and firm and mighty, feet planted apart on the carpeted floor, arms crossed over his chest. Yet you note his hands are splayed across his biceps, as if he were attempting to hug himself.

Perhaps that’s when you convince yourself Frankie is not his real name. Somehow, it makes it easier to believe you’re not the object of his ire. 

“Your friend didn’t tell you–”

“He’s not my friend,” you interrupt. “I only got your note earlier. Tonight.”

You let the implication sink in and your gaze travels down to the dip at the base of his neck and back up. The square, yellow bedroom provides you with the brightest environment you’ve ever had the leisure of observing him in. 

He’s beautiful, stunning, really, with unique and complex features. Almost pretty, but in a reluctant way, as if it was irrelevant to the life he’s chosen and led. His face speaks so loud, washed over by so many emotions, frustration, doubt and anger, and that lingering sadness in his dark eyes that tugs at your heart and twitches your fingers. 

“What’s your name?” he asks, tilting his chin in your direction.

Janet Leigh’s face pops up in black and white inside your mind, driving through a curtain of strident violins, skittish eyes flicking between the road ahead of her and the rearview mirror. 

“Marion,” you answer, inexplicably. 

“Marion,” he repeats, and you know he knows you’re lying. 

Unable to hold his gaze, you look away to the side, and he gives you time to take in the surroundings. The medium size bed with a stained, synthetic bedspread, the practical, shipped furniture, an angular chair and a desk surmounted by a rectangular framed mirror, the antique cathodic TV set hanging from the wall in the corner. The brown carpet. The yellow curtains. The painting of the Appalachian. 

And whatever your face says then makes him huff.

“Not what you expected? How did you think this was gonna be? How do you think these things go?”

You look at him again, stunned, lost, hurt maybe, that he should recognize you for what you don’t want to be. 

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before,” you tell him in a small voice. 

He shakes his head, like you aimed to wound, and unconsciously, your fingers find your sternum, jittery, anxious to appease this wild creature scrabbling against your rib cage. 

“I shouldn’t be here,” he mutters hoarsely, shaking his head again, or still, “and you shouldn’t be here either, this is bullshit.”

And he’s right, once more, he is right, neither of you should be here. All the lines you walked, all the rules you abided by, meeting expectations and doing as you were told, and you still end up here, on the outskirts of town, in this gloomy motel. Facing this stranger, begging to surrender to him, with your heart in your hand and your life on your lips. 

Eyes strained on his, you move closer, cautious, with your palms upward, as if he were to jolt and scurry away if you were too sudden. If you tame him, perhaps you will tame the wild creature between your lungs as well.

Drawn to his skin, you brush the tips of your fingers along his bicep, and the taut muscle thrums under the freckled, tanned surface of him.

He’s holding his breath, hardened face, hardened stare, deepening crease, and your fingers skate up along the slope of his arm until they meet his hand. 

He’s difficult to catch, you think, even when willing to be caught, but it’s now very clear what you want for yourself. You want him. 

It matters not that he belongs to somebody else. If you’re here, it’s because he wants you too. Despair and desire have brought you together, combined, conjoined, converging.  

Your hand travels round to the back of his arm, soft and feather-like, up under the hem of his t-shirt, lifting his sleeve. His eyes are boring into yours. You lick your lips, slowly, and lower them to his skin. A light kiss, testing, tender and wet, and underneath it, a tremor. 

There’s a terrible density to his body. He’s tension and heat. Pressing your parted lips to his shoulder, you let your tongue peek out between them. You take in the tangy taste of him, it travels through your body like lava, like syrup, heavy and sticky and sweet and it pools down between your hips.

He’s completely still, eerily so. Emboldened, hopeful, you tug on his t-shirt, tentatively at first, and when he doesn’t stop you, when he unfolds his arms, you pull it off his frame, the hat coming off with it. You suck in a sharp breath at the sight of his naked head full of curls, lush and tousled. You want to run your fingers through them. You know that’s probably not a good idea. 

His chest, broad and solid, fills your vision, and your hands fly to his sternum where you press them, chasing something invisible, roaming up the plane of his chest, as delicately as possible. Your fingertips drum lightly along his collarbone, as if you were seeing him with your hands, as if all your senses were necessary to take in the whole of him. 

His frown turns imploring, his breathing shallow. 

“Tell me your name,” he murmurs, his deep baritone a pleading husk.

“You can call me whatever you like,” you answer, lifting his hand and taking his two first fingers into your mouth, eyelids fluttering. You cradle them with the flat of your tongue, brushing against the callous tips of them, saliva flooding your mouth around the salty taste. A moan escapes you, imperceptible, and his jaw ticks around a curse, something you don’t make out, something in Spanish, you’re too dazed with want, too dumb with thirst. 

Fire licks up your spine when he moves, fast and sure. His hand tangles in your hair and he sharply tugs your head back, his fingers popping out of your mouth with a hanging thread of saliva. His face has become a threat, a warning, a promise. He’ll give you what you want until you regret asking for it.

His mouth crushes yours, teeth colliding, and his tongue is inside you, swirling and licking. 

Like a dam that gives, his strength breaks and sweeps over you, crushing you into his chest with his hold and his kiss, fingers gripping your hair, your ass, and you let him have it, let him bruise your flesh with his need, scraping your fingernails up his arms, on his back. 

You’re smiling into the kiss, with relief and eagerness, squirming into him and he hardens his hold before releasing you, swift and sudden, grabbing your blouse and pulling it up in a feverish movement that you follow, lifting your arms like a docile little girl. A seam of the silky fabric rips around your shoulders. You don’t notice it. 

His face dives into the crook of your neck, the scruff of his beard grating your skin, and he sinks in his teeth, sucking hard and feral, and at first, you melt into it, before you remember. You force his chest away with both palms, whining, urgent, plaintive, “I can’t– can’t have marks,” when what you really want is to be covered in him. 

It makes him chuckle, and it sounds like a growl, so terribly dark, so profoundly disillusioned, that you shiver in the heat of his body. He squeezes your breasts through the thin cotton of your bra, it’s brutal and it hurts like retaliation.

“Get fucking naked, Marion.” 

Drawing away from him, you start working the button and zip fly of your skirt with fumbling fingers, blood beating fast and booming in your eardrums, while he toes off his shoes and undoes his belt buckle. Hard metal, the same one that was scraping against your belly when he was crushing you into his red truck, into white-hot pleasure. 

His skin looks amber and smooth under the mellow lighting, the harmonious muscles you guessed under his shirt on the very first night highlighted in shadows. A soft belly, and a long, sideways scar on his left side. Would he tell you the history of his wounds? Will you ever have the chance to ask? 

Your skirt crumples at your feet, you’re lost in the sight of him, arms falling limp at your sides. Self-consciousness skirts the edges of your lust. This body that you neglect and ignore at best, despise and mistreat if given the chance, will it be worth anything to him? Will he want you like you want him? With determination. Without dignity.  

When he pulls down his jeans and his boxer briefs in one deft motion, your eyes widen, but he’s grabbing your arm already, spinning you around like a doll and throwing you onto the bedspread. He climbs on the bed after you, the mattress dips with his weight. 

His firm hands spread your legs; he’s manhandled other bodies before yours, the skill evident with his dexterity, the experience obvious in his assurance, and you want to be all of them at once, lovers and enemies. 

His hand rubs over your damp panties and you buck into it, trying to raise yourself on your elbows to turn around. You want to see his face as he touches you, see his reaction at the evidence of your arousal, you want to watch his eyes when his cock breaches you, but he presses a large hand between your shoulder blades and pins you into the mattress with a grunt. 

He’s unlike anyone you’ve known before, brisk and rough and domineering, and you blush at your inexperience, at his irreverence, when he yanks your panties to the side and spits on your folds. The sheer obscenity feels like a reward for coming this far.  

Sprawling your arms forward, bunching the slippery fabric of the bedspread in your fists, you brace yourself, the round tip of his cock lining up at your entrance. 

He shoves himself inside you to the base, and you cry out at the blinding intrusion, the strength of his thrust hauling your body forward on the bed. With a harsh grasp, he slides you back down on his length and you bite down another cry, flesh gushing through the splayed fingers clutching your hips. 

Crouching over you, he presses his forehead heavy against the back of your head.

“Don’t move,” he hisses through clenched teeth, “don’t fucking move.”

His cock pulsates angry and swollen inside your throbbing pussy, his chest pressing down on your back with each uneven, shaky breath burning your nape.

Sitting back, he wraps his right hand around the strap of your bra and twists it around his fist, pulling on it for leverage as he begins to fuck into you. The thin elastic bands bite into your shoulders, raspy vibrations echoing from your throat straight into the bedding with each of his rhythmic pushes forward. 

He’s too much, too fast, too sudden. And he picks up the pace, forcing your right leg up with his knee and angling up his strokes, reaching deeper inside your core. He’s going to puncture your body from the inside, and you contract tight and rigid around his length, writhing underneath him, until he leans into your neck, close to your ear with a command, voice low and gravelly. 

“You want it, just fucking take it, then.” 

That wild thing inside your chest is swelling, madly swirling, your slick floods around his drilling length. Closing your eyes, the side of your face smearing makeup on the bedspread, you nod with just enough strength to exhale a breathless yes. 

Yes. Yes, you want it, just like so. You want to be used, shattered, obliterated by this man.

And so you relent. Curling your fists and sinking your fingernails into your palms, as the pain turns to pleasure and he rams into your taut heat, rams against your cervix, bending you backward, spine ready to snap with each forceful shove. 

The room is filled with the explicit sounds and noises of your emerging dirty secret. The relentless smack of his hips against your ass, the lewd squelch of his cock slamming in and out of your cunt, the creaking bedding, his feral groans, your grateful moans.

He’s miles away from you, but that’s what you came here for, drain the sadness from his eyes, make it yours, understand. If you’re only going to have him once, then you want it all. 

But his rhythm is faltering already, and it stops abruptly. He releases his grip on you and pulls out with a loud curse, leaving you empty, for all those things you never wanted in the first place to fill you up again.

You feel his knuckles brushing against the swell of your ass as he strokes himself into his release. He loses his balance, and braces his hand next to your face to catch himself as come spurts hot and rich into the curve of your arched back. 

He slaps his cock into the cleft of your cheeks once, twice, pumping out the last drops of his spend, and he collapses next to you, with a grunt when his back hits the bed, his chest heaving with exertion. 

Unshed tears weigh down your eyelids. Your heart rattles against your rib cage, frantic and irregular. Your blood is thick as molasses, of amber and gold, coursing dense and languid down your limbs, but your nerves are crackling like electrical wires of blue and purple. 

The creature between your lungs has tripled in size and your sore cunt throbs with your suspended orgasm. 

Sunk into the mattress, you’re unable to round your back or turn your head towards him. Everything hurts. Everything is alive.  

Reaching back blindly, you dip the tip of your fingers into the pool of his spend, and bring them back to your lips. Tasting him with delight and a quiet, strengthless moan. 

The mattress moves with him as he shifts on the bed, and you feel the warmth of his large hand covering the expanse of your lower back. 

Before you can relax into it, he flips you on your back with an easy strength, and you wince with the sudden change of position. What a mess you must look like, flushed face, sweat-damp hair, clotted mascara. 

He’s heavy, in his straddle of your thighs. He brings his hand to your mouth, and you open up for him, pulling out your tongue to lick his come-coated palm, wrapping your lips around his fingers as they glide over the hot wet muscle. You swallow his essence with fluttering eyelids, grateful, tears rolling down your temples. 

The soft light catches at the sheen of sweat gleaming over his chest, like he’s made of gold, leaning over you like a magnificent and merciful god, like you’ll grant him everything, and you bask into his radiance, your lips pursed into a new smile around his digits. 

The frown that hasn’t left his brow softens ever so slightly. His throat bobs, corded muscles, pebbled skin, the tension barely relieved. His fingers slip out of your mouth and come to cup your chin, so gentle your mind fails to comprehend. His touch lingers, warm and relenting and it becomes a caress, trailing down the line of your throat and coming to rest over your beating pulse at the base of your neck. 

“Are you real?” he asks, sorrow blurring his dark eyes. 

“I don’t know,” you murmur, beading sweat, beading tears. “Make me be.”

He breathes in deeply, and perhaps it’s the first time in years he breathes in so freely.  

“Okay,” he nods.

Slowly, with the tip of his tongue darting between his parted lips, he tugs down your bra to the side. His calloused palm finds the soft swell of your breast, and his warmth radiates through your skin. His hold strengthens, he pinches your nipples with his two first fingers, the ones you took in your mouth earlier, harder, until your mouth goes slack with pleasure and with pain, and you keep smiling at him through it all.

Loose, trustful, pliant, you watch as he drags your panties down along your damp skin and spreads your thighs. He pauses, eyes on your core and you lie still, exposed and opened, feeling no shame. 

His curls, matted with sweat, are stuck in locks to his forehead. Where was he, when you were still hopeful? Were you too young for him, then?

He dives between your hips, and his teeth bite into the soft skin of your inner thigh. You jerk, palm pushing feebly onto the crown of his head and he freezes, eyes shut, like he doesn’t have enough willpower to let go, like too much of his control has already waned and thawed.

“Please,” you coo, “please. I’ll get in so much trouble.”

And your heart sinks a little with apprehension because, surely, he’ll scoff at you again, but instead he just lets go, bringing his fingers to your swollen folds to part them. 

A small whimpering sound escapes you when he latches his lips around your clit, but the sensation is nothing like what you anticipated. Of his previous roughness, only the bruising digging of his fingers into the plush of your hips remains.

His mouth is warm and soothing, a liquid caress, the touch from the tip of his tongue precise but gentle. He shifts with a soft groan, applying more pressure and you keen, head trashed back into the bed. Instantly, he adjusts his grasp, pulling you closer to his face, suckling on your clit with more insistence. 

The smooth skin of your calves brushes over his shoulders, your heels digging into the muscles of his back and you’re reminded of that first night again, when he swiveled around to meet your gaze, soft sad eyes, hard cold stare. Your orgasm builds up fast, embarrassingly so, encouraged by his heavy breathing fanning the soft curls on your mound.

The wild creature melts into your blood and flows down to your core, branching out to every nerve from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. And when you come, you come sharp and bright, with your hand clasped over your mouth to muffle a loud mewl and your back arched from the bed. 

He forsakes his restored restraint when you recoil from the overstimulation, hardening his hold and fastening his mouth over your cunt to lap up your release, tongue diving in, greedy, burning your walls. 

You’re still shaking with the aftershock when he releases you and rises above your trembling body. Lying his forehead on your belly, heavy head, heavy breathing, sweat dripping on your skin, he stays there until his breathing slows down, falling in rhythm with yours. You reach down for his hair, threading your fingers through his curls, at last, and he gives in, leans into the tenderness of your touch. 

A stray tear slides down into your hairline and it’s over, he’s gone, standing up, his broad back turned to you, gathering his clothes and dressing up. 

The notion of the world around you resurfaces. Outside, tucked away in the heart of the night, countless other wild creatures dwell and carry on, moved by fear or desire, and you lie still in that crushing knowledge. Soon, you will have to leave this bed, confront your solitude to theirs.

You roll to your side and curl up on yourself, drifting with the soft droning from the sleeping creature between your lungs and the sweet soreness thrumming between your hips. 

He’s at the door, putting his hat back on, when you call out his name. 

“Frankie.” 

It passes your lips for the very first time, a long kept secret, a forbidden vow, a usurped oath, and immediately you want to say it again. You want it to be real. You want it to be yours.

Frankie pauses and tilts his head towards the bed without facing you completely. 

“Thank you,” you say.

He opens the door to a draft of air wafting in, charged with the salty, humid scent of the faraway bay. He’s about to cross the threshold, and disappear into the night, when he speaks. 

“The room is paid for til morning. I’ll see you next Friday.”

