Chapter Text
Aaliyah cradles Cruz against the warm shelter of her chest. Her fingers spin nonsense patterns in her hair, and her free hand curves against the small of Cruz’s back.
Cruz thinks: I’ll fall asleep here. In this warm light, beneath the weight of her hand in my hair. I’ll fall asleep, and I won’t wake up, and how lovely will that be? Because as long as she’s awake, as long as she’s alive, she knows what has to come next.
Aaliyah uses one finger, posed at Cruz’s lower chin, to draw her gaze. The blue in her eyes is green where the yellow light crawls in. Redness at her lashlines lend them an old, exhausted sort of grief. Cruz knows that kind of grief, feels it now, a preemptive ache low in her gut. A ‘wait and see what’s coming’ sort of hurt. She thinks of a phone cord lashed against her ribs, the blazing point of a cigarette singing her skin, hoping the memories might distract her. But that pain was there and then gone, as long as she kept her mouth shut. This pain will last forever.
“I’ll never have this again,” Aaliyah says. Her trembling lips are full and painted an unusually purple shade - like the juice of a smashed plum. The idea that the color might be for Cruz’s benefit makes something held tight and coiled inside her unwind because fuck, it’s working, and fuck, it doesn’t matter. Cruz can’t touch Aaliyah like she wants to. Hold Aaliyah flush against her panting mouth and whisper her name inside. If she could, she would. She’d kiss Aaliyah hard enough to stain her own mouth. Transfer the color to something she can keep. Something that isn’t Aaliyah.
“This is the last time,” Aaliyah prods.
Cruz looks away as she says, “I can’t.” She looks away, because she wants to say: I can, I will, I have to, and she’s certain it shows in her eyes. That hunger. The way saying “no,” feels like losing her breath beneath an unscalable tide. The way everything, all of it, is bigger than her. And if Aaliyah looks at her for too long, really looks, she’ll tell the truth.
One more glance and she’ll unravel. One more prying question. One more time. And there won’t be a threat in the world that will stop her from scaling the tide, breaking the surface, finding her breath inside Aaliyah’s mouth.
I can’t sleep beside the woman whose father I’m supposed to kill.
That’s what she’d said.
But the words had been in the wrong place. Entire phrases negated.
What she should have said: I can’t kill the father of the woman who my heart sleeps inside.
But the phrasing wouldn’t have mattered. Anything Cruz can or can’t do is relative to Joe. If it kills her, but she succeeds - well. They extracted what they needed from her. They don’t concern themselves with the damage and loss that follows.
“I just want to feel loved,” Aaliyah says, and her voice is half sob and half plea, and Cruz’s resolve is crystal that only needs the high sound of Aaliyah’s hope to shatter it entirely.
The idea that Aaliyah could ever not be loved is laughable. While Cruz is here, or across the building, or anywhere on this fucking earth. While she still lives, while she still walks with the memory of Aaliyah. A humorless twist tugs at the corner of her mouth. She almost smiles. Almost.
“One last time,” she adds, and there’s a shame in her tremored voice, in the way she glances down at her own hands and hides her face from scrutiny.
Is it in the asking? The shame she must feel to have to beg. And Cruz knows - if you have to ask for love, then it isn’t really there. Any affection that follows is a constructed thing, a pitying. Cruz wants to say it could never be false - the way she wants Aaliyah. That Aaliyah should never have to beg. That if anyone is begging, it should be her, on her knees, face sunk into Aaliyah’s stomach. Asking for forgiveness or at least release.
Aaliyah’s hair is gathered away from her face. Long curls spill over her shoulders. In this light, her features are sharpened. Color coalesces. The red flush on her golden skin is almost purple. Her eyes gleam, reflective like a knife’s metal edge. The strong curve of her nose dressed in shadow, the line of her jaw sharp and sudden. Her body looks small in the dark satin that clothes her. Parts of her Cruz had only ever regarded as full - her chest, her hips, the sure shape of her strong shoulders - shrunken down. Maybe by circumstance, maybe by deprivation. Either way, Cruz did this to her. Hollowed her out.
