Work Text:
I found it hard to find someone like you
Like you, like you
Send your location, come through
They’re sitting in his car behind the shop. It’s a quiet night, too cold to roll the window down. It’s cozy inside. Fez tells her that her eyes are really pretty and dark like chocolate. He drags out the word chocolate, like he can taste it, but it’s Lexi who licks her lips.
She fidgets with her hair and looks away, still in disbelief that she’s here with him.
“Speaking of eyes,” she says, because she feels comfortable when she speaks of quantifiable things she knows, “ever wonder why we don’t have all-round vision like some other animals?”
Fez cocks his head, lips parted, already drinking up her words.
Most guys fake interest. Most guys don’t care; they nod along and hum politely while their minds are miles away. But he genuinely wants to know. She’s noticed that about him. He’s curious and attentive, always listening, always stashing information for later. She can relate.
What she doesn’t know is that she opens another world for him, a world where information isn’t a transaction, where he is treated like a real person, and every time she invites him in he feels so fucking weak.
“I didn’t before,” he says, staring down at her lips for a second, “but I am now. Wondering.”
“It doesn’t make sense, at first,” she says, shifting in her seat to face him. “How did human beings manage to climb to the top of the food chain without this particular advantage? Why did they give it up? Say, you’re sitting by a river, having a drink. Wouldn’t it be useful to have one eye on the water and another behind you?”
Fez genuinely considers this. Yeah, it would be real fucking useful. He’d want that upgrade. He nods, attention rapt.
“But that’s the thing,” she says, licking her lips again, and his eyes flicker briefly there. “Most prey animals have all-round vision. But we’re not prey animals. We evolved to be predators. We’re the thing jumping from the bushes, ambushing that poor sucker by the river. And in order to be lethal, we need to be able to look forward. We need to judge the distance and zero in on our victim. How far we leap makes us or breaks us. So. That’s why we only look forward.”
When she’s done, she does that thing where she scrunches her forehead and laughs a tiny laugh to herself, like she said the stupidest thing in the world.
Fez rests his head against the seat, staring at her, like he can’t quite catch his breath.
“Fuck, Lexi,” he says softly. “The way you talk should be illegal.”
Lexi gasps a little. She tries to hide it with another laugh. “Shut up.”
“It’s true. Gives me goose bumps.”
She thinks he’s teasing, but Fez really means it. No dirty talk has ever made the hairs stand at the back of his neck like this. And she hasn’t even touched him yet. But her going on about all-round vision and fucking predators is the hottest thing he’s ever heard.
Lexi reaches out with one finger and drags it across the chain over his sweatshirt. She’s not bold enough to keep it there. But Fez catches her wrist before she can pull away.
“Here, listen. My heart’s beating real fast,” he rasps, and he presses her palm to his chest.
Lexi shivers. The pulse of his heartbeat travels down her arm like electricity.
“Because of me?” she asks softly.
He nods. “Your talking does that.”
Lexi doesn’t know what to do with this information, with his heart in her palm. All she can do is handle it with care.
“Wanna hear another fact about forward-looking eyes?” she says, staring at his chest, the way it rises and falls.
“Hell yeah.”
She swallows. “It’s how we formed connections as a species long ago. It’s why we were so successful. Since our gaze is so direct, it’s pretty clear who we’re paying attention to, and it helped us make bonds. It’s why we bond with animals that have forward-looking eyes too. It’s – um – why we’re pretty much the only species that makes love face-to-face.”
And she can feel it, the beat. His heartbeat going fast, faster.
She lifts her eyes to his face.
Fez almost looks hurt, like this feeling is unbearable.
And he knows what he wants to do, and he knows she would let him. He can see his hand carding through her hair, thumb swiping her jaw as he pulls her forward, but –
Ash knocks on his window hard.
“Yo, enough with the corny shit! You two ain’t goin’ to prom. We got work to do.”
Lexi snatches her hand away, cheeks red like apples.
Fez gives out a harassed sigh. Fucking family.