****

Additional note: I woke up on day and decided to build a multiverse of orange bedroom Frankies 🧡 For those who've read PTMY, can you spot all the clues? This Frankie is really pissed off, though, but I kinda like it. I hope you'll like it too 🧡

Taglist (thank you 🧡): @elegantduckturtle @mashomasho @lola766 @flowersandpotplantsandsunshine @nicolethered @littleone65 @bands-tv-movies-is-me @the-rambling-nerd @saintbedelia @pedrostories @trickstersp8 @all-the-way-down-here @deadmantis @hbc8 @princessdjarin @harriedandharassed @girlofchaos @gracie7209 @mrsparknuts @your-voice-is-mellifluous @mylostloversbookmarks @readingiskeepingmegoing @lovesbiggerthanpride @youandmeand5bucks-blog @sarcasm-theotherwhitemeat @southernbe @blackvelveteen1339 @anoverwhelmingdin @casa-boiardi @nandan11 @jessthebaker @pedroshotwifey @angelofsmalldeath-codeine @noisynightmarepoetry

#tonight you belong to me #happy frankie friday #tybtm #Francisco Catfish Morales #frankie morales #the pilot™️ #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x ofc #frankie morales / fem!reader #frankie morales / you #frankie morales / ofc #triple frontier fic #triple frontier #pedro pascal #pedro pascal character fic #frankie friday #will miller #benny miller #santiago pope garcia #william ironhead miller #triple frontier fanfiction

[intheorangebedroom]

Tonight you belong to me, chapter 3

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town.  What happens if you can't make it to the motel on Friday evening?

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 see series masterlist for extensive tw.

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange besties 🧡 @frannyzooey thank you for your help and beta reading, I fucking adore you so much it's downright obscene 🧡

Word count: 12.2k

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Chapter 3: The Man At The Frontier

Make us come, baby. Make us come together. 

These words are yours. 

Even if you never see him again. Even if you lose him before having had the time to map the freckles on his skin. To sleep in his arms. To hear him repeat them. They’re yours to keep. 

He mouthed them against your skin, sunk them into your bloodstream in bright mahogany before coming undone, wrapped around your body. 

They’re yours, right? 

Even if you don’t get to see him ever again. 

—

It starts with the cramps. That’s how it usually goes. A myriad of microscopic pliers nipping at your intercostal muscles. 

Your eyes shoot open at the familiar ache. The early morning hues redefine the room in blue shadows. You blink your sleep-heavy eyelids a few times, confused, before your vision adjusts and you recognize the room around you. It’s your bedroom. Your nightstand, your lamp, your books. Your pills. Your tube of scented hand cream. The chair in the corner, that ugly, Louis XV style, transparent polycarbonate monstrosity by that French designer. The large windows. Those damn floor-to-ceiling windows that let in too much light, too much heat, too much open view. Nowhere to hide, in here. 

It has to be sometime between 4 and 5 am, you assume, before another cramp seizes you. You curl up into a tight ball on the edge of the bed, pulling the comforter to your chin.

Not today. Please. Not today.

Friday. 

Inside your abdomen, nausea streams densely, like liquid lead, from your ribs to your stomach, as cold shivers run up your spine. Sweat breaks on your forehead. You know only too well what’s happening, but it can’t be, there’s been no warning signs. No headache, no stabbing sensation in your lower belly, no spinning head. 

Today is Friday. 

You reject the obvious.

Were you so engrossed in the memory of him to pay attention? His hand wrapped around your nape, his forearm molded along your spine, pressing you into his chest, making you two as one. Closer.

Nausea is already lapping at your esophagus. The pliers bite harder at your ribcage and you know you have to move now if you want to make it to the bathroom before it happens. Shuddering, you push away the comforter, then get up and run.

Kneeled on all fours on the cool bathroom tiles, you dive headfirst into the toilet’s porcelain bowl as everything inside you collapses on itself, emptying the content of your stomach, mostly liquid. You should have eaten something last night. 

You know you’re not pregnant. For an infinity of reasons. 

Because you haven’t let Adrian fuck you in weeks. Because, when he does, he always wears protection. That’s your mutual, very tacit agreement. A silent understanding that you’re never the only woman, at any given moment. An unspoken confession on his behalf, implicit permission on yours. 

Because your contraceptive pill is the only one you’ll never stop popping. 

Because you’ve suffered through more stomach bugs than you care to count.

And of course, because Frankie won’t come inside you. 

You stand up on fawn-like legs and flush the toilet. 

You splash water on your face and grab your toothbrush with a trembling hand, shaking from head to toe. You know this is only the beginning, but it’s coming in strong. This one is most likely going to be a bad one. At least for now the pain is gone.

Above the sink, the woman in the mirror stares at you with unsettling, disproportionate glassy eyes. Her skin looks waxy, she scares you, and you have to lower your eyes. You brush your teeth as quickly as you can. 

You haven’t made it back to the bedroom when the second wave of cramps squeezes your abdomen. The pain folds you in half, and you let out a low whine. 

It echoes like distant thunder along the glass walls of the empty corridor. 

—

On Fridays, you count. You break down hours and minutes and steps and heartbeats into small, bearable quantities, so that you can live through them without going crazy. Today, however, you’re counting trips to the bathroom, and the time between two attacks from the cramps, like you’re readying yourself to give birth to a terrible monster, feeding off you from the inside of your quivering body. 

You’ve managed to spend most of the day hiding in your office, with the window cracked open, and the AC cranked up to the max. The clothes you wear are the same as yesterday. Your expensive formal blouse sticks to your sweaty skin in clammy patches. You’re cold, cold and hot all at once. In fact, you’re burning up, and a chill sweat has you shivering in the non-existent breeze. 

You haven’t gotten any work done, to state the obvious. You’re just dozing in and out of consciousness between two crises, head like a rock sinking onto your arms on top of your shiny glass desk. Its surface fogs with every one of your short breaths. You’re running out of toothpaste. 

Being the boss’ daughter has never granted you any particular privilege over your coworkers, except on days like this. At the first signs of sickness, you go home, or call in sick. Stay in bed for a couple of days, sleep it off, sip water tentatively every time you throw up until you can finally keep it down. No one has ever thought to comment on the frequency or duration of your sick leaves. Not even your father.

Kaytee has probably noticed something’s wrong with you. Her office is right by the bathroom, and you've run there seven times since you’ve arrived this morning, an hour late, which is uncommon, to boot. You look like a walking corpse, your eyes eating up half of your face and your lips pinched in a tight line. And surely, she will find a way to use this against you in the near or distant future. She’s been dying to take your place ever since she was recruited nearly two years ago, champing at the bit, waiting for you to slip so she can bury you. 

If she only knew. How you are dying to let her have it all. That you are convinced she’d be so much better at the job than you’ll ever try to be. 

With your last shred of energy, you push down the thought, like you push down the nausea and the shivers. On Fridays, everything that’s not him is irrelevant. At 6pm sharp, you’ll count your steps down to the parking garage and hop in your car. You’ll sit in traffic until you reach the 589 and you can finally cruise towards the motel in the protective semi-darkness of the Tampa suburbia. 

You haven’t yet considered what will happen beyond this point. When he steps into the room and finds you sitting there, looking like an undead version of yourself, reeking of stale bile, rancid sweat and toothpaste. 

All you have to do is make it there. You won’t give up, simple as that. You’ll suck it down. 

Demonstrating resolve you never knew you possessed, you make it to sundown. You hold out through the pain, through the cramps, through the soreness on your knees and the abrasion in your throat and the stabbing sensation behind your eyes and the pulling of your gums. 

At 6pm, you turn off the alarm of your phone and put it away in your purse. The room swirls around you the first time you try to get up. You wince, falling heavy on the simile leather chair you sweated on all day. You wipe your damp forehead and neck with a tissue, and you stand up again. 

All the blood in your body rushes to your feet. There’s not a drop of it left in your brain. You swallow hard against the bitter taste clinging to your tongue and palate and start counting your steps toward the elevator, only to lose track somewhere after 18.

Dark, green circles flash in rapid succession across your pupils, narrowing your vision. You grip the strap of your purse harder, and register you can’t feel your fingers. Something is wrong with your balance, your whole body slants to the left. You try to correct its trajectory but you can’t feel anything below your calves either. What you can feel is your forehead and your nape, defined by pain, burning hot and somehow also freezing where beads of sweat run down your skin.

You’ve made it to the lobby when everything fades to black. 

—

In your early 20s, you had genuinely tried to shake off the melancholia. An honest, hopeful attempt. You were away at college, and even though you didn’t get to choose your major, different and various paths seemed possible, within reach. A couple of years after graduation, when you had met Adrian, you had tried again, with renewed vigor and motivation. 

You did want to get better. 

You cut back considerably on hard liquor. You smiled broadly, at everyone. You said “please,” and “sorry.” Applied lipstick daily, polished your nails weekly. You went out to dinners and parties, wore high heels and interacted with strangers, drank wine in stem glasses and in reasonable quantities. 

On your mother’s advice, you went to “see someone.” As your father prescribed, you read the news and followed sports results. 

But the sadness kept settling down inside you, like the white particles inside a snowball. The vomiting spells became more frequent. Despite your willingness and earnest efforts, you kept falling short, and each fall hit you with increased brutality. 

For your mother, you were too much. For your father, never enough. For Adrian, you would soon come to realize, you were a commodity.

Trying to please them in turn, learning your cues, anticipating their needs and wills and whims, torn up between their contradicting desires and expectations, smiling pretty and meek, you completely lost track of what you liked and who you were. 

Anxious, confused, perpetually dissatisfied and unsatisfying, you withdrew within yourself. Hid away between the folds, detached and ready to flee, wishing for nothing more than to disappear. 

As Ava grew up, her loud and unapologetic personality compelling everyone’s attention, she provided you with a reprieve and, most importantly, a purpose. But a diffuse sense of guilt soon arose, as your little sister’s struggles could hardly be instrumental to your self-fulfillment.

Inside of you, isolation and loneliness grew solid, like a second skeleton, keeping you upright.  

Apathy soon took over. You resorted to medication to control it all. 

And when it was no longer enough, you found your way to the Hole in the Wall.

—

The smell of rubbing alcohol floats around you in the chilled darkness, its rough acetone accents abrading your nostrils. There’s an undertone to it. Rotting perfume and decaying bodies. A faint beeping sound tugs at your consciousness, and as you begin to come to, pain strikes you in multiple places. 

Something sharp stings the thin skin on the back of your right hand. Each one of your intercostal muscles is sore. Your throat is parched, rougher than sandpaper; your tongue too big for your mouth, stuck to your palate. Every single joint in your body is sensitive, but the worst, by far, is the piercing ache in your forehead. It glues your eyes closed. 

Panic floods your brain with static when you stir, wincing against the shooting pain, and you don’t recognize the motel’s mattress. The one you’re lying on is too hard, the linen covering you too starchy, the darkness is closing in on you, you need to open your eyes, fence off the pain, find Frankie…

Frankie. 

You never made it to the motel. Where the hell are you? When the hell are you?

“Ah. At long last, she wakes. How are you feeling, babe?”

Adrian’s honeyed voice hauls you through the darkness. Your eyelids flutter against the light until you open your eyes to a square room with a single, large window, blazing sun darting through. 

Adrian is sitting in the corner by the foot of the bed. A hospital bed, apparently. A narrow, dark blue mattress, unusually high, encased with rails on each side and at your feet. You’ve never been hospitalized before. 

He’s looking at you with a Cheshire cat grin stretching his thin lips, like he was just let in on a juicy secret. He’s dressed in his golf apparel. 

The violent luminosity intensifies the splitting sensation in your forehead, it vibrates to the back of your skull, from within, from the sides.  

Squinting, you turn your head to the side to take in your surroundings. On top of a beige, melamine nightstand are a black phone with a long twisted cord, an oval device with a red and a white buttons and another cord, and a metal kidney dish. 

There’s a tray table over your legs, with a jug standing next to a hard glass already filled with water, and some paper napkins. There’s a needle in your hand. A drip. With a cord. You flinch a little at the sight. A white rectangle eats up the tip of your index, a red light flashing from inside it. Another cord. It’s linked to the source of the beeping sound, a square monitor to your right, displaying wobbly lines of green. Another two cords are plugged in, you follow their sinuous lines to your bed, where they disappear under the sheet, and you take in the two round patches taped to your chest.

So many cords. Too many sensors. 

“Where’s my phone?” you mumble. 

Your tongue feels like a piece of carpet. You’re not sure whether it’s even your voice anymore. 

“You scared us this time,” Adrian says. His tone is cold, practiced, policed. 

You reach for the plastic glass and bring it to your chapped lips. The liquid flows down your throat like a waterfall; you wince again.

“Can you pull down the blinds, please? The light hurts.”

He lets a moment pass before he gets up, then circles the bed, unhurried, pacing toward the window, but instead of shutting the Venetian blinds, he sits by your side. The mattress dips under his weight. You hold your breath, anticipating a new jolt of pain. Behind him, the daylight forms a halo, blurring the outline of his silhouette. Your eyes water against the brightness. 

“What day is it?” you try again. 

“One thing we don’t understand is why you didn’t go home. You got us all worried, you know?”

The beeping picks up pace, imperceptibly. You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand. The one with no cords linked to it. You know this dance, he won’t cooperate until you ask the right questions, the ones he wants you to listen to him answer. Better to give him what he wants, for now.

“What happened?” 

“We don’t know exactly, that’s the thing. Well, you were sick, this you know,” he punctuates his words with a knowing grin and a wink, “but instead of coming home, you stayed at work, for some reason. We think you lost consciousness on your way out, and you hit your head on the elevator’s frame in your fall. We couldn’t help you right away because most employees had already left the floor. Jerry found you. He called your dad.”

You close your eyes, blocking the image of Jerry, of all people, finding you sprawled out and unconscious on the floor. And why would he call your father? Why not 911? You resent that collective we. Who the hell is we? Right about now, you could swear it’s the entire world versus you. 

Besides, you’re fairly certain Kaytee was still in her office at the time. She never leaves before 8pm at the earliest and makes sure everyone knows about it. 

“You split your forehead open. Apparently, you were running a pretty high fever, too. Oh, and you were critically dehydrated, according to the doctor I saw this morning,” he frames the words critically dehydrated in air quotes. “He also said something about a light concussion, I think.” 

You lift a heavy hand to your forehead, the tip of your fingers gingerly testing what they find there, a gauze dressing, held in place by medical tape. 

Having the clinical explanation behind the multiple aches throbbing inside your body somehow eases some of the pain.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” you say, unable to look him in the eyes with the harsh light behind him. “I need my phone. Can you give me my phone, please?”

“What do you need your phone for?” he asks casually, seemingly absorbed by something on his pants.

It’s a dare. You know that tone all too well. Today, however, you find that you don’t feel like playing. You want your goddamn phone.

Frankie cannot possibly have tried to reach you as you never exchanged numbers, but you want to call the motel. Find out if he came. What happened then. You want to know what time it is, what day, how much of him you’ve missed. You’re craving his touch, his skin between your parted lips, your heart pumping on empty, racing madly from the need for him, and of all the sensations making your body known to you, this one by far hurts the most. 

The beeping sound accelerates, drawing Adrian’s attention to the monitor, then to you. His cold blue gaze narrows on your face. You try to slow down your breathing, hoping it translates to your heart rate. 

“I need to call Ava. She must be worried.”

“Ah yes, your sister, of course,” he exclaims, feigning a bright mood, as if you’d just reminded him you’re traveling to Hawaii together next week. 

Getting up, he walks nonchalantly to the foot of the bed, leaning against the wall underneath the TV set, hands in his pockets. The black screen dwarfs his lean proportions. His red polo enhances his pallid complexion. You avert your gaze, lest the monitor picks up your disgust like it does your nervousness.  

“Yes, it’s true, she probably got very distressed, when you didn’t show up at all last night,” he agrees with affected concern.

There’s a foul taste in your mouth. Acid, rubbing alcohol, and something else. The glass is empty, but you don’t think you can lift that jug. Each one of your muscles is vibrating, waiting for the axe to fall. If only that fucking monitor could stop beeping. 

“Remember back in October, when Kenneth went to New York over the weekend for the symposium at NYU? Well you’ll never guess. He saw your sister there, in some uptown restaurant, making out with her…” his upper lip curls, “with this older woman, her girlfriend.”

So this is it. He knows. All this time, he’s known. Since October, practically since the beginning. And he let you believe you had him fooled, that you had the upper hand on the situation, that this part of your life was yours. He lured you into a false sense of safety, a deluded feeling of freedom. And all the while, he’s known. 