It hasn’t made her any less beautiful. Nothing could.
Cruz focuses on her breathing. One slow inhale followed by an even slower exhale. Again and again. She imagines Joe’s voice. Focus, marine. She imagines the insults and threats she’d bark into her ears. She tries to become that person. The marine. Hard edges, quick hands, fingers on a trigger. Boom. Breathe.
In her periphery, Aaliyah’s lips part, and Cruz loses the count. A sharp inhale, an unstable exhale. Focus. But she can’t. She can’t even breathe.
Aaliyah says “I know you.”
Cruz probably answers. She thinks she might say, “You don’t.” But there’s a ringing in her ears and the only sound that makes it through the clatter is Aaliyah’s voice.
She asks, “Are you my friend?”
None of Cruz’s answers cease Aaliyah’s line of questioning.
None of her cold words make it stop.
And then Aaliyah leans over her, and Cruz’s world narrows to the dark shadow of her body, the sweet smell of her breath. Aaliyah says, “You know you want this.” And fuck, Cruz does. She wants it more than she’s scared. She wants it more than she’s been conditioned not to. She wants it more than she’s ever wanted anything.
“You know that.” Aaliyah urges. Cruz knows that, from Aaliyah, these words aren’t a demand. Not cajoling, not tactful. If they’d come from the mouth of any man she’d been with, they would be. They’d be a trap. But from Aaliyah, there is a question. An implied lilt at the end. Do you know that? Do I know that?
There’s no resistance. Because Cruz does know it. Better than anything.
Aaliyah presses her palm against Cruz’s chest, leaning in with all her warmth and the plum purple shade of her lips and the sweet, florid smell of her perfume.
Her lips surround Cruz’s, like a hook finding its mark, forcing them apart. Only it isn’t force that opens Cruz’s mouth. It’s want, more than anything. Its defeat. The initial soft touch of Aaliyah’s lips, the way she kisses deeper after that first time, her eyes fluttering open to investigate Cruz’s reaction.
Then Cruz’s body is flush against Aaliyah’s, and she thinks maybe it’s Aaliyah that pulls her on top. Her hands against Cruz’s thighs, guiding her where she wants her. Because that’s how it has gone before. But she realizes it isn’t Aaliyah that puts her there. It’s her own arms, her own will.
She presses into Aaliyah, her knees folded at the other woman’s sides. Chest against chest. Stomach against stomach. Cruz’s mouth finding hers and pressing with all the weight she has. She hears her own panting, the way it’s made louder by the cave of Aaliyah’s mouth.
Cruz makes a sound that she hopes communicates some semblance of protest. But she knows it doesn’t. She knows there’s only want forming the noise in her throat. And she knows Aaliyah is too adept at the language of her body to interpret it as anything else.
Two hours.
Two hours they’d spent, merging over those sheets, smiling against each others mouths, forgetting the facts of their desperation, the binds that waited for them outside of the room, just hours or days away.
Two hours for Aaliyah to come to understand Cruz’s body better than anyone ever had. Herself included.
Aaliyah moves below her, directs the heat of her mouth to a spot just below Cruz’s jaw that renders her a weak and writhing mess. Aaliyah moans, like the touch she lends Cruz affects her the same.
And this is when Cruz knows - she won’t turn back. She can’t. For all her strength, for all the ways her mind and body have been molded and poised towards someone else’s wars and whims, this is stronger. Aaliyah is bigger than any of it.
In another life, where Cruz is good and kind and worthy, she pulls away. Like a spring released; the pull outmatched. Her feet find the cold tile floor. And she says “I can’t fucking do this.” She repeats herself. She breathes. One long inhale, an even longer exhale. She leaves the room. Slams the doors hard enough that it shudders in its frame.
Let’s Aaliyah wait there, believing she isn’t loved, believing she has to beg for it and even then it won’t be enough.
In another life, Cruz is decent, and when she first finds Aaliyah in the cold halls of the shopping center, she sees the warmth in her eyes and never gives her a name. Never pronounces the sharp syllables of that fabricated identity. Zara. Adid.
She turns around. She leaves.
