Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.” 

Like any other introverted maladaptive daydreamer, Lexi figured she wouldn’t find love until college. Before Yale or Stanford or maybe the fucking Sorbonne, maybe in the university library or the nearby coffee shop, at a concert or after a night out or in a random grocery store aisle, the friend of a friend, a girl or guy or whatever who smiles at her like she’s something staight out of a holy scripture. Anywhere, but not here ,  at East Highland, where she’s Cassie’s prudish little sister and no one could ever compare to the Rue she’s built up in her head. 

And it’s good, it’s okay. She goes to class and watches Cassie throw herself at boys she knows will never love her. She keeps her head down and pretends Rue and Jules’ intertwined pinkies don’t tie her stomach up in knots (is it because she wants Rue? Is it because she wants someone, anyone?). She tags along with her pseudofriends for lack of something else to do, because at least if she’s listening to Maddy’s nasally whining, her affectionate bitch and fucking and Nate ,  then she’s not listening to her own cruel, unforgiving thoughts. 

And then it happens, as most things do, completely out of left field: Fezco is something else entirely. He doesn’t fit in her go-through-the-motions routine, he’s a whole other thing, a fork in the road, a variable in an equation she thought she knew by heart. 

She sits next to him and talks about the pagans and he listens, she gives him her phone and he puts his number in with a half-smile, and then she watches him take off his green cable-knit sweater and smash a bottle of Smirnoff on Nate Jacobs’ head before calmly, coolly beating him to a bloody pulp amidst frantic screaming and deafening music. 

So Fez does not fit in Lexi’s reality, the high school dropout, the drug dealer with a predisposition to violence. Whatever. His eyes meet hers from across the room before he takes his leave, all bloody hands and simmering anger that makes him look like an avenging angel, and Lexi picks up a jagged knife and carves out a space for him in her world, right next to her, because she’s an idiot who wants to careen into dangerous situations headfirst, fucking fearless, and sue her—she likes the way he says her name, the way it rolls off his tongue slower, hoarser, like he’s savoring it, and no one’s said her name like that before. 

(And college is a distant thing. Fez is here, now, she texts him I have your sweater and he texts back hold on to it for me? and that’s that. Happy fucking new year.)

Fez is the one who got Rue hooked on drugs. He’s done the same to other people, to mothers and fathers and their children, nudged them all into ruining their lives. He nearly killed a (psychotic, monstrous) guy and did so with the greatest indifference, looked measured and focused and apathetic like he was thinking of something else, like this violence isn’t worth wasting his time over it. 

Objectively, these things should discourage Lexi from ever talking to him again. Instead, the very next day, she dons a red top with a Peter Pan collar and her shiniest loafers. Lies to Cassie that she’s going to see Rue. Plays Ultraviolence in her earbuds, tries not to think too hard about the guy she’s going to see as Lana croons the lyrics to Shades of Cool. She bikes to his store, all flint and steel and determination, feeling it all build up (" Lexi Howard , " he greets her, like it’s the title of an artwork at the Louvre) only to wither away a minute into her arrival. 

There’s a blonde girl with fake nails and faker lips perched on the freezer at the store. Fez calls her Faye and says she’s staying with him, that she’s cool, and Lexi whirls around and pretends to stare at the selection of drinks to hide the angry flush in her cheeks, to focus on something that’s not the Cassie-like voice in her head saying you’re a fucking idiot, lexi and digs her fingers in her palms to curb the urge to claw Faye’s eyes out of their sockets. Which is so pathetic, really, and it makes her burn with shame for being that kind of girl, and it’s an ugly concoction, anger and embarrassment and jealousy—

Fez says, “Sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye on new year’s.” 

Lexi tries to smile, even though he can’t see her, and replies, “It’s cool. I imagine you had much more important things to worry about.” 

A beat passes. Then, “Don’t think I did.” 

She has no idea what to say to that. It’s lucky Faye takes it upon herself to ask if Fez could pass her a bag of chips, and she hears him huff as he asks, “You gon’ pay for it this time?” 

Faye’s lack of reply probably means no , and Lexi hears the bag opening and Faye’s obnoxious chewing. Aiming to leave (to get the fuck out, really), Lexi grabs a Diet Coke from the fridge and moves to the counter to pay, a strained smile on her lips. 

Fez asks, “That’s it?” 

“Yep.” 

He shakes his head once and grasps her elbow as she moves to get her wallet. “Don’t gotta pay.” 

“I—um.” She glances at Faye, who’s watching the interaction with complete disinterest as she pops another Cheeto in her mouth with orange-stained fingers. “You sure?”

“Shit, Lexi. Take the coke.” 

“Thank you,” she replies, politely, with the demure smile that hurts her cheeks because she curves her mouth in a way that’s so particular it’s painful. “Um. I should—I’ve gotta go.”  

“Lexi,” he says, and god .  “Why’d you come here?”

“Just.” She holds up the bottle, her hand uncomfortably cold from gripping it. “Get a drink.” 

Fez looks like he doesn’t believe her. “You busy now?”

Lexi hesitates. Unconsciously, she looks at Faye again. Decides she doesn’t think she cares. “Um. No. Why?” 

Objectively. Objectively, Nate Jacobs had it coming because he’s not just an asshole but also a cruel, sadistic man, and it’s not Fez’s fault that some people (Rue included, Lexi thinks, Rue definitely (probably) included) are too cowardly to deal with their lives and so they numb it all. So (objectively. Really. It has nothing to do with the way his gaze burns her, or how the mere brush of his bruised fingers on the small of her back as they exit the store makes goosebumps rise on the back of her neck) Fez is not a bad guy, just one who’s been dealt a shitty hand in life. 

She comes to this conclusion in the passenger seat of his old Cadillac, the leather smelling of smoke and weed and Fez’s sweater, and it’s like he can’t keep his eyes on the road—he keeps glancing at her, his lips curled upward the slightest bit as Lexi rambles about Mithridatism, of all things, because he’d heard of it in passing and she knows way too much about it. The sun’s going down and then it’s gone entirely, and it’s then that she gets the nerve to ask, “Why did you ask me to come with you?”

“Cause.” He shifts the hand that’s on the wheel, opens and closes the one that’s on the gearshift. “Wanted to talk more with you.”

“With me?”

“Who else?” A pause, then, “‘m stuck with Ash and Faye the whole day, an’ she a fuckin’ menace. Can’t wait for Custer to get her the fuck out.”

“Custer?”

“Her boyfriend. She’s in trouble, I’m doin’ him a favor by lettin’ her stay. But—shit, Lexi, that’s not the point. I like talkin’ to you.” 

Lexi glances at his hand on the gearshift. His knuckles are all torn up, red and raw and angry like he was, but she thinks she likes how it looks. It’s why she rests her hand over his, why her breath hitches when he turns his over to fit his fingers between the crevices of hers, squeezing once. “I like talking to you too.” 

“Works out nice, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, and because she’s pure want, she leans over and kisses his cheek—the corner of his mouth, to be precise, catching it on purpose. Startled, he turns his head, and Lexi tells him, “Eyes on the road, Fezco.” 

Fez swears, and Lexi giggles, all innocent and girlish, falling back into her seat. He clears his throat, looking at her warily, and it’s unclear which of them is the predator and which is the prey. He turns back to the open road—highway to nowhere, away from the stifling suburbs of their postcard town—and comes out with, “Tell me more ‘bout that slow poison and immunity shit.”

Lexi clarifies, “Mithridatism,” just because she likes the word. 

She doesn’t expect Fez to repeat it, all rolling letters, his voice dark like he understands it, the delicate and meticulous act of poisoning oneself in slowly increasing increments to build a resistance to something lethal, to hurt oneself enough to get rid of vulnerability. 

“It’s, um.” She licks her suddenly dry lips and tries to focus on anything but the warmth of his palm against hers (but then there’s his scent, the angle of his jaw, the flex of his muscles as he drives—). “It’s named after Mithridates VI—the King of Pontus, it’s of Persian origin. His father was poisoned by his attendants, and then his mother took control until a male heir came of age—either Mithridates or his brother—and since the mother began to favor the brother, he started suspecting that his mom was sending out orders to have him killed, too, because he also thought she had a role in his father’s death.” 

“Crazy shit,” says Fez, riveted, giving her more and more attention when he should be focused on not crashing his car.  

“Right? So, he noticed these weird pains in his stomach during his meals and obviously suspected that his mother had ordered small amounts of poison to be added to his food to slowly kill him off. And they kept trying to assassinate him, so eventually he just ran away into the wild, and he started slowly dosing himself with poison—enough to feel it, but not to die, to just—slowly build this immunity to it.” 

Fez hums. “Kinda the opposite of drugs, you feel?” 

“How so?”

Fez pauses, like he hadn’t expected her to want him to keep talking. (What a fucking pair they make, chewed up and spit out by the world time and time again until they somehow both ended up in this car.) “No one builds an immunity to it. You just get more and more fucked up. End up like Rue.” 

Like Rue, spiraling, a ballerina gripping the hands of the people who love her and bullying them into spinning in circles with her until she collapses. 

“Like Rue,” Lexi repeats in a murmur, staring at the very man who signed her best friend’s death sentence all those months ago. Fez swallows, and she watches the way his throat moves with it. She gets this urge , unnameable and terrifying, to reach out and run her nails over the tendons of his neck, to maybe draw blood. It’s sick and nauseating and she’s never wanted something like this—or at least, not with such an intensity. 

“Wanna go back?” he asks her, jolting her out of her daydream. Go back where? she wonders, and then realizes there’s a world outside the confines of his car. 

She doesn’t want to go back . She wants him to keep driving, farther and farther away until they exit the state of California and everything it represents. She’s always thought she could do it—leave her whole life behind and start a brand new one, only if she had the right person by her side. For a while, when she was deluded and starstruck and drowning in the ache of first love, she thought it would be Rue. Now she knows better: she wouldn’t want someone fickle and volatile the way Rue is. Lexi clears her mind and her throat, and prim as ever, she asks, “Can you drop me off at home, please?”

come by again sometime

I will. 

good. see u lexi howard

She keeps showing up at his store. 

Sometimes Faye’s there, and she shares her chips with Lexi. They lick the orange dust off their fingers and talk about Los Angeles, the big city where they both hope to live someday. Faye can entertain herself, though, so sometimes Lexi listens to her talk in that incomprehensible way she has and tries to make sense of it—it’s interesting, to say the least, and Fez looks torn between confusion and amusement at the whole thing. Once in a while, Ash pops out of his hiding spot to grab a bag of gummy bears and offers a snide comment or two before disappearing again (and Lexi can’t tell who he trusts less—her or Faye). 

But sometimes, the best times, it’s just Fez. She perches on the counter next to him and closes the book she’s reading for English Lit on one finger—right now, it’s Toni Morrison’s Beloved —to delude herself that she’s actually doing some work for her classes, and they talk. Talk and talk and talk. 

Lexi didn’t know she could string so many words together—at least not out loud. 

She tells him about Jules and Rue, and he mentions Rue’s been coming around more to hang out on his couch and annoy the fuck out of Ash. She hesitantly presents the play she’s writing, tells him about the characters and the plots (and if he notices that  so much of it is just real life with its flaws magnified into something unrecognizably monstrous and horrible, he says nothing). He reads it and loves it, asks her strangely insightful questions about the plot, says, “She’s no longer a side character if she’s a main character, nah?”

If this were an episode from one of Jules’ favorite animes, Lexi would be staring at the boy in front of her with cartoon heart eyes. Pathetic. “That’s the whole point ." 

Fez smiles at her, always. He listens to her and smiles at her, deviating his attention only when the bell above the door chimes signaling that someone’s entered the store, and even then it’s brief and nothing compared to all the focus he gives to her. 

She debates telling him about Nate’s dad showing up at her house and Cassie’s stupidly big mouth. If Cal goes to the cops, it could land Fez in deep shit—maybe even Ash, too. 

But then she watches him load a magazine clip in a Smith & Wesson to tuck into the waistband of his jeans before he sends some guys to see Ash in the back, and he’s probably got better things to worry about than some rich, old jackass taunting kids half his age.

Fez doesn’t touch her. Not first. He’ll hug her back if she wraps her arms around his neck, squeeze her hand if she reaches for his, but he won’t do it first. He only calls her Lexi, never Lex like Faye does (and Ash, once, a grumbled fuck off, Lex ,  when asked if they stocked some artisanal chocolate brand). He doesn’t try to cover up what he does for a living, but he doesn’t bring it up. He’s hidden in plain sight.  

She feels like a kid when she wonders why he’s so cagey with her. Like the little insecure girl who wondered why Cassie grew boobs while Lexi didn’t, why Cassie got boys and friends while Lexi didn’t, and so on and so forth until she learned to box these worries up and ignore them. 

This, unfortunately, she can’t ignore, because she wants Fez so bad that her hands shake with it. She wakes up at night flushed, sweaty, trying to hold onto the phantom touch of his fingers on her skin and kisses between her thighs. She closes her eyes and she can see him lying over her, golden chain glinting in the dark, blue eyes burning with the same intensity they had on new year’s eve—straight out of her dirtiest fantasies. She’s known him barely a month and yet she’s possessed by the urge to learn him inside out, memorize him like her favorite poems (like, I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair, etcetera). She craves him like sinners crave absolution, and it makes her burn and pine and perish. 

She never thought she’d be someone who yearns  for a guy like this . Only, well—

Lexi’s biking to his store after school, like she does more often than not, when it starts raining: a drizzle and then a downpour. It’s just her fucking luck to be caught in one of California’s rare storms. She’s cursing, complete with words she only learned from Ash like, a week ago, when she barrels into his store, soaking wet, kind of cold, and probably looking like a really unattractive drowned rat. 

“Shit, shit, sorry, I’m tracking water all into the store—”

“You insane ," says Fez, exasperated, and within seconds he’s by her side. He pulls her closer by the front of the jacket she’s wearing then pushes it off her, his fingers brushing the exposed skin of her shoulders, and now she’s all hot and cold, like the heroine of an Austen novel. He brushes the wet strands off her away from her skin, then delicately traces the slope of her neck all the way to her face so he can brush matted hair off her cheeks, too, grazing the curve with a tenderness that shouldn’t belong to his scarred fingers. 

“Insane,” he repeats, looking at her like she’s something. “Why’d you bike? You coulda called.”

“It wasn’t raining when I left,” says Lexi, unable to stop herself from pouting. It makes Fez laugh, so she takes it as a win, naturally smiling just because he is, too. 

Only she’s not smiling much when he cups her cheeks and leans forward to peck her forehead, soft as ever. Her breath hitches and her eyes widen, but then he’s letting go of her and stepping back, looking like nothing ever happened. “Lemme see if I’ve got somethin’ in the back for you.”

“Alright.” She watches him go, somewhat dejected that he’s leaving (but also exhilarated, her skin burning where his lips had been), but then she notices his hands. Shaking, trembling from holding back, just like hers. It kind of all makes sense after that, and she learns to curb her anxieties about what she means to him.

There’s something wrong with Cassie. Again. It’s worse than before, worse than McKay and the abortion, because now she lets Lexi crawl into her bed and curve her body around hers while Cassie sobs quietly, biting her palm to muffle it. Lexi holds her other hand so tight she fears she might break the bones, tries to wipe Cassie’s tears and mend her broken heart, glue the shards of it back together with little it’s okay s  and i love you s . 

It doesn’t work. Not really. There’s an alarm that goes off at 4 AM, and it’s like a canary in a coal mine: Cassie wipes off the last of her tears and smooths her edges into a tabula rasa ,  a blank slate that she designs differently each day: a bodycon set that Maddy raved about weeks ago, the country music star look, and always too much glitter and effort for eight hours in a building that stinks of sweat and people who show up in UGGs. 

The loss of sleep makes Lexi cranky—she loves Cassie more than anyone in the world, but she wants a night’s rest—her time is equally divided between ironing out the finer details of her play and tightly holding Cassie so she doesn’t break even more—and she wants to know what’s keeping her sister one badly phrased sentence away from a nervous breakdown, and it’s a vicious circle that seems never ending, a snake biting its own tail. 

So, nine days into Cassie’s route to disaster, she shows up at Fez’s house and not his convenience store for the first time. She’s got her backpack slung over her shoulder and his green cable knit balled up in her arms when she rings the doorbell, heart in her throat. 

He wouldn’t turn her away, right? Even if it’s pretty late, and her reason for showing up is kind of pathetic— my sister is acting like a total fruitcake and I’m losing my mind and nothing makes me feel better than you, so can I just hang out here? I’ll be real quiet, you won’t even notice I’m here, and I’m positive of that because no one ever fucking notices me. 

The door opens and Lexi’s chest painfully constricts, especially when she sees the surprised smile on Fez’s face. “You lost?” 

“Should I be?” She doesn’t give him time to answer, saying, “I have your sweater.” She doesn’t mention how bad she wanted to wear it, like she’s crushing on him or something. As if. What is she, some bland self-insert in a Wattpad cliché, falling for the dangerous bad boy with a heart of gold?

Semantics. 

“Don’t say you biked all the way over here for this,” says Fez, stepping aside in a wordless invitation for her to come in. 

“It’s not that far.” She steps inside into the warmth of his home, all muted orange lighting and the smell of— “Are you cooking?”

“Just spaghetti. Dinner.” 

“I didn’t know you cooked.”

Fez closes the door behind her with a shrug. “Someone’s gotta feed Ash. And Faye, for now.” He pauses, then, “There’s ‘nough for four, though.”

“That works out nice.” To give herself an excuse to look away from the earnest expression she doesn’t know what to do with, Lexi turns to the living area. “Hi, Faye.” 

From her spot on the couch, Faye blows Lexi an air kiss, complete with an obnoxious mwah sound. It pulls an honest smile from Lexi because Faye is nothing but genuine in her affections, unlike Maddy’s saccharine smiles and Rue’s you’re my best friend from preschool that only comes out when she needs clean urine. 

“So, you good?” asks Fez as he steers her deeper inside the home that’s straight out of an IKEA catalog from the 60s. Lexi drops on the couch next to Faye and lets her drape her legs over her lap, but keeps looking at Fez. “It’s late out.” 

“Just… stuff with my mom and my sister. I thought I’d come hang out.” She tries to smile at him, and he’s looking down at her with undeniable fondness. 

“Cool. You can always come by, you know. Just… text me or some shit.” 

