Archive of Our Own ^beta

I.

The cameras have stopped flashing, but for Daniela, the performance has only just begun.

The bruises have faded, but the fear still runs around in her blood like it’s a racetrack. Lito is a man’s man. Protective. Honorable. If she does this right, she’ll have him. At least for now, she’ll be safe.

When Daniela was a girl, she was terrible at putting on this face: softness around her eyes, but fire inside them. She watched the way the other girls looked at their boyfriends until she could do it too. Melt downward, tilt upward, offering herself up. Men don’t say no to her when she does that.

But Lito does.

A role more important than anything she’s playing on the screen right now, and she can’t pull it off. She stands in the darkness next to Lito’s apartment building and hears the paparazzi come closer. If they see her standing alone here, she’ll have to start over from the beginning. Find a new man to latch onto, win over. And the next one might not be as honorable as Lito.

She ducks into a liquor store to buy a bottle of champagne and practices for the store clerk. The man is practically drooling on the counter by the time she’s done with him. Daniela’s still got it. She can do this. She rings Lito’s apartment from the lobby.

He still sounds so reluctant. Like Daniela herself was with her first boyfriend, Genaro, until she realized that he would cuddle with her and let her stroke his hair all she wanted if only she gave in. But Lito isn’t like her. He’s a man, just like all the rest. She can wear him down.

It’s like a dance. She already knows all the steps. Step one, into personal space. Step two, shimmy. Step three, shirt off. Step four, pants. But where she leads, Lito doesn’t follow. It throws off her rhythm.

So it’s a relief when Daniela sees the man in Lito’s bed, and realizes she’s been stepping to the wrong music this whole time. There won’t be hands in her clothes, trying to stir up feelings that have never been about other people. There won’t be declarations of love she’ll never be able to return in the same way.

She’s always liked dancing by herself better anyway.

“You know,” Daniela says, gulping down champagne because seriously, she was gearing herself up for this for weeks, and now she doesn’t have to, and her blood is singing the upper registers like Mariah Carey. “If you were in the middle of something, you don’t have to stop on my account.”

“Daniela,” Hernando says, taking her hand in one of his and clutching Lito’s waist with the other. “You’re very beautiful, but I think you may have figured out by now that Lito isn’t interested in the particular charms you offer. And even if he were, I don’t share him that way.”

“You don’t have to share,” says Daniela. “I’m an experienced window shopper, you know. Look, but don’t touch.”

“You break it, you buy it,” Lito says, mock-serious, pointing at her.

“I won’t break you,” Daniela says. “I know what you like and what you don’t.”

Hernando raises his eyebrows. “Recent evidence would indicate otherwise.”

Daniela waves her hand. “I got the desire right, just not the target. Listen. That line you used to blow me off, Lito. ‘My heart belongs to another.’ You like the idea of belonging to someone, don’t you? I just didn’t know it was Hernando you belonged to.”

“Just to be clear,” Hernando says. “You’re saying you want to watch us fuck.”

“Well, yeah. Porn is great, but live porn is even better. You don’t find it a little hot? Showing off for someone?”

Lito looks at Hernando, then at her, his eyelids sinking down in that way she’s practiced so many times in the mirror. She may never have felt this fire that burns in him now, but she knows what it looks like. He likes the idea.

“I know Lito likes you, muñeca, but I only just met you.” Hernando looks at Lito, as if asking for backup. But Lito isn’t backing him up. He’s running the backs of his fingers up and down Hernando’s flank, his eyes heated.

“She won’t give me away,” Lito says, his mouth very close to Hernando’s ear. “It’s fine by me if she watches, Hernando. It’s like being on camera, but we don’t have to do five takes to get it right.”

Daniela holds her hands up. “I won’t get between you guys. I’ll just be right here watching.”

Hernando bites his lip. His eyes keep flicking between Daniela’s face and Lito’s very focused expression. But he’s starting to respond, too; those briefs don’t hide much.

“Come on, Hernando,” Lito whispers. “You may not be an actor, but haven’t you ever wanted an audience?”

Finally, the fire catches in Hernando’s eyes too. He clears his throat. To Daniela, he says, “You’re going to have to give me some room.”

“Sure,” says Daniela, scooting down to the end of the bed. “Sex smells weird anyway.”

Lito squints at her a little, but Hernando distracts him with a hungry kiss, which is probably for the best, because she’s not ready yet to explain that she only likes sex when she doesn’t actually have to fuck anybody. Yes, yes, good – there is the heat and the wet slick sound that gets her going, and there, there is the love. Has Daniela ever seen love like that in real life? Not between her parents, that’s for sure, and whatever is broken inside her doesn’t let her feel it either. As far as she knows, anyway.

But watching the way they hold onto each other like the bed is made of quicksand, and especially the way they break apart and smile at her, as if to say, See? – that makes her want to set aside what’s broken, and see if she can find her own way to love them.

II.

“Don’t you miss dating straight guys?” Lito asks Daniela, as she settles back against his chest with a glass of white wine.

“No,” she says, taking a slow sip. Hernando really has excellent taste. “Why would I?”

“Going out on dates where you don’t have to pretend you’re something you’re not,” Lito says, starting to count off on his fingers. “Romance, you know, like buying you flowers, or gazing deep into your eyes. Getting hard for you when you kiss. Sex. Living together, getting married.”

“A lot of straight guys don’t do those things,” Hernando says from the liquor table, where he’s pouring himself his own glass of wine. “Most of the girls I know complain to me about having to pretend they’re something they’re not when they’re out on dates with guys.”

“He’s right,” Daniela says, raising her glass to Hernando. She counts off on her hand like Lito did. “I’m more myself on my dates with you than I’ve ever been on a date with a straight guy. I don’t even like romance, unless what we do when we cuddle on the couch together and watch movies counts as romance. To be perfectly honest, I don’t like fucking either.”