In another life, where Cruz is someone who can be forgiven, she turns away when Joe offers her a fancy title and a challenge. She never asks for the specifics. She’s never there, in the first place. She’s spent all the money she has on bus rides to somewhere else, and she’s serving tables in a small town where no one knows her name.
She’s never held a gun in anyone’s face.
She’s never pulled the trigger.
But that’s another life. And in this one, she’s a wretched, wanting thing.
Cruz digs one hand in Aaliyah’s hair, the other in the soft swell of her breasts. She squeezes, hard, both hands altering the landscape of Aaliyah’s body. Taking memories for themselves.
The heat of Aaliyah’s mouth. How it grows, coaxed by her own. And then there’s a second heat, a wet one. She realizes it’s her own tears when she hears the strangled sob. Aaliyah presses against her chest, forces their bodies apart. Fuck, it’s painful. That separation. A cruel premonition.
Aaliyah’s eyes search her own. The contact makes her feel unclothed. Spotlighted underneath harsh fluorescents. She feels the instinct - bright and piercing - to pull away. But it doesn’t win.
“Don’t,” Aaliyah says, but it’s a question rather than a demand. Her thumb below Cruz’s eye, contending with their seeping mess. Aaliyah wipes some away, and more spill out.
“I’m sorry,” Cruz manages, “I’m really fucking sorry.” Another tidal wave of it follows. That wet grief, coating Aaliyah’s fingers.
Aaliyah tries again, “It’s okay,” her voice softer now than Cruz thought possible. Not a whisper, but close. The words emptied of anybody, any sway. She doesn’t believe what she’s saying. She knows that nothing about any of this is okay.
Cruz shoves her palm messily into the space below her eyes, wiping hard enough that her skin stings. Aaliyah stills her hands. Kisses her eyelids, her cheeks, her neck, her lower jaw. Mouth open, tongue joining the work of her lips.
When she kisses Cruz again, her taste is salty. Her tongue is a wave that builds against Cruz’s teeth until her jaw grows loose and lets her in. Cruz’s hands rove over Aaliyah’s hips, exploring the concave spaces between her ribs. They’re at Aaliyah’s thighs when the feeling becomes too much. When the lightning strikes down her back and pulses between her legs.
Her nails dig into the soft flesh of Aaliyah’s thighs and Aaliyah whimpers. A sad, desperate sound. Cruz matches it with her own.
“Careful,” Aaliyah says.
Cruz feels a heavy weight fall from her chest to her stomach. “I hurt you.”
“No, I want it, but Ehsan….” Ehsan.
“If he sees, he’ll-” Aaliyah doesn't provide the end of this rationale, and Cruz is grateful for it. If she did - if she detailed the abuse she's only thus far hinted at - Cruz isn't sure where she'd put the pain of knowing. She isn't sure there’s space for more.
“He knows, but- he doesn’t like it paraded before him.” Aaliyah guides Cruz’s hands to her back, “Here,” She breathes.
Cruz doesn't understand. Surely, he’ll find the marks there, too. See the bright red evidence of Cruz’s nails. Her pleasure, spelled out in vivid script. “But-” Cruz starts.
“He's not that kind of lover. He doesn't look beyond what's necessary.”
Something twists inside Cruz. This man, who will have everything she wants, who will call Aaliyah wife, won't even see her. Won't ever realize what he has. Won't ever touch her, beyond brief perfunctory contact.
Aaliyah must see the pain in Cruz’s face. She cradles her cheek and adds “it's for the best. For me.”
And Cruz realizes what she means. Because Aaliyah will never want Ehsan. She’ll never meet him below the sheets with desire. Only with a sense of duty. Only without any semblance of choice.
It all rushes in, and Cruz is sobbing again, because she can't do anything about it. She can't fix this - she can only make it worse. She is making it worse. And she will make it unbearable soon. Soon.
Then Aaliyah is crying, too, dark makeup spilling down her face in river-like patterns.
“Maybe you don't want this?” Aaliyah asks, “Maybe I was wrong?”