“I should’ve asked, and—” She notices she’s still got the sweater in her arms, so she holds it out— “I kept forgetting about this. I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t gotta be sorry.” He looks like he wants to say more, but instead he just takes the cable knit from her hands, relieving her of its presence in her closet. To avoid the awkwardness of looking him in the eye without knowing what to say (Faye’s scrolling on her phone, oblivious to the world around her), Lexi looks around the living room—the knitted blanket on the armchair, the half-empty bottle of beer on the coffee table in arm’s reach of Faye, the books on the shelves next to the TV—

“Oh, are those yours?” she asks excitedly, bounding up to check the reading material because she’s a fucking nerd at heart (and because what the hell would Fez read? Drug cartel mysteries? American Psycho and Infinite Jest ? ). 

Faye whines, “I was comfortable.” 

Fez scoffs. “C’mon, we got guests, this ain’t your bed now.” Lexi glances back and finds him pushing Faye’s legs off the couch, mildly irritated, before he joins her at the shelves. He watches her pick up Lunch Poems and says, “‘s mostly poetry. Can’t focus long enough for longer shit.” 

“Why not?” 

He taps the side of his head, at the scar on his skull. “Migraines.” 

“Oh.” She flips through the book before browsing the rest of the titles—he’s got Beat poetry next to Anne Carson and Mary Oliver, classics like T.S. Elliot and e.e. cummings, and collections she’s never heard of, something called The Surface of Time and Pastoral . He’s even got a Bible next to everything, but the hardcover looks pristine when compared to the well-loved appearance of his dog-eared paperbacks. “God. This is… this is so stupid. I never would’ve expected you to read.”

Good-natured, Fez asks, “You callin’ me a dumbass?” 

“No, I’m calling you a normal person.” She picks up a random book that she hadn’t read before and smooths a hand down its cover. “None of my friends read anything longer than an Instagram caption.” 

Fez hums in appreciation. “Knock yourself out.” He brushes her elbow before he retreats back into the kitchen, and Lexi takes her book and goes back to the couch to curl up and read—it’s a Bukowski, which she’d never picked up on account of feminism and all that, but she figured why the hell not this time. 

Faye scoots closer to hook her chin over Lexi’s shoulder. “That sucks . " 

“What does?” 

“About your mom and sis.” A beat, then, “I miss my mom.” 

Hesitantly, Lexi asks, “Do you know where she is?” 

Faye nods, her plump lips downturned. This might be the most emotion she’s ever shown. “Still at home. They told me to go when I wouldn’t leave Custer. Or the drugs.”  

“I’m sorry.” 

“It’s cool.” She shifts so her head rests on Lexi’s shoulder. She smells like menthol cigarettes, cheap drug store perfume, and bubblegum; Lexi adores her for it. “I miss Custer.” 

Lexi pats her hand. “It’s okay. He loves you, he’ll come back for you soon.”  

Faye smacks a sticky lip gloss kiss on Lexi’s cheek before she leans against the opposite arm of the couch. With a small smile, Lexi picks up her book and mirrors her position, taking her shoes off and hoisting her legs onto the cushions. If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny that Lexi feels more at peace in a drug dealer’s home next to the addict he’s housing than she feels with her own mom and sister.

It’s just her luck, what happens then. She’s idly flipping through the copy of Last Night of the Earth that she’d picked out earlier, drinking the last of Faye’s beer with her legs tucked underneath her, and Faye’s at the other end of the couch lighting a blunt. Fez is still in the kitchen, finishing up, when Ash barges in, dragging a man three times his size behind him. Or, in front of him, seeing as he’s forcing him into the house and onto a chair with the business end of a shotgun pointed at him. 

Faye only glances over the back of the couch and lets out a disinterested hm .  Lexi sits up, eyes wide, heart pounding so hard she presses her fingers against it like she’s trying to hold it back inside her ribcage.

“Lexi Howard,” says Cal Jacobs, equal parts stupefied and smug, like she’s a child that he just caught with a hand in the cookie jar. He opens his mouth to say more while Lexi discreetly fumbles between the cushions because Fez is a dealer , of course he has weapons stashed around his house (or at least, that’s what fictional dealers do) and she’s looking for a fucking pocketknife or something just to feel safe, but Ash pokes his head with the shotgun, hard enough to hurt. 

“Don’t fucking talk to her,” he orders, glaring at Lexi as if he’s warning her to keep her mouth shut, too. 

Fez, standing at the door to the kitchen, says, “Yo, man. What the fuck . " His eyes slide over his brother, the fucking hostage he’s brought with him, and then the girls on the couch. He meets Lexi’s eye and she knows his mind’s running, quicker than many would give him credit for, trying to come up with some way to explain her presence on his couch, her converses under the coffee table, or the half-drunk beer in her hand. 

“He was lurking out,” explains Ash. 

Fez’s head falls back, his eyes closing in exasperation, and Lexi wants to kiss his neck. Fucking whatever. “So first, you come to my job, askin’ all these weird-ass questions like the Feds. Then I find you out in front of my house. The fuck are you doin’, man?”

Completely unable to take a hint, Faye sits up a bit and holds out the blunt. “Lex. You want?” 

“What’s she doing here?” demands Cal of Lexi, and Ash promptly hits him with the end of the shotgun. 

“None of your fucking business,” snaps Lexi over the din of Ash’s violence, then takes the opportunity to tell Faye, “Maybe later.” 

“Cool.” 

“The fuck are you doing hanging ‘round my house?” repeats Fez, coming to rest against the back of the couch, so close Lexi can smell him—cigarettes, weed, cologne, and the dinner he’d been cooking. 

“You’re free to call the cops,” suggests Cal, much too brazen for a man who’s got a loaded weapon pointed at him. 

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Well, it's either call the cops, let me go,” he says, eyes sliding to Lexi and fixing onto her, “or kill me.” 

“What the fuck, man?” gripes Fez, discreetly moving his hand onto the couch, right in front of Lexi. Hidden from view, she takes it, grasps it like a lifeline as she angsts over how this might end, absolutely terrified something will happen to Fez. “What’s with your family? Are you all just a bunch of fuckin’ assholes?”

“You beat up my son,” grouses Cal, moving his eyes from Lexi to Fez. 

“Yeah, well, he deserved it, man, he’s a fuckin’ bitch.”

“Oh, okay, tough guy—ow, fuck !  Why did you do that?” 

Lexi holds in her gasp, glancing up at Fez who seems completely unfazed that his brother’s using a firearm as a mallet. She turns back to look and kind of doesn’t care, either, even when the blood starts running from Cal’s head. 

“Cause you’re in no position to talk shit.” Ash hoists the gun and lightly pokes Cal’s temple with it. 

Lexi feels like Faye when she blurts out, “That’s so gonna stain your carpet.”

Fez laughs at her, says, “Fuckin’ hell.” 

“I'm warning you,” hisses Cal. “You hit me one more—oh, fuck ! " 

An eleven-year-old shouldn’t look so terrifying, but Ash does, menacing and murderous as he taunts a prominant adult into calling the police as he’s being beat up by a literal kid. He pulls his phone out of pocket and says, “Dial, bitch,” laughs when Cal tries name dropping the chief of police, and comes to the conclusion that, “This guy don’t want the fucking cops involved any more than we do.” 

“Alright, Ash, chill out, man,” warns Fez. “I get it.” 

Cal inhales sharply, then, “I know you and your drug addict friend, that girl. You're trying to extort my son.” 

“What?” demands Lexi. 

“Because of what I did to her friend.” 

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, man?” deadpans Fez.

“You know, the blonde.”

“The blonde?” echoes Lexi, thinking he means Cassie. Ash is looking at her like he wants to empty a round of bullets into her just for being here, but Fez squeezes her hand so she’s probably not stepping that far out of line. She doesn’t really care—not after the way Cal had talked to Cassie when he came to their house, not after Cassie’s near-hysterical state when Nate was in the hospital. 

“Not your sister,” says Cal, glancing at her. “The other one.” 

“Who? Jewel?” asks Fez, and Lexi coughs to choke out a laugh. Jewel.

Cal hesitates, then, “Look, man, I didn't know she was 17.”

She’s not laughing anymore, not at all. Nausea rolls all over her, and she presses a hand against her mouth because she really thinks she might throw up.

“You tellin’ me you had sex with Jewel?”

“Who's Jewel?” asks Faye cluelessly, looking from Lexi to Fezco, then at Ash and Cal.

Fez ignores her to continue his disgusted tirade. “What the fuck, man?”

“Do I know Jewel?” Faye leans closer to Lexi, but she can’t bring herself to pay attention to her right now.  

“You slept with my friend ?"  blurts out Lexi, utterly floored and still queasy. 

Cal huffs, “I didn’t know she was a minor—why the fuck am I talking to you? I’m not here to talk to yet another addict.”

Ash takes this as an invitation to thwack him with the shotgun again. “Told you not to fucking talk to her.” 

“The fuck are we even talkin’ about right now, bro?” asks Fez. 

“ Jule ."

“Jewel,” repeats Faye in a quiet mumble to herself. “Jewel…”

“I just want the disc,” says Cal, pretty pathetically. 

“What disc ?” questions Fez. 

“Of Jule and I.” 

“Yo, you recorded that shit?” 

“I didn't know.” 

“You didn't know that you were recording?” It’s good that Fez is still able to articulate his distaste, because Lexi’s pretty sure if she opened her mouth she’d barf.   

“I fucked up,” admits Cal. Faye’s still muttering their rendition of Jules’ name to herself. 

“Obviously, man—yo, who the fuck even told you I gave a shit about this anyway?” 

“My son.”

“Your son? The one that's in love with Jewel?” 

“Dude, no,” says Lexi. Each time she thinks this conversation can’t get any worse, it does . 

“Aw, that's cute,” coos Faye. 

“That's not cute, man,” says Fez “What the fuck?” 

“What?” asks Cal.

“What kind of weird-ass father-son shit is goin’ on around here, bro?” 

“I'm extremely confused,” confesses Cal.

“You're confused— I'm fuckin’ confused, bro.” 

“Me too,” concurs Faye. “Lex. You look confused too.”

“You’ve no idea.” 

“I don't even know what the fuck you’re doin’  here,” Fez says. 

Cal seems to be reevaluating every single life choice that landed him in this situation. All things considered, it must be quite mortifying to be assaulted by a drug dealer’s kid brother. “Do you mind if I just leave? I'm not gonna say a word about anything, I swear to God. Let's just pretend like... none of this ever happened.” His gaze zeroes in on Lexi again. “You do it, too.” 

Fez looks at Lexi, then at Ash, who furiously shakes his head. Fez stands, squeezing Lexi’s hand one last time before dropping it. “Yo, Ash, let me talk to you real quick.” 

Lexi’s heart palpitates at the idea of being left alone in a room with Nate’s dad, but she’s forgotten to account for Faye, who sits up straighter and chirps, “Hi.”

Reluctantly, he says, “Hi?” 

“What's your name?” 

“Cal.”

Faye nods once. Then, “Do you and your son, like… Do you, like, fuck people together?” 

And Lexi, god help her, bursts out laughing, burying her face in her hands to hide it. But it draws Cal’s attention back to her, because he says, “If you tell anyone about what you heard today, I’ll make sure your boyfriend ends up behind bars, too.” 

And. Well. Faye asks, “You got a boyfriend? How come you didn’t tell me?” 

Before Lexi can respond, Fez and Ash come back in. Fez is saying, “Imma let you walk up outta here on one condition.” 

Cal seems to sit up straighter. “Anything.”

“You'll keep your bitch-ass son out of my fuckin’ life, and Rue’s, and Jewel’s, till the end of fucking time.” He breaks off, then, “And Lexi’s. You keep outta her life. You understand?”

“I promise.”

“Now, I don't know shit about no fuckin’ disc, man,” continues Fez. “That's not my problem. Now get this motherfucker outta here, Ash.”

Ash does like his brother had asked, seeming disgruntled that he’s been forbidden to do more, contenting himself with repeatedly poking Cal with his weapon. 

“Did he say anythin’ to you while we were out?” asks Fez, coming to stand next to the couch again, attention fixed on Lexi. His eyes are so blue , Lexi stutters when she answers.

“Just—um. The usual. Keep your mouth shut or your—you get jail time.” 

“Fuckin’ bitch. D’you know anythin’ ‘bout all that shit he was sayin’?” 

Lexi says no just as Ash comes back inside, closing the door behind him and setting the gun on the dining table. They’re all quiet for a moment—Lexi can’t figure out what to say, wants to tell Fez he should’ve let Ash kill the Jacobs patriarch and then maybe his son, too, for good measure but that might come across as juvenile—but then Faye goes, “Yo, will someone tell me who the fuck is Jewel?” 

Fez stares at Lexi, so long and so hard that she expects him to say something more, but then he goes back into the kitchen with a muttered, “Imma go finish.” She gives him a half-second’s head start before she climbs off the couch to follow him, unsteady on her feet. 

He’s got his back to her when she enters, shoulders tense in a way she’s never seen from him—except new year’s eve, when his body was taut like a wire as he spoke to Nate before breaking the bottle over his head. She doesn’t know how to breach this, incredibly anxious like she’s still fourteen and unsure of where she belongs. She wants to belong with him, no matter the cost. 

But Fez must have heard her come in, because he says, “Look, I’m sorry you saw all that shit.” 

“Do you think Jules is okay?” 

“Shit, Ion know. Are you?” 

Lexi blinks. “Um. Yes? Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“I just—y’know, with Ash and shit. He’s not like this, usually, but—fuck.” 

“He should be. At least with assholes like Nate’s dad.” She takes the incentive to cross the distance between them and, just to know what it would feel like, rests her forehead against the back of his shoulder. He stiffens—and if he brushes her off, it just might kill her—but then he slowly reaches for her hand again and tangles their fingers together. An anchor, a grounding point. “It’s okay. It’s—shit, it’s not even something that you have to worry about.” 

“It should be.” 

“If I wanted something else, I wouldn’t be here.” 

“Word.”

“I’m serious. I’m—you’re a good guy, Fezco. I always wanna be around you because—” her cheeks are burning, and there’s an itch in her throat because she has to get these words out— “Sometimes I feel like you’re the only person who sees me.” The driving just to talk to her, letting her hang around in his store and now his home, listening to her whine about homework and petty sisters when he’s never had any reason to care about it himself. And now—the books he keeps in his living room, the rationality with which he handled his brother and Cal Jacobs, the softness of his t-shirt. 

“Shit. I gotta tell you,” Fez says, voice low and hoarse, “I thought you wouldn’t want this.” 

“This?” 

“Me. Ash. Fuckin’ Faye.” 

“I do, though. I have since—since new year’s eve, I think.” 

His laugh comes out choked and disbelieving. “For real?” 

“For real.” Lexi lifts her head and moves so she can stand between Fez and the counter. He’s never been closer than he is now, and he’s never been more real to her, eyes half-lidded and voice soft and hushed, as though she’s his cathedral. He lets his forehead drop against hers, and Lexi has to resist the urge to just—close the gap. It’s tiny, doesn’t even count considering he’s so close that they’re breathing the same air, what will it matter if she gets to find out what he tastes like, too?

“Okay.” He nods once, lips quirked up in the minutest smile. “Your choice. I ain’t gonna stop you.” 

“You’ll let me stay?” 

(Stay in his life, every single facet of it, the good and the bad and the illegal; stay in his store and in his house and maybe he’ll do the same for her, too, stay in her world.)

As an answer, Fez reaches up with his free hand and tangles his fingers in her hair. Tugs on it, the slightest bit, sending a jolt of pleasure down her spine. He leans forward and presses a kiss to the underside of her jaw, open-mouthed and hot, then on her jawline and cheek. He stops a hair’s breadth away from her lips, just to murmur, “You sure?” 

Not with a bang, but with a whimper (this is how the world ends), Lexi kisses Fez for the first time. She lets go of his hand to cup his neck, fingers at his rapid pulse point, and he wraps an arm around her waist to pull her closer even as he presses her against the counter, like he wants to eliminate any fissures between them. It’s not soft or gentle, not in the slightest, because Fez seems to let go — he bites at her lower lip and makes her moan, digs his fingers so hard into her hips she hopes it bruises. She clings to him desperately, kind of terrified that this is another of her daydreams, but then he hoists her onto the counter and her head bumps one of the cabinets and—it’s real, it’s messy, and it makes her laugh, breathless and elated. 

“Shit, baby,” he murmurs, pulling back to run his hand over the back of her head. “You good?” He’s still gripping her waist, looking at her with a worried furrow in his brow but a cloudy delight in his eyes. 

She nods furiously, wrapping an arm around his neck to reel him back in. “So good. Very good. I’m great. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’m amazing, tremendous, hunky-dory—”

“Alright, I get it,” he chuckles, then leans in to kiss her again, more tempered this time, a brush of lips against hers that’s all affection. When he pulls back, she bumps their noses together, and he smiles. “Want dinner?” 

“ I want fucking dinner,” says a petulant voice in the doorway. Ash stands there, arms crossed, and Lexi stifles her laugh because he’s looking at them with the exact same disgust he looks at Faye with when she’s incredibly stoned and talking out her ass. 

Fez clears his throat and takes a small step back, his hands dropping to rest on Lexi’s thighs as they both turn their heads to look at Ash. “Want a drink with your spaghetti?”

“Fuck you,” replies Ash. “And yes. Juice.” 

“Get the fucking plates, Ash,” Fez tells him. His thumb keeps rubbing circles on Lexi’s jeans—if only she’d worn a skirt. It’s insane how much she wants him to touch her everywhere. “Four people.” 

Ash narrows his eyes. “You stayin’ for dinner now?”

“Is it a problem?” asks Lexi. 

“I mean, first you at the store all the time, now you’re showin’ up here and—fuckin’ hell, there’s no more apple juice,” grumbles Ash, closing the fridge door a little harder than necessary. 

“I could make lemonade,” offers Lexi.

Fez turns back at her. “No need.”

“I want lemonade,” pipes up Ash. “Do we got lemons?” 

“Yeah, but—”

“Point me to your juicer,” says Lexi, holding onto Fez’s forearms—and, whoa, muscles—to hop off the counter. 

“We don’t got one of those,” says Fez. 

“Your way of life astounds me,” she says. Fez shakes his head and shows her the lemons, gives her the singular pitcher they have. He repeats that she doesn’t have to do it, but it’s weirdly nice making fucking lemonade while Fez finishes sauce for spaghetti. It’s like a scene from the wholesome movies that bore Lexi to death, with the happy families and the homecooked meal. They even set the table in the dining room, much to Ash’s consternation.

“What are we, the fuckin’ Brady Bunch ?  We’ve never had dinner on the table. I can’t think of a last time I had a meal off the couch.” 

“You’ve watched The Brady Bunch?” asks Lexi, disbelieving. 

Disgruntled, the kid replies, “It’s stupid, so it’s funny.” 

“Oh, I know. I love The Brady Bunch . ” 

It seems to soften him up the slightest bit, seeing as Ash only antagonizes the world twice and asks Lexi to “pass the fuckin’ salt” with less hostility than she expected. Faye turns out to be a messy eater, slurping spaghetti in a way that makes everyone at the table mildly uncomfortable, and Ash keeps inching away from her even though there’s already plenty of space between them. 