Hernando raises his eyebrows at her as he joins them on the couch with his glass of wine, legs tangling with Lito’s. “You seem to like it when Lito and I do it.”

“Well, yeah,” says Daniela. “I love porn. I just don’t like fucking. Do you want to fuck the actors in every porn you watch? You kept saying that the white guy in that porno we watched the other day had a weird mouth, Lito.”

“It was weird,” says Lito. “He barely had any lips.”

“But you liked the porn anyway,” Daniela points out. “Even though you didn’t want to fuck that guy.”

“Huh.” Hernando nudges Lito with his elbow. “She makes interesting points.”

“That’s what it’s like every time I watch,” says Daniela. “It’s fun, but I don’t want to be part of it. It’s weird, I know. I like watching, and I like getting off, but I’ve never really wanted anyone. And before you ask, I tried it with girls too when I was at UC San Diego, and no luck.”

“I’m still not sure I get it,” says Lito.

“You like it when Daniela watches us, but you don’t want to fuck her,” Hernando says to Lito. “Is what she’s saying all that different?”

“I guess not. But nobody? Really? Why did you go after me so hard that first night, then? And you said you fucked Joaquin’s best friend.”

“I’m not a virgin, Lito. Haven’t you ever fucked someone even though you didn’t really want them?” Lito and Hernando nod, their eyes distant, and Daniela feels suddenly ashamed. They’re gay, for fuck’s sake. Both of them have probably tried to have sex with women. Why did she have to bring that up? She hides her face with a long drink from her wine glass. “I tried to fuck you because I thought if I did, then you’d feel like you had to protect me. But then it turned out I didn’t have to. And Joaquin’s best friend was just sweet, sweet revenge. I smiled all the way through that fuck. Even though he had an even weirder mouth than that guy from the porn the other night, I swear.”

Lito laughs so hard that the vibrations through his chest nearly make Daniela’s wine slosh over the rim of her glass. But Hernando watches her closely, and Daniela feels a stab of something like fear. She braces herself, because Hernando always spears right through you, straight to the truth. It’s his gift. But he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he looks at Lito expectantly, as if the words he wants to say are in Lito’s mouth, not his. There’s a pause, then Lito’s chest buzzes against Daniela’s back as he speaks. “You should never have to fuck anyone to get what you need, Daniela. That’s not what sex is about.”

Daniela twirls the stem of her wine glass between her fingers, and watches her face and Lito’s distort in the glass. “I know that now,” she says, staring at the reflections. “But I didn’t before. I thought that kind of sex that’s all about each other and nothing else was just bullshit you see in the movies. Like car chases where all the cars explode and everyone gets out without a scratch.” She looks up at Hernando, leaning her head back into the curve of Lito’s neck. “Until I saw the two of you.”

Lito leans his chin against the top of her head and wraps his arms around her waist. “Oh, Dani. I’m so sorry.”

Hernando squeezes her knee. “Please don’t do that again, Daniela. You deserve better. If you don’t like having sex, then don’t have it.” He smiles. “Get into weird voyeuristic threesomes instead. Whatever you want. You shouldn’t have to give up your self-respect. Not for anybody.”

“I won’t,” Daniela says, smiling. She wishes she could really mean it. Because Hernando’s right. Sex should be the way Lito and Hernando have it, with no performances or secrets. But she can’t quite convince herself that she’ll be able to live her whole life that way, as if her body and desires are entirely hers.

III.

When they finally get home, after Lito and Hernando kiss and make up, Daniela retreats into the bathroom to dab cream on her cuts and bruises. As she walks into the bathroom, she considers the door for a moment, then leaves it open. What does she have to be ashamed of?

In the mirror, her face is mottled with old green and fresh purple. Behind her, Lito leans against the doorway, watching her. She keeps massaging cream into the bruise around her eye, taking care not to press too hard. His face hovers behind her shoulder in the mirror, eyes intent. Finally, Lito says, “What did he do to you, Daniela?”

“I think that’s pretty obvious.”

“Besides that.”

Daniela breathes carefully in and out through the pain. “He didn’t let me go outside without him. He took away my phone. I couldn’t contact anyone without his permission.” Hernando joins Lito in the doorway. Their faces are as serious as she’s ever seen them. “I fucked him. I’m sorry, Hernando. He’d never believe he’d won me back if I didn’t.”

Hernando leans against Lito, his eyes watching her sadly in the mirror. “There’s no reason for you to be sorry, Daniela. I am. You should never have had to do that.”

“Love, like art, must always be free,” says Lito.

“What movie is that from?” Daniela asks, her lips twitching.

Lito laughs a little. “No movie. That’s a genuine Hernando classic. He said it on our first date.”

“Daniela,” Hernando says. “Turn around.”

She’s not quite ready to look at them directly. She’s not really looking at them; it’s just a trick of the light. But it’s like she had seen herself only in funhouse mirrors all her life, and then she finally got to see her real face. She’s so full of distorted reflections inside. That was enough for her before. Now she has to look in the real glass, and find out what she’s really like. Daniela turns around.

Lito and Hernando each have one arm wrapped around each other. Hernando holds his free hand out to her. Lito’s free hand is turned palm up, but it hasn’t quite reached her yet. “Let us make you feel good, Daniela,” Hernando says.

“How?” says Daniela.

“However you want.”

And that… is terrifying. No one has ever asked Daniela exactly what her body wants. Oh, sure, even Joaquin asked her during sex, “Do you like this, baby? Does it make you feel good?” But none of her lovers would ever have accepted her real answer, that it all felt hot and sticky and far too close. Hernando, though. Lito. She could say anything, and it would be fine. She has no idea what to say.

Until she feels a twinge in her shoulders.

“I want a massage,” Daniela says. “All over.”

“I can do that,” says Lito. “I give great massages. Just ask Hernando. He’s the only one who gets happy endings, though.”

