Chapter Text
0:00 hours
The room stinks. It smelled when she walked in, but that was dozens of teenagers crammed in the same space, shouting over each other. That was the smell of stale beer and weed and sweat, the party smell she’s used to staining Cassie’s bed, the backseat of her car after a fun weekend.
This is something else entirely. This is hot copper, a smell that burns in her throat, that hangs around her head, even as the reality of what’s just happened seems to set in.
Cassie is still screaming, Maddy crying softly beside her, and there’s some male voice telling them to stop, to be quiet, he’s on the phone with 911. And then there’s nothing but Fezco’s gaze on her, eyes that look apologetic, briefly, before he turns away and marches on, and something inside of her falls open.
The sweater feels soft in her hands, as lovely as she’s been imagining all night, while he was asking questions about her favorite books and her brain came up with the idea of running a hand along his chest, scraping over his beard. She half wants to lift the fabric to her face, inhale the smoke and the woodsy smell, but someone shoves her to the side in an attempt to get a picture of Nate, sprawled out on the carpet.
Dead, she thinks. She doesn’t have to think about it, because she watched it happen, saw blow after blow after blow, the way he couldn’t stop, even if he wanted to.
He did want to. She knows he wanted to, because she can feel the ache in her arms just the same, the heaviness when she holds the sweater to her chest, ducks between the masses, pushes to get outside. To breathe again. Nobody can breathe inside, not her, not him. Not Nate.
She can see him as soon as she steps outside, white shirt glowing in the night, an angel smoking half a joint and leaning in a car window. When she steps up behind him, the kid in the car shifts to stare at her, and Fezco glances back with entirely too much informality for a guy who just beat her classmate to death in front of a crowd of witnesses.
“Lexi,” he says, same soft voice, eager to hang on her every word. “You need a ride?”
The person in the car scoffs, but Fez lowers his voice and says something she can’t make out, and she extends a hand, lays it beside his bloodied knuckles on the open window.
“Do you?“ She counters, desperate to be useful, to be used.
He looks at her a beat longer, looks at their hands pressed tight together, how small hers is beside him. She's sure he must know how fragile she feels, how she wants to feel the same sting on her hands, the knowledge of how she could protect him right back. Could put a man down on somebody’s white Sears catalog rug and never look back.
“Yeah, aight,” he turns back to the kid, who’s already muttering some curse. “I’m not fuckin’ around, Ash. Go home.”
The child groans, but he doesn’t argue, and Fez reaches out to touch his cheek, the softest gesture she can imagine from him, before he recoils.
“Where’d you park?” He asks, as casual as if they’re going to dinner. Like he’s in no hurry to flee the scene of the crime, or even if he is, he wouldn’t use it as an excuse to be rude.
She just walks the way in silence, leads him between the rows of cars, through the small crowds of people starting to leave. A few of them seem to recognize him, seem to realize he’s the reason their new year is starting off on an unfortunate note, but no one stops him. No one says anything. And Lexi likes that too, likes the eyes on them, the judgement from afar, that these people will never know how it feels when he presses a hand to her lower back and guides her over the dip in Virgil’s front lawn.
When she unlocks the car, he opens her door for her and there’s a line of red dripping from his hands, tracking down the dark paint. His, she hopes, because Nate’s blood on her car makes her want to throw up, but his feels like marking territory.
She turns the car on, watches some half-drunk couple stumble out in front of them, and wonders how this night will end for everyone else. Everyone who isn’t her, who didn’t discuss morality and religion with the local drug dealer. Who didn’t watch him kill a man with his bare hands and a vodka bottle, all the while dwelling on the knowledge that even if something’s wrong, sometimes it’s the only choice you have.
And sometimes it’s fucking hot.
The sweater goes in her backseat and he goes on the passenger side, buckling in without a reminder. He shifts in the seat beside her, and when she looks over, he’s sporting half a hard on, adjusting his jeans as he presses his forehead to the cool window.
A part of her wants to reach over and fix the issue, to see if she can make that same vein pop in his forehead, but there’s more and more people piling out on the lawn, and she’s not a stupid girl. Reckless, it seems, but never stupid.