But Fez is there, and it makes all the awkwardness dissipate. He eats with his left hand and keeps his right one on Lexi’s knee, all soft and domestic, and he’s actually a better cook than Cassie and her mom, so it’s a win. It’s a dinner unmarred by marital dysfunction or alcoholic irritability, which is insane because she’s having dinner with a bunch of loveable criminals, an episode of her very own sitcom.

He doesn’t talk about Nate Jacobs or his father until Faye brings it up after dinner, when they’re back on the couch and Fez is teaching Lexi how to roll a joint. His hands are quicker but hers are steadier, more methodical, and it gives him this pained smile when he notices. 

“So, will I meet Jewel soon?” 

Lexi pauses in her movements, fingers fluttering over the wrap and sativa before she presses her palms onto the coffee table, tapping her nails onto it. 

Fez looks at Faye, who’s reclined on the couch with her blanket and pillow already prepared, and asks, “The fuck are you talkin’ about?”

“Jewel. The girl that old guy fucked.” 

“Please don’t remind me,” whines Lexi, burying her face in her hands. Thinking of Jules having sex is uncomfortable in the same way thinking of Cassie in such a position. Thinking of her with an older guy is even worse, and thinking of her with Nate Jacobs’ dad who filmed the encounter for future entertainment takes the fucking cake, maybe even the tea and the biscuits, too. 

Fez seems to sense Lexi’s perturbation because he tells Faye to fucking drop it. In turn, she pouts and whines, “You never fuckin’ tell me anything.” A pause, then, “I want my boyfriend.” 

“At this point, I fuckin’ want him too,” mutters Ash, mindlessly flipping through the TV channels until he finds some movie that’s right in the middle of its action scene, all burly men running around and toting huge firearms. It seems to be something right up his alley, but then he scoffs and gripes, “A machine gun would never fire like that,” before changing the channel.    

Electing to ignore the nagging worry about Jules’ possible involvement in a case of statutory rape and child pornography, Lexi finishes up the joint and reaches for the lighter on the coffee table. She sticks it between her lips and lights it, inhaling the smoke and holding it in her lungs for a few moments before exhaling. She’s gotten over that awkward stage in which she would cough it back out, Rue and Jules giggling as she did so, instead knowing how to smoke it and enjoy the fleeting moments in which her brain would pleasantly sign off.  

She turns to pass it to Fez and finds him already looking at her, something intense in his gaze that darkens his eyes. He takes it from her, deliberately brushing his fingers over hers—and it’s insane, completely absurd how the briefest of touches from him can make her so lightheaded, or maybe that’s the drugs—and takes one hit. Then, giving it to Faye, he stands and tells Lexi, “There’s a book I wanna show you in my room.” 

Flabbergasted, Lexi repeats, “A book?” 

“I think you’d like it.” He offers a hand to pull her up. She takes it—ignores Ash’s fucking horndogs — and lets him pull her in the direction of his bedroom, shutting them inside it once they’re there. 

Lexi looks around at the unmade bed, the bare walls, the singular book and gun on the nightstand. “Did you really want to show me a book?” 

“Fuck no,” he huffs, and then he’s all in her space, arms around her waist and nose at her hairline. Lexi follows his lead and clutches at his shirt to pull him even closer, eyes closed to immerse herself in how he smells and feels. “Lexi.”

“Hm?” She looks up at him, his anxious expression at handing her his heart on a silver platter. 

“Are you sure?” She hears the unspoken about me tacked onto it. 

Is she sure? About this zero to everything speed, the all or nothing nature of being with a guy whose life is inextricable from crime? About his role in Rue’s destruction and maybe even her father’s?

“You can’t treat me like a child,” she says as a response. 

“Never did.” 

“And it’s okay if I happen to be there when... things like what happened today happen again.” 

Fez’s breath hitches. “Lex, c’mon.” 

“It involves me, too. Jules is my friend.” 

He sighs. “We’ll figure out a middle.” 

“Together?”

His lips curl up into a smile, involuntarily. “Fuck yeah.”

“Then yeah, I’m sure.” 

“That’s wassup.” 

He kisses her, and it’s not a word illustrative enough of what he does: takes what she’s willing to give and then some, matches her desperation with his as he pulls her hair because she surprisingly likes it, murmurs her name when she moves away from his lips to his jaw. And then he bares his throat to her like he trusts her to kiss it or slit it, to bite his Adam’s apple and tear it out, to relish in the forbidden fruit even if it’s at the expense of their sanity. They’re equally greedy, hands in hair and tugging at clothes, completely voracious and craving more more more.

Lexi pushes Fez to sit on the edge of his bed and climbs onto his lap. He asks her if she’s sure, one final time, and then unzips her jeans to fuck her with his fingers amidst her whining his name and more .  He kisses her when she comes, muffles her moans against his lips, leaves her feeling spent and oh, this must be what it feels like to have your world shift. 

“Good?” 

Still trying to catch her breath, Lexi says, “Want me to pull out the dictionary again?” 

Fez laughs and kisses her, their softest one yet. “C’mon, lemme take you home. And—Lex.” 

“Yeah?” 

“I really like havin’ you ‘round, but you gotta text me when you wanna come by.” 

She knows when to ask for him to let her in, and when to relent. For this one—just this one thing—she’ll let him have it. “Okay.” 

“I don’t want you caught up in my shit.” 

“I’ll try my best.” 

He cocks his head to the side, still with that soft smile, and says, “Why do I get the feel you’re just lyin’ to shut me up?” He looks adorable while doing it, and so Lexi pecks his lips, then each of his cheeks once. 

“I’m not. I promise. I wouldn’t disrespect your wishes like that.” 

It looks like a novel idea to him, that someone would take his feelings into consideration. Well, he can join the fucking club. (There’s something about it, this devotion that they have for each other, that makes it run so deep—from ashes rises a phoenix, and from a lifetime of inadequacy they’ll learn to understand that they’re more than enough for each other.)

When they come back into the living room, Ash is gone, presumably having retreated into his own bedroom. Faye’s on her couch, already half-asleep, but she still has it in her to ask, “Did y’all fuck?”

“Good night, Faye,” says Lexi, ducking down to plant a kiss on the top of her head. It makes Faye smile with something that kind of breaks Lexi’s heart.  No one’s wanted her affection for a really long time.  

They climb into his car; Lexi turns the radio on and fiddles with it until she finds some alternative station. Fez drives in silence, but once they’re out of his neighborhood, he says “You know what I do. For like, a livin’. You know what Ash does, and why’s Faye here.” 

“I do.” 

“And it’s cool?” 

“The coolest.” She pauses, then, “You’re not selling to Rue anymore, right?” 

“Nah. Not ever again.” 

“Okay then.” Lexi watches his expression, the way it’s all calculated indifference, and says, “I’m good as long as you don’t get your teeth knocked out.” 

A shocked laugh falls out of him. “What?” 

“Human teeth are the only part of the body that can’t heal themselves,” explains Lexi, trying to hold back her giggles at the bewildered look he shoots her. “They’re coated in enamel, which isn’t a living tissue, which is why getting your tooth chipped or something doesn’t heal on its own.” 

“So what, I’ll just get gold teeth.” 

She winces. “Please don’t do that. I don’t think I could make out with a guy who has metal in his mouth.” 

“So you just keepin’ me ‘round for the benefits, is that it?” he jokes. 

“Definitely,” she says, scooting closer and pressing a kiss at his jawline. He turns his head and manages to give her a small kiss before turning back to the road. They’re almost to her house, and it’s coming down from a high, having to go back to her shared bedroom with her sister and high school tomorrow morning after everything that happened. 

It feels like another life, Cal Jacobs admitting to the shit with Jules. Like kissing Fez threw everything off balance, shifted all her perspectives—which can’t be healthy at all.

“Do you think Jules is—” she cuts off, not knowing what to say. Okay ?  No, she probably isn’t okay after being taken advantage of like that, but— “Do you think she knows he’s filmed her?” 

Fez worries at his bottom lip, then, “Rue once asked me to keep Nate away from Jewel. Think it had to do with that. Got me raided by the cops, though, fuckin’ bastard.” 

Confused, Lexi begins to say something like what the hell are you talking about , when she catches sight of a familiar figure and blurts out, “Stop the car.” 

Immediately, Fez does as she asked, suddenly hitting the brakes and making them both lurch forward. “Fuck. What?” 

“Is that my sister?” she asks, inching forward on her seat for a closer look. It is Cassie, wearing a blue dress and her hair in matted curls, walking home at something close to midnight in her favorite pumps. “Fucking hell. What is she doing ?  Do you think she’s high or drunk or—what if someone hurt her?” 

“Hold up,” murmurs Fez, gripping her wrist. “You wanna pick her up?”

“No,” she replies without thinking. She hastily adds, “Because she’ll make it her business. She’ll crap on you and on me and I don’t wanna deal with that after tonight because I know she would ruin it, so just—fuck.” 

“A’ight,” he says, still soothing as ever, his thumb rubbing circles into her skin. “We’re almost at your home anyway. It’s no big deal. Ain’t nothin’ happenin’ to her.” 

“Okay.” Lexi inhales sharply, watching as Cassie rounds the corner and disappears from view. This is their neighborhood—their safe, suburban neighborhood, where their family is the odd one out. Cassie’s gonna get home in one piece. In thirty seconds, she’d probably be at their door, scrambling to unlock it as quietly as possible in case their mom is passed out on the couch and not her bed. 

“Good?”

“Yeah, fuck.” Lexi turns to Fez, cupping his cheek in her free hand. “Sorry I freaked out.” 

“Nah, course you did. I’d do the same for Ash.” 

“No you wouldn’t, Ash can take care of himself.” 

He grins. “I was tryna make you feel better and shit.” 

“It’s okay, I appreciate it anyway.” She tilts her head up to catch his lips with hers, tries to say something like blood of your veins in my mouth, darkness of your mouth for my death just with kissing him. He has to know, right? How much this is for her, how much he is? She’s never felt like this, and she knows none of her friends have either, but he must understand it. 

He pulls back first, slowly, almost reluctant. “You gotta go.” 

She clears her throat. “Yeah. I do.” She definitely does, now that Cassie’s home and she isn’t. “I should walk the rest of the way, so that Cassie doesn’t hear the car.” 

He doesn’t look like the idea pleases him, but he just says, “Text me when you’re in.” 

“I will.” She gives him one final kiss for the night then goes, cold and desolate without his touch and the warmth of his presence. She turns back and finds Fez watching her, concern lacing his features, and it’s nothing but everything, too. 

Lexi follows Cassie’s footsteps, looking for her keys in the smallest compartment of her backpack. The door’s been left unlocked, which is just typical of Cassie, and so Lexi locks it just as she hears her sister come down the stairs. 

“What the fuck , " she hisses, looking kind of manic. “Where were you?” 

Like an idiot, Lexi says, “Out on a walk.” 

“It’s midnight! You’re still in the clothes you went to school in! What kind of walk lasts ten hours?” 

“You were out too,” Lexi snaps, pointing at her sister’s clothes. “And you definitely weren’t out on a walk. Where the fuck were you ?" 

Cassie falters for a moment, but then she just scoffs, says, “What-fucking-ever,” and quietly stomps back upstairs. It takes real melodrama to do that, Lexi thinks. She pulls out her phone to text Fez before going to her room and dealing with Cassie for the night, finds that he’s already texted her first. 

nate jacobs was drivin a few blocks away

think he mighta dropped ur sis 

I’m home

And theres no way

Maddys not talking to him so cassie wouldn’t

maybe it wasnt him then

But Fez isn’t the kind of person who would mistake a random driver for someone he knows, especially in the dead of the night. Especially not Nate , who’s done his fair share of being a dick to everyone they know. Lexi bites her lip as she wonders what to text back, but he beats her to it. 

u should rest

talk to u at the store tomorrow? 

And it’s fucking pathetic. She’s fucking pathetic, with the way a grin spreads on her face and she texts him back Of course , like she would go anywhere else. 

It takes Cassie one more week to break down. 

Lexi had elected to stay home—Fez had business to deal with earlier in the day, and Faye’s on her period which means she’s no fun to be around. Rue and Jules are hanging out with Elliot, and that relationship’s way more psychosexual than what Lexi’s comfortable with. It's a process of elimination that makes her hide away in her room and work on an assignment for AP Government, writing a few lines in this new script idea she’s half-assing. 

But then Cassie comes home early, or at least early by her standards. It’s not even ten o’clock, but she barges into their room already tugging at the zipper of her skirt and pulling her tank top off. “I’m gonna shower, wanna bake cookies after?” 

Lexi pulls out one of her earbuds, thinking she hadn’t heard right. “Huh?” 

“Chocolate chip cookies. Me, you. In thirty minutes.” 

“But… it’s nine thirty on a Friday night.” 

Cassie kicks her clothes aside with more force than necessary. “I know. I just— fuck , ” and then she’s crying, in that way that’s her whole body: heaving shoulders, shaky limbs, more snot and tears than a person should be able to produce, heartwrenching sobs. It’s only happened a few times, like after the abortion, and it always chills Lexi’s blood. She drops everything and darts to her sister, wraps her in her arms before she crumples onto the floor. “I fucked up, I fucked up, Lex, I fucked up so bad .” 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, whatever it is—” 

But Cassie moans, “ No ,” completely inconsolable, and Lexi’s starting to think shit like Cassie killed someone or committed a war crime when, with the most anguished voice, she confesses, “I’ve been fucking Nate.” 

Lexi freezes. She thinks of Fez smashing a bottle on Nate’s head, and they must be fucking soulmates or something, because she would do anything to be the one doing so right now. Instead, she holds Cassie until she tires herself out from crying and falls asleep on the floor.

There’s an idea in the back of Lexi’s mind, but it’s buried beneath a bunch of other things—things like my sister is fucking her best friend’s ex-boyfriend, who also happens to be the son of the guy who fucked my best friend’s girlfriend and filmed it, both of whom have threatened my boyfriend and his family .  Lexi does what she does best—compartmentalizes it. Helps Cassie off the floor, tucks her into bed even though she’s just in her underwear and she tends to run cold at night. Gets the wipes to clean her face, getting rid of the mascara tracks and glitter on her cheekbones. Considers burning the dirty clothes on the floor, thinks better of it, takes them to the hamper instead. 

Lexi scrubs all evidence of Cassie’s mistake from their room and texts Fez to ask if she can come over tonight. He asks her what she wants for dinner, and if she wants to watch Drive with him and Ash or if he should pick up something else. 

She glances over at Cassie. Even in sleep, she looks sad and drawn, curled in on herself and still sniffling as she breathes. 

Actually, can we make it tomorrow?

course baby 

miss u see u soon   

A few weeks later, Lexi accompanies her sister to a party only to get ditched twenty minutes in. It’s something she’s used to, and she only showed up this time to try and see if she could get something out of Cassie’s idiotic behavior—but apparently she won’t tonight, so whatever. She finds a spot on the couch and takes out a lighter and the one blunt Faye left in her purse two days ago; Lexi thought she wouldn’t use it, but she’d forgotten the stifling anxiety that engulfs her at parties, and thinks she’ll give Faye a big fat kiss the next time she sees her. 

Rue finds her like that, smoking on the couch, toting a familiar figure behind her by the elbow. “Hey, Lex, you know Fez, right?” she asks, seeming to have forgotten that everyone knows Fez. 

“We’ve met,” replies Lexi, smiling up at the guy whose dick she sucked in the backseat of his car three nights ago. “Hi.” 

Fez gives her this grin that’s all endearment. “Hey, Lexi Howard.” 

“So you know each other!” Rue exclaims over the bass of some Tupac song. “Fucking dope—Lexi, since when do you smoke alone?” 

“I’m not alone if there’s hundreds of people humping each other three feet from me,” replies Lexi. 

“Word,” says Fez, sitting down next to her, a respectable distance away. Lexi wants to be close enough to count the freckles on his neck, but since this thing between them is precarious and, like, a little over a month old, it feels like an unspoken agreement not to say shit in front of anyone, least of all Rue. 

“Imma go find Jules,” says Rue. “Stay here.” 

“As you wish,” says Lexi dryly, but the moment Rue’s out of sight, she leans closer to kiss Fez, a quick thing where he doesn’t even get the time to move his hands to pull her closer. “Missed you.” 

“Missed you too. You doin’ good here?” 

God. This guy. She’d give him the goddamn sun with a pretty bow on top if she could. “Better now that you’re here. I’m just sticking around for Cassie.”  

“You’re a good sis,” he tells her, affectionately tugging at a strand of her hair. “How’s your play?” he asks, like he hasn’t been getting periodic updates over the phone, text messages like this cast is a fucking menace and this was much better in my head ,  but also i cant believe im doing this oh my god what if people hate it and not to brag but i think im a fucking ingenue.

“Good, great,” she replies. “Kat and Jules actually stayed behind for rehearsals the other day. They didn’t really get what was going on, but at least they tried, and Jules said the bits she understood were amazing.” 

“That’s good of her.” He wavers a bit, then, “Know anythin’ new about her and that old fucker?” 

“I didn’t ask. Didn’t know how to without making it all dramatic. Did you ask Rue?” 

“Didn’t seem like the time. And your sister? She good?

“Oh. That.” Lexi averts her eyes, as though her sister’s liaison with Nate is something she should carry the shame for. “Nope. I don’t—I know I have to talk to her about it, but it’s just—she keeps crying at night and jumping through hoops during the day, and I don’t wanna hurt her any more than he is.” She always gets this flash of blind rage when she thinks of Nate Jacobs using her sister like she’s a fucking blowup doll, but it never lasts long enough for her to do something about it.  

“You go with your gut,” says Fez, like her instinct is as foolproof and trustworthy as it gets. “You’re smart about shit like that. Know how to talk to people.” 

“You think so?” 

“Ash hates you, like, ten percent less. But that’s cause of the brownies you make.” 

That pulls an honest laugh out of Lexi, the idea of the scariest eleven year old on the face of the earth warming up to her when lured with baked goods. “Good. I’m glad.” 

Fez opens his mouth to say something, but then Rue’s back, and Jules is with her. Jules plops down between Lexi and Fez, and he leans back, a moment of disappointment on his features before he schools them. Lexi passes the joint to Jules, who takes it gratefully, grumbling something like, “Fucking asshole.” 

“Who is?” asks Lexi, half-interested, expecting her to name some random person who maybe bumped into her and spilled her drink. 

“Nate fucking Jacobs,” replies Jules, making Lexi’s spine stiffen. Without thinking, she looks at Fez, who’s already got his eyes trailed on her, much more casual than her rigid form and strained expression. “He’s such a fucking creep. Look at how he’s watching Maddy.” 