Daniela just snorts and walks past them to the bed. She sets her purse on the nightstand, where even after so short a time, it looks like it belongs. She takes off her clothes and lets them fall to the floor. It feels so good to be naked in front of people who don’t see it as a promise.

Lito and Hernando stand at the foot of the bed, leaning their heads against each other, taking a long look. At first Daniela can’t figure out why. Then she realizes that all of her bruises are exposed, including the ones that were hidden under her clothes. They’re assessing the damage.

“We’ll have to be gentle,” Hernando says to Lito. “None of that pounding you like to do on my back.”

“Gentle as a kitten,” Lito agrees. “Let’s each take a foot and work up from there, yes?”

Daniela leans back against the headboard. Her nerves are humming and crackling. No one’s ever done something like this for her before without demanding sex before or after. Lito and Hernando won’t do that, but she still can’t quiet herself inside.

Then she feels thumbs on her insteps, and her head tilts back against the pillow. “Oh, fuck, that’s good.” She sighs. “I had no idea how many knots I had in my feet until just now.”

“Lito needs foot rubs sometimes after he spends all day filming an action scene,” Hernando says.

Lito hums in agreement. He works her instep, then the ball of her foot, while Hernando follows his own pace. The two different rhythms on her feet keep her from guessing what’s going to happen next, and Daniela falls into a kind of trance, where even Joaquin’s blows and threats fall away from her, and all her tension flows out of her into their hands. She doesn’t worry anymore. With them, she can let go.

Snick. A bottle opens. Daniela opens her eyes partway. Lito pours lotion into his hand – the kind he and Hernando use for handjobs – and slicks his palm with it. “It’ll help you relax your muscles more,” he says. “I can feel how tense you are.” He moves up to her ankle, then passes the bottle to Hernando. Daniela lets her eyes fall closed. She needs to moisturize more often anyway.

The air conditioning is on, and her friends’ hot hands have moved up to her ankles and calves, but her feet still feel warm and tingly, like her skin remembers their touch. Like they’re filling her up with feelings she never had before. She groans at the release when they get to her knee joints. The crooks of her legs are so sensitive, and who knew her knees carried so much tension?

Daniela’s spine starts to stiffen when their hands reach her upper thighs. It’s fine when they do the tops and outsides, but when their fingers massage her inner thighs, she wonders exactly how far up are they going to go. They can already see the bruises Joaquin left there, and that by itself is almost unbearably intimate.

Hernando stops with his hand a palm’s length from the crease of her upper leg. Daniela opens her eyes. His eyes are big and soft. “How about we stop here?”

“That sounds good,” Daniela says. Lito smiles and works upward from her knee. She waits. He stops at the same place Hernando did. There. She can just let it happen. She closes her eyes. It’s not like her to be this quiet, but for now she loves that she can say nothing and still get exactly what she needs.

“Good,” Lito whispers. “See? You can just give in.”

The next touch is Hernando’s hand on her hip, moving up her side. She gasps and squirms away. “Hey! No tickling!”

“Sorry,” Hernando laughs. “I didn’t know. Roll onto your side and I’ll do your back instead.”

Daniela rolls to her right so Lito can get to her left hip. Hernando presses his thumbs into the base of her spine and works upward. Daniela sighs into her pillow. Her legs feel liquid, borderless, like they keep on going past her feet.

The mattress shifts. Through the curtain of her eyelashes, Daniela watches Lito lie down facing her. He slicks his hands and reaches for her shoulders, kneading them firmly. His eyes are focused but the rest of his face is so relaxed. What about this gives him that peace? She doesn’t ask. This is all so fragile, still. His hands are soft, and can say so much. Maybe there’s an answer in the way his thumbs hover lightly on the inner corners of her collarbones, or in his breath, matched stroke for stroke with the rhythm of his hands. She feels Hernando’s breath, too, on the back of her neck, as his fingers follow the outlines of her shoulder blades.

Hernando gets to her scalp at the same time as Lito reaches her face. He massages her very gently there, just with his fingertips, especially around her bruises. She keeps her eyes closed. She’s not ready to see Lito’s face so up close to hers. The inside of her head oozes with sweet golden syrup everywhere Hernando touches. Lito and Hernando’s fingers intertwine along her hairline; she can hear them slide against each other, wet with lotion.

“Anything in particular you’d like to see right now?” Hernando says low in her ear. “I think Lito and I are just about ready to put on a show.”

Daniela realizes, her thoughts moving slow through the thick gold honey in her brain, that this whole time Lito and Hernando made sure their hips didn’t touch her. They might both be turned on right now, and she wouldn’t know. She might be turned on too, for all she knows; she spent the whole time with Joaquin trying to pretend there was nothing at all between her legs, and she hasn’t gotten back in touch with those parts yet.

“Kiss first,” Daniela says. “For a long time. Then, whatever you want.”

Lito looks over her shoulder at Hernando, his eyelids softening down, their hands tangled in Daniela’s hair. He pushes himself up on one arm. Behind her, Hernando does the same. Daniela turns onto her back and watches them kiss over her, just their lips touching, their hands resting lightly on her shoulders. They are so equal in this, as in everything else: neither man tilts his head back, or tries to ravish the other’s mouth. They give and take, back and forth, I suck your tongue, you suck mine.

Hernando raises his hand from Daniela’s shoulder to Lito’s cheek, his fingers resting lightly there. Lito leans into the touch. He says, “I think our Daniela wants to see something romantic. We love each other, even after all we’ve been through. Let’s show her.”

Daniela makes some sort of sound, maybe just a sharp breath, but it makes Hernando and Lito smile at each other, because they’ve gotten it just right. She wasn’t even with Joaquin all that long, but already she started to forget that love can really be like this. She wants to watch her best friends have sex, not to scratch an itch, not to get control over themselves or each other, but just because they love each other, body and soul. Kind of like the way they just loved her. But different.