0:38 hours
He doesn’t talk on the drive either, just flips through radio stations, listens to 30 seconds of some oldies before going to the next song, directing her to turn a few times. She does, eager to please, as always, and eventually they turn into the parking lot of a Best Western.
She wants to ask how much he comes here (wants to ask who he brings here; girls, do they look like her?) but he gets out of the car before she finds her voice, and in the harsh lights of the lot, he still looks like that same angel. He thinks he’s fallen, but she’s certain he’s soaring far above her even now.
He presses a roll of cash into her palm, asks if she can get a corner room, ‘cause the bathroom’s bigger.
“Okay,” she agrees, and he leaves the briefest kiss on her lips, a punctuation and a promise. Their first, she registers, and she wants to take a picture, put it in a scrapbook. Save it for their kids.
“Lexi Howard,” he mumbles against her mouth, and she doesn’t know when he got her full name, or if he’s always known it, or if this is all a delicious dream she’s having. “So nice to me."
Yes, she thinks. I can be very nice. You deserve something nice, don’t you?
She deserves something too, but she’s not sure exactly what.
They do get a corner room, and the bed is softer than she thought, sinking under her weight as she sits and watches him help himself to several glasses of water in the bathroom. She feels the swirling nerves in her belly, not quite the same, she knows, but she wants to tell him she gets it. Gets him. Connected, maybe, through a feeling and a desire that she can’t quite name.
“It’s okay,” she tries, like soothing Cassie after a night of throwing up in some football player’s backyard. “It’s okay. What happened.”
“Yeah?” He laughs a little, wiping a bruised hand across his forehead, and something inside her clenches down tight. “You don’t owe me nothin’, y’know.”
She does know. She knows she sat beside him at a party and now they’re here in a hotel room, trying to ignore the stains on the wall. She knows her sister and Maddy are probably at the hospital, waiting for an answer that will never come, and she’s six feet away from the man responsible.
She knows, like she’s known her whole life, that she is a good person. And if she feels for him -wants, aches for him- then that makes him good, too.
Fezco re-enters the room, strips off the white shirt and there’s nothing underneath but a smooth expanse of skin, dotted with a thousand stars.
She’s expecting tattoos, maybe. Some scrawling portrait of Jesus on the cross, a family birthday on his abdomen. Gun shot wounds. Scars like the one on his head, curving over his whole body, little white lines of the life he’s lead. But it’s just soft, blank skin under her manicured fingers, the dark green scraping against his shoulder, and when he turns to face her, she digs in her nails.
He doesn’t flinch, just keeps watching her with the same look he held on the couch, like there’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be right now, than right here with her.
“Lexi,” he whispers, softer than she’s ever heard it. No one has said her name like that, not ever, and she fears no one will ever say it just this way again. “What’re you doin’?”
She doesn’t know. Hasn’t known, since they started talking tonight, because befriending the man who helped her best friend overdose eight months ago hasn’t ever been high on her list of priorities.
A man, she thinks, is generous. In the poor lighting, he’s a boy. A boy with bloody hands and stains on his conscience. She wonders if he would accept her absolution, or if he only seeks forgiveness from his own imagination.
“It made you hot,” she says, and when her hand runs down his chest, his eyes flutter shut. “What you did.”
He sighs, a strangled noise that comes from somewhere far inside, a deep recess he won’t let some girl from a party peek at.
“I saw,” she tries again, the image fresh in her mind, and she draws a hand across his waistband to another gentle sigh.
“S’adrenaline,” he claims, eyes still screwed shut, mouth parted to release a quick breath. “Happened too fast.”
“No, you were.” There’s a different sort of girl undoing the button of his jeans, slipping her hand inside. Someone who knows it’s wrong and knows she wants it so fucking badly anyway. “Killing made you hard.”
He opens his eyes, gaze tough and narrow, and she feels bare before him, like she’s saying these things about herself. He reaches out to brush against her neck, swollen fingers, open sores, and she captures the hand, presses it just over her racing heart.
He slides across the satin of her shirt, and there’s dried blood staining the gold, but it looks even better for it. He cups a breast, lip fitting between his teeth, and she’s surprised to find there’s no self consciousness, no embarrassment. No worry that he won’t like what he sees.