Lexi looks at the makeshift dance floor, where Cassie and Maddy are dancing together amongst a bunch of other sweaty, intoxicated people from their school. It’s all those obscene movements they adore, swinging hips and raised arms, fingers interlaced like they’re little kids holding hands on a playground. Slowly, she slides her gaze to Nate, who’s leaning against a wall and nursing a drink out of a red solo cup, expressionless as he stares at the two girls. 

Jules said he was watching Maddy, but it could just as well be Cassie. 

It could be both, because he’s a sick bastard. 

“Fucking sociopath,” says Rue, before she taps Fez on the shoulder. “Yo, did you zone out again?” 

Fez had been studying Lexi, quiet and unflinching, as though waiting for a sign from her. She meets his gaze, the only dependable thing in this fucking room, but she doesn’t know how to articulate her thoughts. 

“What happened here?” 

They’re in his bed for the first time (not ever, but for the first time really ) , half-naked and languid in the afterglow of their sex. Fez had been incredibly gentle with her, guiding her hips to roll against his for the first time and then hiking her legs around his waist as he fucked her the second time, all heat and passion and latching onto each other in ways that make the lines between pain and pleasure all hazy. After, she pulled his shirt and her panties on, and he grabbed his sweats and Lucky Strikes. 

Now, Lexi’s sated and sprawled against the pillows to read her brand new copy of Henry & June ,  reciting the particularly steamy bits out loud. Fez, head on her lap as he smokes a cigarette and listens to her voice, kisses her inner thighs every time she reads something that sticks out to him. 

(She never wanted to be a writer like Anaïs Nin, but Fez makes her want to try. He makes her want to commit their passion to paper: the cold metal of his ring when he slips his fingers inside of her, the hitched gasp he lets out when the takes him into her mouth, the filth he whispers in his slow drawl to bring her to her peak, all those things.) 

She’s gotten distracted and noticed the scar on his head again, the one that gives him flashes of excruciating pain and memory blackouts. She’s tracing it with a finger as she asks him to tell her the story, and she feels the shiver that goes through his body. 

“Nothin’ important. An accident when I was a kid.” 

“You don’t remember it?” 

Fez shifts to meet her eyes. “It’s ugly.” 

“Oh, so you mean that thing you were doing earlier today when you said—” she drops her voice a few octaves to sound like him— “ I’ve got some business to deal with, baby was, what, a trip to Bel Air? To the LA boardwalk, maybe? Got some cotton candy and took a few pictures?” 

He laughs against her skin, says, “Jesus Christ, baby. I’ll tell you, but—I warned you.” 

Lexi puts the book on the bedside table, giving Fez her entire attention as she strokes his buzzed hair. “You know how you’re always on me about doubting myself?”

“Hm.” 

“The same applies to you, Fezco,” she insists, her free hand going to grasp his on her thigh. “You’re amazing and incredible, and so smart and cunning in the best ways possible. No one else could have been able to run an entire drug business and raise a kid at the age of twelve and keep it going for years, so I think… you should cut yourself some slack. You’re already doing your best, and it’s—God. I need you to get it, okay? I need you to get that you’re fucking phenomenal.” 

“Fuckin’ phenomenal, huh?” he repeats shakily, pressing his lips to her knuckles.  

“Yes. Yes, I swear to God.” 

“Thought you didn’t believe in God.” 

“Hm, no. But I believe in you.” 

He sits up and kisses her, a desperate clash of mouths and teeth like he needs to make sure she’s real. Lexi grips the back of his head, keeps him close to her, while his fingers dig into the flesh of her thigh. It’s everything, it’s possession in the best ways, it’s the urge to fuse herself to him, it’s the I love you that’s at the tip of her tongue but also stuck somewhere in her bleeding heart. 

She pulls away the slightest bit to whisper, “Tell me?” 

He does. They lean back against the headboard and Fez doesn’t look at her, plays with her fingers instead while he tells her about his grandma’s business deals and his role in them. She already knew about some of it, but not this much, not with such depth. His words slow down when he tells her about the time with the crowbar, like he’s carefully picking what to say so as to not frighten her. 

But Lexi’s beyond that. She’s not scared but angry, fucking furious at the circumstances that put him within reach of a crowbar, of all things. He’s hesitant and circumspect when he tells her about the hospital and the months of his life he’s lost, about the numbing migraines she still hasn’t been witness to, about his tentative conclusion that it’s why he’s kind of— slow , he says, his mouth curving bitterly around the word. It’s even worse when Fez says, as an afterthought, “I should’a stayed put. ‘s my fault it happened.” 

“No,” snaps Lexi, making his eyes widen a little at how ferocious she sounds. “You were a kid. You were trying to help your grandma.” She shakes her head, and his hands come up to brush the apples of her cheek in a soothing motion. “You’re always trying to help people.” 

“So are you, baby,” he teases softly, leaning forward to peck her nose. It pulls an involuntary smile from her. “Guess we got that in common.” 

Lexi reaches up to smooth a hand over his scar, making his eyes flutter closed. His forehead falls to press against hers, and her voice comes out kind of broken when she says, “I’m sorry, angel.” 

(The first night they met, she thought he looked like one. Even with blood on his hands, with his pockets lined with illicit substances—for one shining moment, she believed in some god, only because a boy with blue eyes made his anger look divine, carried it on his broad shoulders so that he looked like a saint bearing the brunt of ruthless violence as penance to reach martyrdom.)

“I know,” says Fez, kissing the back of her hand once, then twice. 

“I wish I could fix it,” she confesses, softer than she’s ever been. “I wish I could take all your hurt, or at least make the people who hurt you first just—fucking burn.” 

“I know you’d do it,” Fez insists, like it’s the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. “You’d set the whole world on fire to keep people you care about warm. Like Rue and your sis.”

“And you.” 

“Don’t deserve it.” 

“I get to choose,” says Lexi, and she pushes him down onto the mattress, still not done with him. She kisses his neck, right over a hickey she gave him earlier, says, “I choose you,” then goes down on him. 

Ash is the one who teaches Lexi to shoot a gun—not Fez. Fez would never. He’s still wary, taking time to get over the assumption that she’s breakable, that she’s scared of his bloody knuckles and his grandma’s legacy and everything else he’s made of. Ash can see straight through her, though, like he can read her mind and knows all the sick, violent thoughts lurking in there, and so he doesn’t give her room to act soft and delicate. 

It happens on the evening that Lexi comes to the house with the five Percy Jackson books stacked in a tote bag with some Save the planet! slogan. Ash is the one who opens the door, and he’s giving her the stink eye when he says, “Fezco’s not here.” 

Lexi knows, but she cocks her head to the side like this is the first she’s being told of it. “Oh. Can I still come in?”

“Motherfucker,” he grumbles, but still opens the door wider and steps back to let her in. “He’s gonna be late.” 

“It’s okay.” 

The TV is on, screen paused on a Halo game. Two empty bags of chips are on the coffee table next to a can of coke, and when Ash settles back into the couch and grabs the controller again, he looks so much like the kid he never got to be. 

(Like he’s in a confessional booth, Fez mutters, “It’s my fault.” 

“That he’s been cared for since before he could talk?” asks Lexi, her knee touching his over the duvet on his bed. 

“That his life’s fucked up.” He swallows, then, “All the drugs and the guns. He doesn’ know anythin’ else. That’s gotta—Ion know, fuck him up for life or some shit.” 

It’s a bitter worry, a resentment that Fez harbors in the darkest, most shrouded parts of himself. Lexi knows it now, has seen brief unease cloud his features when Ash says or does something distinctly violent. She knows he thinks he’s ruined his little brother beyond redemption, that he believes that out of all his sins and crimes, this is the one that’s going to keep him locked out of heaven. 

“You’re the only reason he even has a home,” she insists, “and people that care about him and treat him right. You’ve done him so good, considering the shitty circumstances you can’t control.” 

Fez closes his eyes, like this conversation pains him. “Lexi, c’mon,” he says, and she brushes her fingers along the nape of his neck before scooting even closer and pulling him to her. His head falls onto her shoulder, forehead pressed to the material of her ratty Pink Floyd shirt. He exhales against her, and she runs her hand along his buzzed hair, thinks something like I’ll carry this with you. I’ll carry it for you .)

Lexi dumps the bag in front of him. Ash stares at it, peeks at its contents, then glares up at her. “I know my brother makes you believe you can do fuck all if you please, but you fuckin’ can’t.”

She stares back with one eyebrow raised, the way she does when she’s waiting for Cassie to realize she’s said something particularly idiotic. “I read these books when I was nine. I was cleaning my room the other day, found them, and realized I didn’t want them anymore.” 

“Get that shit away from me.”

“They’re good books.”

“I’m not nine anymore.” 

Lexi bites her tongue so she doesn’t say you never really were . “It’s either these or fucking Harry Potter ,  Ash, I can’t throw them both away.” 

Ash huffs. “ Harry Potter movies are cool.” 

“These are cool, too,” she insists, pulling out The Lightning Thief and brandishing it like it’s the holy grail. “The main character has a pen that turns into a sword.” 

“Lexi, I’m not a fucking kid. Take your shit and go see Fez at the store.”

She knows not to fight losing battles. “Fine. But I’m leaving these here.”

“You do that.” 

With a huff of exasperation, Lexi turns to leave, kind of dejected. Obviously, if Ash wanted to read anything, he’d pick from his brother’s collection—a kid who’s seen violence up front since he was old enough to walk and talk wouldn’t be affected by a few poems on gay sex or mental disorders—a children’s book series inspired by Greek mythology is impossible. 

But then Ash says, “I’ll read the fuckin’ book.” 

Lexi whirls back around, not even trying to cover up her delight. “Will you?” 

He nods, his eyes steely. “On one condition.” 

“I’m not doing anything illegal,” she warns.

Ash rolls his eyes. “Obviously. Fez wouldn’t like that. Pussy-whipped bitch.” 

“Should I be offended?” 

“Nah. You got a car today?”

Lexi’d made it a habit to take her mom’s car instead of her bike when coming to the house; Fez is right about it being a risky neighborhood. “I do. Why, where’d you wanna go?” 

With a crooked grin that looks absolutely nothing like his brother’s, Ash grabs two identical handguns—one from the shelves, hidden behind a row of books, and another from an ugly vase stashed in the corner. “Let’s go on a road trip.” 

He gets into the passenger seats and gives her directions, but other than that the drive is silent and relatively fine. They stop in an empty field that looks like a defunct shooting range; Lexi takes one moment to think then says, “Why?” 

“Cause it’s fun. Now c’mon, let’s go.” 

Ash gives Lexi one gun and keeps the second with him; he shows her how to load it and how to remove the safety, tells her where to position her fingers, warns her about the kickback of pulling the trigger. “Always use both hands, Fez always tells me that. He never does, but that’s cause he’s a fuckin’ showoff.” 

The gun stops feeling foreign in her hand after she’s fired a few shots. In fact, Lexi finds that it fits—being able to protect herself if she needs to, protect the people around her. She thinks of Cassie and Nate, that if she got the chance to, she wouldn’t stop herself from hurting him just because he’s made her sister cry. 

(Also, also, she likes matching Fez in this skillset. Like they’re slowly becoming on even ground, even though he’s never made her feel like they’re on anything but that.)

When they’re done, and Lexi’s hit bull’s eye on two of the targets, they go back to the car and share the bag of Haribos she had in the glove compartment. Neither of them talks for a really long time; Ash is the one who speaks up first. “What are you doing to my brother?” 

It’s hard to think of an answer that balances the line between honesty and what Ash wants to hear. Lexi settles for, “Nothing that would hurt him. Or you.”

He nods once, like he accepts it. “You gonna make him go straight and shit? Workin’ at an office and livin’ somewhere swanky?”

“I won’t make him anything,” replies Lexi. “That’s the thing. When you care about someone, you take them as they are, flaws and all.”

“Fezco’s pretty fucked up.”

“Good. So am I.”

He snorts. “Yeah, you fuckin’ are, else you wouldn’t be here.” He sighs and stares out the window. “So you care about him?”

“Fucking hell. Would I stick around if I didn’t?” 

“I don’t know what you bitches do for fun on your side of town.” 

“Well, I guarantee you we don’t hang out with our drug dealer boyfriends, their hostile younger brothers, and their heroin addict houseguests who might have pushed a guy off a balcony and killed him.”

Ash gives her this look like he’s inspecting her. Then, “I took you out here because if you’re stickin’ around, Ion want Fez in danger ‘cause of you. I want you to have his back. And I figured you ain’t leavin’ any time soon, so you’d better learn to take care of him like he would for you.”

To mask the fact that she’s incredibly touched by this whole thing—she’s literally about to fucking cry ,  all emotional about this guarded kid and how he might be starting to trust her with his brother, the only person he loves—Lexi says, “Nice deductive skills, Sherlock.” 

“Sherlock?” 

“He’s the main character from a book series— Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . He’s a detective who figures out all these cases with his wacky reasoning.” Lexi gasps, delighted. “When you finish Percy Jackson ,  you could—”

“Fuck no,” snaps Ash, getting his petulant glare back. “I’m reading one book because you let me teach you how to use a gun. I’m not turning into a fuckin’ nerd.” 

“Sheesh. Alright.” Lexi turns the key in the ignition and backs out of where she’s parked, trying to ignore the annoyance radiating off Ash. She opens her mouth, closes it, then, “Wanna stop for ice cream before we go to the store?” 

Ash tries not to sound too excited when he says, “Sure,” but Lexi can see right through him. 

Custer comes back for Faye some three months after Lexi first kissed Fez, and it kind of sucks. 

Ash is absolutely relieved to see her go, practically packs all her skimpy clothes and fruity sodas for her, and Fez is just glad to have his couch back. Lexi thinks she’ll miss her, one of the first few people who was unflinchingly kind to her, never holding back and never expecting anything in return because she never learned to be cruel, or maybe just didn’t care to. 

“I wish you could stay,” admits Lexi, softly, and Faye throws her gangly arms around her shoulders in a hug that smells of bubblegum. 

“Love you, Lex,” she says, kind of strung out on her boyfriend’s stash, but still meaning it. Fez always says not to believe what addicts say, but this one’s different. It has to be. They cling to each other for a long time, only separating when Custer hollers that they have to go. Faye kisses Lexi’s cheek and leaves her with three joints she rolled herself, a tube of e.l.f. lip plumping gloss, and the sort of emptiness that burrowed in her and never left when Rue became someone who could no longer be her best friend. 

At seven in the morning, Cassie stumbles into their shared bathroom just after Lexi has. She’s rubbing sleep from her eyes, patting down her bird’s-nest hair, when she freezes in her spot and says, “You have a hickey.” 

“I do?” asks Lexi calmly. 

Cassie points at the bruise Fez had sucked into Lexi’s skin last night while she gave him a handjob. Since Faye’s gone and Ash had made himself scarce, they spent the Sunday in his house, fooling around, trading poetry back and forth: her Walt Whitman for his William Logan. They drank iced tea and smoked weed that they blew into each other’s mouths, and she sat on his face for the first time and then he fucked her against the wall, on the kitchen table, and in the shower. 

“I burnt myself with the curling iron.” 

“But you haven’t curled your hair in weeks.” 

“Yeah, because when I tried to, I burnt myself, so I stopped trying.” 

“So, no hickey?” 

“Sorry I’m still a prude.” 

“You’re not a prude,” Cassie says, hooking her chin over Lexi’s shoulder and wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “You’re just… careful.” She kisses her temple and lets her go, grabbing the mascara she came into the bathroom to find. “And I love you for it. I promise.” 

Lexi holds her smile until Cassie leaves their shared bathroom, closing the door behind her. She turns to stare at her reflection in the mirror, the mess of curls and the shadows under her eyes, critically inspecting every inch of her skin. The purple bruise looks and feels like a tattoo. A thing that says this person is already sold, sorry

She turns the shower on to let the water warm up then strips off her clothes and stands in front of the mirror. There are many more hickies on her chest, her stomach, her thighs. They’re both still insatiable, like each encounter might be the last, like they’re running on borrowed time. 

Lexi’s never liked the idea of being owned by some man, but she figures it’s okay if it’s Fez. He belongs to her right back, considering the bruises she left on his neck like scorch marks, the way he’s making space for her in his life—at least now she can be in the house if he’s got a deal happening, though she sticks to his room and fiddles with the gun on the bedside table while she reads or texts Rue, hidden from sight but still there , just in case. 

But it’s not a conscious decision. To keep it quiet, a secret, an if I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more .  A murmured oath between the two of them in the quiet of his bedroom, nestled under covers that smell like him and, slowly, her too. But the thing is—

Lexi likes knowing how to use a gun. She likes sitting at the kitchen table to differentiate equations for AP Calculus while Fez weighs and separates colorful pills into little baggies. She likes sharing a blunt with him, likes how it makes it even easier to loll her head onto his shoulder and press her lips to that sensitive spot next to his ear, where a constellation of freckles hides. She likes how dark his eyes get when she reads out loud to him, dirty poetry and excerpts from Persuasion , telling him so much without saying anything at all, likes how when she recited Louise Glück’s “Encounter”— because I wanted to be burned, stamped, to have something in the end — he pushed her back onto the bed, stripped her of her shirt to kiss a slick line down her stomach, and drawled the lines again at the apex of her thighs, all you must have known, then, how I wanted you as he sucked bruises onto her skin, marking her like she asked.  

She likes the blurring lines between violence and sex, between those and the love neither has spoken out loud. Likes that he has an impeccable memory for all things her, that she’s the brightest star of his sky, if not the only one. Likes the fact that she’s chosen to have him, that she’d watched him pummel a man and load up a gun and thought him , that’s the one I want, and he chose her right back, and they keep choosing each other over and over. All those things would be borderline insane to Cassie: her sister would think she was depraved, would take matches and set this whole thing between Lexi and Fez aflame until it’s nothing but ashes and dust. 

And if Cassie can’t know, then no one else can—not Rue, who can never keep her mouth shut, not Maddy, who also can’t keep her mouth shut but in a way that’s much worse, not Kat or Jules who would be sweet but also belittle it, turn it into the cute story of a bad boy and a good girl falling in love and how amors vincit omnia , as if Lexi wants to fix Fez. 

In other words, everyone would twist it into the farthest thing from the truth. No one will ever be able to understand her and Fez, the nature of what they are and what they have. Something about them finding each other and choosing each other on purpose, seeing past the smokescreens and figuring out their cores are rotten in the same way. 

Cassie wouldn’t get that, so Lexi just asks Fez to be careful about how hard he’s biting on skin she can’t cover from view. 

“ Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us ."