Before Cruz can answer, guilt twists Aaliyah’s expression. Her eyes are stricken, filling. “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck,” Cruz moves one arm below Aaliyah’s, lifts her gently until she's upright, until her mouth is close enough. She presss Aaliyah’s back against the headboard and guides Aaliyah’s fingers below her waistband.
“No, Aaliyah. Please.” She pleads. “I want this so fucking much.”
She presses Aaliyah’s fingers further, past another layer of fabric, and then into the wet mess she’s made between Cruz’s legs.
“See how much I want this?” She asks, because she has to make Aaliyah know somehow. That she was wanted. That she'll always be wanted and-
Loved.
As long as Cruz is still here. Or across the world - if she’s alive, she’ll be hurting for Aaliyah. Wanting her. Loving her.
Aaliyah’s fingers move slowly between her thighs, growing slick, and then moving faster and faster. And Cruz is a mess of sound. Whimpers. Moans through clenched teeth that become something harder - like a shout or a sob. It embarrasses her - the depth and height of the sound. It’s not something she’s ever had to worry about before. She’d only been with men, only ever made sounds of pain or rage.
This time, like last time, Aaliyah orders, “Louder.” And Cruz doesn’t understand why she wants the raucous display of her pleasure. But earlier, with Aaliyah’s lips at the secret cove of Cruz’s throat, she unraveled. The Cruz that might have done what’s right, or at least something close to it, was smothered under the weight of this Cruz who wants Aaliyah more than anything else, more than her freedom, more than her safety, more than oxygen in her lungs.
This Cruz would give Aaliyah anything she asks.
This Cruz grinds against Aaliyah’s palm, and bends to press her mouth to Aaliyah’s neck. She moans, and she begs, and she melts into the gift of the sounds Aaliyah makes in response. Somewhere, buried beneath the embarrassment and the shame, some secreted part of her alights at the idea that something as simple as these sounds, strangled and clumsy as they are, could move Aaliyah. Be something she recounts, alone, in her bed.
Cruz whimpers, “Aaliyah.”
She moans, “More.”
She begs, “Faster.”
And she hopes these words aren’t too much, and that also, they’re enough. That they give Aaliyah the things she’s asked for. The evidence of Cruz’s desire. The aching thing Aaliyah’s made of her body.
Aaliyah’s fingers weave a sensation that leaps from her center to her spine, to the bruised landscape of her neck, to her mouth. And she can feel Aaliyah everywhere - maybe even more in the places she never touches. Her heels. Her wrists.
Cruz is close. Close to the thing that’s only ever been coaxed from her by Aaliyah or herself. The thing that’s theirs alone.
“Stop,” Cruz moans, “Stop.”
It takes three tries to still the rhythmic sway of her own hips, and when she does, she aches where Aaliyah’s fingers cease. She wants to keep going, to come undone, but they’ve been here before. It’s a memory Cruz already has, and she doesn’t know how much time they have left.
There’s a memory she doesn’t have yet. And it feels like it’s the one that will tether everything. Make the pain to come - whatever shape it takes - bearable.
Aaliyah begins to ask why but Cruz smothers the words, kissing her hard enough that she tastes iron and isn’t sure whose lips it spills from. Then she says, “Tell me what to do.” She’s crying again, and only knows it because the salt of tears mixed with the zing of blood mingle on her tongue.
“Tell me what to do,” she says again, and the sound is panicked. Like the call of someone drowning, only quiet. She means so many different things, but only one in particular. Show me how to make you unravel. Come apart in my arms the way I have yours. Show me how.
Aaliyah says, “You don’t need me to tell you.”
“I do,” Cruz begs, “Please.”
Aaliyah, below her, trembles. “Undress me,” she says. And Cruz does, slowly lifting the black silken fabric over her shoulders. There’s nothing else beneath but a thin slip of fabric at her hips. And then her body: a map of places Cruz wants to do more than visit just once. She wants to live and die in each destination. She never wants to know the feeling of leaving, only arriving. She takes a nonsense route, and her mouth joins the work of her fingers. She kisses the skin at Aaliyah’s collarbone, taut over the landscape of bone. Moves to Aaliyah’s neck, licks the muscles that strain beneath her skin. Notes how warm the skin of her ribs is, harbored below the weight of her breasts.