She tucks her legs in to give Lito and Hernando more room. They kneel in front of her, facing each other, symmetrical. They’re so much bigger and taller than her. Hernando’s hand, which held the whole back of her head, is just the right size to hold Lito’s hip, his thumb tucking right into Lito’s pelvic cut.

Lito holds his face close to Hernando’s, close enough to kiss again, and says, “I missed your beard. I love how it feels on my face.” He nuzzles his cheek against Hernando’s beard, then pulls him close so they’re lined up, skin to skin, chest and thighs and cocks. “I missed how warm you are. Like you have the sun inside you. The bed felt so cold without you.”

Hernando cups Lito’s face with his hand, careful to avoid his bruises. “I missed you too. You and your romantic similes. I know you don’t get them all from movies.”

“I had a very good teacher.” Lito clasps a hand around the back of Hernando’s head, drawing him into a messy kiss. They knock noses, and Hernando goes ngah when Lito bites a little too hard. They rock against each other, just a little, unable to resist the hot contact between their cocks.

Daniela still feels warm all over, but the warmth settles heaviest between her thighs. Hello there, cunt. It’s been a while.

When she moves the hand on her stomach downward, though, she stops with her fingertips just brushing the top of her pubic hair, she feels a flutter of fear. What kind of memories might she bring up? Those would sure as hell ruin the moment. Better to just sit back and enjoy what she has, at least for now. Her hand falls to the sheets.

Lito and Hernando moan softly into each other’s mouths. Hernando pulls away and focuses his eyes on Lito’s neck and collarbones, like he’s picking a target. His mouth latches onto Lito’s ear, sucking hard on the lobe, then he pulls back and breathes on the spit-slick skin. Lito shivers and lets out a breath that just crosses the edge into a groan. It must feel so intense, the room’s cool air on his wet earlobe, then the heat of Hernando’s breath.

Hernando laves his tongue along Lito’s pulse point, the tendons of his neck, his collarbone, while his thumbs rub slow circles around Lito’s nipples. He looks so worshipful, sinking down with his ass on his calves so he can pleasure Lito’s kneeling body. It’s like a work of art.

Daniela’s heart clenches. She doesn’t want to lose this image, ever. She reaches for her phone on the nightstand, thumbs the password in (she added that protection as soon as she got the phone back), and turns on the camera. She puts a frame around them: Lito clasping Hernando’s shoulders for support as he sucks a bite into Lito’s shoulder and flicks his nipples with his thumbnails.

The phone makes a soft click as she takes the picture. Lito turns his head. He’s biting his lip to quiet his cries as Hernando torments him, his face flushed, but he blinks at her several times in surprise, then his eyebrows draw down in the middle. Is he still upset about the pictures she took before, the ones Joaquin stole for blackmail? But no, he can’t be angry. He knows she meant well. Besides, it’s different now. They all love each other, and they know it. She smiles, to reassure him. Lito glances at her phone, then closes his eyes, presses his lips together, shakes his head, and pulls Hernando up for a kiss, open mouth against open mouth. Daniela bites her lip, then silences the shutter sound on her phone camera. She’s free of Joaquin now, so she can finally have the things she wants. She takes two photos from different angles, saving the kiss inside her phone.

Lito’s hand curls around Hernando’s ribs, while the other, still moist with lotion from massaging Daniela, drifts down to Hernando’s ass. When he presses down and in, Hernando breaks the kiss to tilt his head back and take giant gulps of air. He rocks against Lito, his cock purple and wet. Lito presses kisses along the line of Hernando’s jaw, rutting back against him, pinning him between his two firm hands.

The room is cool, but sweat gathers on their hairlines as they press their cocks together. Sweat slides down Daniela’s neck, pooling between her collarbones. The air-conditioned air moves across her clit, cool against hot, but she just lets it be.

Hernando grips Lito’s hips, making him thrust harder. He tugs at Lito’s lip with his teeth, stretching it and letting it go with a pop. Their cocks make slick sounds as they move faster against each other. Heat radiates off them. Daniela wipes sweat off her upper lip with the back of her hand. She’s tired, blissed out from the massage, but she’ll stay awake to watch them come. She won’t have to wait long.

Lito has two fingers inside Hernando now. When he pulls them out, she gets a glimpse of his shining fingers before he thrusts them back in. They kiss so sloppily Hernando’s beard is damp with it, Lito’s chin as shiny as his fingers. Lito growls a little. “You first.” His fingers start moving so fast Daniela’s wrist aches in sympathy.

“Ay, Dios!” Hernando whines. He doesn’t even try to resist. He just holds onto Lito’s hips, rests his forehead against Lito’s shoulder, and pistons his hips. “Yes, Lito, querido, yes,” he murmurs, again and again, until his cock twitches and spends between them.

Hernando sags down, his head resting against Lito’s chest. He catches his breath, then kisses Lito and reaches for his erection. “Ah, mi lindo,” Lito says softly, between kisses. “You’re so good to me. So good. A little more, yes, yes, ah…”

And then it’s over for him too. They hold each other’s faces for a moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other’s air. Hernando’s hand smears a little of Lito’s come on his jaw, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Daniela reaches inside the nightstand drawer for a clean soft cloth and tosses it to them. “Here, boys. That was beautiful, as always, but I’m not sleeping in your wet spot again.”

Lito laughs low in his throat and wipes Hernando clean, then himself.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” Hernando says.

“Very much,” says Daniela. “I like that we’re finding ways to make this work. We could make a whole Kama Sutra of weird voyeuristic threesomes, if we work hard.”

“Let’s write the Kama Sutra of three-way cuddles first,” Hernando says. “I like the triple spoon, myself.”

“That one’s pretty good,” Daniela said. “As long as I’m the big spoon.”

“The littlest big spoon.” Hernando kisses Lito’s cheek. “You want the middle, mi hermoso?”