It’s really your fault, for forgetting that’s how things are with him. That nothing truly is what it seems. That he likes you scared, anxious. Perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

There’s no point in trying to control the beeping, now. In fact, given its cadence, you expect a nurse to barge in any minute. 

“Polly’s not old,” is your answer. 

“Yeah, whatever, they’re degenerates, both of them.”

“Where’s my goddamn phone, Adrian?”

“What do you want your phone for?” he barks.

The words are spat in your direction, and the sheer volume of his nasal voice startles you. Red blotches erupt on his cheeks and neck, his eyes are blazing with contempt. 

“You need to call your fucking dealer? Is that it? You think I haven’t noticed that you’re high half of the time?”

You remain perfectly still, holding your breath.You can feel your skin pulling at the medical tape in your hairline. 

He doesn’t know shit. In fact, he’s scared. He’s so, so small. 

“Listen, I don’t care what the fuck you do every Friday night, ok? But can you at least be fucking discreet about it?”

The poison in his tone and his words corrodes your confidence. 

“They will announce the senior partners in January, I cannot fucking lose your father’s business until it’s done, do you understand me? So whatever you do,” he points his index finger at you and stabs it through the air to accentuate each of his following words, “you be fucking discreet. More fucking discreet than that shitshow you pulled, do you get it? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Should you nod? Is he waiting for you to manifest your understanding of the situation? 

You hate yourself for thinking, ever so briefly, that he might have been jealous, that he might have cared. Held down on this bed with all these cords, you feel like a butterfly pinned in a glass case, on display in a cabinet of curiosities, a mere object amidst a multitude of other trophies covered in dust and mold. You’ve always hated butterflies. They gross you out. 

You allow yourself to breathe again when his posture relaxes. Looking down at his feet, with his hands on his waist, he shakes his head and huffs. The stance reminds you of Frankie, the difference in their proportions almost comical, like a circus monkey aping the brawny horseman, the one who gets top billing in the show. 

Frankie had you pinned on a bed repeatedly, without ever making you feel like a study in entomology. 

“Your dad is waiting for me, I’m already late,” Adrian says, coming toward you, “I’d love to stay a little longer, but you know how he is about golfing. Don’t want to keep him waiting!” 

He pecks a kiss on the crown of your head. The pain darts through your skull in all directions, all the way down to your spine. 

“Where’s my phone, Adrian?” you call one last time as he strides toward the door.

“You don’t need your phone, babe. What you need is to rest. Get those magical hospital electrolytes. Doctor’s orders,” he adds with a wink. 

And he’s gone.

Furious tears hang from your lashes. You focus on the plastic box on the tip of your index, and you begin to inhale and exhale, as deeply and slowly as you can. It’s shaky at first, but you’re encouraged by the decreasing cadence of the beeping. 

Adrian and your father go golfing at 2pm on Saturday afternoons. Meaning you’ve been out for over fifteen hours. Without your phone, you have no means to assert the time. Your watch is nowhere in sight, neither are your clothes, shoes, jewelry, purse. 

The room has a phone, but you have no idea if it’s connected. You don’t know the number to the motel. Hell, you don’t even know its name, only its location. 

Frankie’s silhouette invades your thoughts, the size of him, the shape of him. His broad back, his strong shoulders, the line of his neck. The sensation of his hands grasping your waist. Their precision, their roughness. Their intent.

Is this how it ends?

Fresh tears swell under your eyelids. You quickly clench them close. 

You did everything wrong. What an appalling idiot. You should have acknowledged you’d never make it there, not in the state you were in. You should have called the motel to leave a message, explain your absence, and promise you’d be there again the following Friday. 

Now you have no means to reach him. You probably have lost him forever. The warm touch of his skin. His unique scent. His taste.

The beeping grows frantic. Heavy wet sobs heap up inside your chest. Your hand flies to cover your eyes. You anchor yourself to the throbbing pain in your skull and the prickling needle in your hand. To the faint clasp of the pulse oximeter on your index finger. Pursing your lips, you exhale.

Whether the phone is connected or not is just a detail. You can always signal someone with that little remote on the nightstand and have the option charged to the room. Ava’s phone number is the one you have memorized, she can come and get you, and when you manage to get out of here and get your phone back, you’ll replace Adrian’s contact info with hers as your ICE. 

The point is: you’re not trapped. You’re not a dead butterfly in a glass case. 

Your heart rate slows down. 

Between the cords and the hospital sheets, you look up at the white ceiling, and do what you do best: you check out, slip back between the cracks, disconnect.

—

The pain from your head injury is overwhelming. You’d ask for painkillers, but that collective we still haunts you. 

You expect Adrian to come back on Sunday. He doesn’t. Throughout the day, you fall in and out of sleep, a restless, feverish slumber crowded with violent dreams of flesh-eating monsters licking your bones clean.

On Monday morning, the doctor comes in to see you. A man in his early 60s with a thick mane of gray hair and a carefully trimmed beard, he calls you “sweetheart,” and when he raises his eyes from his tablet, he flashes you a perfunctory smile with blinding white veneers. He introduces himself as the head of the gastroenterology department. And a friend of Richard. He makes sure that you understand that his name on your chart is a favor to your father. His demeanor commands your respect, preferably by way of intimidation. 

Whatever he tells you, you’ve already learned from the nurses who waltzed in and out of your room in a brisk and constant ballet throughout the weekend, to check with skilled, professional movements the multiple cords and tubes pinning you to your bed. 

You suffered bacterial gastroenteritis, with severe dehydration, necessitating an antibiotic treatment, and, from your fainting spell, a minor concussion and a head injury. A thin split, on the right side of your forehead, perpendicular to your hairline.

You got sick. You fainted. You hurt your head.

After the doctor’s gone, you’re finally allowed to get up. Under the fluorescent ceiling light of the adjacent bathroom, you spend several minutes observing the seven stitches adorning your forehead. The thick black thread tied in neat little knots that look like dollhouse barbed wire. The visible indentation in your flesh underneath them. The kaleidoscopic and psychedelic coloration of your skin, spreading from your brow to your scalp.  

One of the nurses assures you the scar will quickly fade and disappear. Just like you. 

You find your belongings inside the narrow closet by the bathroom door. The slit of your pencil skirt is torn nearly up to the waist, and the blouse is bloodied. Your jewels are tucked inside your purse. You stand in front of the shelves, staring blankly at the black leather rectangle with the two gold C’s entwined on the front. One of the very first gifts you received from Adrian. You can’t remember if it was for Christmas, or your 30th birthday. Every Friday evening for the past three months, you’ve shoved it unceremoniously under your car seat. You hate that thing. It’s soulless, tacky, it begs for attention, it screams money.    

Later in the afternoon, your mother comes to visit. She brings you magazines, In Style, Elle, Southern Homes, Vogue … At first, she doesn’t look at your face, and when she does, she crumbles into tears. You comfort her. You watch her pad the corner of her fake lashes with a tissue she pulls out of her Birkin purse, and reapply lipstick.

Adrian comes back on Tuesday, with a large bouquet of roses, a box of imported Belgian chocolates you’re not allowed to eat, and your phone. He doesn’t stay long. Before he leaves, he presses an open-mouth kiss to your lips. You wait until he’s passed the door to spit into the kidney dish.

Your father calls within minutes of his departure, with an apology for not visiting. Work, he says, the magic word that justifies everything, from the clothes on your back to his shitty behavior. You tell him the doctor has advised to rest for the remainder of the week. 

In the evening, you finally text Ava. She calls you back immediately, which, beyond her audible concern, puts a lump in your throat. When she asks you how you’re feeling, it’s a minute before you can even speak. 

You’re discharged on Wednesday, with a tube of antibiotics, a short list of food to favor and a much longer one to avoid. 

Ava comes to pick you up. She brings you a change of clothes, a pair of baggy, distressed jeans and a white t-shirt that spells PRIDE in rainbow letters. You smile at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, and when you come out, she laughs like a child at her own joke. You laugh with her. It hurts a little, but the pain is worth it.

You’re still smiling when you ask her if you can keep the t-shirt, and her face drops. She hugs you, a bone-crushing hug with closed fists compressing your back, her face slotted into the crook of your neck. Her voice quivers when she answers that everything that is hers, is also yours. 

You stuff the pockets of your jeans full of your things and leave your purse in the closet. With a little bit of luck, the person who will find it can get a good price for it. 

On Friday morning, you drive back to the hospital to honor a 10:30 am appointment to remove your stitches. You’re led through a sprawling maze of corridors into a windowless room with baby blue walls, and instructed to undress to your underwear, which you don’t. Sitting on the examination couch, legs dangling in the air, palms rubbing on your jeans, you wait for the nurse to come in. 

She doesn’t remark on your defiance. In fact, she makes a point of soothing your nervousness, introducing herself as Diane, complimenting the color of your sneakers. She promises that you won’t feel a thing, and you believe her. When she smiles, her irises nearly entirely disappear, and a wide-spanning arch of wrinkles appears at the corner of her eyes, like sunbeams drawn by a happy child. 

While she prepares her utensils, she engages you in small talk, skillfully stirring the conversation toward the matter of your mental health and physical well-being. You’re well-trained too. You divert without shame or remorse. 

True to her word, she makes quick work of it, and when she’s done, she hands you a mirror framed in a blue, rubbery material. 

At first, you refuse to look, but she kindly insists. Her voice is gentle, angelical, her hands are warm when she lays them on your shoulders. She never once pronounces the word “scar.” She calls you “a beautiful and brave young woman.”

So you let her guide your hand upward until you’re faced with your image. 

“See? Barely visible. Once the ecchymosis has faded, you won’t even be able to notice it. Just something that happened.”

As she stands behind you, her warmth radiates through your cold bones, and she smiles broadly at your reflection. You blink back your tears. You want to commit her words to memory, uncorrupted by emotions. Just something that happened.

Out in the street, a strong wind blows in gusts from the east, in an overcast sky. The damp smell scrunches up your nose. Even without the sun, the air is too warm for the season. When you get into your car, the first thing you do is crank up the AC. 

That rotten hospital smell is still clinging to your skin and hair, you keep having these drops in blood sugar that leave you trembling like a willow tree and drenched in cold sweat. The whiplash from this morning’s anxiety does nothing to level your mood. 

You glance at your watch. 11:30. You let your head roll back on the headrest. You can’t remember a time in your life when you were not exhausted. 

You consider heading straight to the motel. Originally, you intended to go home first, change your clothes and apply some makeup. Cover up the giant bruise on your forehead, and do your best to look alive. It would be smart to put some food in you, too, and of course, to hydrate.

“Fuck it.”

You start the ignition, and merge into the midday traffic. 

The drive is excruciatingly long. A week from Christmas, the traffic is terrible. Getting out of Tampa takes over an hour. 

It’s the afternoon when you pull into the motel’s parking lot. Your eyesight’s unfocused, your nerves are raw, your shoulders pulled taut. 

Of the three other cars parked in the lot, none look like the one you’ve always assumed to be Raul’s, an ancient white Jeep Wagoneer with a rusty back bumper. 

As you try to ponder what to do next, the prickling of your healing tissues riles you up, convoking intrusive thoughts of your scarred reflection. The antibiotics drill a hole into your stomach, the discomfort creases your brow into a constant frown. Your right leg bounces continuously on the car floor. 

You’re running on empty. Pure, solid stress is what’s holding you up.

Once again trapped, this time inside the carbon fiber box of your car, while the outside world is defined in movements. The course of the overcast sun across the pearly gray sky, and the ever-changing shades of the clouds chased by the eastern winds. The occasional vehicle driving past the motel on the secondary road. The trembling of tree leaves, birds flying over, lonesome or in flocks. 

That decaying smell is everywhere in you, around you, but it might be your festering thoughts.

You’re too much, not enough, a disposable commodity. 

Is this how it ends?

Sometimes before 7pm, the white Wagoneer pulls into the parking lot, followed a few minutes later by a red sedan. Raul’s short, bespectacled figure is recognizable through the windshield of his Jeep. Then, it’s the familiar sight of his blue overall as he climbs the flight of stairs to the reception. You slide down on your seat, you don’t need him to see you already stationed here. 

Shortly after, a curvy young woman with a straight, blonde ponytail that goes down to her waist comes out and jogs to the red sedan. She gets in on the passenger side, and you wait until the car disappears on the horizon to exit yours. 

The short walk from your car to the office should be muscle memory. Only today, the gravel feels steady under the flat soles of your Van’s, and your jeans allow you to take actual, proper strides. Carried by the momentum, you march into the room, opening the door so wide it bangs on the door stopper with an ominous sound of shaking glass panes. 

Behind the desk, Raul lifts his head. It’s easy to tell by his puzzled expression that he doesn’t place you. And why would he? You look nothing like you usually do on every other Friday evening. Your clothes are casual, your face is bare, your features pulled taut by mental and physical exhaustion and an array of soreness and pains, your forehead shines in Technicolor, set off by a fresh, inch-long scar. 

“Good evening,” you start with a tight smile. “I—“

A whole week. Seven days, and you haven’t thought this through. The liability that is your impractical brain appalls you, exasperation heating your temples. In the silence that ensues, the droning of the AC unit seems to grow louder. You smile again. 

“I come in every week?” 

Jesus. 

“Oh yes,” he nods, his boot-button eyes boring into yours, “Friday nights, room number 2.”

“Yes,” you answer with a strained, cringy little chuckle, “room number 2. Is it–”

You wipe your sweaty palms on the sides of your jeans.  

“I was wondering if the room was booked last week?”

“Yes, last week room 2 was booked. But you didn’t come, last week.”

“Yes, no, I was held back,” you hear yourself say. You wince before you add, “And, the— the tall man— the tall man who joins me, did he come, last week?”

“Yes. He came. He waited, two, maybe three hours. You didn’t come, so he left. No refund.  Reservations paid in advance are not refundable unless canceled at least 48h—“

“Oh no, that’s fine,” you cut in, relieved he might have thought this embarrassing interaction was about money. “And is the room booked for tonight?”

Raul’s boot-button eyes linger on you for a beat before he lowers them to the computer screen on his left. The mouse clicks a few times, loud and suspenseful, as he operates the thing. You try to catch the reflection of something, anything in his round glasses. There are seven rooms, two cars beside his and yours in that parking, what can possibly take him so long? 

If the bacteria hasn't killed you, the wait surely will. 

“No,” he eventually declares, looking up at you, “it’s not booked for tonight.”

The answer falls on you like a guillotine. It rings out in your ears and you sway on your feet from the violence of the blow. You don’t know how to breathe. 

“Do you want to book it?”

You shake your head slowly.

“No. Thank you.”

Back outside, in the muggy semi-darkness, your wobbling legs find the way to your car on autopilot. 

He made no plans to come back. This time, he didn’t leave any note. This is how it ends. Between your lungs, the wild creature is bleeding. 

You should turn around, ask if they have his full name, bribe Raul into giving you his contact info. You never thought of memorizing his plates, but you could always drive back to the Hole in the Wall, see if he’s been there, if he came looking for you. 

You don’t. You won’t. You’re not entitled to any of it. He was never yours. Never yours to want, to long for, to miss, to hold.

All that’s left now is the abyss and the fear. You’re terrified. Of what lies ahead, the choices you’ll have to make, the answers you’ll have to give. The hollowness in your chest. The gap in your existence. The fracture in your years. 

The before and the after him. 

He has changed you. You changed yourself. You’ll never know if you changed him. 

Stunned, you stand still by your car, cloaked in the velvety night, frozen in space and time. Your hand petrified on the door handle. Unable and unwilling to leave. Eyes riveted to the brass number on the door, glinting with a blurry glow in the soft yellow hues of the porch lights. Moths flutter fuzzy and silent into the light beam, oblivious to the drama of your story. 

The rectangular window stands guard over your secret life. Behind the yellow curtains, your lonely silhouette awaits to come to life, poised and silent, seated on the edge of the bed. 

That woman, young and brave . Want has made her bold and determined. In just a few moments, her trained ears will pick up the sound of an old truck engine drawing near on the empty road. Her existence will come into focus with thrilled anticipation. She will bloom out of her restraints at the sound of tires on the gravel. 

“Oh god,” you whisper, whipping your head around, your grip on the handle white-knuckled as the red truck parks behind your sedan. 

His massive silhouette comes out, and you clasp your hand to your mouth to muffle a dry sob. 