He waits for her to get off school. He stands behind one of the coffee shops where she loves to sit and read. He’d like to go in with her, but he has places to be, and it’s better he’s not seen around.
Lexi waves at him and ducks into the alley with him. “Hey, stranger, I got your text –”
But he’s not here for that. He’s been living with a live wire inside him since that night in his car and he needs to kiss her so fucking bad.
So he does.
He grabs her like you’d grab a life-jacket, reels her in quick, hands on her waist and face, pressing her against the wall, soft and dangerous, the way she likes it, because her face tilts up with an inviting gasp, and her fingers purchase on his shoulders before he even finds her lips. It’s a kind of telepathy or trust. Something intoxicating that makes him put one hand around her throat, that makes her moan against his mouth, accepting the pressure, the deprivation of oxygen.
As first kisses go, it’s a storm, but it’s also a light summer rain. It’s like burning up in the middle of a pool.
Her hand brushes the back of his head and his mouth skips to her jaw and her throat and her knees almost give in, the way he’s going, tender but merciless, fingers digging into her waist, making her arch against him. And then his mouth is on her mouth again, like he’s saying, I can’t get enough of it, but not only the shape or the taste of it, but the words, the words she pours in his ears, it’s like he’s inhaling her words.
When they finally break up for air, Lexi’s mouth is bruised and swollen and he feels possessive about it - that mark on her that’s his. He leans his forehead against hers for a moment, because he doesn’t usually do this shit, he doesn’t rush in like an idiot, and it feels scary. He’s always made sure not to want things too badly.
“I have to go. I’ll call you tonight,” he says softly against her ear.
Lexi can only nod, still reeling.
She stands against the wall, breathing in and out, watching his shape growing smaller in the distance.
If she goes back to the beginning –
If she goes back to that night she went to his shop to give him back his sweater which he'd dropped at the party –
If she goes back to that embarrassing moment when she admitted to him she’d washed his sweater and he lifted it to his face to inhale the laundry smell and she blushed so badly –
If she goes back to that time she was at his place, and they'd sat on his couch and he'd asked her about her favorite things and she'd asked him if he'd had a favorite thing growing up, and his kind face closed up, and she'd coughed and said she'd loved Charlotte’s Web growing up, and then told him the entire story because he did not know it –
If she goes back to that moment when they'd laughed over Charlotte’s Web, even though his knuckles were still raw and peeled of skin –
If she goes back to that moment when he'd told her, I could listen to you forever –
If she goes back even further to that New Year’s Eve party and the way he'd zeroed in on her, eyes forward, lavishing her with attention, all because she was interesting, all because she was cool in an esoteric way that only he understood –
If she does all those mental gymnastics, she knows it will be for nothing. Whatever point along the map she chooses, it’s the same.
She lost her head from the start.
For such a smart girl, she’s been really reckless, and maybe that’s a byproduct of intelligence. It’s not that she got cocky; it’s that she decided his presence was better than his absence. Even in quadratic functions, she prefers the upward parabola, the possibility of infinite real numbers.
So, even though she saw him beat Nate to an inch of his life, even though she has seen him stuff a gun under his shirt, even though he still deals, even though he makes her inhale so much smoke, she doesn’t think about it, about where she should be, what she should be doing, she sits at his table and does her fucking homework, while he does the weekly accounting, and he glances at her from time to time, relishing the way she bites her pen, and he smiles at her as he rolls the bills, and afterwards – when she’s done with calculus, they order pizza, and they crash on the couch and talk and talk and talk, until her voice strips him of calm, and his hands and mouth are on her, hungry and wolfish, and Lexi lets him part her knees. She lets his bruised fingers slip under her underwear, she lets him inside her, lets him set a really slow pace as she fucks herself on those fingers, on that hand that always bears fresh cuts and she lets her head fall on his shoulder, but he wants to see her, eyes always looking forward, face-to-face, as she comes with his name on her lips.
It feels domestic and terrifying.
But there are times when she’s not allowed to come over, because she can’t ever be involved with the people who come to collect.