Daniela is grateful. After Lito faced down Joaquin for her, she wants to give him something back. A cuddle isn’t much, but it’s something. Lito nods, and with a lot of squirming and tugging on sheets, they arrange themselves for the night. Hernando reaches for the light and flicks it off.

For tonight, she has this. No, not just tonight. “Let’s go home,” Lito said to her. This is her home now. She can have this every night: a safe space, and best friends, not like the girls who sucked up to her at school because of who her papi was, but true friends.

She’s not sure what kind of dreams she’ll have tonight, but if they’re bad ones, she knows exactly what her friends will do for her. So she lets go of her thoughts, rests her arm on the long line of Lito’s body, and welcomes sleep in.

IV.

“You look great,” Hernando says, smiling at the pre-audition selfies on Daniela’s phone. “I hope you got the part.”

“I had to adjust my makeup so many times,” Daniela says. “Half the selfies are just me figuring out why my left eyebrow looked all weird. I had to delete like fifty photos to make room.”

The dishwasher whooshes on, and Lito looks at her from the kitchen. There’s a crease between his brows. “Daniela. Do you have any photos of us on there right now?”

“A few,” says Daniela. “Why?”

He dries his hands on a towel and leaves the kitchen, coming toward her and Hernando. He clasps his hands together in front of his chest. “I want you to delete them. Please.”

Daniela stuffs the phone in her jeans pocket. “What? Why? You don’t trust me?”

“That’s not it,” says Lito. His hands clasp and unclasp. “I know you wouldn’t do that.” He stands facing her, his shoulder just touching Hernando’s. He wraps an arm around Hernando’s shoulders, drawing strength. This isn’t easy for him. “You took those photos without our permission, Daniela. That’s why I want you to delete them. From now on, you need to ask us before you take any pictures.”

A wave of hot prickles flows under Daniela’s skin. Her cheeks heat. “You said to Joaquin you didn’t care!”

“I said I don’t care what he does with the photos. I didn’t say I don’t care that you took them in the first place.”

Daniela turns to Hernando. “You agree with him?”

Hernando nods with a slight dip of his chin.

Daniela folds her arms across her chest. “Why didn’t you tell me? You shared your bed with me, let me watch you – how was I supposed to know this wasn’t okay?” But even as she says it, she begins to doubt herself. She remembers the way Lito looked at her when he noticed her taking a photo: shocked, uneasy. Should she have taken it as a sign? And the time before, when she took the photos Joaquin stole from her, they had no idea she was taking them at all.

Lito and Hernando exchange a look. Lito raises an eyebrow and tilts his head a little toward Daniela. Hernando takes a deep breath in and nods. Lito grimaces, but nods back. Daniela watches, but can’t read anything. It’s amazing, the way their bodies can have conversations like this.

“I hate to say this, Daniela,” Hernando says. “But you of all people should know that just going along with something is not the same as wanting it.”

Daniela’s face prickles hotter. Her lips feel numb. Her first time, on the couch with Genaro in tenth grade. She liked Genaro a lot. They watched Matando Cabos together, and it just felt natural to lean against him, feeling his warmth. But then he looked down at her, and his eyes lit up, and he kissed her, because that’s what all the other girls wanted when they cuddled with a boy during a movie. She went along with it, because as long as they kissed he let her stay close, and the movie went by in flashes of warm cuddles and too-hot touches up her thighs.

Everything she wanted, all tangled up with what she didn’t want. Take it all or take nothing. Lito and Hernando want Daniela with them, in every part of their lives, but they don’t want her snapping photos. So they’ve chosen to take it all – at least, until now. How can she blame them?

Daniela won’t think of Joaquin right now. She won’t. Dios le ayude, is she any better than he was? She’s definitely no better than Genaro stealing caresses up her skirt in tenth grade. She covers her mouth with her hands. She’d cover her whole face except then she wouldn’t be able to watch Lito and Hernando, and she needs to know exactly how disgusted they are with her right now.

They watch her, holding hands. Hernando’s brows are drawn together, concerned. Lito is hard to read. He bares his heart so much that when he suddenly doesn’t, it catches her up short. She can’t go by his face – what she thinks he wants – ever again. She should have learned that on her first night here.

“That first night,” Daniela says, her voice muffled behind her hands. “You kept saying no, and I kept – I tried to force myself on you.”

Hernando and Lito look at each other again. Their faces soften. Lito lets out a breath. The corners of Hernando’s mouth turn up a little. They’re relieved. They’re not going to leave her over this.

“I understand why you did it,” Lito says. “But it can’t happen again.”

Daniela doesn’t want it to happen again. But she doesn’t know how to stop it. No one ever taught her, because no one ever cared about that. “How? How will I know?”

Lito fidgets a little. His eyes focus for a moment on a blank space in the air to his left, then back on her. “Remember when we gave you the massage? And Hernando stopped here,” he says, touching the place on Hernando’s thigh, “and said maybe he shouldn’t go any further?” Daniela nods. That was good. New. They still keep to that, and Daniela treasures it. “That’s called setting a boundary. Once there’s a boundary, we both have to agree to change it. When you took pictures of us, you changed a boundary without asking.”

Daniela frowns. This doesn’t sound like Lito. It sounds like he’s quoting something, but she can’t imagine what. A self-help book about relationships? Lito would never read that, and Hernando wouldn’t make him. Still, she thinks she understands it. “Okay. So if I, say, want to join one of you in the shower.” She’s never done that before. “I ask, you say yes or no, I know where the boundary is. And I can set boundaries too.”

“Of course,” says Hernando.

“And not just about sex stuff,” says Daniela.

Hernando and Lito nod.

“Okay,” Daniela says. “Can I get inside your boundary about what’s going on with the photos?” Lito blinks at her, but Hernando’s eyebrows just rise a little. He’s not surprised. “I’m dying to know if he’s leaked them to anyone, but you haven’t said a word. I can see how worried you are. I want in.”