Aaliyah whimpers, and that’s an instruction as well as a gift. Lower. And Cruz abides.
She thinks, briefly, of all the instructions she’s ignored. All the demands and threats that loom over her like a gathering storm. She knows by doing this, she’s not running. She’s not hiding or saving either of them. She’s only taking what she can, in this small space of time, between their meeting and their demise.
Inwardly, she begs herself to stop. Don’t take anymore. But she only kisses Aaliyah harder, as if her body is telling her mind to submit. Her body has won this fight.
Aaliyah says her name, only it isn’t her name. It’s someone else’s. “Zara.” And she’s back here, mouth lost in the woman she loves. She’s not imagining a Cruz who decided something better and kinder. She grips Aaliyah’s hips, and moves lower. Then she’s folded in the space between Aaliyah’s thighs and she knows her tongue has found the right place because Aaliyah bends towards her mouth. She digs her hands into Cruz’s hair and pulls.
She says her name again, “Zara.” and Cruz can pretend, for a second, the name is one syllable instead of two. The name is hers. And that makes a pleasure like nothing else rip through her. Tear through her body and almost send her over the edge.
If in some other world, she could tell Aaliyah her name, and hear her cry it out. Cruz, Cruz, Cruz. How would she survive it? Maybe, in that way, this alias protects her from the breadth of what this thing between them could be otherwise.
The sound of “Zara” is already so much. Too much. Cruz is trembling all over, her hands slipping from Aaliyah’s hips. But she doesn’t stop. She keeps flicking her tongue, and feeling it between her own legs. A phantom touch. Every sound Aaliyah makes is a hand between her thighs, fingers slipping in.
And then Aaliyah’s jerking against her, riding the movement of her tongue, breathing like she’s taking in all she can before she disappears beneath water. And then her voice is an echo repeated against a cave’s walls. “Zara, Zara, Zara.” And Cruz thinks: her name is whatever Aaliyah calls her. She’ll be whatever Aaliyah needs, for now, in this space of time that can’t stretch beyond the night. As long as Aaliyah deserves. As long as Cruz doesn’t.
One final cry, and a sudden rush of wetness down Cruz’s jaw. Everything inside her clenches and bends towards the sound and taste of Aaliyah’s collapse.
She’s slow to find Aaliyah’s mouth again - stopping first at her stomach and her nipples and the red flush spanning her neck - and once she arrives there’s a new taste to share.
“You’re shaking,” Aaliyah observes, and her voice trembles.
Cruz smiles, the muscles surrounding the movement stiff from disuse.
She says, “You too.”
And Aaliyah nods.
Cruz observes the ruinous set of her features: the site of her undone. Her lips parted. Sweat glistening at the high points of her cheeks and along the line of her jaw. Eyes barely open, only a slice of blue against the flushed crimson backdrop of her skin.
And that’s the memory. The one she’ll have to keep to survive whatever comes next. This is the last time.
Cruz’s mouth crumples, and tears from her own eyes join the sweat on Aaliyah’s skin.
Aaliyah kisses her in a way that prompts more, the heat of her mouth sudden against Cruz. And that’s when she knows - it wasn’t the last time. The relief is like cold water gulped beneath a beating sun. Shocking, and painful, too - a throat working to accommodate a relief so extreme.
Aaliyah fumbles for her white top, and somehow in the haze of tearing it away from her body, that purple lipstick finds its way to the fabric’s folds. This is what she’ll keep. What she’ll never wash again. Her totem, this worship. A keepsake.
Aaliyah kisses down the length of her chest, lingering at the bruises on her abdomen. Pressing the heat of her mouth there, as if her breath might be healing, might chase the blood beneath her skin somewhere else where it won’t hurt her.
It’s a combination of teeth and fingers that pull her boxers from her body. And even though Cruz doesn’t see, she knows Aaliyah’s left the color of her mouth there, too. Another thing she’ll never wash. Another portal to this memory. Their bodies, meeting below yellow light.