He tells her he can’t afford to beat anyone else to death, because that’s what he’d do, and he adds, I wouldn’t be able to pull back like I did with Nate, and she reminds him that other people pulled him off Nate, but Fezco shakes his head like nah, if he’d wanted, no one could’ve done a thing.
That was easy, he says.
And Lexi kisses him then, because the happiness inside her chest is ugly, because she’s shivering all over, because she should not condone it, because she should say something to that effect, but he just pulls her into his lap and buries his head in the hollow of her throat and all she can do is hold on.
She’s still the cheerful wallflower at parties, chatting with friends, sitting by the sidelines, fiddling innocently with her phone like she’s not texting her drug-dealer boyfriend (God, is that what he is?), but at midnight, he sneaks into the house full of teenagers when the lights are low, when you can barely see the other person in front of you, and he comes up behind her with that familiar slow step, and she instantly inhales his smell and feels his stubble on the side of her throat like a friendly vampire and her pulse jumps deliciously, and they sway together to whatever song is blaring, rocking together, thrumming with the music. One night, Biggie’s Hypnotize is playing on the speakers and he murmurs playfully in her ear, over the lyrics, Lexi, Lexi, Lexi can’t you see? Sometimes your words just hypnotize me…
And it’s too good, it works too well, her heart swells, she turns in his arms and kisses him on the mouth, unafraid that others will see, but he always leaves before the lights come back on, like some kind of gender-swapped Cinderella, and one time Rue, who is high off her ass, comes up to her with drawn eyebrows and asks, “yo, did I…just see you and Fez grind on each other?” and Lexi laughs a little too loud and says, “What the fuck are you talking about?” and Rue shrugs. Must be her mind playing tricks on her, because no fucking way that would happen.
Lexi hates to do this, really, but for once, she is going to be selfish. She's going to be the addict.
She thinks she gets it now. The high. The pull of addiction.
She remembers getting all dressed up, ribbon in her hair, when she went to his shop for the second time.
And she was leaning against the fridge doors, feeling the cold soak through her thin blouse, trying to keep from tripping over her words, and Fez stepped forward slowly and slid open one of the doors close to her body, grabbed two drinks for them and ran his knuckle down the glass, wiping the condensation close to her waist.
And he spoke to her, up close, against the doors, “Aren’t you cold, Lexi?” and she shook her head with a dumb smile, “No, I like it,” and those striking blue eyes of his knew right away, she’s fucking fearless, and she’s ready for another hit.
He loves putting his head in her lap while she reads, with the soft lamp the only source of light in the room. She’s sitting in his bed, reading A Clockwork Orange to him while she runs her fingers over his brow, and he closes his eyes and listens.
She told Cassie she’s sleeping over at Rue’s, but she feels safer here, feels known.
When she’s done with the chapter, he tells her it’s the coolest, weirdest story he’s ever heard. He loves those Russian-sounding bullshit words. He calls her ptitsa, little bird, but without any derogatory echo, no side-chick, no babe, just little bird, just a tiny, resilient thing that flew into his arms.
He remembers what his grandma said about love, and it makes his chest tighten, because one day, the little bird will fly away and the nest will be empty. Ash said the same thing. Too fucking good to be true. Say goodbye while you still can. But he can't.
When they slide down between the sheets, he tries not to think about it. They’re taking it slow.
Lexi whispers in his ear that she’s ready and he trails feverish kisses down her belly, because maybe he’s the one who’s not ready, because maybe he wants to yearn a little longer, because maybe he likes the parched feeling in his throat, the wait and the wanting.
But they’re predators, that’s what she said in the beginning, this is the course of evolution, we judge the distance, then we leap.
Her nails run down the muscles of his back and he unfolds, shows her what he’s made of.
Face-to-face, he sinks inside her, and the girl under him tells him again they’re the only species that do this, but what he hears and what she feels is that they’re the only people who do this, and that’s perfect too.
“Do you believe in God?” she asked him once.
And he'd said yes, and he says yes again at the sound of her voice, calling his name in the night.