Lito sighs. “Yes. All right. You have a right to know.” He fidgets, and Hernando rests a calming hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think Joaquin really believes that I don’t care about the photos. He’s contacted my agent with them. He’s trying to blackmail me.”

Daniela’s face rushes with a whole different kind of heat. “That son of a whore. We should take him down. I know things about him – ”

“If we try to take him down,” Hernando says, “then we’re telling him that what he says and does is important. But it isn’t. That’s the whole point. We should just ignore him as much as we can.”

“Hernando and I have talked about this. He’s right, Daniela. Joaquin doesn’t matter.”

Daniela takes deep breaths. “Okay. Okay. Yeah, the one thing Joaquin hates most in the world is being ignored. Maybe this is the best thing we can do.” She looks from one man’s face to the other, so they know she means business. “But next time you talk about this, I’m part of it.”

Hernando comes over and squeezes her shoulder. With her sitting and him standing, he towers over her, warm and solid. “Yes, Dani. You’re in.”

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I should never have done any of it. You’re important to me, and look how I hurt you.”

“If you hadn’t done it,” says Lito, “you’d still be with Joaquin.”

“Come on, Lito. Have a little faith. I’d have found some other way to get away from him.” She leans into Hernando’s touch. “But I would have lost this. I wouldn’t even know what I could have had.”

V.

When Lito is out for a run, Daniela says to Hernando over their morning plate of chilaquiles, “I think Lito’s hiding something from us.”

Hernando puts down his coffee mug. “Like what?”

Daniela sucks the salsa off her fork. How should she say this? “I first noticed during the fight with Joaquin.” Hernando grimaces. Lito told him the story at great length, but he didn’t mention this. “At first, he fought like he was in a movie. Mostly for show, you know? But that didn’t make him back down. That’s when he… changed.”

“Changed?” says Hernando, fork halfway to his mouth. “Changed how?”

“He had this look on his face I’ve never seen on him when he’s not on camera. Fierce. Like a predator. I would have thought it was just acting, like he always does, but then the way he fought. It was like night and day. This wasn’t fighting for the camera. This was the real thing. Brutal. Lito doesn’t fight like that. Does he?”

Hernando shakes his head.

“And then when we had that talk when you told me to stop taking pictures. He gave that speech about boundaries, right? I’m glad he did it, but he didn’t come up with those words himself. It’s like he was quoting. He always sounds different when he quotes things. But where did he get a speech like that from? Do you know anyone who talks like that?”

Hernando shakes his head. “Not in real life or the movies.”

“Was he reading some kind of self-help book?”

Hernando nearly spits his coffee. “Dios mío, no!”

“That’s what I thought,” says Daniela, jabbing her fork in the air for emphasis. “And there’s the sleep-talking.” Hernando’s eyes light. Has he noticed something too? “Just last night, I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, and he was talking in English. Barely any accent. Better than my English, even, and I went to college in California. Lito’s English sucks, right?”

Hernando laughs a little. “He understands some, mostly from watching movies, but he can barely speak it.” He stares off into the clear morning sky and slowly chews on some egg. “I could have sworn I heard him speaking Korean in his sleep one night. And that time he called me while he was stuck in traffic, and he was acting so strangely. He mentioned a Korean woman crying, for some reason…”

“Do you have any idea what it could be?” says Daniela. “You don’t think he’s sick or something, do you?”

Hernando shakes his head. “Schizophrenia doesn’t make you suddenly able to speak a foreign language without an accent.”

Just then, the door to the apartment opens, and Lito comes in, flushed and sweaty, his T-shirt clinging to his chest. “Morning!” he calls to them. “Ooh, are those chilaquiles?”

“Lito,” Hernando says. “Can you say that line from Taxi Driver? The American movie with Robert de Niro?”

Lito grins, then strikes a pose with his shoulders up and his jaw jutting out like he’s some kind of tough guy. “You talkin’ to me?” Poor Lito doesn’t even try to put on the New York accent. Without the pose, Daniela’s not sure an American would recognize the line at all. “You talkin’ to me?”

Daniela and Hernando laugh. “Go take a shower,” says Hernando. “Then you can have chilaquiles.”

“Have I mentioned how much I love you, querido?” With that, he sprints to the bathroom.

“See?” says Hernando.

“Yeah.” Daniela fiddles her fork thoughtfully between her fingers. “I guess we’ll just have to ask him. Think he’ll lie?”

“He won’t. Now that you’ve pointed it out, Daniela, I think this is something serious.”

VI.

Daniela and Hernando decide they’d better wait to confront Lito until the next time they hear him speaking a foreign language in his sleep.

It happens a week later. Daniela is sleeping spooned behind Hernando sleeping spooned behind Lito. She wakes with Hernando’s hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her awake. It registers that Lito is speaking English with only a slight Mexican accent – about the same as Daniela’s own English. Then she actually listens to what he’s saying.

“Oh, yes, Amanita, yes! Oh, please, please let me fuck you, I need to feel you…”

Amanita? Daniela mouths. Hernando isn’t looking at her; she just needs to express her total confusion to the universe. It sounds like a woman’s name.

Lito shifts against the mattress like he’s humping it. “Mmm. You’re so wet. I love the way you smell when you’re like this.” He purrs. “Oh yeah. I’d love to lick you open first.”

Oh my God. Fighting like a real brawler and speaking good English is one thing, but having a sex dream about a woman? Something seriously weird is going on. Daniela rolls over and turns on the lamp.

Lito groans in an entirely different way and pulls his pillow over his head. Hernando tugs it away. “Hey. Hey there, love. Can you tell me who Amanita is?”

Daniela sits up so she can see Lito’s face. First he just blinks and squints in sleepy surprise. Then he laughs. “Amanita? What’s that?”