“Y’know, ‘s funny,” murmurs Fez, his fingers skipping over the rungs of her spine. Lexi looks up at him, settling her chin on his chest, right over the steady beat of his heart, the Siken book forgotten next to her. “This reminds me of somethin’ my grandma once said to me.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Somethin’ how… love’s this instinct you can’t trust. It fucks you over.” 

“It does,” acquieses Lexi, thinking of Cassie string of heartbreaks, of her latest entanglement with Nate fucking Jacobs. “But… not always. If you find the right person.” 

His hands frame her face, all tender and adoring in ways she still can’t believe she deserves. She knows the feeling goes both ways, if his quiet awe at touching her is anything to go by. “Right person fits who you are. They wouldn’t fuck you over.” 

“No. They wouldn’t.” Lexi reaches up and squeezes one of his hands, keeping it there, thinking that loving the right person is the closest to divinity she and Fez are ever going to get.  

When Lexi was younger, she used to think that Rue wasn’t a person—not in a negative way, but in the sense that she was more whirlwind than girl, always chasing danger and looking for it when it eluded her. When they were ten it used to be pedaling their bikes as fast as they could on a downward slope; when they were sixteen she started knocking on Fez’s door and asking for Ashtray’s goods. Even with her return from rehab and the repercussions of her relapse, she’s still pandemonium constrained in the body of a teenager with unruly hair. She’s still Rue , careless and shortsighted and kind of selfish, but still hilarious and warm all over. 

Lexi loves Rue, obviously. Even after everything with the drugs and Jules and their shattered friendship that they’ve slowly begun to build again, piece by piece, she loves her. Lexi’s the kind of person to hold onto the past because she has no idea to move on, to find the next best thing because she agonizes that there may be no such thing for girls like her, so she should cling to what she has. 

So, Lexi loves Rue forever. Only she doesn’t love her much when she nicks Lexi’s phone to text Jules because hers is out of battery and finds the text thread with Fezco, reads most of it, and demands in a tone that’s much too loud for their high school lunchroom, “Are you sexting my drug dealer?”

Lexi can name every single kind of drug Fez and Ash sell and its side effects. She has the entirety of Pablo Neruda’s “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII” memorized, among others. She’s a straight-A student, she’s written and is currently directing and staging a theatrical production. All those things don’t help her when she’s faced with Rue and Kat’s wide eyes on her, Maddy’s delighted expression, and Cassie’s absolute revulsion. 

Cassie says, “No, she’s not,” and snatches the phone. She stares at the screen with an indecipherable look on her face before looking up at Lexi, unimpressed, and says, “Really.” 

It’s all it takes for Lexi to snatch her phone back and turn it off, her entire being burning with shame and fury. The noise of the cafeteria is drowned out by the ringing in her ears, the ache to tell each and everyone of them exactly why they can’t say shit about her relationship, starting with Cassie’s neurotic addiction to all things Nate, but she curls her fingers and digs her nails in her palms instead. 

Maddy’s laughing. She says, “So now that we have an in with Fezco, does this mean we get a discount on our purchases?”

“Oh, my God ,  Lexi, are you on drugs?” demands Cassie, horrified. 

Jules, who’s just arrived at their table, asks, “Lexi’s on drugs?”

“No, Lexi’s fucking Fez,” says Rue. “Also, hi, where were you?” 

“Is this why you’re fucking him?” continues Cassie, bordering on hysterical. “Because he’s letting you score for free?” 

“Lexi wouldn’t do drugs,” says Kat. 

“ I thought Lexi would stay a virgin until marriage,” snipes Maddy. 

“Have you lost your mind?!” screeches Cassie, drawing everyone’s attention to their little table. Rue lets out a low whistle, Jules is saying something like hey, why don’t we just calm down , but it’s—this is exactly why she never wanted them to find out. 

“Shut up, shut the fuck up ,” Lexi hisses, vibrating with anger. She stands up and flounders for a moment before she snaps, “I’m not fucking Fezco. Well, I am, but also he’s my boyfriend, and he’s been my boyfriend for—months, now, and I plan on him staying my boyfriend for the foreseeable future. I’m not on drugs, my head is completely on straight, and you can all go fuck yourselves for being absolute bitches about this.” 

She grabs her bag and marches out, curbing the overwhelming urge to look back at Cassie, just to see—to see if she’s disappointed, if she’s disgusted, if she doesn’t even care because she’s never fucking cared —only to start crying the moment she’s in the hallway, pressing her hand against her mouth to muffle her sobs. 

“Lexi! Lexi Lexi Lex — ” 

“The fuck do you want, Rue?”

“I’m sorry,” she blurts, completely earnest. Lexi turns and spots Jules hanging back, clutching at the straps of her little purple purse. But Rue’s directly in front of her, brows furrowed and regretful. “I’m glad about you and Fez. He’s a good guy.” 

“I know he is,” says Lexi petulantly, crossing her arms and sniffling. “He’s—” everything, the love of her life, maybe, and it terrifies her, she loves him but she’s never been one for unpredictability— “I care about him.” 

“Yeah, of course,” says Rue, glancing behind her for a moment. “I should’ve kept my fuckin’ mouth shut, now Cassie’s all fuckin’ freaked.”

“Cassie’s always fucking freaked out,” mumbles Lexi, sniffling and wiping her cheeks. “I never thought she’d actually find out.” 

“So your plan was to date Fez til the end of fuckin’ time and pretend to be a spinster prude in front of Cassie for the rest of your life?” asks Rue, slyly raising an eyebrow. 

Until the end of time, for the rest of her life. “Sounds like a good idea to me,” says Lexi, shrugging. “Knowing Cassie, she probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway.” 

Rue hums. She turns to look at Jules, who must get some sort of message that it’s all clear because she bounds over and says, “I think it’s cool you’re dating Fez. You both have that weird intense thing about you.” 

Lexi doesn’t know how to reply to that. She settles for, “Thanks, I guess.” 

Rue’s bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Hey, I’ve got an idea for how to make it up to you.” 

“Do tell,” responds Lexi dryly. 

“How about—” Rue’s got that shiteating grin that always, always means bad news, and Jules seem to realize this because she sighs, resigned— “we ditch our next class and Jules drives us over to Fez’s store so I can watch you two make googly eyes at each other.” 

“I have AP Lit,” protests Lexi half-heartedly. 

“You read all these boring ass books when we were still thirteen, Lex, you know them all,” needles Rue, grabbing her hand and tugging at it like an insolent child. “C’mon, don’t you want to see Fez?” 

Obviously. Of course she does. It’s not even a question, she misses him like hell, hasn’t seen him in close to a week because they were both overworked. She still crosses her arms and pretends to be all reluctant when she says, “If Jules doesn’t mind driving. I mean, you do owe me.” 

“I do,” agrees Rue immediately, nodding. “For fuckin’ life, I owe you.” 

“I didn’t agree to this,” says Jules, but she’s already fishing for the keys to her father’s car. She links her and Lexi’s elbows together, grabs Rue’s hand with her free one. Says, “I have to know. Did you kiss him first, or did he kiss you?”

Lexi snorts. They drive to Fez’s like that, her in the backseat and the other two girls in the front as they ask her the weirdest questions on earth. Rue’s severely disappointed for about a minute when Lexi tells her she and Fez had known each other for a while before that party they were at months ago, and her nose crinkles in distaste when Lexi says, “Faye was pretty cool.” Jules asks if the sex is good; Rue makes a gagging sound when she spies Lexi’s impish smile in the rearview mirror. 

Rue’s the first one out of the car when Jules parks. She practically skips to the door of the store and once she’s inside, yells, “Fezco, I got you a gift!”

“Kid, don’t you got school now?” he asks distantly, like he’s in the back of the store, and Lexi’s warm all over just at hearing his voice, an involuntary smile spreading across her face, so wide it kind of hurts her cheeks. 

“I know, but Jules drove me—”

“Hey,” calls Jules. 

“And we brought you your girlfriend.” 

“My girl—shit, hey,” and he’s in front of her, eyes shining with something soft and earnest, a bashful smile on his face when he spots Lexi. “There’s a surprise.” 

“Hi,” she says, burning with the desire to touch him, but she doesn’t know how to go about it with Rue and Jules watching them like they’re a wild species on the Discovery Channel. She’s never been good with public displays of anything ,  and Fez must sense it because he takes her hands in his and just kisses her gently, a little thing for just the two of them. 

“Ash will be happy to see you,” he jokes, doing that thing where he bonks his forehead against hers in a moment of teasing affection. 

“Lemme go say hi to the little ankle biter,” says Rue, disappearing into the back. Jules watches her with barely disguised worry, eyeing Fez as if she thinks he was lying about not selling to Rue anymore. But Rue comes back a minute later and makes a beeline for the king sized Kit Kats. She unwraps one and splits the chocolate between her and Lexi because it’s been their favorite since they were kids, “Because it was the easiest thing for Lexi to share . Big fuckin’ sharer.” 

Lexi hoists herself onto the counter, reaching for Fez as soon as she’s seated. “Rue always forgot her snacks at home. I was just nice about it.” 

“Was, she says, like you ever outgrew it,” says Jules, watching with a small smile as Fez takes Lexi’s hand and kisses the back of it. 

“My little pushover,” says Rue, pinching Lexi’s cheek. 

Lexi swats her hand away as Fez says, “A’ight, kid, stop raggin’ on my girl.” 

Rue wiggles her eyebrows. “This is fuckin’ sick. Fezco’s got a girl .  For a while, I thought you were gay, too.” 

“Nah,” he says simply, shrugging. Pathetically, Lexi’s distracted by his shoulders, how she can see a peek of his gold chain underneath his black sweater. She brushes a hand over the nape of his neck, nails scraping gently, then tangles her pointer finger in the chain. Fez seems to like it, if the goosebumps she feels on the back of his neck are any indication. 

“You never showed interest in any girl,” continues Rue. 

“Lexi’s special, then,” says Jules; Lexi’s ears burn with mortification. But Fez just glances her, practically starry-eyed, and says, “Fuck yeah.” 

Jules and Rue don’t stick around long. Jules wants to get back for her next class and Rue tags along just because she knows her girlfriend would want her to, but Lexi figures she could use her previously spotless attendance record to skip one day. 

“We’ll cover for you,” assures Jules, and then she and Rue are gone, leaving Lexi and Fez alone in the store. He waits for the car to peel out of its parking spot before he turns to slot himself between her legs, hands on her waist. 

“I got a question.” 

Lexi fiddles with the chain, now at the front of his neck, nails brushing his Adam’s apple. “Hm?”

“How come it took a long ass time for Rue to come in and say shit ‘bout you bein’ my girl?” He’s rubbing circles over the material of her sweater. It’s a surefire way for her to lose concentration, but he doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Cause. She didn’t know.” Lexi averts her eyes, looking at the fridges behind Fez as she talks. “No one did, until today because Rue had my phone, and she saw what you texted last night—”

“What we texted, baby,” he corrects gently, leaning closer to peck her lips. He moves back, his eyes still half-closed, then says, “Want more.” 

Pretty desperately, Lexi says, “ Please . "  

He tightens one hand around her waist and tangles the other in her ponytail; she pulls him closer by the neckline of his sweater to capture his lips with hers. This kiss is different, more and better, a cool drink after starving in a desert for immeasurable days and nights (so needy she’d texted him please, please, i want you so bad and he only replied with wanna know what i wanna do with u? ), it’s him pulling at her lower lip with his teeth and the taste of weed and the chocolate she just had, it’s something she’d been longing for all week. 

It’s a long, long time later that Fez pulls back and inquires, “You were sayin’?”  

Lexi clears her throat. She’s got one leg hiked around his waist; she can feel how much he wants her. Maybe later tonight, if he’s up to it and if he’s got nothing going on. “She practically announced it to everyone at our table, and then Cassie got all hysterical like she’s not probably most likely screwing Nate Jacobs, went all—” She mimics her sister’s high-pitched voice as she says— “ oh my gosh, Lexi, are you on drugs ? "

Fez makes a humming sound in the back of his throat, glancing down at the minimal space between them. “She don’t know ‘bout us?”

“No.” 

“Been months, Lex. And your sis doesn’t know?”

 “Fez, angel,” she says, cupping his cheeks, prompting him to look up at her, “it’s got nothing to do with who you are, or what you do, or any of that.”

“It’s cool, babe,” he whispers, and he kisses her nose like it really is. It’s not, it’s the furthest thing from cool ,  it may as well be on a whole other planet.

“No, no, listen. Listen. Nothing’s ever been mine like you have, alright?” There’s a lump in her throat. She tries to swallow it down. It doesn’t work, so she settles for the break in her voice. “All my friends were Cassie’s first and they’re mine because they have to be, Rue just feels bad and sticks around, probably, and I don’t even wanna start about my mom and dad—” 

“You don’t gotta—”

“I do. I have to explain it. You chose me. You’re the only person who’s ever chosen me like that, and I chose you right back. I wanted to keep it to myself, okay? I wanted you all to myself. I didn’t want Maddy asking me shit about what it’s like to fuck a drug dealer, or Jules to ask who made the first move, or Kat to ask about the first date—” 

“Shit, we’ve never had one of those.” 

“I don’t want to. I like sitting in your living room and watching Hitchcock movies. I like that your kid brother stops by to eat popcorn and bitch at us. I like when we can just read dirty poetry next to each other.” 

Fez snorts. “I like it better when I can read that poetry on you.” 

Lexi laughs, uncontrollably, and Fez grins against her neck. When she sobers up, she kisses his forehead and whispers, “I wanted you all to myself. It was never about not telling people that it’s you. I mean, I’m pretty sure that I—that you’re—”

“I know,” he breathes. “I gotchu.” 

She sniffles. “Okay. Good.” She’s about to kiss him again when the bell above the door rings, makes her hastily jump off his counter and, when she sees it’s just a suburban mom coming in for a quick snack and energy drink, Lexi pops in the back to look for Ashtray. She finds him staring at something under his little desk, completely enraptured by it. “Hey, urchin.”

He snaps to attention, shifting his face into that indifferent scowl. “I’m fuckin’ taller than you are.” 

“What are you doing?” asks Lexi, intent on being a nuisance since Ash doesn’t seem to despise her so much ever since their little excursion the other week. 

“Workin’ so you can come over and mooch off us and eat a home cooked meal,” he snarks. 

Lexi makes a little hm sound, all contemplative like. “So do you not want blueberry cheesecake the next time I drop by?” 

Grumpily, Ash says, “Fuck off, Lex.” 

“Hey, so how have you been passing your time while waiting for someone to show up and ask for product?” asks Lexi, faking curiosity. “Do you play solitaire, or maybe bounce a stress ball—” 

“Why the fuck are you back here?” 

“I thought I’d come to relieve you of the boredom that you certainly must be feeling.” 

“I ain’t bored.” 

“Really? How come?” 

“Just ain’t.” 

“Motherfucking bitch,” says Ash, defeatedly plopping a book in front of him. 

Lexi gasps, completely delighted. “I knew it, I knew it!” 

“Course you did, the bitch out there’s probably givin’ you a play by play of everythin’ we do ‘round the house.” 

Trying to moderate her tone and hide her pure, unadulterated excitement, she asks, “So, what do you think of it so far?”  

Ash purses his lips, contemplates his answer, and settles for, “Whatever.” It’s a complete and utter lie, obviously, but Lexi lets it slide, contenting herself with the fact that he’s reading the very first Percy Jackson book and is already halfway through it. 

“Okay. Cool.” 

“What, no gloatin’?”

“Nope. I’m gonna go hang out with Fez.” 

“You do that,” mutters Ash, hiding the book under the table as he picks up where he left off. 

Cassie doesn’t talk to her for a week straight; Lexi doesn’t talk to her right back. It’s a very symbiotic relationship that they have, full of love and communication and all that other bullshit that healthy families thrive on. 

Whatever. All the unhappy families, or whatever it was that Tolstoy said. 

Lexi continues functioning like everything’s fine. She goes to school and stays behind until the evening for rehearsals since opening night is in a little over a month. She texts Fez when she’s done; he’ll either apologize and tell her he wishes he could be with her right now, or show up in his car to pick her up and take her to his house. On those nights, they make dinner together—variations of pasta and tuna sandwiches—or order Chinese and gorge on the living room floor in front of the TV; he and Ash have a long-standing tradition of watching trashy action movies and pointing out the inaccuracies in the weaponry or in the drug usage. She starts spending the night by telling her mom she’s at Rue’s; Cassie’s obviously none the wiser. 

On the nights where she has to stay in her room, however, she walks home as she listens to Bikini Kill in her earbuds to prepare herself for another afternoon of passive anger. It’s like there’s a clear divide in their room, one side being Lexi’s and the other Cassie’s, and neither wants to cross into enemy territory. If Cassie’s still crying at night, she does an excellent job of hiding it. She’s setting her alarm for five o’clock instead of four, now, less neurotic about her skincare routine, more and more drawn and bone-weary. It’s worrying, obviously, especially now that Lexi thinks she knows the reason why her sister’s acting like this, but she’s not backing down first. Not this time, at least. She’s waved enough white flags to last her a lifetime. 

And then. And then, Lexi walks into Fez’s house one day, giggling about some inane Swedish law she’s telling Fez about— “I’m just sayin’, this law sounds like it’s from fuckin’ Footloose " —only to freeze in her tracks as she finds Cassie comfortably sprawled in the armchair, watching Top Chef with Ash who’s on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table. 

“Is this a fever dream?” she asks her boyfriend, staring at the scene in front of her and completely not getting it. 

“Yo, I must be way higher than I thought,” says Fez, rubbing at the nape of his neck. “Fuckin’ hell. Ash, how many fuckin’ times do I gotta tell you not to open the fuckin’ door when I ain’t home?” 

“You mean Barbie here is gonna be standin’ to take me out?” 

“Ooh, yes, I’m sooo scary,” mocks Cassie. “Look at me, with my sharp acrylic nails and cherry lip balm. I just scream mortal danger to a family of drug dealers whose house could pass for a gun store.” 

“What are you doing here?” asks Lexi, her words coming out harsher than she intended them to be. 

“I’m here to hang out with you.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“What? I’m just assuming that you don’t give these two the silent treatment like you give it to me.” 

“ You’re giving me the silent treatment!” 

Cassie scoffs, standing up to face Lexi, crossing her arms over her chest. “No, I’m not. You’re the one who comes home super late listening to that weird angry punk girl music all huffy and incommunicative. You spend all night staring at your laptop and listening to screamo music on your headphones, how am I supposed to talk to you?” 

“Yeah, well, I reserve the right to be un co mmunicative,” snaps Lexi. “You insinuated that the only reason I’d be with my boyfriend is because he’s supplying me with free drugs.” 