“Saw you watchin’,” he mumbles, and his thumb finds her nipple, working little circles as she tries to control her breathing. “You didn’t do nothin’.”
Maybe she should have. Cassie did. Maddy did. Fucking poor Virgil did. But she just stood there, just observed, like she’s done all her life.
“You liked it?” He asks, and it’s not a real question, because the right answer is of course not. No, no. Lexi Howard the little sister, the wallflower, wouldn’t like it. Doesn’t like it. Doesn’t want to think about how his body flexed as he landed blow after blow, long after he stopped needing to. Doesn't want to dream of how soft those rough hands feel on her own skin, of the knowledge that he could do those things, but he chooses not to. That he chooses tenderness with her.
“I like you,” she says instead. “I didn’t like him.”
He looks up with a hard frown, hand stilling on her body, and a feeling like nerves rises up quickly in her stomach.
“He do somethin’ to you?”
Lexi shakes her head, and he returns to the subtle motions, fingers slipping under the ruined blouse.
“Not me. Maddy. And Rue, I think.”
He nods at that one. “Fucker,” he states, and Lexi feels a smile pulling on her face.
“Fucker,” she repeats. He looks a little surprised at the word falling from her mouth, but the expression gives way to a grin of his own, and she can see the little gap between his front teeth, wants to find out if her tongue will fit just perfectly in that space.
Fezco leans down and presses a kiss to her cheek, something light and sweet, before he hovers just over her mouth. Taunting, teasing, and she wants, but there aren’t any words for it.
“You ever done this?” He asks, no judgement behind it. Just searching, like he searched for answers to her all night, like he simply wants to know.
She nods curtly. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it, the same flat tone as he continues.
“How many times?”
“Once,” she answers, and he curves a little smile.
“You love him?”
“No.” She used to think, just based off of her friends reactions, that love isn’t something very obtainable, especially not when it comes to sex. Cassie has loved every man she’s ever slept with, and it hasn’t help anything. Maddy loved Nate, and she still watched him bleed out on the floor of some science geek’s living room.
“Why you ain’t do it more?” Fez prompts, that genuine, earnest note still creeping in his voice. So curious about her, her life, what’s gotten her to this point. What’s tangled them both together like this, two people who shouldn’t be in the same social circle, let alone the same shitty hotel room.
She shrugs, and his eyes glance down her form, the ruffled capris and her ballet flats. He pulls his hand from her shirt, reaches to tug her zipper down, helps her clear herself of the barrier.
“Gotta get rid of these,” he mutters, on his knees below her, stripping her pants and pressing a kiss to her thigh. “Shame.”
“Is it?” She asks; Maddy had told her she looks like an art teacher in this ensemble. Not sexy, not desirable.
He glances up with a puzzled look, eyebrows knitting together. “Damn shame,” he repeats, leaving an open kiss against her knee. “Your ass looks great in these.”
She giggles, a girly sort of move she’s sure she picked up from Cassie’s late night phone calls, but he just rests his head against her inner thigh.
“You smell good,” he says, and before she can realize what he means, he nudges his face towards her center, tongue slipping against her panties, and she sets a solid hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t like that,” she says seriously, and he laughs.
“Who the fuck don’t like that?”
“I don’t,” Lexi repeats, more firmly, and he rolls his eyes.
“Somebody do it wrong?”
She curls her lips, exaggerated in her disgust, but he just snorts a little in response. “It’s wet.”
“Yeah, girl. S’posed to be fuckin’ wet.” He rubs a hand against her, slipping below her underwear, and she’s already fulfilled that request. “You really don’t like it?”
She shakes her head, and he abandons the effort, settling for tracing his fingers up and down her center, nipping at her lip as he returns to eye level.
“Fine,” he mumbles, and when he presses against her clit, she agrees wholeheartedly. Very fine indeed.
He moves away to shed his pants, boxers quickly following, and she does the same. The shirt lands in a wrinkled pile of his bloody clothes, gold threads shining up at both of them, as he pulls an arm around her back and undoes her bra, mouth slipping down to follow where the fabric vanishes. He slides a tongue across her nipple, squeezing her other breast as he nibbles at her skin, and the little noise she releases sounds foreign to her ears, so needy and wanting.