Hernando’s face isn’t visible, but when he speaks, Daniela pictures it tight and serious. “You can’t fool me, Lito. Don’t even try. You always laugh when you panic and try to lie to someone you actually care about.”

Lito covers his eyes with a hand and drags it downward. “If I tell the truth, you’re going to think I’m insane.”

“I saw you in that fight with Joaquin,” Daniela says. “I’ve heard you speak English with barely any accent. You just had a sex dream about a woman. I already feel like I might be going insane.”

“And that time we started having sex on the roof and moved inside,” Hernando says. Daniela winces: that’s when she took the pictures without them noticing, the ones Joaquin stole. “You didn’t make love to me the way you usually do. It was like you were exploring my body for the first time. It was very hot, certainly, but…”

Lito laughs again, this time for real, coming up from his belly instead of his throat. “Ay, Dios. I’ve spent weeks wondering how I’m going to tell you about this, and you’ve already noticed half of it on your own.”

“Noticed what?” Daniela demands.

Lito props himself up against the headboard and sighs. The last traces of the erection from his dream die away. “About two weeks ago – has it really been only two weeks? I started… experiencing things.” He closes his eyes and rubs the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Connections to other people. Like empathy, but more intense. I could see them and talk to them even though they weren’t there. I felt what they felt, did what they could do, and the reverse – they knew me, too. Over time I figured out that there were seven of them. Seven other people, in my head, from all over the world. One of them is Nomi, in San Francisco. Amanita is her girlfriend. They’re, ah, having a moment right now.”

Hernando’s face is still facing Lito, turned away from Daniela. Her chest hurts. She’s so lost right now. If only she could see Hernando, she would have some guide for how to feel about this. The words rise up her throat before she can think about them. “You’re saying you had a sex dream because there’s a lesbian in your head? Are you crazy?”

Lito’s voice is neutral, flat, but his eyes are as open and vulnerable as Daniela has ever seen them. “I don’t know. Am I?” He looks mostly at Hernando, but his eyes flick to Daniela too. His jaw clenches and unclenches.

Is this a test? Is he trying to figure out if he’s going to believe him, or is he really not sure if he’s crazy or not? Daniela has no idea what to say. It feels like half the night passes before Hernando says, “If you say you’re not crazy, I believe you. But you’re going to have to help me understand.”

Lito’s face relaxes. Daniela feels bad for doubting him, but she’s not Hernando. She still needs something more than faith. Lito says, “Nomi’s going to be pissed at me for interrupting her right now, but I can prove she’s real. Let me ask her for her number.” His eyes fix on a point in the middle distance. He did the same thing when he gave Daniela that speech about boundaries, didn’t he? His eyes focused on a point in the empty air to his left. Was it this Nomi who helped him say those words?

Daniela passes Hernando his phone and his glasses from the nightstand so he can take down the number. The area code is San Francisco for sure – Daniela recognizes it from her college years in San Diego. Hernando’s thumb hovers over the call button. “Ready?”

Lito lets out a shaky breath. “Yes. I’m pretty sure what’s been happening is real, but I want you to be sure, too.”

Hernando hits call, then turns on speakerphone. The dial tone sounds once, then a woman’s voice says, in lightly accented Spanish, “Hola? Hablo con Hernando?”

He almost drops the phone in surprise. “How did you know?”

“Lito told me you’d call. Besides, we’ve already met.”

“When?” Hernando stares at the phone as if he could stare down the woman at the other end.

“On the roof. Then inside. Then… inside. Sorry about that. I wouldn’t have intruded on you during sex without permission, except I didn’t really know what was going on until it – ”

“That was you! I knew there was something different that time.”

“Not just her,” Lito says. “Two of the others were there too.”

“Who? Were they hot?” Hernando shakes his head. “No, wait, don’t answer that. Okay, Nomi, if you were there with us on the roof, what music did we have playing on the sound system? Daniela, you were there, you can confirm.”

“Daniela’s there too? Hi, Daniela!”

Daniela rolls her eyes. “Answer the question.”

“It was that Macy Gray song.” Nomi sings in a rough, untrained voice. “All of your demons will wither away…”

Hernando does drop the phone this time. Daniela scoops it up. “Do you speak Spanish, Nomi?”

“No. I’m borrowing Lito’s Spanish to make sure Hernando can understand me.”

“Thank you,” says Daniela. “That explains a lot. Hey, are you the one who taught Lito about boundaries?”

“Yeah,” says Nomi, surprised.

“You were there for our conversation?”

“Yeah. Lito needed a little encouragement.”

“Yeah? Well, thank you. It was hard to hear, but… thank you.” Daniela considers. “You’re not the one who made Lito a badass fighter, are you?”

Nomi laughs. “No. That would be Wolfgang or Sun. And hey. It’s nice to meet you, Daniela. If you’re important to Lito, you’re important to me.”

“If that’s true, I’d better pass the phone back to Hernando.” She does, but she feels a little thrill of warmth. This is beyond weird, these people connected to Lito from across the world, but this one, at least, is looking out for him.

“What’s happening to you and Lito,” Hernando says to Nomi. “Is it dangerous?”

“Our connection isn’t dangerous,” says Nomi. “Or at least, it’s done us a lot more good than harm. But I’m going to be honest with you, Hernando. We have enemies. People who hate us because of what we are. None of them have come after Lito yet. But they’re coming after me.”

“What can we do?” Hernando says, quiet and firm. Lito meets Hernando’s eyes. His own are wide, gleaming with pure adoration and gratitude. He reaches out and squeezes Hernando’s hand. It makes Daniela want to hide under the covers. Their love for each other is just so much.

“Lito’s fame protects him. They can’t make him disappear without people noticing. He should stay in the public eye as much as he can.”

“I don’t think there’s a danger of our Lito fading into obscurity anytime soon,” Hernando says.

Lito scoffs and punches Hernando playfully in the shoulder. Then, more seriously, he says, “As long as all the others are okay, I will be okay.”