It’s a trick of your overwrought brain. He’s wearing a pair of worn-out jeans and a suede jacket over a dark t-shirt. The brim of his hat casts a long shadow over his face, but he’s moving fast, and in a couple of strides, he’s standing before you, hands on his hips. He’s smiling, a broad and bright smile. You catch a glimpse of a dimple you’ve never seen. A trick of the mind. 

Oh but he’s here, in the flesh, your body knows before your brain comprehends his presence. The instant pull, the humming purr of the creature inside you, the blood level instinct.  

“Hey!” he calls. He sounds out of breath. Like he’s been running. Running to you. 

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out through your clenched fingers. 

“What?”

His smile drops when you take a step back. 

“I’m so sorry, I couldn’t make it, I thought I could, but I couldn’t make it, and then I couldn’t—“ 

Your throat closes around the memory and you swallow hard, eyelids weighed by stubborn tears that refuse to fall. 

He takes a step forward, tilting down his head. That scowl. That scowl, you know. You’re only too familiar with it.

“Then it was too late and I couldn’t reach you,” you finish.

“What happened to you?”

The low timbre of his voice reverberates inside your chest. His eyes flicker up to your forehead. Before you can think of anything to say, he cups your face with both hands and turns it to the side, towards the light. The whole sequence happens so fast that you trip on your feet and catch yourself on his forearms. 

“Who the fuck did that to you?” he grits, leaning so close his breath fans your forehead.

“I’m sorry,” you repeat in a whisper. 

“Did he do that to you?”

“What?”

“Your husband. Did he do that to you?” he asks again, louder, this time. Separating each syllable.

“Oh no! No, I fell.” You bring the tip of your fingers to the sensitive mark. “The nurse said it will fade.”

“How did you fall?” he presses. 

He doesn’t believe you. Like you could lie to him if you wanted to. 

The tension from his frame resonates through yours, where a week’s worth of suppressed emotions and tears are piled up, waiting for a detonator that will bring down the dam. You push away his hands, your frown mirroring his own. 

“I fell, ok? I’m here now, so let’s go inside.”

“I’m not– no,” he huffs, hands back on his hips, shaking his head. His boots scuff over the gravel, the grating sound loud in the empty lot, in the stifling night, and despite the dimness you can make out that scowl, ever present, splitting his gaze. 

“You can barely stand.”

However relevant, his rejection burns your cheeks. You raise your chin, leaning against the hood of the car for countenance. For balance.

“I’m fine. The room is free. Let’s go.” 

“I said no. I’m not fucking you. Look, I don’t know what happened to you, but you’re clearly not well enough–”

“You don’t fucking tell me what I’m well enough to do,” you snarl with your heartbeat in your throat, pushing away from the car, sustained by your last shred of strength. “Don’t assume you know what I’m capable of.”

He stands in front of you, seemingly unmoved, impossibly tall, infuriatingly silent. Stoic, and you’re thrumming with frustration, standing stubborn and brittle in front of him. He gives you none of the myriad of micro-expressions that usually play across his face, that you read instinctually. You feel ugly, exposed, but you withhold his gaze, jaw clenched, breathing heavy through your nose. You might faint again.

The silence drags on. It’s a minute before he moves again, crossing his arms over his chest. His voice is calm, when he speaks next, low and quiet, almost soothing. You don’t want it to be soothing. You don’t want to be soothed, you’re not done with your anger. He didn’t book the room, and now he doesn’t want to go in. You are a swappable vessel, after all. 

“I don’t. I don’t assume anything,” he says, “I don’t want to hurt you, that’s all.”

“I told you already, you cannot hurt me,” you snap, impatient.

“Wanna bet?”

You don’t need to. You know he could. Just not in the way he thinks he would. He’s already marked you permanently, deeper than any injury, any wound ever could. 

“Listen,” he begins with a sigh. 

“No, I get it, I look like shit and you don’t want to fuck me—“

“Alright, that’s enough!” he silences you with his index finger pointed at you. His voice booms in the dim parking lot, and you avert your eyes. Weariness washes over you, you fall back against the hood of your car.

His shoulders sink just a bit, the slightest drop in the tension pulling them taut. He steps closer to you, leans down, seeking your gaze, searching your face in the semi-darkness. 

“Hey, why don’t we go for a drive?” he offers. “We can talk. Or not. We can listen to the radio. Or just drive in silence, if you want. Clear our minds. What do you think?”

Our minds. 

He’s so close you can smell the clean scent of his t-shirt and the musk of him underneath it; you can feel your skin reaching out for him in feverish little tendrils you cannot control. 

“Ok.”

“Ok?”

“Yes, ok.”

He smiles, a cautious, appraising smile. The light catches at the mahogany depth of his eyes. He reaches for you, placing a large hand in the small of your back, and whispers, “Alright, let’s go.”

— 

The cab of the truck feels almost sacred. For months, it’s been your favorite daydream. Picturing him alone in the only private space of his you’ve ever seen, driving to you. 

What are his thoughts, then? Are they of you? Are they happy? Are they hopeful?

On any other occasion, you’d relish the opportunity to be in here with him. You’d catalog and store up every tiny detail for future use in your fantasies of him. Instead, you’re sitting tight and rigid on the wide bench seat, pressed against the door, face turned toward the window, seeing absolutely nothing. 

You hate yourself for that, too. 

After a while, you risk a glance at the dashboard. 

Judging by the analog dials, the truck has some mileage, but it’s visibly been well maintained. There’s no visible spots, no dust, no dents, only the patina of time. The vinyl bench seat is upholstered with a soft fabric whose colors have fainted after too many years under the Florida sun. There’s a cassette player and a cigarette lighter. The windows are manual. 

The one on Frankie’s side is cracked open. The night air carries his scent over to your side of the cab. Leather, laundry, musk. You can’t escape it. 

“Hey. You ok there?”

In the moonless night, you can only make out the sharp lines of his profile against the outside darkness of the country road. 

“I’m sorry,” you mumble. 

He looks at you, brow pinched, but his expression is soft. Compassionate. 

“C’mere.”

The truck slows down to a snail pace, and he unbuckles your seatbelt. You scoot over near him. Without taking his eyes off the road, he reaches to your right and rolls out the middle seat belt across your lap, fastening it between your hip and his. 

The truck accelerates to a cruising speed, and he wraps his arm over your shoulders, drawing you closer. 

You let him, allow your body to slump against his, embrace his warmth, your cheek pressed against his chest. It’s solid and strong, a match for your skeleton of loneliness. The suede fabric of his jacket is smooth, worn in. You inhale him there. You rest a hand on his thigh, and slide the other under his jacket, to rest on his chest. It rises and falls with his breathing. If you lie real still, you can feel the steady thumping of his heart. 

“I’m not married.”

“Ok.”

The word is felt through your cheek as much as you hear it. 

“The man I live with. He’s not my husband.”

“Ok.”

The nodding motion of his head nudges you a bit. 

“And I really fell.”

He remains silent, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. The leather lining creaks inside his fist. 

“I got sick, last Friday. I get these stomach bugs all the time, but this was a mean one. I tried to make it through the workday, but eventually I passed out. Like a corporate rendition of a Victorian damsel, or something.”

You chuckle, diverting the humiliating memory. Just something that happened. 

He tightens his embrace. 

“That when you hurt your head?”

“Yes. On the edge of the elevator’s frame. At work”

“Fuck. Did it hurt a lot?”

“Actually it didn’t? I was out. It hurt when I woke up later, in the hospital, though. I had this terrible headache. I didn’t know where I was, or when I was.”

You feel him shake his head as he asks, “Were you scared?”

How to put into words, that the only fear you’ve ever had, is to never see him again? 

“I survived,” you answer with a shrug and a little, empty laugh.

If you were brave enough, if you had some strength left, you’d ask. How did he feel, when he got to the motel and found the door to the room closed. Why he didn’t book the room again. Why he still came tonight. 

“Does it still hurt?” he asks. 

“No,” you lie. 

“Mmh. And for real?”

You rub your cheek against the smooth suede, imprinting your soft smile into it. And maybe some of your scent for him to keep. In case, just in case he does care.

“A little. I’ll be fine.”

The truck cruises over the black asphalt, between the straight, stretching yellow lines. 

Your next words come in quiet, but not hesitant.

“He wouldn’t hit me.”

“Ok.”

“That’s not what he does.”

He exhales slowly through his nose. 

“What does he do?”

You bite your cheeks, already regretting this moment of weakness. The treason. 

“He makes me doubt.”

“Him?”

“Myself. And him too.”

Your eyes clench shut. His chest flexes under your cheek as he hardens his grip on the wheel. 

The truck drives past a gas station, through a small town. Neatly delimited square lawns, white houses with flags hanging on their porches, Christmas lights blinking through square windows, and you tilt up your head to look at him in the streetlights. 

His outlined profile, his steady expression, everything about him feels safe and grounding. The beauty that radiates from him, from within him, sinks to your heart. It races madly, awakening the soreness in your bruised ribcage, and perhaps he can feel it, with the way you’re curled up into his side. Leaning down, he brushes a kiss to your forehead. You bunch up his T-shirt in your fist. 

Soon, the yellow lines unwinding endlessly in the truck’s headlights weigh down your eyelids. In the safety of Frankie’s hold, your mind and body slowly drift into a peaceful slumber. 

“You ok? Want me to close the window?”

His voice is a distant whisper skirting the edges of your consciousness. 

“No, ’m good,” you mumble. “Wanna stay like this forever.”

Under your palm, Frankie's heart thumps loud and heavy. 

—

When you wake up, the truck is still and silent. Engine cooled off, windows rolled up. The night is pitch dark. Frankie’s scent, heady, familiar, everywhere around you. Your cheek is resting on his lap, and his hand lies heavy on your waist. His breathing comes in even and slow. Both your seatbelts are unbuckled. Your feet are bare. 

Aside from your legs, sore from being crammed into the length of the seat bench, you feel better than you have in a week, with your headache finally gone. 

You sit up, take in your surroundings and his sleeping form, seated behind the wheel. He stirs, lifting an eyelid and glancing in your direction, the corner of his mouth tugged up into something that resembles a drowsy grin. 

At some point while you were asleep, he drove back to the motel. Parked the truck so that the cabin faces away from the only source of light. 

You stretch side by side, sleep-heavy limbs, comfortable silence. You watch him lift his hat and comb his fingers through his hair, a tender smile lifting the corner of your lips. You know the curls he hides there. 

Of course, it cannot last forever. Nothing ever does. In a couple of hours, it’ll be daybreak. He’s always gone, by then. 

You won’t make this uncomfortable or difficult for him. You slip your socks and shoes back on. You’re reaching for the handle when he stops you with a hand on your thigh. 

“Wait. I need to talk to you.”

His voice is low and husky from sleep. You realize you have never woken up next to him. Never slept with him through the night. Probably never will. 

You hum quietly, pivoting on the seat bench to face him. 

“I can’t come, next week,” he says, searching your eyes. 

Emotionless. That’s how you have to be. You know how to do this. Not when it comes to him, but you can try. You try your best, your very hardest. 

“I understand.”

“I imagine you can’t be here either.”

No, you can’t. Thanksgiving at your parents’, Christmas with Adrian’s family. Always. 

“No, I can’t.”

The following week, either. But you don’t share that.

This is when the two of you should discuss a practical means of communication. The awareness hangs between you, loud and unspoken. The consequences it would have on whatever it is that the two of you share. The shockwave, the shift in nature and intention. The names that exist to describe your situation, crass, overused, sordid. Tainted with lies and deception, secret texting, hushed phone calls, disgusting, undeniable guilt.

Frankie moves first, getting out of the truck and going round the hood to open the door for you. You slide out of the high cab into his arms, and when your feet touch the gravel, you wonder if this could be the last time he will ever hold you.

In the feeble porch lights, his face is a landscape of diffuse shadows. The dip in his collarbone draws you in, a beacon in a dark ocean. You nuzzle into it, inhaling his scent, taking in his fragrant warmth. You tuck your face in the crook of his neck, graze your cheek along his pebbled skin. What if you stayed there? Tucked away forever. Disappeared to the rest of the world. Would it matter? Would he let you? 

Your fists bunch the sides of his jacket. 

“Kiss me, Frankie, please.” 

“Yes.”

His first kiss is tentative, the plush cushion of his lips a soft press over yours, but they return immediately, hungry for a taste, for more, the tip of his tongue brushing against your parted lips. 

All that you crave, all that you need is here, in his embrace, between his arms and his hands tugging at your waist, beckoning your body closer to his. 

Your arms circle his neck, the tips of your fingers seeking his curls. His hand spans your back, finds your nape. He molds you into his chest, and with the way he’s pressing you against him, firm and commanding, you know this will be one of these moments that feed into your hopes. The delusion you’ve been nurturing since the first time you’ve faced him. The dream that he wants you to be his above anyone else. 

His third kiss opens you up, tongue swirling around yours, and you keen, rising to your tiptoes, angling your head to take more, more, more and he gives. Hands gripping, tongue licking, crushed lips and guttural moans, he gives you all that you need like he needs it too. 

You’re floating above the gravel, there’s no time, there’s no space, his body has no end and there’s no beginning to yours as he kisses away your fears, your doubts, your darkness. 

Together, you stand entwined between night and morning, linked by chance, need and hurt, bonded by will and desire. 

There’s no urgent hunger in the spanning of his splayed hands across your body, no rage in his kneading of the soft of your hips, or the swell of your breast. His grip is strong, but studious and thorough. He takes you in, your curves, your dips, the slopes and slants of your figure. Like he’s storing up the feelings and memories of you for when there will be no more, when you’re far and gone, away with your husband who is not your husband. There’s despair in his touch, but most of all, there’s foresight, and intent. 

He’s untucked your t-shirt, calloused hand skimming up to cup your breast, thumbing the hardening peak of your nipple.

Once again, you find yourself pressed against the hard, cool metal of the truck, and like the first time, you’re frantic in his hold, but he’s in control. His thick thigh parts your legs, offering friction to the coiling need between your hips, that fire pooling liquid down your core. You squirm against the firm muscles. 

“Want me to make you come, baby?”

He’s breathing into your mouth, and you whine in frustration. 

“No, I want you inside me.” 

“Shit, you sure?”

“I’m not made of glass, you’re not going to break me.” 

You push away to look at him, a demonstration of strength. All talk, but you’re that desperate. He pulls you back into him for another kiss, chuckling into your mouth. 

“You think I don’t know that?”

So many simple things you had never done with him before tonight, after months of lying bare and naked, to his gaze and his touch, inside and out. Driving, falling asleep, walking, his steadying hand nestled in the small of your back. 

Behind the reception desk, Raul seems unfazed by this new development. The drawing pad blackened in charcoal is back.

“Room number 2,” Frankie asks, “for the night.” 

It’s so wild to consider that the two men have never interacted, when Raul plays such an important part of your Friday ritual. You’d try to get Frankie’s full name, real name, perhaps, but Raul doesn’t ask. This is not that kind of place. 

“I can pay,” you whisper into Frankie’s shoulder, tucking your t-shirt back into your jeans. 

“I know you can.”

When he flips open his wallet, a small color picture pops out, next to his driver's license. The photo booth format is easily identifiable. In the snapshot, a bare-headed Frankie is holding a very young child. The picture is that of a moment, seized through movement, the kid holding the Standard Heating Oil hat in her chubby hands, likely mere seconds after having snatched it from Frankie’s head, who’s looking down at her, with a bemused grin, tousled hair. 

It’s him, his distinctive, sharp features unmistakable, only he hardly looks like the man you know. There’s no trace of the grief he carries like a cloak when he meets with you. No crease splitting his brow like when he looks at you. Instead, his eyes glint with pride, creasing with a smile that dimples his cheeks, large and genuine. And the child’s round, plump face is brightened by the same irresistible dimpled grin, the same head full of wild curls, the same mahogany eyes.   

You quickly avert your gaze, but you’ve seen enough. The guilt is physical, visceral, it squeezes your ribcage harder than the pliers. The pain has you wincing and you grip the reception desk for balance, but Frankie’s arm is already wrapped around your waist and he’s leading you outside. 

In a trance, you walk beside him to room number 2. Your room. That picture-perfect image of fatherly love dancing before your eyes. 