Cruz gasps at Aaliyah’s lips against that bundle of nerves. Her thighs clench despite her, as if to keep Aaliyah there. But it’s brief, the contact. Aaliyah is at her mouth again in seconds, and Cruz is clenching around nothing but the memory of that sensation.
Aaliyah’s hands command Cruz’s shoulders, and moves them so Aaliyah is beneath her. Some of her hair is wet, sticking to her temples, the rest is sprawled in dark wave-like patterns on the sheets. Like ink spilled, left to soak onto the fabric.
She guides Cruz’s leg between her thighs. She guides Cruz into a rocking movement, a docked ship over water, returning again and again to the shore. And Cruz becomes the rhythm, back and forth, the muscles in her thighs and back working.
Aaliyah moans. And Cruz can feel her moving, too, that imprecise contact of her own body stirring the space between Cruz’s thighs. It isn’t the same as Aaliyah’s mouth, or her fingers, but it’s still everything.
And Aaliyah’s face. Her lips parting to let the sound fall out and vibrate against Cruz’s skin. Her eyes clenched shut and then fluttering open. A line appearing between her brow and then softening. A flush consuming every available inch of her, especially deep at her cheeks.
“Fuck,” Cruz groans. She’s holding Aaliyah’s jaw, then her cheek, as her mouth roves hard against hers.
“Don’t say it again,” She manages through the chaos.
“What?”
“Don’t say it again,” she repeats. She slows the movement of her hips, trains her eyes on Aaliyah’s. Even though it hurts to stop, even the the contact, their gazes meeting, makes her feel more naked. A live wire, exposed, waiting to be ignited into flame and explosion.
“That it’s the last time.” She fights to keep her voice steady, to keep her eyes on Aaliyah’s. “I love you. I’ll always fucking love you, Aaliyah.” She inhales sharply. Exhales shakily. She has to finish it. “I need you to remember that. If there’s ever anything that makes you question-“
Confusion consumes Aaliyah’s features. Brow knitted, mouth downturned.
“Just remember. This part isn’t a lie.”
Aaliyah opens her mouth to speak, to question, but Cruz doesn’t allow it. It can’t do them any good now. She buries Aaliyah’s lips in her own. She moves her hips fast. She feels her her knee slip into the wetness that waits for her between Aaliyah’s thighs.
Cruz pants, Aaliyah whimpers. Then they trade places, Cruz’s mouth a ruin of sounds and pleas. Aaliyah’s fingers dig into her back, and Cruz guides them to her arms. “Where I can see them,” she breathes. Because she has that privilege. She can wear the wounds of Aaliyah’s pleasure without inspiring a man’s ire. If she ever makes it home, she can regard them, glistening in the dark. She can remember Aaliyah’s fingers, and her hands, and the shape of her pleasure.
Cruz is there - she’s been there, but she holds back. She wants to look into Aaliyah’s eyes as she does, she wants Aaliyah to meet her there. Watch her fall apart, watch her gaze turn vitreous, her mouth fill with those sounds of want.
And then she does. Then she arches against Cruz’s hold. Bends into the touch. Her eyes roll to the back of her head, and Cruz lets the sensation erupt in her. Invade every nerve.
This is her Monet. Her water Lillies and her Starry, Starry Night. Her Mona Lisa, her Last Supper. The Creation of Adam, the Birth of Venus. Faith and desire and prayers on her knees in worship of this one image, one moment. The sight of Aaliyah coming undone. The orchestra of Cruz’s own nerves a soundtrack accompanying the visual.
Aaliyah, every color brought to one canvas.
Blue: her eyes, revealed in the aftermath, fluttering open.
Red: the flush, a gradient of flame.
Yellow: the light, pooling in the dips of her form. Her collarbones, the sinews of her neck, her lower lip.
The deepest shadows and the bright, glistening light.
The last time.
The only thing she can take with her. Until she’s dead and gone, and maybe even then, held inside her body after the rest decays. An enduring bulb, animated by something archaic, bright and flickering in the cradle of her bones. Packed beneath the soil. The light traveling six feet up, lighting the ground and the grievers’ heels.
The memory of Aaliyah.