He pulls away, much to her disappointing whine, to rummage back through his discarded jeans. He retrieves a packet from his wallet, and it feels like a scene she’s watching on TV, like something happening to a more exciting girl. A story she’d write into a play, but one that doesn’t really happen. Not to her.
“How many times have you done it?” She asks as he rolls the condom on, face screwed up like he’s thinking on this hard, the task crucial.
“A couple.”
“How many’s that?” She presses, and he grins a little, like he finds it all funny. How badly she wants to know. How badly she wants, full stop.
“Four,” he answers, and she considers this. Four girls. That’s a fair amount of experience; more than she has. Means he knows what he’s doing, which is beneficial, as she has bits and pieces of the after-show hookup in the theatre dressing room, and it was fumbling and messy and not really something she’s looking to replicate.
“Good,” she settles on, and he just keeps smiling down at her. So funny; her and him and the two of them here together. Hilarious, really. The absolute height of comedy, being naked in bed together, desperate for what’s to come.
“C’mere.” He covers her frame with his own, broad shoulders bumping into her, pressing down into the mattress as he crawls above her. In an instant, his hand slips back across her stomach, over a hip to brush just softly against her. He’s less practiced now, finger pushing in without much fanfare, and she thinks briefly she’s never heard her body sound like this. It’s all so different, so strange: the moans he tugs from deep in her chest, the sound of her cunt as he pumps in and out, burying a head in her neck as he asks, breathless, if he can fuck her.
There’s a better answer out there, something clever and endearing, something she’ll remember ten years down the road, but the only thing that comes out is yes, please, Fezco.
It’s the first instance she’s said his name aloud. Never to him, the 60 second visits at the store where she hangs outside and pretends she doesn't know exactly what's going on inside. Never even to Rue, to Cassie, to everyone in her life who knows him. Not like this, not like she does now, the wretched pull of him inside her, the horrible thudding of her heart and the way she can see his image painted on it, carved into her skin as he kisses her neck.
“Fuck, you’re- God,” he keeps muttering soft endearments, how fucking tight and how fucking good she is, one hand absentmindedly squeezing a breast, the other fisting in the sheets beside her head.
It stings, more than she was expecting, more than it did the first time, maybe. But there was alcohol then, and she’s stone cold sober here, laying flat backed on the bed with her legs spread for a guy she met hours ago. A boy who showed her such kindness, genuine interest, before he displayed the most violence she’s ever seen in her life.
This hurts a tinge, just a bit, but in the way she figures his hands must hurt. Like, sometimes you have to go through something just slightly painful to get the result you want. And the final product feels so mind-blowing, so fucking cosmical, that whatever pain this is will seem inconsequential.
“You good?” He asks, and she nods stiffly, but he doesn’t seem to buy it. “Lexi-“
“I’m fine,” she tries for composed, mixed with some attempt at ecstasy, eyelashes fluttering. “You’re just a lot.”
“I can’t make it any smaller,” he teases, big grin and a bragging tone, and she knows she’s done that right. Guys want to hear that. But when he pushes forward a bit more, her head falls back and she looks up at the ceiling with her mouth set in a tight line, and he freezes.
“Christ, c’mon-“ He pulls out abruptly, and the emptiness feels far worse than the sting of him, but when she looks down he’s reaching for her hands, tugging her back up. He scoots to the edge of the bed, yet she just stays frozen in the middle, knees bent and legs open.
“It’ll be easier,” he tries, and his hand encases hers, swollen fingers wrapping around her own. “It won’t hurt so bad.”
“It doesn’t hurt-“
“Lexi,” he says flatly, and she wants to argue that she likes it like this, likes the stretch and the pull and the pain that binds them together, too. “Do you want to?”
“Very much so,” she replies, and he gives a funny smile, confused and turned on and happy, she hopes, all at once.
Contradictory; every part of him, even this. Even now.