He’ll never be yours. The wild creature shivers between your lungs. The certitude shatters your heart. 

Stepping inside, you’re rooted to the floor. Limbs too heavy to lift. Your blood has turned into lead. The fire in your core is a pile of ashes. You can taste it on the back of your tongue. 

Frankie flicks up the toggle switch, and the room lights up in amber hues. It feels too big, the satin quilt, the brown carpet, the yellow curtains, everything is foreign and distant.

Behind you, he sets his hat on the desk, drapes his jacket on the back of the chair.

“You ok?”

His voice jolts you up. You turn around to face him, unshed tears hanging round and heavy from your lashes. After a beat, he takes a step towards you, and you feel that absolute pull tugging from behind your midriff. 

His gaze drifts up to your fresh scar, where your flesh is tender, swollen and bruised. Yours travel down along the pebbled skin of neck, to the dip between his collarbone. A firework of freckles springs from the V-shaped collar of his faded blue t-shirt.  

Carefully, he slides your t-shirt out of your jeans again. You lift your arms like a docile child, let him undress you. He places a hand, warm and calloused, beneath your sternum. His palm heats your skin, warmth seeping into you. It untangles something, there. Something you didn’t know was still bruised. You lean into it. 

He stays like that for a while. 

Then his hand skates up to the base of your throat. His cold hard stare finds your soft sad eyes. 

“Do you get wet, thinking I could hurt you?”  

“I trust you,” you answer, a nod contradicting your words. His gaze hardens.

“Why did you think I wouldn’t come tonight, then?”

You shake your head, blinking fast. You never mentioned that. How would he know your thoughts? 

“Don’t you know I would fuck you on my deathbed?” he grits.

But you don’t know. Of course you don’t know, and how could you? Nothing in your life has ever prepared you for him, for this, for the strength of that pull, inescapable, for this obsession that has uprooted your life, your body, your instincts. Nothing has prepared you for the magnetism of his skin, the things you’d do to be in his presence, to breathe the same air, what you’d risk for his touch, what you’d give up for his attention, what you’d destroy for his affection . Your comfort, your safety, your future, your health. Your family and his, nothing fucking matters compared to the insatiable hunger of this wild thing inside your chest and its incessant chant of him, him, him. 

Your chest heaves, but his grip is firm. He leans down, lowering his lips to your ear, where he whispers, “What’s your name?”

You close your eyes, the wild creature is gnawing at your chest, eating you raw from within. 

“I want you.”

His hand lingers, travelling higher, fingers splayed across the width of your throat in a loose grip. You hope he tightens it. Like he does sometimes when he’s inside you. Tune out your mind, toss you into white-hot pleasure. Into oblivion. 

He doesn’t. 

He’s never truly been gentle with you before. Tonight, his kisses are languid, his touch soft and slow along your ribs. Delicate, when he reaches the swell of your breasts and slides down the cup of your bra, replacing the fabric with the palms of his hands. When he leans down into you, wrapping his plush lips around your nipple, sucking in the peaked bud ever so lightly, flicking the flat of his hot wet tongue around it, lips pursed, suckling. 

Against your belly, you feel him harden. You shiver with arousal and anticipation, with exhaustion. With the weight of this week and the burden of your life. With pain, ache and soreness. With your empty body, and your empty cunt. With that creature in your chest that can’t be tamed or satisfied. Can’t even be named. 

You shiver in his hold, for fear that this’ll be the last time. For fear that he’ll never be yours, that he’ll never want you the way you want him, with determination, with madness, without a choice. 

“I want you inside me, Frankie please," you breathe out, and he backs you into the bed to lay you down on the quilt. 

The fabric is cold under your burning skin, you shudder at the contact. He takes off your shoes, rolls off your socks. He slides your jeans down and off your legs, then your panties. 

You sit up to watch him undress, his eyes of mahogany brown never once leaving your face. 

He stands before you, naked, erect, filling your vision with this breadth, and you want to rip your beating heart out of your aching chest. 

The bed dips and he’s crawling over you. Leaning down, he drags the crown of his head up along your belly, along the valley of your breasts, his hair a soft caress on your quivering skin. Your fingers twine in his curls, you get lost in the sensation. For weeks he has barely let you touch it, kept it out of your reach. Now the abundance feels decadent, your head sinks back into the mattress with a faint exhale. 

Cautiously, he parts your folds with two knuckles. You bite down a gasp, tensing up. You can’t shake off that chilling dread, the one that trickles inside you, cold and piercing, when you think you’re losing him. But your body knows better, that sticky wet slick pooled between your hips, the coiling heat at the center of you. 

“Stop me,” he breathes into the crook of your neck, “don’t let me hurt you.”

He inches the tip of his length inside you with a strained groan, hooking your legs around his waist. He tries to work you open with a few shallow thrusts, panting against your temple.

“Fuck you’re tight.”

“Please, Frankie–”

His frame tenses up under your palms.

“I’m trying, you’re too— fuck, you’re too tight. Let me eat you open.”

“No!”

That’s not what you want, not tonight when you have no strength to spare, no time to lose, no patience left out. 

“I can—“ You trip over your words. 

“What?”

“I can sit on it.”

Heat creeps up your neck, setting your cheeks ablaze. He gives you a quiet chuckles. 

“Yea. Yea you can.”

He grabs your wrists and lifts you with easy strength. A few swift movements and he’s lying on the bed underneath you, your folded knees a straddle across his lap. You feel dizzy, like your blood can’t course along your veins fast enough, like it’s no match for his strength, for your arousal. 

“Spit on it,” he says. 

You circle his cock, smooth, heavy. It throbs into your hand. You take it all in, with a trance-like gaze, the coarse curls at his base brushing your skin, the round head, an angry shade of red, the ridges and pumped up veins along the length, the tip of your fingers that don’t meet around it.  

“Come on, don’t be shy, spit on it.”

Bending down, you lick a broad stripe along the thick ridge of his underside, from his balls to the fat round tip, where the skin is smooth and his taste heady, and he hisses something you can’t make out. It shoots through you, his sound, his burning skin, his taste. The curled tip of your tongue slides inside the small leaking slit, collecting the pearly drops he gives you. Your eyes flutter shut. His hands grip your thighs above the knees as you take him into your mouth, his fingers digging, a bruising furrow, something desperate. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Your lips slide along him, up and down, tongue wrapped around his girth. With hollowed cheeks, you take him deeper with each stroke until your head is spinning and you slip him out, rueful, glassy-eyed. 

His breathing comes in almost as heavy as yours. 

“Sit on it, now.”

His voice sounds wrecked, like you must look. 

“Yes,” you pant. 

Hands braced on Frankie’s chest, you’re not that flimsy, empty shell. You’re that fierce creature inside your chest, the one that claws and purrs and spits and demands. You tap into the bottomless pit of its life force, tap into the rumbling of Frankie’s ragged breathing under your palms, and you take.  

Eyes strained on the solid breadth of his chest, on the expanse of his amber skin and the darker circles of his nipples, on the constellation of soft brown freckles that turn your insides into a sticky leaking mess, you slide up his lap, part your folds with his hard cock, rub your clit over it.

“Fuck, you feel good,” he murmurs, not for you, not really. To himself. Like the memory comes back crushing. 

The bobbing of his throat, the low rasp of his voice, the wet sound of your slick smearing over his cock, it all builds up hot and prickly right under your navel. 

Sweat breaks on your forehead, along your spine, down in the bow shape of your arched back. 

You push away from the cradle of his hips, knees sinking into the creaking mattress. Raise yourself from his heat just enough to line him up, with his hands curled around your thighs, a steadying help. 

You’re tight, but wanton-wet. He’s a gliding stretch along your walls as you sink down on him with all your weight, your cunt ready to collapse, fluttering frantically. 

His thrashes back into the mattress, corded neck, strained muscles. Thick fingers bruising the tender flesh of your legs. 

“Fuck wait, don’t move, don’t move. Stop moving, shit!”

You still, not like you can move anyway, the pleasure-pain has you numbed out, limp, blinded. Your head lolls back, your eyes roll shut. Your lower lip twitches with the tension and the stretch. He’s so big you forget how to breathe but this is what you wanted, for him to annihilate all the other pains.

A sound comes out of your parted lips. A grating against your vocal cords, a primitive vibration of the air that’s punched out of your lungs. It’s not you, it’s the creature mewling.  

You can feel his cock pulsating hard and angry inside your belly. It’s a tidal ripple that travels up your chest. Your heart skips several beats. 

His hands cup roughly around your breasts. You lean forward into his hold, hips swaying, slack mouthed. You keep him inside you, a deep roll, hipbones to hipbones. The coarse black hair at his base a harsh scrape against your swollen clit. 

And suddenly, he fucks up into you. A hard shove, filling, merciless, into your cervix. You cry, nearly toppling backward and he sits up with a cinch, arms wrapping around your waist, catching you before you can fall. 

“Too much?”

“Oh god yes.”

You’re crying, at last. Big, hot beady tears of salt rolling down your cheeks. Full, fucked out, filled to the brim. Everything that’s not him obliterated. Thoughts, emotions, sensations.

“That’s what you wanted, right? You want too much, baby?”

His voice is quiet and soft like silk, teeth raking along your throat. It’s almost a bite but not quite, tongue tasting your sweat, lips wrapping around your pulse point, barely sucking in. You can’t speak, your nails dig into his arms, forming little pink crescents you’re not allowed to leave behind. 

You nod, you breathe out, “Yes, I want too much.” 

He straightens up, your breasts are pressed to his chest, sweats mingling. His scent is overwhelming. That musk he exudes, a leathery spice, whenever you’re fucking. The scent of his desire. 

His hand tangles in your hair. He makes sure you’re looking at him.

“Take it. Take what you want. Fuck, you’re beautiful, so fucking beautiful, you believe it, right?” 

You try to tilt your face down, hide your tears, hide your scar. He doesn’t let you. So you give in. Because, what if you are? 

“Say it again, please.” 

“Look what you do to me, baby. Can you feel what you do to me?”

His fingers dig into the soft flesh of your ass, and he grinds you onto his cock, a slow, thorough grind, splitting you deeper onto him. It’s coiling fast, hot and heavy, right at the center of you. 

“I’m gonna come, Frankie.”

“Do it. Come. Use me, make yourself come on my cock. Make yourself feel good. Take everything you need.” 

He talks you through your orgasm as you tremble and crumble in his hold. It’s a high that feels like a free-fall, like you’re unraveling, like you’re never landing. Like your skin’s burning and your mind is the horizon. 

You’re sobbing quietly when he carefully eases out of you, still hard. He carries you in his arms and you think you’re floating. You’re drained, boneless, falling asleep already. 

He lies you down under the covers, tucks you in. Places a glass of water on the nightstand. Folds your clothes on the desk. 

You don’t hear him dress up. You don’t hear him leave. 

And in a few hours, when room service wakes you up, barging into the room, you won’t remember his forehead kiss. 

****

#one day I will understand why I am more obsessed with Frankie driving his truck than flying a fucking aircraft????? #it's like Kelli said: it's my safe space 🧡 #Kelli's a genius #anyway #HAPPY FRANKIE FRIDAY #tonight you belong to me #tybtm #Francisco Catfish Morales #frankie morales #the pilot™️ #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x ofc #frankie morales / fem!reader #frankie morales / you #frankie morales / ofc #triple frontier fic #triple frontier #frankie friday #will miller #benny miller #santiago pope garcia #william ironhead miller #pedro pascal #pedro pascal character fic

[intheorangebedroom]

Tonight you belong to me, chapter 2

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. 

Two months have passed since your first time at the motel with Frankie. What has changed, what hasn't. Who are you now?

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 PLEASE, see series masterlist for extensive trigger warnings.

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange besties 🧡 How are you all? Gentle reminder that our Reader is an OFC. In this chapter, we get to know her better, and there are indirect physical descriptions of her. Sincerest apologies to anyone who knows Tampa. I did a lot of research, but I'm afraid my ignorance will still show… I swear I did my best. Raul is real, though. He's a friend of a very dear friend and he lives in Paris.

@frannyzooey my love, as always, I am in your debt. Thank you for your help. I love you more than words ��

I hope you enjoy this one, Orange besties, it made me sweat blood, @dreamymyrrh and @pedrit0-pascalit0 had to listen to my constant whining to put me on life support. Ily 🧡

Word count: 8.6k

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Chapter 2: Closer

The traffic is dense, but you spot Ava’s red Toyota as soon as it turns into E 7th avenue. 

On any given Saturday, the upbeat neighborhood is bustling with cheerful crowds of leisured weekenders and hip thirty-something. On this particular Saturday, the first after Thanksgiving, the streets are a vision from hell. 

There’s a constant ballet of cars pulling in and out along the curbs. On each side of the avenue, the sidewalks are swarming with jittery shoppers, frenetically prospecting for good deals on potential Christmas gifts. You’re willing to bet that most of them will stretch their budget thin on useless, meaningless knickknacks. Generic trinkets without soul nor purpose but that will, for the first half hour of ownership at least, fill the void in their consumers’ existence. 

The traditional Christmas tree of unholy proportions is up and sparkling. Wrapped around the iron porch columns, electrical garlands blink in rapid sequences like luminescent spasmodic snakes. Storefronts are decorated with more or less taste. The temperature has dropped twice below 70. It’s that time of the year. 

The merry season usually finds you adding a generous helping of anxiolytics to your daily cocktail of little helpers. This year, however, you haven’t popped a pill in days, and everything feels… more. Louder, too vivid, more oppressive. Sensations magnified and emotions amplified. Which is, after all, what you were aiming at when you unilaterally decided to taper off your intake. 

Ava miraculously secures a free spot on the other side of the avenue, about a hundred yards in front of yours. You watch her parallel park, the maneuver surprisingly sloppy, given the parking assist technology the brand-new hybrid car is equipped with, and you wonder if you really needed to spend that much money on it.  

In front of your own parked car, pedestrians agglutinate at the crosswalk. When the light turns green, they move as one, like flocks of extras on a movie set, coming to life on cue when the director yells “action!” 

They’re not extras, however, each one of them is the main character in the movie of their life. Together they form a constellation of individual and interconnected stories, while you stand at the margin, forever exhausted, willfully forlorn. At best, a supporting part in Ava’s fantastic tale of eccentric adventures, but more likely a backdrop in your father’s gripping success story.

Although, your narrative has changed drastically over the past two months. You now got a part in your own right, unfolding in between takes. 

You wait until Ava gets out of her vehicle before you exit yours, reluctant to leave the hushed safety of your old sedan’s cab, even for the few minutes it’ll take you to meet with her and step into the coffee place. 

You wave at her from across the busy street until she sees you, but when she proceeds to jaywalk over to you, reckless and entirely indifferent to your pleading expression, you have to avert your eyes. There’s a crosswalk right in front of you, god dammit.

She levels up with you and pecks a kiss on your cheek, hitting your cheekbone with force, more headbutt than demonstration of affection. 

“Hey,” she says, barely stopping in her tracks before she pushes open the glass door to the coffee shop.

“Hello, pup,” you answer fondly, your words lost to the street’s bustle. 

Inside, the artificial air instantly pulls at your skin. The atmosphere is cool but dry, saturated with the smell of freshly grounded coffee beans and greasy-sweet pastries. The high-ceiling, cement floor, wide open-space is packed. The brick walls reverberate the ambient noises, and the late morning sun beams brightly through the large floor-to-ceiling windows, evenly spaced along the lateral walls. People sit in small parties around the white designer tables, sipping iced coffees from tall red paper cups with white snowflakes, large shopping bags at their feet. 

Trying your best not to shrink and shrivel from the multiple overwhelming stimuli, you focus on Ava’s back, walking behind her as she leads the way to a free table at the rear of the coffee shop, between the counter and one of the windows. There’s a regal quality to her gait and the way she carries herself, not unlike your father, the resemblance enhanced by her preference for masculine clothing, and you have to love the irony, given how much she hates the man. She has your mother’s beauty, though. The same luxurious dark hair, fair, flawless skin, and wide green eyes, her frame tall, her figure athletic. She’s the masterpiece. Next to her, you look like a clumsy first draft, with blurry edges and hesitant features.

She throws her jean jacket on the back of her chair and collapses on her seat with a theatrical sigh. 