“Shit, man,” grumbles Ash, watching Tom Colicchio try a bite out of some heavily bruléed dish. “If he starts givin’ her drugs and food, we gon’ have a problem.” 

“Yo, Ash,” says Fez. “Lex keeps you fed in cakes and books. Shut the fuck up.” 

“Pussy whipped.” 

“Classy,” says Cassie; Ash flips her the bird. 

“Cassie, what the hell are you doing here?” 

She stares at Fez, then turns to Lexi and says, “Is there somewhere private we can talk?” 

Fez points and says, “Kitchen’s through there.” 

“Good.” Cassie whirls on her heel and goes, expecting Lexi to follow her, as usual. 

“Fuck,” she grumbles. Fez kisses her shoulder and squeezes her elbow when he moves past her to sit next to his brother, and it kind of makes everything better. She trudges in the direction of the kitchen and finds Cassie inspecting the fridge door like it’s a really complicated Trig problem. 

While out looking for legal pads to work on her plays, Lexi bought one of those stick-on whiteboards as a joke, but Fez put it up and kept it. They take turns writing corny shit on it, like you’ve stolen a pizza my heart and you’re totally my jam .  Fez also writes what he runs out of, eggs and chocolate milk and ketchup .  Since Ash’s pride is insurmountable, he scribbles fuck you!!! and what kind of dessert he’s craving—right now, it’s cinnamon buns. Letting Cassie read it feels like an invasion of privacy, but all she says is, “Cute.” 

“Will you please tell me why you’re here?” 

“Because,” says Cassie, crossing her arms over her chest, “I thought we told each other everything.” 

“Do you tell me everything?” asks Lexi, thinking that all she knows about Nate and Cassie is that he makes her cry endlessly, that he’s keeping her buried like a skeleton in a closet, and that he’s a fucking dick who lets a girl dressed like a hooker walk home alone at night. 

“Yes.” 

“Okay.” Lexi crosses her arms, mirroring her sister’s position. “What the hell is wrong with you?” 

“Are you seriously attacking me right now?” 

“I just mean—have you seen yourself these past few months?” She starts and she’s on a roll, every single thought she’s had about Cassie since new year’s eve coming out of her in the worst word vomit of her life; it’s incoherent and somewhat manic, making her feel like a child asking for her dad again. “You wake up at four in the morning and roll those weird rolly thingies all over your face like you’re mowing a lawn on there, you dress like you’re auditioning for a musical production or a cartoon every single day—I mean, seriously, what is up with some of those getups? Were you trying to be Kimmy Gibbler from Full House ?  Did you seriously look in the mirror before leaving and decide that your outfits were fine? Also, it’s your senior year, maybe start applying to some colleges!” 

“You’re being a huge bitch, Lexi—”

“Really? Cause I’m not fucking done. I don’t know what is up with you, and I’ve seen you lose it over guys. This is worse, not only because you’ve become a completely different person who’s barely functional but also because I don’t think he’s worth all this shit. I don’t think he’s worth you crying every single night and having a nervous breakdown day in and day out, I don’t think he’s worth you screwing up your friendship with Maddy—”

"Shut up!" yells Cassie. She catches herself, lowering her voice as she repeats, "Shut up .  At least he’s not dangerous like your boyfriend.” 

Lexi scoffs. “Fezco’s not dangerous.” 

“He put Nate in the hospital . ” 

“Nate had his house raided. He threatened him and Ashtray.”   

“Yes, for drugs ,  because he’s a dealer . ” 

“Whose services you’ve asked for, multiple times, you fucking hypocrite.” 

“That was different. Also, what the fuck kind of name is Ashtray?”

“The story behind it is cute,” says Lexi impatiently, extremely displeased that this is what Cassie’s choosing to take as her angle for their argument. 

“I don’t care. That kid has to go out in public with a name like that.” Cassie pauses, then, “Though with everything else wrong with his life, including who his brother is, I doubt his stupid name’s high on his list of priorities.” 

“This is exactly why I didn’t tell you,” scoffs Lexi, so, so heartbroken. “You’re turning it into something it’s not because you don’t know my boyfriend. You don’t know how good he treats me or how much he cares about me and Ash and Rue. You have no idea how smart he is, or how attentive and thoughtful, you—you don’t know hi m.  You see a drug dealer and you think automatic asshole, but he’s not, and he’s not a sociopathic shitbasket like Nate.”

“You don’t know Nate.”

“I don’t have to. I share a bedroom with you. I’m the one who’s had to wipe your makeup off and help you undress when you come home so drained by him you’re out of it.”

“Are you holding it against me, that I needed your help?”

“Of course I’m not, I just—” Lexi sighs. “Cassie, please. Please, please, I’ve never asked you for anything. I’m asking you for this one thing. Just break it off with Nate.”

“What about you and Fez? I break up with a decent guy from a nice home—”

“You mean your best friend’s abusive ex who’s treating you like a side piece—”

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” barks Cassie. 

“Fucking hell, Cassie, fine. Do whatever with Nate, but I know that all I want is for you to be happy for me, for anything ever, and you never are. And I've got this guy who treats me amazingly, and you're just—you—God. Whatever Just go home.” 

Cassie seems to soften at this. “My opinion means that much to you?" 

"Of course it does," says Lexi, exasperated. "Who else’s would I care about? Mom's?" 

"No. Definitely not." 

"Yeah. So."

Neither of them speaks for a really, really long time: Lexi stares at Cassie's Air Forces while Cassie studies the faded wallpaper. The silence lasts for so long that Fez pops in and says, “Yo, everythin' good?”

“Yeah,” says Lexi softly. “Why?”

“Just... y'all were screaming' and shit and suddenly it's all quiet.” 

“Everything's good.” Lexi wants to reach for him; she hates being close and yet so far, but she's not going to flaunt it like that in front of Cassie, doesn’t want to subject them to any more scrutiny.  

“I should go,” says Cassie. 

“Are you sure?” asks Lexi, still childish and pathetic at heart. “You were watching Top Chef . ” 

“I can watch it at home.” 

Dejected and beaten down to her very core, feeling like a bloody pulp left to rot for flies to pick at, Lexi tries to pretend it’s okay. She vocalizes it, says, “Okay,” but she’s pretty sure she’s just going to crawl into Fez’s bed and cry about it in about ten minutes.

There’s a beat of silence before Fez says, “If you want, you can stay for dinner.” 

Both sisters chorus, “What?” 

“Well, we always got too much food,” he says, like that’s the reason he proposed dinner in the first place. Lexi loves him. He catches her eye and gives her a small, encouraging smile, and she loves him, loves him, loves him. 

“He’s right,” she says, looking at Cassie with what she hopes isn’t too much hopefulness. “You should stay. 

Cassie looks between the two of them like she’s holding up two beakers in a lab and inspecting their contents, wondering how they react together. "Oh. I wouldn't wanna impose—"

“Nah, 's cool,” says Fez, turning to pull out frozen pizza from the freezer. "Just don't mind if Ash gets pissed off. He's still gettin' used to Lex hangin' around all the time." 

“I think he's starting to like me,” jokes Lexi. 

Ash calls out, “We have thin fuckin' walls, I can hear you.”

Cassie flushes. “So, you could hear everything, huh?” 

Fez hesitates, glancing at Lexi before he says, kind of uncomfortable, “Bits 'n pieces. Not much. Got distracted by the TV.” 

Despite the initial awkwardness—there’s lots of mute staring at cooking montages—Cassie still stays for dinner. Ash is pissy about it, but then Cassie starts talking about Formula One racing—one of those weird obsessions she gets sometimes—and Ash is all into it, and they get into a mild argument that Lexi puts out about some of the makes and models of the cars. 

Fez is kind of on edge the whole time, uncharacteristically restrained with the affection he usually lavishes her with and selective about what he chooses to say, averting his eyes when Cassie falls into a stupefied silence whenever Ash mentions his and Fez's business. He’s trying to be something Cassie would like just because he knows it’s what Lexi longs for, and it makes her feel like a piece of scum for being the catalyst to his disciplined prudence but also like she really, really wants to blow him later tonight, just because he exists. 

Ash surreptitiously disappears into his room when it’s time to clear the table, the way he always did when Faye still lived here and only half the meals they ate were takeout boxed that they passed around on the floor. Cassie helps clean up, even though she never does it at home, and she tries to strike a tentatively courteous conversation with Fez, saying, “The only other place I’ve seen that has as many books as your living room does is Lexi’s side of our room.” 

Lexi watches with barely concealed pleasure. Fez says, “It wasn’t this stocked until Lexi,” and from there it evolves into a conversation about her , her neurotic reading habits and her always trying to recommend books to Cassie, and it figures that the one common ground they have is Lexi. She can deal with that, for now at least. 

She leaves them to it in the kitchen, quietly slipping away to scour Fez’s room for a pack of flashcards for bio she’s pretty sure she misplaced the last time she was here. Sure enough, they’re on top of his dresser, neatly stacked and tied together with an elastic band. She takes them to stow away in her bag so she doesn’t forget them again before she returns to the kitchen. 

Only, she stops in her tracks right before the doorway—Cassie’s saying, “Would you trust you?” and Lexi freezes, holding onto the wall for support. 

“I don’t,” replies Fez. “I trust Lexi, though. Like you should be doin’.” 

“So you know having her around is dangerous. To her. And you still keep her around.” 

“The fuck are you, my conscience?” He’s talking with the same tone he had when Cal Jacobs was sat in his living room with Ash’s shotgun pointed to his head, tainted with disbelief and incredulity. 

“You have one of those?” snarks Cassie, and Lexi gets that funny, familiar urge to break her sister’s nose. 

“I worry ‘bout her all the fuckin’ time, but it’s not my place to,” says Fez, disregarding Cassie’s taunting. “She ain’t a kid. She knows what she wants. And I ain’t puttin’ her in harm’s way, so you can chill about that.” 

Cassie asks, “Do you care about her?” 

Exasperated, Fez replies, “I’m sittin’ in my fuckin’ kitchen talkin’ to you, tellin’ you I’d lay my life down for your sis. The fuck you think?” 

Lexi closes her eyes, leaning her head against the wall. There’s got to be a word for all that ardent passion swirling inside of her, setting her on fire and flooding her veins with a yearning for a guy who’s already hers. 

“Sheesh,” says Cassie, subdued. She clears her throat. “So, you care about her.” 

“That’s the general idea.” There’s a pause, then, “And you’re bein’ real unpleasant. All Lexi wants is for you to be happy and shit, and you ain’t returnin’ the favor.” 

“All I want for her is to be happy and shit,” says Cassie, and it mends a broken bone inside Lexi. “God. Lexi’s the only person I know who, like, only deserves good things and all that.” 

“She is.” 

Cassie heaves a dramatic sigh. “I’m sorry, Fezco.” 

“Not me you should be sorry to,” he says, and it seems to be the end of the conversation; Lexi chooses that moment to bound into the kitchen with a fake smile on her face. 

“What did I miss?” 

Fez and Cassie share a glance, which is a disconcerting thing in and of itself, before the latter says, “It’s so obvious you were eavesdropping. So obvious. Never go into acting.” Fez hums in agreement, and Lexi rolls her eyes as she gravitates toward him, grabbing onto his arm and slanting her temple against his shoulder. He turns to look down at her with this fond twinkle in his eye, and she could melt onto the tile floor. 

Cassie says, “God. Even your PDA is all innocent and wholesome. I feel like you’re making me watch Pride & Prejudice again. That was the worst two hours of my life.” 

Lexi says, “Fez is way hotter than Darcy.” 

“Fuckin’ hell.” 

“For shame,” says Cassie, but she smiles with something akin to affection, and it makes it all okay. Lexi presses her lips to Fez’s shoulder, smiling into it and thinking, I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun .

Cassie's driving them home in their mother's car when she says, "You're happy?" 

"Yeah. Really, really happy." 

"Okay. Okay, then I'm happy for you too." 

“Good.” Lexi stares out the window for a long time before she hesitantly says, "And the Nate thing?"

Cassie asks, "Can we not talk about that?" And so they don't. 

Lexi entertains a myriad of ideas. 

The fatal dosage of Fentanyl or a combination of other fast-acting, untraceable drugs. The mechanics of a car, its wheels and brakes and engine. The gas lines of a house, how they become dangerous, how to cut them or set them on fire. The ease of picking up the gun or a knife and doing it with one motion, the curving of a finger to pull the trigger or the twist of a wrist to thrust the blade. 

“Hypothetically,” she asks her drug dealer boyfriend as he brushes her wet hair after her shower, “if you want to kill someone. And you don’t want to be caught. How would you do it?” 

Fez’s movements don’t falter. “No one wants to be caught. You don’t gotta specify that.” 

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

He stops brushing her hair. Places the purple brush he bought her from Target when she started staying over more and more on his/her nightstand. “We talkin’ make believe?” he asks, even though he knows the answer. 

“Whatever you want.” 

He tugs at her elbow, turns her so they’re face to face, sitting cross-legged on his bed. He doesn’t look wary, or disbelieving, but the exact opposite—he looks at her like he has the most faith in her. Fez believes in God and in her, and she’s never wanted to be holy but when he bestows her with this unflinching conviction she may as well be. “Arson.”   

“I like fire.” 

“I know you do, kid,” he murmurs, reaching out to cup her cheeks. “C’mere.” 

They shouldn’t get off to this—this hypothetical, but they do. He pushes her onto the mattress and holds himself over her, lets her tangle her fingers in his gold chain as he sweeps his tongue over the inside of her mouth and rolls his hips into hers to make her moan. 

And then Fez whispers, “Tell me how you’d do it,” then leaves a trail of kisses on from her lips to her stomach before he pulls her panties off and sucks at her clit. Lexi’s hips arch off the bed as she lets out a choked moan, but he presses them back down and harshly says—orders, really, “Lex. Tell me how you’d hypothetically kill a man.” 

He eats her out while she stutters through how she would slip a meager milligram of botulinum toxin into the victim’s drink late into a party—a big one, one of those blowouts that happen after football games at houses with pools and careless teenagers. She keens as Fez pushes two fingers into her when she says she’d do it next to the pool, maybe, so if the drug doesn’t do its job then asphyxiation would speed it along. Fez says, “My smart girl,” kisses the insides of her thighs before adding a third finger and going back to mouth her clit. 

She comes hard ,  harder than she ever has—which is saying something, considering how Fez is the kind of lover who’s never satisfied unless she is first and second and third, and none of their nights has ever been anything short of mind-blowing. He sucks his fingers clean when he’s done, whispers good girl as he moves up to kiss her. She tastes herself on his tongue and it’s all it takes for her to flip them over and push his boxers off to sink onto him, nails digging into his shoulders and reveling in the fuck, baby he exhales against her neck. 

“You feel so— fuck ,"  whines Lexi, rocking her hips as he grips her waist to help her move, fingers digging hard into her skin. He may as well break through her and take her bones, take all of her because she’s his anyway, and he feels so good ,  always does, it’s unimaginable that she spent the first eighteen years of her life without him, loving her softly and violently, like a fist, like a knife. 

“You’re doin’ amazin’, Lex,” he praises, softly, almost cooing. “So good, so pretty on my cock. So wet just by tellin’ me how you’d kill.”

Scraping her nails against his scalp, she instinctively lets it slip out, “Would you kill with me?” 

Awed, he brushes the hair off her sweaty forehead and replies, “Without a doubt, baby. Always.” He thrusts up into her to meet her movements, quick and erratic, his moans a symphony in her ear. He calls her perfect and his, his gorgeous girl, all mine all mine like it’s holy gospel, and she gasps into his mouth when he slips a hand down to where they’re connected to help her along. He comes with a slew of curse words groaned into her shoulder, all fuck baby, so fuckin’ good ;  she follows after him, biting her palm to muffle what probably would’ve been a scream, and that’s her petite mort .

She collapses against him, a sack of useless limbs, and he wraps his arms around her to shift her onto the mattress, as gentle as ever, this boy with edges sharper than an obsidian knife who still takes care of the people he loves with everything in him. She thought it would be everything short of murder. In her fucked out state of satiated pleasure, she realizes he’s not above crossing that line, too. If she asks. She wouldn’t even have to beg. 

“You good?”

“With you? Always.” 

He kisses her temple and pulls his sweatpants back on, resting back against his headboard. Lexi rolls over onto her stomach and rests her cheek on her folded arms, watches him pick up the crumpled pack of cigarettes from the bedside table and pull one out. He lights it, smokes half of it, then says, “I blacked out on new year’s.” 

Curiosity laces her tone when she asks, “When you were with me?” 

“Nah. After. When I was hittin’ pretty boy.” He blows smoke out; Lexi’s momentarily distracted by how it billows out around him. How he looks like a Sargent painting with the angles and planes of his chest, the curve of his lips, his pretty, pretty eyes.  “It wasn’t that bad. Was like… I could only focus on the violence. Nothin’ else mattered.” 

She shuffles closer and perches her chin on his thigh. With his free hand, he traces the shape of her face like he’s committing her form to memory, gazing at her with so much tenderness it mends the breaks in her heart, taking it and carefully sewing the lacerated bits back together. 

“Ion know if I was gonna stop. Ion wanna find out.” He inhales sharply, tilting his head up and closing his eyes. “But when I saw you after, it stopped. All the noise came back. The good kind, I mean. The kind that makes me feel like I’m alive, at least.” 

Softly, Lexi wonders, “What’s your point, angel?” 

Fez puts the cigarette out on the ashtray that rests next to the handgun on the nightstand. He runs his fingers through her hair, gently, untangling the knots he put there when he pulled the strands as she rode him. “I’d do anythin’ for you, but I need you to be safe.” 

“I will be.” She kisses his palm when his hand comes back to her face, turning her cheek into his touch. “With you. I trust you, Fez.” She lets a beat pass, then, “Do you trust me?” 

He doesn’t reply for so long she worries she’s said something wrong. But then, “Your play’s at the end of the month, right?” 

“I—yeah. It is.” 

“A’ight.” He drops his hand from her face and slips down, joining her under the covers. 

“Fez?” 

He reaches for her, murmurs, “C’mere.” He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into his chest, pressing his lips to the center of her forehead in a kiss that burns like he’s branding her. She remembers reading about the Mark of Cain, immortality and divine protection and vengeance  sevenfold, and this like it, like he’s promising something. “Whatever you want, Lex,” and he means it. 

One night, Jules comes into the store alone. She doesn’t go to see Ash for cartridges for her vape or anything, she’s just there , hanging out with Lexi and Fez for a bit. She sits on the freezer like Faye used to, eats the little gummy bears that Ash adores, and talks to Lexi about her play. 

Before she leaves, Lexi offhandedly asks, “How come you came by?” 