She lets him pull her over, tugging until she straddles his lap, and he rubs a hand over her lower back, touch so gentle it’s hard to remember what he did with those hands two hours ago, the things that lead them here in the first place.
“Relax,” he whispers, and she tries too hard to follow the suggestion, body sagging against his, and he lets out a little laugh. “Not that much. Just, like-“
He sets her back up, hands on her waist, fingers curling on her skin. He lets his gaze run down her front, lingering on her chest, and she sits up a little straighter.
“Yeah, like that,” he praises, hands lifting her up as he sets himself back at her entrance. “You ready?”
She nods, the words long gone, and he eases her down with such care that it feels precious, in a way she’s always figured sex couldn’t be. Delicate, soft, tender, and from someone who shouldn’t be any of those things.
It’s less of the stretch this way; she sees what he means, it’s more of a pressure in her belly, a tight feeling instead of a sharp pain. And when he bottoms out, when she’s so full she can’t do more than stare back at him, there’s no hurt at all.
He looks up at her all starry eyed, seizing forward to capture a kiss. It’s hotter than she expects, more demanding, as he opens her mouth and licks inside, tongue pressing over hers, claiming something she’s offering up willingly.
When she tries to move, to shift her hips back and forth, he clamps his hands down and holds her in place, eyes tracking down to where they’re joined together. She follows his gaze, watches him thrust up the first couple times, until his hand comes to press against her, rough on her clit as he whispers the softest things she’s ever heard.
So beautiful, so fine, want you so bad. Need you like this, Lexi, always. My perfect girl. How good’s it feel? How good do I make you feel?
“Please-“ it’s hard to recognize her own voice like this, so wrecked and lost. Interrupting his stream of consciousness, half a marriage proposal she’d accept in an instant, if only he would keep doing this forever.
He fucks up into her, hips thrusting faster than she’d even considered possible, and her mouth feels dry, her body so tight, bouncing atop him with no effort.
“You takin’ it so good,” he mutters into her neck, leaving a kiss to her racing pulse, and when he leans back his eyes are cloudy. “So good for me.”
She groans quietly as he keeps the pace, fingers quickening to match, and something is so strong inside of her, a rising wave that she thinks will pour out of her body, fill up the room and sweep them away.
“Y’gonna come?” He slows for a moment, hand deliberate and steady, circling her clit as he grinds against her. His eyes narrow a little, head leaning in as he whispers the next question, like it’s been haunting him all night.
“Did it make you wet?”
She doesn’t answer, so he pushes up with more effort, thrusts etching deeper, and her forehead rests on his, body so close to the edge that this hurts too. Aches, all the way inside of her.
“Lexi,” he pleads, circling the realm of begging himself. “What I did to playboy- it make you wet?”
She nods silently, without thought, and he groans out her name.
“I’da fucked you right there,” he hisses, and she lets her eyes fall shut, lets the idea wash over her. The perfect image of her bent over the couch, the smell of blood and him pulsing inside her. “Fuck, I wanted to.”
She can smell it now, feel the ache on her own knuckles again, and when he presses firm against her she loses it, copper in her mouth and shockwaves through her system.
“Fuckin’ hell, Lexi, I-“
It shouldn’t be like this, nothing should be like this, but it is. So good, so perfect. He was right, she doesn’t owe him anything, but she wants to give him a million and a half things, starting with this right here.
So she cups his cheeks in her hands, pushes up her shaking body, tries to meet his erratic thrusts, mumbling something about pretty eyes and how gentle he is, how sweet, and when he comes it’s to a soft little cry, although she couldn’t know which of them makes it.
2:35 hours
He sleeps all curled up on himself, knees towards his chest, bent over like a small child. Closing off, it seems, so she lays stock still beside him, hears the ticking of the clock on the wall, until he reaches out a hand and pulls her straight into him, her mouth smacking his collarbone.
"Lexi," he whispers, and it's plucked right out of the air, before it can snake it's way into her heart. "S'room."
There is, just enough space for her to fit against him, if she bends her legs and mirrors his body. If she pretends, just for tonight, that she can make space here, with him. That they make sense this way, pressed tight together under a scratchy bedsheet, attempting to forget an image that's burned itself into her brain for the rest of eternity.