Across from her, you sit down gingerly on the edge of the hard wooden chair, balancing your weight around the sore and delicious ghost sensation of Frankie between your hips. 

“You look good,” you start. 

“Yeah, you too!” she exclaims, like it’s unexpected, “tired but like, good. Are you getting any sleep?”

You smile, waving your hand dismissively. 

“Don’t we have to go to the counter to order?”

“No, it’s fine,” she answers, “they serve at the table. I’m having an oat milk matte, what do you want?”

“An espresso, I think.”

Right on cue, a young woman dressed in a black cropped top and black skinny jeans presents herself at your table and proceeds to tap in your order on a rectangular electronic device. Her long acrylic nails hit the screen with a rapid succession of click-click-click. The sound brings you back to your parents' dining-room, the large table standing like an angular island on the shiny square of reflective tiles, in the middle of a shag carpet ocean. Your mother’s nails, painted in Revlon Desirable #150, rattling impatiently over the lacquered surface of the dining table near her untouched plate and a glass of G&T sweating with condensation. She never ate her food. She drank even when she was pregnant. 

Your fingers find the back of your knee and pinch the thin skin there, so hard you flinch. 

The waitress waltzes off, and Ava returns her full attention to you. 

“I’m happy to see you,” she offers, and you smile softly at her uncustomary expression of affection. Your chest expends. “It’s been a while.”

There’s no reproach in her tone, but you are usually the one expressing ill-concealed concern over her long silences, and the reversal in your dynamic throws you off. Guilts gnaws at you. You choose defense. 

“You were away.”

“Yeah, but like, I came back three weeks ago.”

Three weeks. Your smile fades and you slump in your chair, running a quick mental calculation. 

Time has never been an easy concept for you to grasp, but until recently, you’ve managed to remain afloat and functioning, on a practical level at least, amidst a society that revolves around schedules and timetables. The watch on your wrist, yearly organizers, recently and reluctantly replaced by the iCal app on your phone, sticky notes, tin boxes filled with tickets stubs… All clutches to your failing memory, anything to keep you tethered against an overpowering and primal instinct to escape, let go, drift away. And perhaps, most of your exhaustion stems from this endless swimming-race against the current. 

Lately, your inability to remember appointments, to navigate time and hold an effective grasp on reality has reached a new high. For the past two months, your life has revolved around Friday nights and the sound of a red pickup truck pulling in and out of a decrepit motel’s parking, tires screeching on the gravel. Inside this timeframe, your entire life is contained. Around it, the days stretch, spiral, and blend. And you’ve lost all motivation and interest in any counter-current swimming. 

You frown slightly, scanning her face, but she doesn’t let on anything out of the ordinary. After all, if she genuinely worried, if she so badly needed to see you, she could have given you a call. You were the one to reach out and ask to see her this morning. 

Something’s different about her, in the way she holds herself straighter on her seat, with her legs crossed and her head tilted to the side, exposing the undercut she got before the summer. You’re still not entirely sure if this was the bold fashion statement she claimed it to be, rather than a dramatic reaction to her girlfriend moving back to New York. With Ava, it could be both. She’s not wearing any makeup today, her face looks disarmingly young, and the concern she’s expressed, however subtle, churns your insides with guilt and affection. 

You plaster a polite smile on your face. 

“Well, I’m here now. It’s good to see you, too. Tell me, how was New York? How’s Polly?”

The waitress returns with the pastries and beverages you ordered, and Ava begins to narrate her two-week trip to the big city. She speaks fast, punctuating her words with large gestures to describe the cultural buoyancy, the hip neighborhoods and her thrifts finds, the street food and the refined, cutting-edge restaurants, how everything is bigger there, faster and better, how she fell safe walking hand in hand with Polly, the clubs, the galleries, the weather, crisp air and chilly winds from the north, a refreshing, comforting seasonality to pace the existence. 

“I was fucking crying when I boarded the plane back, you have no idea.”

“Oh, I can imagine,” you sigh, shaking your head. “You don’t miss her too much?” 

She doesn’t answer, and something in the way she avoids your gaze makes you frown again. 

Polly and you have always gotten along well. You genuinely appreciate her solar personality and her worldly conversation. Their encounter four years ago had been the silver-lining in an otherwise horrendous year. The happy, coincidental consequence of a chain of events that had been years in the making. 

When Ava dropped out of college halfway through her freshman year, it provided your father with the excuse he had been waiting for to kick his own child out of his house. You had seen it coming. In fact, you had spent your entire adult life shielding Ava from the paternal discontent, investing all your strength into becoming the son and successor he had wished for, and that neither of you could ever be. 

Ava, however, had never put in the effort. She didn’t fit into the family portrait. She never had. You didn’t want her to, and she simply couldn’t. Too rebellious, decidedly unconventional, and, well, queer, to boot. Your father had spent years formatting you and there she was, standing proud, strengthened by your unconditional support, a glaring highlight of your diverging values, a breathing reminder of his failure with you both. 

In the aftermath of the fall-out, Adrian had refused to take her in, and she had spent days out of your sight, sleeping god knows where. Eventually, you’d dug your heels in, as you only ever did when Ava was concerned and her wellbeing on the line, and obtained that she move in with you. The cohabitation hadn’t gone smoothly in the least. As usual, Adrian was more concerned about potentially upsetting your father than making you happy. You were once again caught between crossed fires.  

The strained situation with your fiancé notwithstanding, Ava couldn't spend her time sitting idly at home. You had pleaded with her for weeks before she agreed to resume her studies. Only this time, it had to be with your funding. The realization that you didn’t have any consequential money of your own had been brutal, even though it shouldn’t have been a surprise: you lived in Adrian’s apartment, and were employed by your father, who refused point-blank to let you sell some of your company shares, knowing the money would go to his estranged daughter. 

All you could afford was Hillsborough Community College, but things had eventually taken a turn for the better when Ava and Polly had met. Polly was teaching psychology, waiting for a tenure that she would never be granted. Because of the 20-year age gap between them, she insisted Ava graduate with her BA before they started properly dating. And when they did, the improvement in your sister’s mental state and overall balance was immediately noticeable. 

Calm and collected, affectionate and thoughtful, Polly grounds your young sibling. She eases her anger and channels her energy into creative and fruitful endeavors, without snuffing her rebellious temper. 

And now, despite Ava being almost fully independent, with a job and a place of her own, you don’t know what you’d do if they were to break up. If one of them were to decide that a long-distance relationship is not what she wants. 

You lean forward, your hand coming to rest over hers, warm and smooth. “Hey pup, what’s up? Is everything ok between you two?”

“Oh yes,” she quickly assures you, withdrawing her hand, “and by the way, she sends you her best.”

Understanding downs on you like a bucket of ice. You suddenly feel stupid, pathetically naive, forever one step behind. Leaning back in your chair, you let out a short, soundless huff. What you’re facing is not a breakup, but the likely possibility that Ava will soon move out of town to follow Polly to New York. 

Ava is talking again, about New York you’re guessing, but you can’t focus on her words. Behind your impassive eyes and your attentive smile, your mind reels and wrestles with a downpour of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Pride flares in your chest at the prospect of your baby sister setting roots in a city as intimidating as New York, but it tugs at something else, something you’re too scared to consider, and an ugly feeling you’re reluctant to acknowledge.  

Would she hesitate before leaving you behind, after you’ve prioritized her freedom over yours? After you stayed so she could fly away? And wouldn’t it be the point? 

Your eyes travel up along the trail of small tattoos adorning her forearms. Dominos, tea cups, a white rabbit with round glasses, a flamingo, several thin arrows, a broken heart in flames. 

What’s your purpose, if she’s not here anymore? If someone else is looking after her? If your sacrifice is no longer necessary nor justified?

“How was Thanksgiving dinner? Did you have fun talking about politics with Richard?” 

You wince involuntarily at your father’s name. She never refers to them as “mom” and “dad.” She hasn’t for a long while. But today the sarcasm doesn’t fool you, no more than her feigned indifference. 

She’s not truly asking if you had to bite your tongue and smile through conversations that make you nauseous. She knows well enough you’ve got just enough political convictions to carry you to the voting poll, but hardly a step further. Listening to him is painful, but you get by, and your shameful silence buys you necessary peace. 

No, what she wants to know is if your family inquired about her. And you don’t have it in you to answer that no, no one has, not last Thursday, not for the past four years, not ever. Not your indifferent father, nor your inebriated mother. Not your bigot grandparents, not your egotistic aunt and her gold-digging husband, not even the housekeeping staff.  

You shrug noncommittally. 

“Who were the guests of honor, this year?”

The question makes you groan and briefly close your eyes at the memory. 

“Adrian’s parents.”

“No?! Fuck! They really want this marriage to happen, don’t they? Looks like you’re not gonna be able to dodge much longer.” 

She smacks her hand over her thigh, letting out a short staccato of a chuckle, as if the subject of your confinement through marriage was a laughing matter. You glare at her, crossing your legs and folding your arms over your chest, but the shifting in your demeanor goes unnoticed.  

Suddenly, her levity riles you up. She got away. You didn’t. And the only thing that carried you through this year’s Thanksgiving dinner is the perspective of being fucked senseless by a stranger on a dirty motel floor the following night. 

For a brief moment, you’re tempted to bite, and retort that, contrary to her, you didn't spend the holiday on your own. But the truth is that you envy her the privilege, and she knows it.

Taking a deep breath that does absolutely nothing to calm your growing nerves, you stir the conversation towards another topic, finding neutral ground with her job. You’re stalling, and you’re not even good at it. You sit restless on that damn hard chair, squirming uncomfortably, sweat prickling under your armpits in the chill artificial air, eyes flicking down to your watch every other second. 

“Do you have to be somewhere, or something?”

Your head shoots up. Again, you have no idea what she’s talking about, or how long she’s been rambling for. This is ridiculous. You are being ridiculous.

“Listen, Ava, I have to ask you something. A favor. I have to ask you a favor.”

Her eyes widen at your sudden change of tone but she nods. “Hit me.”

“I need you to… I need to be able to tell Adrian that I spend… that I spend Friday nights at your place. Actually, I’ve already been doing it for a while. He thinks we see each other on Friday evenings. I just… I need more time. I need the night.” You grip your shin with both hands and dig your nails in. “It really doesn’t matter anyway, he’s not home on Fridays, he plays poker and he never comes back until like, 3 or 4am, and I just need— I need to be able to come home after him. Not, like, every week. Or yes, maybe every week. Just in case. If ever. You know?”

She remains completely still and silent as you wrestle your words out of your throat. Her face hardens, her wide, green eyes strained on you. She gauges you in silence for another moment, while you rub your clammy palms on your jeans under the table. Above the table, you do your very best to maintain a casual air.

“And what exactly is it that you do, on Friday nights?”

You anticipated the question, of course you did. You swallow around the sharp stone stuck in your throat. Your eyes dart down to your espresso cup. It’s empty. 

“I’m just taking a bit of time off for myself.” 

More time, to commit his body and his face to your long-term memory after he’s left you, depriving you of his heat. The tiny bits of him that add up to form the formidable sum of the man he is. The locks that curl around his ears. The dip in his collarbone. The little target tattooed on his hand. You’re never sure which hand it’s on, you need more time, that’s all. And you won’t lie to her, not exactly. You set your mind on that early on. But you will not tell her the whole story.

A large shit-eating grin slowly parts her plump lips. 

“Are you telling me that Richard’s favorite daughter is getting some side dick on a weekly fucking basis?”

“Jesus, Ava, why do you always have to be so crude?”

“But you are? Right? You are getting dicked down, every fucking Friday night? Right? Are you on Tinder, or something?”

“I’m not—” you start, but her excitement is louder than your exasperation. She uncrosses her legs to lean toward you, propping her elbows on the table and threading her fingers together, talking over you. 

“Why didn’t you tell me? For once that something cool–”

“Because there’s nothing to tell,” you retort through clenched teeth, raising your voice. Her mouth hangs open in shock. You don’t give her time to recover. “And look, if you don’t want to do that for me, it’s fine, it’s not like anyone is going to call you to ask if I’m with you.”

She takes the blow, leaning back in her chair. “Wow. You really thought this through, didn’t you?”

You don’t answer, shame and anger burning your cheeks.  

“Why you’re telling me now, then?”

“Like I said. In case.”

“I case what? In case I find myself on a Friday evening in the same place Adrian takes his cuntsluts?”

You steel yourself and stare at her. 

“Something like that, yes.” 

—

Two months. 

Two months of lies and deception, shoving your bright secret deep down inside you, shrouded under a veil of routine and normalcy.

Nine weeks, split into six days of stretched out hours, swirling languid and excruciating, like smoke from a cigarette stub in a room without air, and one day of counting. The minutes, your steps, your breaths, your heartbeats.

Saturdays, worn-out, appeased, pleasantly aching. Sundays rising slow like a lurking threat. Mondays-Tuesdays-Wednesdays merging, dragging and useless. People talking to you, expecting words, when your mind is filled with two glistening bodies entwined in golden hues. A tremor on Thursdays, the nearing promise, and by Friday morning you’re all frayed nerves and aching want, tapping into your pent-up emptiness for focus and patience. 

Friday evenings sliced up into a ritualized sequence of actions. 

At 6pm, you leave your office and head toward the employees' underground parking. There are 37 steps from your desk to the two silver-doors elevators on the landing. Seventeen stories down, including 2 underground levels, and 58 steps from the elevators to your designated parking place. It is crucial that you don’t allow the pace of your steps to catch up with the racing thumps of your heart. 

From downtown Tampa, it’s an hour and thirty-six minutes drive north on the 589, before you reach the motel. An hour and fifty minutes, two hours top, if the traffic’s bad. There might be faster alternative routes, but you don’t use the GPS, so you don’t know about them. 

Once you’re there, you park in front of room number 7, the one with the missing brass  number. You stuff your phone into your purse, which you slide under your seat. 

You exit your car and walk towards the reception in short, hurried strides, cursing the tight skirt that hinders your steps and gives your posture a subdued aspect, which is probably why your father imposes the garment on his female employees. 

The reception is a square room with an old humming AC unit, dark-brown fabric wallpaper, yellowing popcorn ceiling and a counter behind which sits Raul, the night clerk. Raul is a short man in his mid-60s. His dark eyes are reshaped into tiny concentric boot buttons by the thick lenses of his small, round glasses. His light brown, straight hair is styled in a bowl cut. He only wears beige Henley’s with rolled-up sleeves and indigo painter overalls. You’ve never seen his shoes.

Every week, Raul hands you the key to room number 2 without lifting his boot-button eyes from the charcoal drawing he busies himself over behind the counter, and tells you in a thick accent that “everything has already been taken care of.” 

Every week, you thank Raul, grab the key from his stretched out left hand, and chance a glance over the counter to see what he’s drawing. Mountains, infallibly, week after week, the scenery only varying in shape and shades of anthracite. 

And every week, as you exit the reception, you feel Raul’s boot-button eyes strained on your back through his round glasses. 

When you step inside room number 2, you flick up the two toggle switches by the door, turning on the lights and the overhead fan, and you go to the bathroom to wash your hands and check your reflection in the antique black-edged mirror. 

Then, you return to the room and you sit on the bed. That’s where you wait for him. 

You don’t undress, you don’t lie down, you don’t undo the bed. 

You know what he’ll do to your clothes. Anticipation trickles down along your spine all the way to the ripe heat between your thighs, and it travels right back up to tug up at the corners of your lips, but you press them together, lips and thighs, as you wait.  

He comes in after dark, preceded by the sound of tires on gravel and that of his boots stomping on the porch and he’s here, Frankie’s here, the rush of night air from outside when he storms into the room wafting over your face. 

He greets you with a hoarse voice, like he hasn’t used it all week, and he takes a couple of long strides towards the desk, where he sets down his cap. You peer at his reflection in the framed mirror when he combs his fingers through his dark curls, tense jaw, creased brow. You study his broad shoulders, the rippling muscles of his strong back, when he takes off his jacket and drapes it on the back of the chair, swift, precise gestures. It’s his own ceremonial, you let him have it, his transition into this world that you share. The confine of this room. Brown carpet, yellow curtains. 