Jules shrugged, looking a little uneasy. “I, um. I was biking home and saw this car following me. Kind of following me. Nate’s dad’s car. And this was the closest safe place.” She glances at Fez, as if wondering whether his fondness for Rue extends to her, too. If she were in danger, could she come to Fez and hide out? Does his unflinching devotion to Rue mean that he'd protect her, too?

Obviously it does. Fez meets Lexi’s eye for the briefest of moments, but it’s enough.

Ash is hot-tempered and aggressive, and it’s not exactly breaking news. 

He’s careless with his tongue and his fists, spits out motherfucker and goddamn bitch as he goads people into the fights he’s looking for. He’s a vibrating ball of anger and resentment, knows nothing but violence and the cruelty of life as an orphan and a drug dealer. Fez puts food on the table and clothes on his brother’s back, but there’s not much he can do about the kid’s steady hurtle towards self-destruction.  

Lexi thinks of Ash as a psychologist’s wet dream for a case study on nature versus nurture. Fez has a proclivity for violence, too, but it’s never unfounded; Ash is perpetually itching for a brawl, for a weapon in the form of a Swiss Army knife or a semi-automatic pistol. On the other hand, Ash was raised in the home of two drug dealers, grew up eating burnt out cigarettes and staring down terrifying men who sought to take advantage of him and his brother; Fez still remembers what normal life feels like. Or, as normal as child abuse and a mother’s abandonment could be. 

It all explains Ash’s violent disposition, but it doesn’t justify it when he’s always getting into fights at his school on the day that he bothers to show up instead of convincing Fez that he’s needed at the store. 

“Sending him to school more won’t fix it all overnight,” Lexi tells Fez, rubbing her thumb over the furrow in his brows. They’re in his bed, under the covers, and she’s got her head on his pillow while he stares up at the ceiling with this distressed look she hates. “It’s a long-time process. You know what Rainer Maria Rilke said about mental health?” 

“Course I fuckin’ don’t.” 

Lexi drops her hand from his face to take his fingers. “He said that the only journey is the journey within. Which—he’s right, it’s a process. It’s gonna take Ash a lot of time to unlearn that violence is only sometimes the answer, and that he doesn’t have to be so defensive all the time. It’s not your fault it’s happening, but it’s because of you that he’s slowly gonna get better, okay?” 

Fez sighs and closes his eyes, digging the heels of his hands into them. “Who’s the dude who said that shit about the journey?”

“Rilke’s a German poet. He’s got this collection called Letters to a Young Poet ,  you’d love it. I could read it to you some time.” She sits

Fez hums. Then, “Baby?” 

“Yeah?” 

“My head fuckin’ hurts.” He’s trying to prevent it, but his face still screws up in pain. “I just…”

“Okay,” says Lexi soothingly, stroking his cheek for a moment before she presses a quick kiss to his forehead. She slowly slips off the bed, shutting the blackout curtains to keep the blazing orange light from bathing the room in its glow. She disappears into the bathroom and rifles in its cabinet for a clean hand towel, wetting it and squeezing out the excess water. 

She comes back into the room and sits at Fez’s side, placing the towel on his forehead. His words slurring a little, Fez asks, “What you doin’?”

“Cold compress,” she says, trying to be as soft and quiet as she can. “For your headache.” 

His eyes are still closed, cheeks a little flushed. “You don’t gotta.” Blindly, he reaches for her hand and grips it, brings it up to his mouth for a frail kiss. “Sorry.”

Lexi kind of wants to cry. She says, “I want to. How long’s your head been hurting?” 

“Mornin’.” 

She definitely wants to cry. “Okay. Okay. Let me go get you a glass of water. I’ll be right back.” She strokes his knuckles, clean and unbruised for the first time since she properly met him, and stands up to leave the room when he speaks again. 

“Love you,” Fez murmurs. Lexi freezes, staring at the Howl next to the Lucky Strikes and the Smith & Wesson on the bedside table. Reeling, she whirls around to ask Fez to repeat what he said, to maybe say it again and again, every five minutes like clockwork, but his breathing’s evening out as he falls into a perturbed sleep. 

Love you. Love you. Love you love you loveyouloveyouloveyou.

Lexi leaves the room and softly closes the door behind her, her heart beating so hard she thinks her ribcage hurts. Dazed, she walks into the kitchen and grabs a glass from the cupboard, fills it up, drinks half of it. Puts it down on the counter. Stares at it, remembers she’s got Chemistry homework and that love and ecstasy affect the brain in the exact same way. 

“Yo, you good?” 

Lexi flinches. “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t notice you were here.” 

“In my own fuckin’ kitchen,” grumbles Ash, glaring at the plate of chocolate chip cookies in front of him. 

She clears her throat. “How’s your eye?”

Curtly, he says, “Had worse.” 

“Obviously.” A thirteen-year-old boy who’s just learning how to throw punches is nothing to Ash, not in the face of the past decade of his life. School fights are probably a warm up to him, shiners are probably child’s play. “So you’re okay?” 

“Hm. Always am.” Then, almost hesitantly, he asks, “Where’s Fezco?” 

“Asleep.” Lexi clears her throat, burning up at the reminder that love you — she knew, of course she knew, or at least she had an inkling, but hearing it is different. Hearing it changes everything. 

“Huh.” 

Lexi stares at him, drawn and fidgety in a way he’s never been. Or maybe she’s never seen it because he never trusted her enough to let his guard down, but it looks like he doesn’t care anymore. He takes a cookie and breaks it in half, crumbs dusting the table, but it doesn’t really matter, when the kid looks about ready to jump out of his skin. “Ash?” 

Ash chews on his cookie, swallows it, and says, “They’re gonna take him away from me.” 

Lexi frowns, confused. “Take who where?”

“Fez. They’re gonna catch him soon and fuckin’ take him away and stick me in the system.” 

“No one’s taking your brother,” says Lexi, finally getting it, seeing the whole, unblemished picture. Ashtray is, at his core, a scared kid who’s got no family save for a comatose grandma and a brother whose life always hangs in the balance. She never thought of Fez that way, as a person who’s always inches away from incarceration or death, but now that it settles in her brain it makes her stomach churn and bile rise into her throat. 

“You don’t know shit,” spits Ash, pushing away from the kitchen table and standing with a clatter. He’s only a few inches shorter than Lexi. If she stays, he’ll probably grow to become taller than her. “You come in here and you think that fuckin’ ‘round in our house means you know what it feels like! But you don’t, you still got your expensive books and fuckin’ homework at the end of the day, all fuckin’ suburban home. I know you gon’ turn your back on Fez soon as you get the chance to, so fuckin’ do it already!” 

The only thing Lexi can think to say is, “Lower your voice.”

Ash looks close to homicidal. “Fuckin’ what .” 

“Your brother’s got a fucking migraine. Don’t fucking yell.” 

He withers, sitting back in his place and ducking his head to stare at his hands. His shoulders are slumped, eyebrows furrowed, and he looks so much like a kid, like someone who’s had to be too much too soon and is irrevocably damaged. “Shit. Sorry.” 

Lexi says, “It’s okay,” and wonders how to continue. She doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, make Ash think she’s being condescending or patronizing. But, also, she can’t let him think that she’s temporary, or some girl he has to be mistrustful of until the end of time. She doesn't want that to be associated with what she has with Fez.  

But surprisingly, Ash speaks first. “Why am I always angry?” he asks, softly. “You know about all that shit, all those mental fuck ups that happen with people. Fez gets them sometimes too but I’ve never been hit with a fuckin’ crowbar, so what the fuck is wrong with me?” 

Shellshocked, Lexi slowly takes the seat opposite his. She takes a cookie and bites into it to give herself time to think for a right answer. (She used too much sugar in this batch.) “Everyone’s got issues, Ash. Yours just happen to be… expressive.” 

“You got no issues,” mutters Ash bitterly. “Fuckin’ hell. Why the hell you still here?” 

“Because I care about Fez. And you, when you let me.” Lexi sucks in a breath and continues, “And I do have them. Issues. I have general anxiety disorder, and I have a mild dissociative disorder.” 

“Fuck that means?” 

“It’s… sometimes I lose track of the world. Of myself. Everything slows down, I can’t concentrate on anything, and I feel like I lose all my emotions. It’s like I exist outside my own body, like I can’t recognize myself.” 

“Why does it happen?” 

“My brain’s wired that way, I guess.” She shrugs, trying to appear nonchalant, like talking about her depersonalization isn’t something that wrenches her gut and brutally tears her chest open, like skinning herself with a white-hot blade and letting the blood run for everyone to point and gasp. 

“Wired all fucked up,” says Ash, but he isn’t cruel about it. “And me? Think that’s what happened with me?” 

“I think,” says Lexi, biting her lip. “I think you grew up in a very... chaotic environment, and your brother’s always in danger of death or prison. Which is pretty fucking terrifying.” 

“It fuckin’ is.” Ash grabs the last cookie and breaks it in half. 

“Right. And maybe sometimes it gets hard, and you’re still learning how to deal with it. All that feeling inside of you. God, just trying to figure out what you’re feeling is fucking exhausting, dealing with it is horrible. So it’s okay. You’re doing great, all things considered.” 

Ash stares at her for a really long time, then averts his gaze to the table. “Is he… is he mad?” 

“Just tired. He’s been tired since the morning.” 

“He never says when he is,” admits Ash. “Just disappears sometime.” He sighs, fidgeting in his seat, then offers the second half of the cookie to Lexi. “Imma go chill.” Then, so soft it may as well be her own wishful thinking, Ash says, “Thanks, Lexi.” 

He doesn’t give her time to even say you’re welcome , just turns around and exits the kitchen, on the way to his room. “Fuck,” says Lexi to the empty space, pretty confused. She shakes her head and unhurriedly eats the cookie, staring at the fridge as she does so. Fez’s missing frozen fish fingers and tomatoes; he’s written coco-nuts about you next to where she wrote have a gouda day <3333 .  Ash wants chocolate-strawberry cake. 

She finishes eating and fills up a water glass for Fez. In his room, she finds him still asleep, the towel on his head having gone lukewarm. She refreshes it for him, and he wakes up, eyes fluttering blearily, just as she’s slowly placing it on his forehead.

“Hi, sorry,” she whispers. "Didn't wanna wake you." 

“Still here?” he asks, voice gravelly. "Why?" 

Lexi leans down and kisses the tip of his nose. “Don’t be dense. Where else would I be?”

“I found out somethin’ interestin’ today.” 

Lexi makes a hissing sound. “Fezco, I fucking swear—”

Fez grips Lexi’s hip, halting her movements, making her whine like a fucking brat. He’s got his dick inside of her and he’s stopping for conversation like they’re just lounging around. “Y’know what happens when you cut a house’s main gas line?” 

“No. Tell me.” She huffs out, “And while you’re at it, how about you go back to fucking me?”

With a slight chuckle, Fez says, “The tiniest spark makes the whole place—” He starts moving again, quick and rough the way she likes it, eliciting an embarrassingly loud moan—  “go boom . ” 

She digs her nails into his shoulder for leverage, a gasp tearing out of her throat. “How convenient.” 

Laughing, Fez says, “I thought so, too,” leaning down to mouth at her breasts, taking a nipple into his mouth. For the grand finale, their apotheosis, he brings a hand up to her neck and curls his fingers around it. “You sure?”

“Please, Fezco,” Lexi whimpers, so close and so eager. 

“Alright, pretty girl,” he murmurs, tightening his fingers around her neck, choking her, making her heart race in the best possible way as she gasps for air. “So fuckin’ needy, you are. Wanna come?”

She’s close to sobbing right now, he’s going so fast and so hard and she can barely breathe and she loves it, loves him— “ Please — "

“C’mon, baby,” he hisses, his thrusts slowly losing their rhythm. “Come for me, come for me.” 

“Fucking —oh !" It’s fire, it’s white hot pleasure coursing through her, this is what they mean by sacred holiness and she would kneel at the altar for this, would  for him, for this angelic boy whose hands are always, always bloody—like hers will be soon. He follows her into oblivion soon after, teeth buried in her neck to curb his moan, and collapses on top of her out of sheer exhaustion. 

So it goes. 

After minutes of them breathing in tandem, hearts beating against each other (it’s the same rhythm, has it always been like that or did they alter their composition to match, how shall I hold back my soul from touching yours? )  he tries to roll off of her onto the mattress. Lexi wraps her arms around his neck and lets out a mhmpf of protest, clinging to him, keeping him—needing him—as close as possible.

“Okay,” Fez whispers, kissing the side of her neck where his fingers were moments ago. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

“You ready for tomorrow?” 

Lexi glances up at Cassie, who’s freshly showered and still wrapped in a bathrobe. “I think so. I hope so, at least. Bobbi’s doing great, and the actors are incredible—I mean, I know he and Kat broke up after that disaster dinner with his parents, but Ethan’s a fucking prodigy, he nails every single line—”

“But you?” interrupts Cassie, kinder and calmer than she’s been with Lexi in years. She sits at the edge of the mattress, right next to Lexi’s rose gold Macbook, and picks up a battered, masticated copy of the script with multicolored tabs peeking out of it, its edges curled with use. She fiddles with it as she says, “Writer and director extraordinaire?” 

After a beat of consideration, Lexi admits, “I’m excited, but also fucking terrified. What if everyone’s great, the actors and the crew and Bobbi and I’m just—what if the story actually sucks and everyone hates it, and—” She stops and clears her throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say all that.” 

Cassie shifts closer and plops wet her head on Lexi’s shoulder, dropping the script. “Can I tell you something?”  

“Of course.” 

“I think you’re the best person I know, and I love you to bits. I want you to talk to me more.” 

Easier said than done. Lexi’s about to say that, say something like like you’d listen , when she notices that the wetness on the Guns N’ Roses shirt she stole from Fez is more than just shower water from Cassie’s hair. “Cass? Why are you crying?” 

Cassie sniffles and buries her hands in her face, still leaning against her sister. Lexi shuffles so she can wrap her arm around Cassie’s skinny frame and lets her sob against her, quietly like she still has to hide. Lexi thinks of when she read Little Women and saw herself and her sister in every dynamic between the four March girls, but especially in Jo and Amy’s clashing personalities: the rational writer who wants more than what she has, the impassioned artist looking for love in every corner of the world. 

Cassie’s not as lucky as Amy March, though; there’s no Laurie who’s going to fall in love with her slowly, over a period of shared affection and devotion. Here, in their cold, harsh Californian reality, there’s only Nate Jacobs and the sick games he plays with her head. 

“I hate him,” whispers Cassie, her voice raw and so, so broken. She looks defeated, ready to lay down her armor, but Lexi knows that come morning she’ll be primping herself in their small bathroom, going through her routine to try and try and try, to get on the trapeze again in the hopes that he might spare her a glance in the light of day. “Lex, please tell me Fez doesn’t make you feel like this.” 

And it’s worse than the actual admission of what she’s doing with Nate—the disguised confession that she’s unhappy and still she chooses to stick around.

“No. No, he doesn’t.” 

“Then why—why do I feel like this? Why does—isn’t love supposed to be good?” 

Lexi’s heart breaks, falls apart because it’s always wanted to emulate her sister and it’s never learned to act differently. When they were little she used to ask for the same hairstyles as Cassie, the same pretty dresses, the same love. She likes to think she knows better now. She’s smarter with the way she loves. 

(Except. Except for the fact that her heart beats for the drug dealer who cooks his brother dinner and helps her with math homework. Except for the fact that she would still protect Cassie with everything in her—nothing is ever too much for the people she loves.)

Lexi says, “Cassie,” and that’s that. She says her sister’s name, and she likes to think it’s what seals both of their fates.

On the opening night of Lexi’s play, Fez shows up with a bouquet of thornless red roses and twines of ivy. He finds her backstage as she’s practically vibrating from the rush of the crowd’s applause, from Cassie hugging her so tight it felt like rebirth for both of them, from Rue kissing her forehead and telling Lexi she loves her. 

From what she and Fez did fifteen minutes before the curtains opened.  

Cruising on some delirious happiness so intense she may as well have been on drugs, Lexi bounds over to him, all giddy and so, so in love with him she can’t think straight. She kisses his cheek, then under his jaw, and finally his lips, and says, “Angel, you smell like smoke.”

Fez grins. He wraps an arm around her waist to pull her close and says, “Really? Shit, so do you.”

EARLIER THAT NIGHT

Ash waits for them behind the wheel of the Cadillac, pouty and moody that he’s the getaway driver. “I never get to have fun,” he grumbles, looking like a kid who’s being ordered to eat his greens. 

“It’s not that exciting,” insists Lexi dryly, checking her watch. “Promise.” Twenty-seven minutes to go. 

“Yeah, gonna be real fuckin’ boring,” says Fez, purposefully monotnous like Ash can’t see right through him. 

“Fuckin’ liars. I still think Lexi should drive.” 

Fez says, “Nope,” as he opens his door and gets out of the car. Like a fucking gentleman, he opens the door to the backseat, lightly gripping Lexi’s waist when she hops out. He pecks her, softly, then lets go to lean into the car through the passenger seat window. “You hear cops or see shit that seems suspicious, you fuckin' drive, you hear me?” 

“A’ight.” 

“I ain’t playin’, kid.” 

Ash purses his lips, staring down at the steering wheel. “Don’t take too long or I’ll fuckin’ leave either way." He looks up and, with a sardonic grin in Lexi’s direction, “I’ve got a play to catch, after, and if any of you fuckers make me late I’m kickin’ your asses.” 

Lexi serenely smiles back. “Don’t worry. We’ll be back in time.” 

Ash nods, once, then turns his head away from them, like he’s telling them to fuck off. Fez pats the car’s frame and moves back, glancing at his brother one more time before he takes Lexi’s hand. He ducks his head to stare at their shoes as they walk away, silently at first before he says, “What do you want for dinner tonight?” 

“I don’t feel like cooking,” she replies easily. “Could we just order pizza and watch Seinfeld ? " 

“I fuckin’ hate Seinfeld , " he says, but it’s not a complete no. She’ll win him over, she always does. “That dude thinks he’s a comedian. He ain’t. Faye’s said funnier shit than he has.” 

“That’s cause Faye hasn’t been sober in years.” 

“For real.” He stops in his tracks, so Lexi does, too, and he turns to look at her, awaiting her instructions. “So. You know how we doin’ this?”

(“How did you manage to keep it a secret?” asks Lexi in the dark, curled around Cassie’s shivering frame under a pile of blankets. Lexi’s overheating, but Cassie’s so cold her fingers numbly aches, so Lexi figures she can deal until Cass falls asleep and she can slip back into her own bed.

“Blind spots,” Cassie replies dully, “in the CCTV at his house. There’s so many of them. The one for the back door and backyard is fucking broken ,  anyone could break in and if they knew where to walk. They would never get caught. I can’t believe it hasn’t happened yet.” 