“Lito’s right. He may be the safest of all of us. But I’m in pretty immediate danger, and so are two of the others, Riley and Will. I don’t know what it’ll do to him if one of us gets caught or killed.”

“That can’t happen,” Lito says, jaw stubborn. It reminds Daniela of the look on his face when he told Joaquin, I don’t care what you do with the pictures.

“Lito’s been helping a lot already,” says Nomi. “But we can use whatever support we can get.”

“Helped you already?” Daniela says. “How?”

“Wolfgang helped me in my fight with Joaquin. Like I’m helping Nomi speak Spanish right now.”

“Okay, so you’re like a superhero team,” Daniela says. “Wolfgang is some kind of badass on your team who helps you kick ass if you need to. What’s your superpower, Lito?”

“Let me guess,” says Hernando. “You’re the actor. You help them be someone else for a little while.”

“Yes,” says Lito. “I’m the liar.”

Hernando leans back against the headboard so they’re shoulder to shoulder, and finally Daniela sees his face. His mouth is curled in a crooked half-smile. “Of course you would put it that way, mi amor. Haven’t you ever thought about how your acting can help reveal the truth?”

Lito’s gaze shifts from Hernando to a point just past the foot of the bed. He blinks, then ducks his head, embarrassed. Daniela asks, “Who was that?”

“Her name is Sun. She’s let me do her screaming for her, sometimes.”

Hernando smiles at Lito and kisses him on the cheek. “You’re good at that. Listen, Nomi. If there’s one thing we have here in Mexico, it’s money. Lito never knows what to do with all of it. So if you need cash, we can help. There’s also plenty of room in our apartment for one more.”

Daniela gathers the covers around her. What would the apartment be like with a stranger here, suddenly? Hernando must have thought the same thing when she showed up, but he was kind to her. She would have to learn to do the same. She owed the people in Lito’s head at least that much.

“Thank you, Hernando,” Nomi says softly. “I know it’s a lot to take in. You’re being kind of amazing right now. And I’m not just saying that because Lito’s sharing my head to lend me his Spanish.”

Hernando laughs and kisses Lito on the cheek again. “Tell Lito to tell me and Daniela if there’s anything else we can do.”

Me and Daniela. She leans her head on Hernando’s shoulder, her heart beating warm in her throat. She’s a part of this too.

“I’ll be looking out for him too, you know,” says Nomi. “He’s my brother.”

She says it as simple truth, even though she’s only been connected to Lito for two weeks. Then again, Daniela’s only been living with him for about that long, and she loves him. And she doesn’t even share a brain with him.

“Thank you, Nomi,” says Hernando. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight to you, too.”

The call ends. Lito cups the nape of Hernando’s neck and pulls him in for a deep, sweet kiss. Their eyes are intent, like they’re trying to dictate precise messages with their lips and teeth and tongues. It seems like they managed to communicate, because they pull away from the kiss only the tiniest bit, so their eyelashes still touch at their tips. Lito says, “Can you turn out the light, Daniela? I need to go back to sleep.”

“How can you sleep after that?” Daniela says. “My God, Lito! You’re psychic!”

“There’s still so much I don’t understand,” says Hernando, a little more calmly.

“I know you have questions. But if you’ll permit me, I’ll answer them tomorrow. Right now, I need to get some sleep. I have a meeting with my agent in the morning. It’s important.”

“Can we come with you?” Hernando says.

Lito breathes against his mouth. “Maybe you should. I have some big decisions to make.”

“Then we will,” says Daniela. “I don’t know how I can sleep right now, though. I feel so full of adrenaline. This thing you’re a part of, Lito – it’s amazing. And scary. I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

“I know what I’ll do,” says Lito. “I’ll go visit Riley. It’s five in the morning in Iceland, where she is. She’s asleep. She’s dreaming about…” He lies back, closes his eyes, and smiles. “Her father, playing the piano. The two of them are singing along.”

Hernando watches Lito, rapt, as if he could see right into his head, into the dreams of a woman halfway across the world. Daniela reaches over and turns out the light, as Hernando asks, “What are they singing?”

“Now that I’m in the dream,” says Lito, “they’re singing my favorite tango. She’s sitting with her legs crossed on the rug, looking up at her father, with the aurora borealis shining in through the window.” He breaks into his sweet, dark singing voice. “To feel that life is but a sigh / That twenty years is nothing. How fevered the gaze / Wandering in the shadows, that finds you and names you. To live / With my soul anchored to a sweet memory that I mourn once more.”

His voice is already trailing off by the end, and soon his breath evens out in sleep. Hernando isn’t there yet, though. Daniela taps his shoulder, and when he turns to face her, she squeezes his hand. “Hey. What’s going on?”

“I keep thinking back to before this started for him,” Hernando whispers back. “I feel like all these other people in his head must have changed him. I wonder if he’s still the same man.”

“Is he?” Daniela knew him before, but not the real him. Hernando would know.

“No,” says Hernando. “I think he’s a better man, now.”

“Does that mean we’re in love with eight people?”

“We’ll see. I haven’t met all the others yet.” Hernando pulls her hand up to his mouth and kisses her knuckles. “But if so, it’s not just eight. It’s nine.”

“Oh, Hernando,” she says, holding two fingers under his chin. “You would be able to love nine people.”

“So can you, Daniela. So can you.”

Two weeks ago, Daniela knew she couldn’t really love anyone. She knew she was broken. Now, she doesn’t know much of anything anymore. Maybe it’s time to stop knowing and start learning.

Daniela throws an arm across Hernando, resting her hand lightly on Lito’s hip, trying to hold them both in the span of her arm. Hold them all: Hernando, Lito, Nomi who taught him so much, Sun who let him scream for her, Wolfgang who gave him the strength to save Daniela, Riley who sings lullabies to him in her dreams, and all the other people who are a part of him now.