When he turns to face you, at last, it’s always with a heavy, grating sigh, a sound so rough and primitive to express his relief, his hunger, the limit of his patience. You stand up slowly, unfurling in slow motion from your sitting position on the edge of the bed, eyes on him, forever and always. His want radiates from him in colorful angry waves, like a tangible, virulent aura, black eyes boring into your skin and you welcome it as it pours out of him and creeps up to you like thick fumes. 

You stand tall in the charged stillness of the motel room, offered, but not quite yet within reach, waiting for him to come and seize you. 

“Take off your clothes,” he says as he comes closer, tilting up his chin. The command rumbles low and guttural from his throat, and those words are your cue. You clamber out of your statuesque stillness, twisting your ankles out of your pumps while he tugs at your blouse, as he crashes his lips onto yours. 

His first kiss is voracious, unescapable, your face trapped between his cupped hands, and you’re engulfed in the taste of him, drowning in the scent of him, leather and soap and musk. And something metallic you have no name for. It’s intoxicating, you’re floating, losing both bearings and balance, like when you were thirteen, and you’d sneak to the downstairs pantry to drink your mother’s gin before dinner. 

On some Friday nights, you’ve already made it back to your glass prison when you notice a tear in the seam of your shirt, or a missing button. “Take off those fucking clothes, I wanna feel your skin.” 

“Yes,” you answer with parted lips, parted heart, parted life, jaunty fingers working your skirt open.

Beyond that point, neither of you talks much. 

It’s his name –Frankie– falling from your lips, a long but quiet whimper when you come, a whine of pleasure-plain when he inches into you, a moan when you plead for more, a whisper when you promise you can take it all. 

It’s his clipped orders, sharp and short. 

Open up

Push back into it

Let me hear you

I want you to come on it

And two words, always the same since that first time in the parking lot. 

Stop me.

Stop me when he pins your hands above your head or folds your arms in the small of your back, his fingers like shackles around your wrists, and he lines himself up. Stop me before his saliva drips down his tongue in fat drops between your breasts, and he straddles your chest. Stop me, when he closes a fist in your hair and slides you down along his hard length, your chest caving in under your gag reflex, beads of tears like precious shiny diamonds clinging to your lashes. Stop me when he angles your spine backwards with a sudden tug on your hair, when he bands an arm across your belly and ragdolls you to the floor to fuck you harder and deeper. Stop me when he ties your wrists to your ankles with the black zip ties that bite into your flesh. 

Stop me with the flat of his hand pressing down between your shoulder blades, Stop me with his thumb teasing your tight ring, Stop me with your legs around his neck. 

Those two words, a beacon guiding you through the week that precedes. 

Sometimes, when you’re alone, you repeat them to yourself. 

“Stop me,” you say, low and quiet, facing the mirror when you're applying makeup, staring straight into your eyes, so intently it twists your reflection. 

“Stop me.” A whisper, and a slow-spreading, carnivorous smile that splits your face in two because someone, at last, wants you beyond reason. 

Stop me. You will never stop him. 

He fucks you twice, three times a night, before he leaves you covered in him, sated and sprawled on the rumpled bed around 2am, with a nod and a husked, “I’ll see you next Friday.” He sounds calm at last. Drained. 

Once he’s gone, in the rumbling of the pickup’s engine and the screeching of the tires, your mental countdown to the next Friday is reset. You crouch into the narrow bathtub of dubious cleanliness, and ruefully wash him away in the trickle of hot water. You try to hold on to the thought of him, even more so than to the feeling of his touch. That’s what the soreness is for. It will stay with you until Monday at least. 

But in your memory, his face is blurred. Only his sad angry eyes stand out, dreamlike, entrancing.

There's a conflicting distance beyond his hunger. An underlying restraint beyond his roughness. Withheld intimacy. A reluctance to give into your softest touches, when his forehead briefly rests on the plane of your chest, and you circle his neck, or carefully run your fingers through his sweat-soaked curls. 

It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to understand that if he wasn’t in here with you, he’d be somewhere else, doing something worse. 

Some weeks, you go through strings of sleepless nights and restless days of anguish, your mind spiraling to the agonizing thought that you are nothing more to him than an empty and interchangeable vessel into which he can fuck his rage. 

With masochistic thoroughness, you pull taut a red woolen thread to connect the clues of your insignificance. 

He doesn’t name you. There are no sweet names, no terms of endearment, and he certainly never calls you Marion. The sounds he produces when he’s inside you, that’s your reward. Deep guttural grunts, and if you’re lucky enough, they resonate through your whole body when he holds you tight and close. 

He never comes inside you. Where do you want it? he pants, when his hips start to fall out of pace. “Mouth,” you quickly answer, always, a greedy match for his gritty ways. And most times, he obliges. Flips you around or scoot over you and shoves his pulsating cock into your warm, wanton mouth. 

But sometimes, he doesn’t. The thick pearly white ropes of his spend spurt over your back, your belly, your chest. That’s when he’s got a mind to rub it into your skin. That’s when you want to believe he might have chosen you to be here with him. 

In those scarce instances, you are tempted to rely on your instinctual understanding of your relationship. Far from the toxic codependency that, according to Ava, you feed into with Adrian, what you share with Frankie is elsewhere entirely. Week after week, he presents himself before you, visibly wounded, willing to offer exactly as much as he needs to receive. The balance is perfect. No travesty, complete equality. The purest form of interaction. The most honest transaction you’ve ever taken part in. 

And thus, no matter how remote he may seem on some nights, no matter how dark his eyes, how clouded his gaze, or how brutal his hold, you can’t help but feel safe. 

The feeling thrums underneath your skin and finds an echo in his bloodstream. You hear it in your shared silence, when you lie side by side on the bed and stare emptily at the ceiling, chests heaving, bodies cooling off. When a shiver rakes through you, he gets up and turns off the overhead fan. Walks over to the bathroom to bring you a glass of water. 

He’s given you everything you wanted and didn’t know how to ask for. 

And when he looks you in the eyes, he doesn’t blink. 

Stop me, he says, and what you hear is, Trust me. 

He’s been quick to learn your body, and he’s greedy with your highs. He keeps you pinned down onto the threadbare linen with his mouth fastened around your cunt until your legs tremble and your throat is hoarse with your repeated high-pitched moans, the stubble on his cheeks scraping the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. Bestowing pleasure, drinking it right back. 

Your body expands into new sensations, after years of a dormant existence, curled up within your outer shell into the tightest ball, the smallest possible shape. You’re spreading, stretching into your limbs, filling them in. Growing nerve endings that shoot farther along your extremities with each fiery kiss, each starving touch, each orgasm, like trees rooting in beautiful, intricate ramifications. 

The wild creature nestled between your lungs has a mind of its own. You’re developing emotions unknown to you until now. 

The tranquil contentment he leaves you with when he steps back into the night and closes the door behind him rapidly fades over the following days. By Sunday evening, there’s nothing left of it, and you find yourself shivering, deprived of his heat, unsettled, agitated. 

Your mind wanders to her. The faceless, nameless woman he drives back to after you’ve fucked each other free of your pain. 

Envy, tinged with hatred, pours ugly inside your chest, pressing against your rib cage, hindering your breathing, its heavy particles tainting your oxygen. 

Does he handle her with reverence? Does he use sweet names to beckon her into his embrace? Does he spit in her mouth, does she beg him to? Does he rub his spend into her skin, or does he stuff her pussy full of his seed?

Whenever you loosen the grip on your thoughts, you’re brought back to a large reception room on the last floor of another glass prison, stilettos wounding your feet, strangers with empty smiles and cruel eyes drinking from crystal champagne glasses. The excruciating misery of having to interact with Adrian’s colleagues, laughing at golf jokes you did not understand, desperate to fit in. Fighting your survival instinct, to tether yourself and not present a blank stare to those people you were supposed to impress. As Adrian’s fiancée. As your father’s daughter.

The effort seemed worth it, then. You were in love. Or so you thought. In hindsight, you’re not certain anymore. Reinterpreting your past is a temptation you try not to succumb to. In more then one way, you still love him.

There was a hushed tremor in the faceless assembly of tuxedos and cocktail dresses, and you saw her entering the room, parting the crowd. Slender, swaying, lush honey blonde locks and incandescent hazel eyes. Junior partner at Adrian’s firm, quickly climbing the ranks, flawless makeup and oozing self-confidence, she smoked Vogue cigarettes and when your gaze returned to Adrian, everything fell into place. You knew with a chilling certainty that this formidable young woman was fucking your boyfriend. 

Adrian had had a couple of flings in the past, but this one was different. He fell for her hard, a grown man in a teenage-like trance. Your blood left your face when you realized everyone else in the penthouse, and most likely in the firm, could see what you were seeing. 

You decided then and there that you were never going to marry him, regardless of what he or your father would threaten you with.

But even then, what you had experienced wasn’t jealousy. You’d felt trapped, and yes, betrayed. Wounded, in what little self-esteem you possessed. Thoroughly defeated. But you did not feel jealous. 

You understand it now, and every time you think of Frankie’s touch grazing the faceless woman. Every time you torture yourself into considering the nature of their bond and the depth of their attachment.

Would Frankie look at you the way Adrian looked at her? With blunt desire, unabashed, irrepressible thirst? With belonging? Would people around you know? Would they identify you as lovers? 

After all, a single glance had been enough for him to take you from a bar, to a parking lot, to a motel. To make you desperate to mean something to him. 

Does he miss you outside your shared time? Does he think of you? Does his mind wander to your skin in the blue morning hours, does he try to name your scent?

Deep down, you are no fool. If there’s one thing you’ve always known in this life, it’s your place. 

But some Friday nights are more dangerous. They give you too much hope. Prompting you to call your sister, for instance, and risk your little secret so you can spend more time in the small room with the yellow curtains. Wrap yourself in the dirty sheets that bear his musky scent, instead of jumping into the shower. Linger into that breach of your life’s continuum. Extend the delusion.

Last Friday, he buried his face into your core and drew violent waves of release that he kissed back into you, swirling his tongue into your mouth to coat it with your taste. 

His face was shiny with your slick and his body glistening with sweat in the soft yellow hues from the bedside lamps, when he got up to the desk and slid his belt out of the loops of his pants.  

Your eyes grew wide, but not with fear. 

He placed you face down on the bed, with your arms along your chest, and he trapped your body with the belt. You accompanied his movements, docile, curious, without apprehension. The metal buckle was cool on your feverish skin, and the leather smelled like him. 

Stop me. He was hard and thick, and he fucked into you in long, thorough strokes, dragging the round tip of his cock along your clenching walls, slamming his hips into the swell of your ass. With his thumb pushing into your asshole and his hand around the belt to keep you where he needed you to lie still. 

You came in seismic tides that quaked along your body in concentric ripples, from your wrung out core to the extremities of your fingers and toes. The sound that came out of your throat was unrecognizable, and perhaps it was his. Your mind tipped over into unconsciousness. When you resurfaced, his cock was rubbing in the cleft of your cheeks, his come leaking down the curve of your back, mixing in with your combined sweat, his chest pressing down onto your shoulder blades. 

You felt his lips brushing against the shell of your ear, hot breath searing his choked up words into your soul. 

“You’re a good girl. Say it. Say you’re a good girl.”

“I’m— I’m—“

“That’s it, say it for me.”

He was lying heavy on top of you, sinking you into the mattress, his belt buckle digging into your side. This was going to leave a mark. 

“I’m a good girl.”

“You’re my good girl.”

You will never stop him. 

—

Sitting on the edge of the bed, with your back straight and your ankles crossed, you wait. Eyes on the yellow curtains, darting beyond the dusty fabric into the warm December night. It’s yours. All of it. Yours until morning.

There’s the faintest hint of a bad taste sitting on the back of your tongue. Coppery, bloodlike. It comes in waves every time you remember how you twisted your baby sister’s arm into covering for you. But the night is yours. You swallow hard, force a smile. You want to be guiltless, for once. 

“Polly says you’re overly secretive. That you like to live ‘hidden between the folds of life’, as she puts it. Something about culpability being a coping mechanism…”

The words, delivered flatly after you’d stubbornly diverted and defused all her questions, had cut through the most tender parts of your flesh. 

“Is that her professional opinion?” you had retorted, your chin tilted up as if you were not bleeding inside. 

You swallow hard again. If you close your eyes, if you concentrate, you can almost hear it. The pickup’s engine, bolting down the asphalt, bringing him into your needy arms. You can feel the heat radiating from his solid chest and seeping into your body through your palms, resting empty and upwards on your lap. Your tongue tingles with his tangy taste, a trail of goosebumps breaks across your skin, anticipating his caress.

Frankie.

The daydream that carries you through the week, carries you through that very last stretch.   

Until the man himself storms into the room like bad weather. Dark, electric, a standing threat. 

One look at his face and you know. It’s going to be one of these nights that make you doubt everything. 

At first, the change in the script is barely perceptible. There is no gentle acclimatization, no ceremonial, no tacitly shared ritual. He doesn’t face away to let you observe his reflection in the mirror. But he looks like he hasn’t slept since last Friday. The crease in his brow is forbidding, his eyes are too bright, too clouded, circled in black and you’re dizzy with the distance you find there. Tension rolls out from his taut muscles underneath his clothes and you stand up, alert, if not entirely ready. 

“Get naked,” he growls, tugging his gray t-shirt over his head, his trucker hat falling to the floor and tonight, you miss your cue. 

Instead, you come closer, extending your hands towards him. You call him in a murmur, Frankie, but the wild thumping of his heart under your trembling palms cuts you short. 

The light flickers in his eyes, so you hang in brave, hang onto the thread of your touch, sliding your hands up his burning chest. He stills. His gaze focuses on you for the first time since he came in. Your fingertips brush lightly along his collarbone, to the dip at the base of his neck, where they linger, underlining the hollow shape of it, skating around his neck to his nape. His brow shifts, his jaw ticks, and you draw him in for a kiss.  

He jolts when your lips meet his. His hands grip your hips, rough and desperate. This is the part where you melt into him, surrender to his touch, but tonight the balance is tipped off. He licks into your mouth with a pained, muffled whimper, and your eyes remain open. 

You’re powerless, powerless to get to him and bring him back to you from wherever the hell he may be. And his distance settles between your two bodies, an invisible partition. It stands erect and opaque, projecting its shadow over you when he lies you down on the synthetic quilt and dives between your hips. His ministrations are detached, performative, mechanical. There’s no contained urgency in his handling of you. Empty touches, empty silence, and you orgasm weakly, the sensation floating on the surface of you. 

You can sense him, trapped behind his black eyes and this damn crease that splits his face above them, only you can’t reach him. He won’t let you. For every one of your attempts at a caress, at tenderness, is rejected by a shrug, a push of his hand, a shake of his head. 

Sweat breaks on his forehead and dampens his curls as he becomes restless, showing none of the familiar signs of the relief he finds in your release, when he hums softly into you, lapping at your entrance to capture what you offer him, what he drew from you. Impatience and desperation roughen his grip on you. He shoves you to the head of the bed and you scramble, sliding on the slippery quilt, curled on your side, until you’re caged between his rigid body and the headboard. 

There’s no warning, no Stop me, when he lines himself up with a stifled groan. You bury your face into the pillow and bite down on it to muffle the pain when he splits you open. He starts rutting into you with unrestrained strength, forcing through the vice grip of your tight cunt around his hard length. You try to relax into it. That’s all you ever want, for him to fill you up, to be inside you and around you, but that’s the thing: he’s not touching you. Not really. 

Instead of gripping the curve of your hips, or kneading your breast, or lying between your shoulder blades, his hands are clenched on the headboard, white knuckled. His bent knee doesn’t quite touch your folded legs, his hips don’t even slap against the swell of your cheeks.  

“Frankie,” you try, but your voice comes out thin as a ripping thread. It’s immediately drowned under the sounds filling the room, the creaking of the bed, his strained breathing.  

“Frankie,” you call again, louder this time, reaching to the side to grab his thigh. 

He jerks at the contact, sliding out of you with a hiss like you just burned him with a red-hot iron. You grab the side of the headboard to haul yourself up. Behind you, you feel him falling back on his knees. For a few seconds, you can’t bring yourself to move. You remain hunched over, fingers wrapped so tightly on the hardboard, your nails digging into the cheap, tender wood. 

“Fuck,” he breathes out, and you turn around to face him. 