“So it’s an entire family of dumbasses, isn’t it.” 

Cassie hums, noncommittal. “Something like that.”)

“I do,” replies Lexi, looking up at Fez with an innocent smile. 

“Okay.” He swings their hands a little between them, like they’re little kids. “How much time we got?” 

“Twenty-three minutes.” 

Silently, they both stare up at the Jacobs residence. It’s cleanly cut, a sprawling modern estate that Lexi used to envy when she was younger—more rooms and bathrooms that a person really needs, all kinds of appliances and devices, high quality security systems. If she lived in a home like this, her father would never be able to break in to purloin trinkets to feed his drug addiction. 

“Lex?” says Fez. It’s just one word. Just her name, as if that’s everything that there is to say.  

(“If the mom and brothers are home?” whispers Fez, slow like he doesn’t even want to think about it. 

Lexi does, because she has no other choice. She says, “Every liberation has collateral damage.” They both stare at her phone, where the family portrait posted on Facebook is pulled up on a private tab. It’s a foreign concept to both of them, a wealthy father and mother under the same roof, siblings to antagonize and not take care of. 

Fez looks bothered by the family nuclear unity of it all, uncomfortable with the stiff formality of the picture. “They look happy, don’t they? But it ain’t their truth. That’s not real family.”

Lexi wants to tell him they’ve got a much better thing going for them in this little house. She’d much rather stay in it forever, in this exact life complete with the drugs and the perpetual threat of violence, than trade it for the one on the screen in front of them. Instead, she just burrows even closer into his warmth under the bedcovers, pressing a kiss at his sternum)

“Through here,” she hisses, and she leads them onto a complex, unnecessarily convoluted path of corners where the cameras can’t catch them. She tries putting herself in Cassie’s shoes, tries to find what’s so exciting about awkwardly twisting her body to hide from a fucking camera, and still can’t wrap her head around how it works. 

It doesn’t take long for them to find the main shutoff valve for the house’s gas line. It’s a huge, metallic thing, a mass of pipes and faded insignia on how to handle the whole contraption. Lexi thought she’d read enough about it—scoured the Internet how-to pages to figure it out, to name each individual valve and regulator and knows what each one does—but maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she was wrong or rash or just plain stupid—

(Who does this, plans a goddamn fire in the suburbs—)

“How much time?” asks Fez, dragging her back to reality. 

“Nineteen.” 

“Okay.” He moves around her and unzips her backpack, pulls out the four plastic bottles they’d filled with gasoline. He zips it closed and brushes her hair aside to tenderly kiss the back of her neck, making her shiver with an addictive blend of lust and adrenaline. “You good?”

Lexi turns around to face him, figuring they can spare a moment. She drapes her arms around his neck and leans closer to kiss him, slow and languid and a preview for what she wants later tonight. He’s the one who pulls back first, kisses each of her cheeks once, then lets her go, taking a step back to put some distance between them. He gives her two bottles and keeps two for himself, an equal split of the guilt on both their shoulders. 

“Let’s go?” Fez says, the corners of his lips quirking up in a slight grin. 

God, she loves him. She’s all shaky with how much she wants to tell him, how much she needs to. Instead, she grins right back, uncaps one of the bottles, and slowly begins pouring—little amounts, enough for it to cause damage but not enough to leave localized burns that might tip the police off and give them reason to suspect that it’s more than an accident. 

Fez laughs quietly, rubbing a hand over his face. He looks completely gone for her. “Shit, girl. I’m fuckin’ crazy for you.” It’s nice to know she’s not alone in feeling all besotted. 

Lexi blows him a little kiss, watching him pour his own gasoline until he disappears from view. They each round a side of the house as best as they can, trying to keep it to the minimum, and then meet up again where they started at the valve, returning the bottles into her bag and taking out a wrench. 

Fez stretches a little before he kneels in front of the valve (and of course, Lexi’s mesmerized by the trail of hair that disappears into his jeans when his shirt rides up a little. She’s acting foolish, like a chaste regency era girl, swooning over a flash of skin or a subtle brush of hands, like she doesn’t currently have hickeys on her thighs and he doesn’t have scratches on his back from her nails). He gets to work, fiddling around for a few minutes—unscrews certain knobs then screws them back, moving according to Lexi’s murmured instructions with a look of measured concentration on his face.

“Time?” 

“Eight.” 

He stands up, eyes trailed on the valve. “This better fuckin’ work,” he mutters under his breath. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a little rectangular box of matches, turning to Lexi so that they’re face to face, mirror reflections. “Wanna do the honors?” 

“Please.”

“A’ight.”

“Hey,” Lexi says as she takes the matchbox, holding onto his fingers for just a moment. “You know I love you, right?” 

“Yeah?” he muses, brushing his knuckles over her cheekbone. “Figured you do all that kinky murder shit with all them guys.” 

Pouting, she says, “Fuck off, Fezco.” 

Fez laughs and watches her light a match and toss it into the fray, and then a second and a third, then takes the matchbox from her and throws it right into the valve. Then, he fumbles for her hand, and they run just as something goes boom behind them—exactly as Fez had told her it would. Lexi's lungs burn with the exertion, and she hears the roar of a fire behind her though it just may be her imagination, they can't afford to look back and check—

“Holy shit, Lex, we did it,” hisses Fez, his breath coming out short, and Lexi lets out a delirious laugh. 

“Wait, wait, I wanna see,” she tells him, pulling him to stop running. They're trying to catch their breath as they turn to stare at their magnum opus , too close for it to be safe but it doesn’t matter—Lexi feels her heart drop and soar when she sees it. The Jacobs' house is on fire: burning up, devouring the modern structure of the building and hopefully its inhabitants, too, good fucking riddance. This is baptism, this is enlightenment and rebirth, this is fucking retribution for Cassie and Jules and Rue, for Fez and Ash. For Lexi, because she had to watch the people she loved most on this earth be hurt. A weight she didn't know existed is now gone—she thinks she can breathe easier. 

She turns to her boyfriend. Fez is muttering something, quick and breathless, his head tilted up at the starless sky as he does so. The flames cast orange shadows on his face, reflected in his pale blue eyes, and it takes Lexi an embarrassingly long time to realize he’s praying, saying a Hail Mary after setting a family's house on fire with his psychotic, pyromanic girlfriend. He looks like he belongs in a museum, a painting or a sculpture or maybe just a picture of him, that’s art enough and is it sacrilegious to think of kissing someone’s neck when they’re staring up into the face of God?

Whatever. After tonight, she doubts that the thing that’s sending her headfirst into the deepest pits of hell is just a few impure thoughts about her boyfriend. She waits until he’s finished, until he touches his gold chain like there’s a cross hanging from it, to take his arm and pull him back into the real world. 

“We gotta go,” she reminds him, breathless when he turns his shining blue eyes on her like she’s his patron saint. He’s never looked at her like this , and she doubts he ever will after tonight, and so she lets herself savor it. Because she wants him above all, and because she loves him and he loves her enough to do anything for her if she just bats her eyelashes, she leans upward to catch his lips with hers, so worked up that their teeth clash. His cheeks are cold when she cups them, and he clings to her waist with a touch that bruises, desperate and feverish and—

“Fucking Christ. Fuck. Your thing, we gotta go.”  

Lexi nods her head vigorously, trying to force herself to see sense. “And Ash will be worried.”

Fez chuckles against her mouth like she’s just cracked a knock knock joke, and his warm breath on her skin makes her crave more. There’s something definitely wrong with her. She’s a monster, a sociopath, something terrifying and apathetic and inhumane. She is now officially a murderer. She doesn't even know how many people she killed: maybe no one was home. Maybe it was just destruction of property, or maybe she killed a family of five people, three of whom are objectively innocent. 

She is vile and cruel and irredeemable. Not after this. Fez doesn’t seem to think so, though, and it kind of makes it okay. Besides, the ends always justify the means, right? 

“Remember when you asked if I believe in God?” he asks her, fingers softly brushing the hair away from her flushed face. She's thrown back to that moment in the store when she got caught under the rain, and he touched her just as adoringly. Was he in love with her then, too, like she thinks she was with him? 

"How could I forget?” 

“I think I got my answer,” he says softly, eyes burning into hers. He takes her hands and brings them to his lips, kissing her knuckles in a benediction, and they begin running in the direction they first came from. 

Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our deaths. 

Amen.

DEATH AND FUNERAL NOTICE

Beloved members of East Highland community, father and son Cal and Nathaniel "Nate" Jacobs, succumbed to house fire caused by faulty gas lines on June 17th, 2022. Cal and Nate touched the lives of many around them, as their familial bond inspired many and were always ready to offer their services to the benefit of the community at large.  

Cal attended East Highland High School before going on to graduate from Duke University. He later went on to work in real estate where he garnered a breadth of success across California. Nate was a senior student at his father's alma mater and gearing up to attend Stanford University in the fall. He was the star quarterback of his school’s football team and loved by classmates and teachers alike.

Both will be deeply missed by the friends and peers they met along the way. They are survived by loving wife and mother Marsha Jacobs and sons and brothers Aaron and Eric. 

A funeral service will be held at Saint Francis' Church on Sunday, June 19th, 2022.

“Are you okay?” 

Cassie blinks out of her daze, looking away from the headstone she’d been solemnly observing for the past ten minutes. There’s two of them, but she’s enraptured with the one that reads NATE JACOBS, BELOVED SON, BROTHER, AND FRIEND. “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Lexi steps closer, taking Cassie’s cold hand in hers. It’s unseasonably windy, but it’s pretty fitting considering they’re in a cemetery, mourning the dearly departed—or whatever the hell it is they’re doing here, standing around amidst a bunch of graves in solidarity for Maddy. 

Or, at least, that’s the story Lexi’s sticking to, considering Maddy’s still none the wiser about the illicit love affair between her on/off boyfriend and her best friend. She’s the one dressed in all black, complete with a lace veil like a fucking widow and big black sunglasses. Lexi knows she’s okay because she still has it in her to be dramatic; the brief interlude in which Maddy had been so beaten down she left her home in shapeless gray hoodies and greasy hair pulled back into a ponytail had been her lowest point, amplified by her rumpled, forlorn appearance. 

“Just checking,” replies Lexi, and Cassie squeezes her hand. 

“I don’t think,” she says quietly, low enough for just the two of them, “that I’ve felt so okay in a really long time. Does that make me a bad person?” 

If only she knew. “The only bad people here are buried six feet beneath the ground,” says Lexi.

Cassie hums. “Maybe we shouldn't speak ill of the dead.” 

To humor her, Lexi says, “Right, because they’re going to come back and haunt us for calling them assholes, the exact same way we did when they were still alive.”

“Were you always this snarky or does your boyfriend bring it out of you?” 

At the mention of Fez, Lexi turns her head to look for him, eyes scanning the area where saw him last. He’s still there, hanging back in the distance with Rue, and he’s already looking at her with a little smile playing on his lips. The first few buttons of his shirt are undone, the gold of his chain catching the light of the setting sun, and he looks like someone Richard Siken would write about, blood in his mouth and on his hands, beaten and bruised but still so, so beautiful.

Cassie nudges her. “You can go to him.” 

Lexi forces herself out of her reverie. “It’s okay, I can stay with you.” 

But Cassie shakes her head. “I have to be with Maddy anyway. She needs it.” She drops Lexi’s hand and softly kisses her cheek, the way she used to when they were little girls hiding under duvets as their parents fought. “I love you.” 

“I love you too,” Lexi says, and slowly steps away from Cal and Nate Jacobs’ final resting place and towards Fez and Rue, spying the glint of a hip flask they’re passing back and forth. With a wry smile, Lexi takes it from Rue as soon as she reaches them, swallowing down a straight shot of dry vodka. 

“You good?” asks Fez softly, his hand brushing over her shoulder. 

“Tastes horrible,” she says, her nose wrinkling in disgust. 

Rue just laughs, taking a much longer swig of the alcohol. “Little lightweight Lexi.” 

Fez shoots Rue a dry look then reaches for Lexi, wrapping his arms around her shoulders from behind, leaning down to press his lips to the crook of her neck. 

“Ew,” says Rue, not laughing much anymore. 

“Deal with it,” retorts Lexi without any bite. “How’s Jules?”

“Hungover,” replies Rue. “She went out last night. Went real hard in celebration. Or maybe guilt for the celebration. Dunno.” 

“Good for Jewel,” says Fez, nodding once like he approves. 

“I thought so too,” says Rue, and if they each had a flask they would’ve toasted. Let’s all raise a glass to Cal and Nate Jacobs, a pair of fuckers who brought us more peace in death than they ever did in life. May their souls rest in the deepest, darkest pits of hell. Hear, hear. 

“The service was okay?” Fez asks Lexi. He hadn’t attended on account of he didn’t give a fuck to, but still came to the cemetery after the family had left to be there with Lexi, who was just in attendance for Cassie. 

And because it’s thrilling to sit in a church pew and ruminate over the fact that she’s pretending to pray for the souls of the men she herself had killed. It’s hard not to feel fucking invincible when dealing with something like that.

“It was boring,” she replies easily. “Maddy’s eulogy was great, though. She used fancy academic words I had no idea she knew to call Nate an asshole.” 

“As she should,” praises Rue. Fez hums in agreement. “You guys staying long?” 

“I should wait for Cassie,” says Lexi. 

Fez says, “I’ll wait with you.” 

“You don’t have to.” 

Fez gives her that look . “I wanna.” 

Rue scoffs. “I fuckin’ don’t. Later, losers.” She throws a peace sign and turns on her heel to leave, ambling her way through the headstones in various states, among the fresh flowers and little trinkets and letters. 

“You’re religious, right?” says Lexi, spinning in the circle of Fez’s arms so she can face him. 

“Guess so.” 

“What happens after we die?” 

Fez chokes out a laugh. “Holy shit. For me and you, it ain’t gonna be pretty.” 

“Hm. I’m good as long as I get to be with you.” 

Softly, he asks, “So you don’t regret it?” 

“Nope,” replies Lexi easily. “Nothing’s changed since the moment we did it.” 

“Our intentions were good,” says Fez, dropping his arms from her waist so he can cup her cheeks and bring her in for a kiss. It’s soft and chaste but still leaves her reeling— he leaves her reeling, despite the familiarity they’re slowly settling into. She’s at his house more often than not, knows exactly which nooks and crannies have shit hidden in them—pills of Oxy or steel blades—and she can navigate her way around the coffee table and the armchair in the dark. The bookshelf is more stocked, an entire row dedicated to Greek Mythology and the complete Sherlock Holmes collection, another to hardcover Kurt Vonneguts and Jane Austens. She has tampons and a toothbrush in the bathroom, hair ties and bobby pins everywhere, and her favorite chocolates in the kitchen. For lack of a better term, she’s got a home with him, something that belongs to just them, a little sanctuary they painstakingly built over the last few months. Still, he makes her hands shake, makes her dizzy and light-headed like she’s in the beginning stages of a crush. 

Only they’ve set a house on fire together. Lexi thinks it’s much more binding than any wedding ring could ever be. 

“And the fruits of our efforts are delectable, if I say so myself,” says Lexi. “Cassie woke up at eleven this morning.” 

“Good thing?” 

“The best.”  

They’re interrupted when Cassie joins them, trudging in the grass in her black stilettos. She grips Lexi’s arm to take off one heel, then the other, letting out a, “Fuck” of relief when she’s barefoot. “No one told me funerals are so tiring.” 

“They ain’t known to be a ragin’ party, either,” says Fez, making Cassie give him an unimpressed stare that he matches. Lexi watches the two of them size each other up. The two people she adores most in the world, her big sister and the love of her life, the people she can now honestly say she would do anything, everything for. If they can never learn to get along, it just might kill her, but finally Fez says, “Sorry for your loss.” 

Cassie shrugs. “Thanks, but it’s not mine.” She turns her attention to Lexi. “We’re leaving now. Maddy wants to drink the past weekend away, she says, so Kat and I are going to stay stone cold sober while she gets trashed enough to forget her own name.” 

Dryly, Lexi says, “Sounds incredibly fun.”

“I know, right. Wanna come?” 

“I think I’ll just leave with Fez.” 

“Of course you will,” Cassie says, but she still leans over to smack a lipstick-y kiss on Lexi’s forehead and her see you is directed to both of them before she leaves. 

Lexi grumbles as she licks her thumb to wipe off the trace of lipstick Cassie left behind on her forehead. As she does so, Fez asks, “You sure you don’t wanna be with your friends?” 

“Usually, more often than not,” says Lexi, “I wanna be where you are.” 

Fez grins so bright it could rival the sun. “Good. I want you where I am.”

She adores him to bits and pieces, hadn't known such devotion could exist until she met him. Sometimes she still doesn't know what to do with all this love he saves just for her, but she tries her best to take it and give it back. She lets it flood her with warmth and stitch all the hollow emptiness inside her closed and tries to do the same for him, permanently stuck in his corner because she doesn’t want to be anywhere else. 

“You know,” says Lexi, “I still can’t believe how lucky we were.” 

Fez shrugs. “You planned it all out. Course it was gonna work out.” He leans in and kisses her, quick and soft, and it ignites her all over. 

“But it was lucky,” she insists. “His mom wasn’t home, his brothers weren’t home. They were.  Nate’s rarely ever home on a Friday night.” 

“Think it’s cause God liked our plan?” 

A laugh falls out of Lexi, and she says, “Whatever you want. I just think it worked out cause I had you with me.” 

“We work pretty well together, don’t we?” She knows he means more than just that night: them, as two people, they work pretty well together. They love each other enough for it to eclipse anything else, and Lexi never thought she would have this but now that she does—well, she doesn’t want to live inside her head anymore. 

She leans up to connect their lips, soft and gentle and nothing but affection, and he meets her bite for bite. A little dazed, she pulls back the slightest bit to survey him, running a hand over his buzzed hair, brushing the path of the scar that curves around his ear. She doesn't think she will ever be able to move on from this, from him. Doesn't ever want to. No other guy would kill for her; she wouldn't want to kill for another guy. Softly, she tells him, “We should go home.”

He knows what she means without having to clarify, nodding once. She takes a few steps in the direction of the gates but he pulls her back, into the circle of his arms again to kiss her again and again. 

“You’re still sure about us?” 

As an answer, she says, “I love you. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.” She giggles when he brushes his lips all over her collarbone in butterfly kisses, gripping the collar of his shirt. It’s more than enough. He cups her face like she’s sacrament, and it’s everything.

“Love you, baby,” Fez murmurs. Kisses the tip of her nose, eyes closed, reverent like she’s the religion he believes in, the one he could die for. 

Who knows. Maybe divinity really does exist—if it does, Lexi’s found it in this very moment.

“And the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”