Your heart sinks and chatters at the sight of him, of his glassy, pleading eyes that won’t meet yours. His chest heaves with exertion, and the weight of something else. He grazes a palm over his face, tilting his head down. 

“I hurt you. I fucking hurt you, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Tonight, this is it. These words are your cue. 

“No,” you start, scooting closer to him as he shakes his head, exhausted, isolated. The gesture no longer carries the warning it did as he was about to succumb. It’s a measure of his failure, of the depth of his defeat, and it chills you to the bones.  

“No,” you repeat, stronger, and you offer him the only lifeline you know. 

Closing the physical distance, you straddle his lap and wrap your arms around his shoulders. When his body stiffens, you harden your hold.

“Frankie… Frankie…” you coo, again and again, like his name holds the solution, and all of your devotion. You say it as you press your forehead to his, as you rub your cheek against his stubble, as you nuzzle the sharp edge of his nose, and trace his plush lips with yours. 

Until his shoulders sag under your embrace, until you feel the choked up breath that quakes his chest, you keep repeating his name. A few minutes, or an infinity of seconds, time doesn’t matter anymore. The night is yours, your skins are glued together in the soft yellow light. 

His arms circle your waist, hesitant at first, but you encourage him, raking your fingers through his hair, twining them into his soft curls. He lets you, he gives in, tucking his face in the crook of your neck. He inhales you there, raising the soft hair on your nape. His voice is broken when he speaks.

“I’m not–” 

“Frankie don’t, please don’t,” you cut in. 

You know the words that are piling bitter and desperate on his tongue, know them on an instinctual level. You feel them swirling, black and hopeless inside his head, you’ve known them from the very beginning, recognized them in the sadness of his angry stare. And you won’t let him pronounce them inside this room you share, you won’t let him give them any kind of substantiality. Not between your arms, not against your skin. 

“I’m not hurt,” you begin, pulling back to see his face, to look into his eyes and sink your words of hope and faith into him, past the barrier of remorse and regret, “I want everything you–” but his brow furrows deeper as he clenches his eyes shut, and you trail off. 

Panic briefly floods your brain. You’re acutely aware of your shortcomings and limitations, of all the things you’ve never been taught growing up. How to translate feelings into words, how to express compassion, how to care for others. How to be heard. 

You take a deep, shaky breath, your breasts pushing into his chest. 

“Look at me, Frankie baby. Look at me. Let me–”

Let me in. Let me be yours. Let me mean something. 

Your plea dies on your tongue when his eyes shoot open. They shine with unshed tears, pierced by a ray of light from the bedside table, and for the first time, you see that they’re not black. They were never black. His eyes are brown, a deep, rich, precious mahogany brown. The color paints your vision, it flows into your bloodstream and courses along your veins. It spreads into your heart, gets tangled in your soul. Around you, the whole world disappears, along with everyone in it. There is only him, his mahogany eyes brimming with tears, and the feeling of his hot, damp skin against yours. 

His arms wrap tighter around your back, his warmth seeps into your bones. His hands find purchase on your curves, drawing you closer. 

“I want you so badly to be real,” he whispers, quiet and pained, like he can’t ask you this much, but you know that, for him, you’re willing to be. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says again. 

Swallowing down the tremor in your throat, you give him a tender smile, tinted with gratitude, colored with praise. You cup his face, fingernails scratching at the heart-shaped patch on his jawline. His eyes flicker down to your lips, and you give him what he needs, leaning in to press them to his. 

Underneath you, his length throbs with unreleased hunger, and you sway your hips over it. He moans against your lips, the vibration trails down to your core like hot, liquid amber. His tongue peaks out, and you open up for him, like you always have, like you always will. A grating sound comes out of his throat, an echo of your gratitude, a mirror of your pain, a reflection of your loneliness. 

He breaks the kiss to lift you up gently, helping you find friction with his cock sliding between your folds, where it pulsates hard and thick against your clit. Your limbs turn to molasses, toffee soft and sticky, but your hips lock into a slow, languid rhythm, slick pooling down on him as you stroke him between your two bodies. His right hand skates up flat along your spine, to settle on your nape. 

He draws you in closer, closer than you’ve ever been. His heart beats inside your chest, enveloping the purring wild creature you still can’t name or tame. 

“Make us come, baby.”

A dry sob undulates up to your throat. Your eyes fill with hot tears, they spill against his temple. Mahogany explodes inside your brain. The night is yours. 

“Yes, Frankie.”

“Make us come together.”

****

Taglist (thank you 🧡): @elegantduckturtle @mashomasho @lola766 @flowersandpotplantsandsunshine @nicolethered @littleone65 @bands-tv-movies-is-me @the-rambling-nerd @saintbedelia @pedrostories @trickstersp8 @all-the-way-down-here @deadmantis @hbc8 @princessdjarin @harriedandharassed @girlofchaos @gracie7209 @mrsparknuts @your-voice-is-mellifluous @mylostloversbookmarks @readingiskeepingmegoing @lovesbiggerthanpride @youandmeand5bucks-blog @sarcasm-theotherwhitemeat @southernbe @blackvelveteen1339 @anoverwhelmingdin @casa-boiardi @nandan11 @jessthebaker @pedroshotwifey @angelofsmalldeath-codeine @noisynightmarepoetry @missladym1981 @laughing-in-th3-purple-rain @survivingandenduring @jeewrites

#tonight you belong to me #happy frankie friday #tybtm #Francisco Catfish Morales #frankie morales #the pilot™️ #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x ofc #frankie morales / fem!reader #frankie morales / you #frankie morales / ofc #triple frontier fic #triple frontier #pedro pascal #pedro pascal character fic #frankie friday #will miller #benny miller #santiago pope garcia #william ironhead miller #triple frontier fanfiction

[intheorangebedroom]

Tonight you belong to me

Series, ongoing

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. 

Week after week, under the crushing weight of his body, you learn to find yourself. Week after week, under the reverence of your touch, he allows himself to heal. Why can’t this last forever, when you’re so good to each other?

Set a few months after the TF events. 

Pairing: Frankie Morales x OFC fem!Reader Written in reader format but Reader is an OFC. There are sparse but still present physical descriptions, she has a thorough background, and a name.

Rating: Explicit 🔞

TW: THERE WILL BE NO TRIGGER WARNINGS ON INDIVIDUAL CHAPTERS. So please tread carefully because there will be (blood) (kidding, just mine) mentions of: PTSD, death, infidelity, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, stomach bug & hospitalization, light bondage, rough sex, size kink taken to the next level, lots of bodily fluids (come spit and sweat, sweat come and spit, the usual suspects), questionable (very bad) decisions, unprotected sex like woa, intense darker Frankie, where’s my feminism at, this man, this man, this man. You know the drill.

A/N: alright orange besties, here we go again, I once more locked up Frankie in a bedroom with a girl... More or less an alternate exploration of my favourite tropes: love at first sight, soulmates, forever love, pleasure and pain, hard sex/sweet love, flourishing through a lover's care and attention, Frankie being a B I G boy... Are you in? 🥺 Also, I’ve never set a foot in Florida, bear with me, I'm trying my best. This is going to be a little rougher kind of Frankie, but still our Pilot™️. I hope you enjoy the flight 🧡 

A very special and heartfelt orange THANK YOU to my love @deadmantis for the moodboards & inspos that went straight into the header for this series 🧡 Deadmantis, I love you in every colour.

Chapters

Prologue - In The Beginning

Chapter 1 - Dirt

Chapter 2 - Closer

Chapter 3 - The Man At The Frontier

Chapter 4 - Frankie (coming... before May. I hope. Tell my employer to leave me alone)

Chapter 5 - ...

Chapter 6 - ...

Epilogue - ...

Playlist

#HAPPY FRANKIE FRIDAY #I’m scared #tonight you belong to me #tybtm #Francisco Catfish Morales #frankie morales #the pilot™️ #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x ofc #frankie morales / fem!reader #frankie morales / you #frankie morales / ofc #triple frontier fic #triple frontier #pedro pascal #pedro pascal character fic #frankie friday #will miller #benny miller #santiago pope garcia #william ironhead miller #Spotify

[intheorangebedroom]

Happy Miller Monday, Orange besties 🧡🧡🧡

Took these brilliant gifs from this edit from my love, the magical Nicole.

I'm sneaking a little bit of writing on my lunch break for a scene between these three and I'm having a blast!!! I missed the Miller brothers so damn much.

Happy Miller Monday, Orange besties 🧡 I know it's Monday, but you got this. And in case you don't, hit me up, I'll send you a Frankie or a Miller hug 🧡🧡🧡

#the pilot™️ #tybtm #Miller Monday #Happy Miller Monday #Benny Miller #Ben miller #Will Miller #William Ironhead Miller #Frankie morales #francisco catfish morales #triple frontier #triple frontier bts #pedro pascal #garrett hedlund #charlie hunnam

[intheorangebedroom]

Hey Orange besties

Little orange PSA. I've just realised (yeah just now) that I didn't thank anyone for the comments and reblogs for the lastest tybtm chapter??? I'm so, so fucking ashamed. And sorry. I'm sorry. Because I'm very thankful for each and every one of you, and I hope you all truly believe it. So I'm gonna get to it. Life has been lifing my ass off these past two months with very high highs and very low lows, so thank you for your patience, everyone 🧡 Next chapter coming Friday as promised and advertised. Stay hydrated, ask your friends how they're doing, and try to hug someone you like, ok?

Ily 🧡

ETA: lemme give you a lil Pedro for your troubles

#me saying I've hard a rough couple months and my brain screaming “that is no excuse” is the most gen X I'll ever be #tybtm #I'm thankful for anyone who reads and interracts

[intheorangebedroom]

Last line tag game

Rules: In a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you feel like).

Thanks for the tag, @write-down-your-dreams and @julesonrecord 🧡

Here's the last line I wrote, from chapter 4 of tybtm, still very much at first draft stage.

He’s never going back to that motel.

*cackles in French*

Very much a lot of pressure tag: @write-down-your-dreams (it's for your own good, remember that ily more)

And no pressure tag: @frannyzooey @whatsnewalycat @undercoverpena @secretelephanttattoo @yourcoolauntie @5oh5

#tag game #tybtm

[intheorangebedroom]

@frannyzooey my love, I know today’s not Thursday, but I’ve just finished a pretty productive editing session, so I’m happily passing on the good vibes to you and whoever may need it 🧡🫂😘

@fuckyeahpaperco recognise something here…??? It’s quite literally holding my hand 🧡

#I’m going to bed but cheering you on my fellow writers!!! #sorry for blanking the screen I’m shy #tybtm

[intheorangebedroom]

🧡HAPPY ❤️‍🔥FRANKIE❤️‍🔥 FRIDAY🧡

Ugh look at him... Damn, I wanted to say something, but now I forgot... Oh yeah! For those of you Orange besties who liked the first chapters of Tonight You Belong To Me, first of all, THANK YOU 🧡 Thank you ever so fucking much for the support you've shown for this story and this darker Frankie in any form of interaction, I love you ALL and I am very grateful 🧡 Despite January being the longest freaking month of the year, I haven't had much time to work on chapter 2, but I've busted my booty and I'm nearly done! It should be posted next Friday (Feb. 2nd), wish me luck.

To atone for the wait, a sneak peek below the cut. Once more, HAPPY FRANKIE FRIDAY TO YOU ALL 🧡

When you step inside room number 2, you flick up the two toggle switches by the door, turning on the lights and the overhead fan, and you go to the bathroom to wash your hands and check your reflection in the antique black-edged mirror. 

After that, you return to the room and you sit on the bed. That’s where you wait for him. 

You don’t undress, you don’t lie down, you don’t undo the bed. 

You know what he’ll do to your clothes. Anticipation trickles down along your spine all the way to the ripe heat between your thighs, and it travels right back up to tug up at the corners of your lips, but you press them together, lips and thighs, as you wait.  

He comes in after dark, preceded by the sound of tires on gravel and that of his boots stomping on the porch and he’s here, the rush of night air from outside wafting over your face when he storms into the room. 

He greets you with a hoarse voice, like he hasn’t used it all week, and he rushes over to the desk and sets down his cap. You watch his reflection in the framed mirror when he combs his fingers through his curls, tense jaw, creased brow. He takes off his jacket and drapes it on the back of the chair, swift and precise, and it’s his own ceremonial, you let him have it, his transition into this world that you share. The confine of this room. Brown carpet, yellow curtains. 

When he turns to face you, at last, it’s always with a heavy, grating sigh, a sound so rough and primitive to express relief and hunger and impatience. You stand up slowly, unfurling in slow motion from your sitting position on the edge of the bed, eyes on him forever and always. His want radiates from him in colorful angry waves, like a tangible, virulent aura, black eyes boring into your skin and you welcome it as it pours out of him and creeps up to you like thick fumes. 

You stand tall in the charged stillness of the motel room, offered, but not quite yet within reach, waiting for him to come and seize you. 

“Take off your clothes,” he growls, tilting up his chin, coming closer, and those words are your cue. You clamber out of your statuesque stillness, twisting your ankles out of your pumps while he tugs at your blouse, and he crashes his lips onto yours.

#tonight you belong to me #happy frankie friday #tybtm #Francisco Catfish Morales #frankie morales #the pilot™️ #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x ofc #frankie morales / fem!reader #frankie morales / you #frankie morales / ofc #triple frontier fic #triple frontier #pedro pascal #pedro pascal character fic #frankie friday #will miller #benny miller #santiago pope garcia #william ironhead miller #triple frontier fanfiction

[intheorangebedroom]

just to make sure: how much angst is too gothic? asking for chapter 4 a friend. also 2/3 in and already over 8k, pray for me. but mostly, pray for poor Kelli.

#tybtm #my gothic ass

[intheorangebedroom]

wip wednesday

It's still Wednesday, right?

Thank you @undercoverpena for the tag 🧡 That Joel 🌶 was sweet and sexy, it made me all warm and fuzzy inside, I do love a bit of rope 😇

Took me long to answer, I'm sorry. I'm buried under a heap of work and stress and December, writing down a line here and there every time I get a chance, and I think it should be ready by next week? Anyway, here's a wee little something after the cut.

This is ridiculous. Sordid. It’s gone too far. A motel outside of town. The worst possible cliché. The most degrading place. 

Between your lungs, the creature is clawing at your chest. 

You stir nervously on the creaking leather seat, exhaling long and shaky, no longer repressing the memory of his sturdy fingers curling inside your warmth, of his tongue swirling inside your mouth. The instant intimacy of your furtive encounter, that turning point, when he briefly relinquished his control. 

A chorus of voices rumbles like tumbling boulders inside your head, a cacophony of rules and guidelines, tacit and unspoken, ingrained and internalised. But with every passing minute staring at the bright motel sign, your resolve grows surer. 

The yellow curtains ripple behind the rectangular window of room number 2 and you quickly pull the key out of the ignition. Grabbing your phone from the dashboard, you stuff it inside your purse, which you slide under the driver's seat. 

Eyes strained on the curtains, you make a fast-paced beeline to the door. Around you, the night bustles with the sounds and noises of the invisible wildlife. Revealing nothing, containing so much. 

With a quick rattle of your heels, you step under the porch, hand extended and ready to knock on the door when it opens for you.

NP tag: @5oh5 @julesonrecord @dreamymyrrh (yes, again, ha! (love you more))

#the pilot™️ #frankie morales #francisco catfish morales #tonight you belong to me #tybtm #triple frontier fanfic #pedro pascal #wip wednesday

[intheorangebedroom]

Wip last line game

My dearest @5oh5, thank you for the tag 🧡

I'm very happy to know you're finding solace in writing, as well as a way to heal yourself. Anything that gets you there, really 🧡 If you have a tag list, I would love to be added to it, please 🧡

Here's the last line I wrote, it's from the upcoming Tonight you belong to me, and I'm giggling like an idiot right now but I won't be feeling that giddy when I have to press "post"...

"I'm Frankie."

Ok bye.

NP tags: @dreamymyrrh (please let it be the Tim & The Thief pleaaaaase), @frannyzooey and @julesonrecord

#wip game #last line wip game #the pilot™️ #tybtm

[intheorangebedroom]

IS the next chapter Frankie’s POV?!?!

Maybe…

#i did say the Millers would be back ☺️ #the pilot™️ #tybtm #thank you for the ask 🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