The First Time, Chapter 5
Title: The First Time
Rating: R
A/N: Okay, we're going to take a break from the angst for a second. Well, maybe not entirely. But I hope this chapter at least brings a smile to your face. It made me smile to write it, bittersweet though it was.
Read Chapter 1 here
Read Chapter 2 here
Read Chapter 3 here
Read Chapter 4 here
Chapter 5
The first time Pepa dreams about her and Silvia’s wedding, she does not dream about how it was. She dreams about how it should have been.
And there are days when Pepa is hard-pressed to decide which is worse.
There would have been no El Gordo, no gunshot. There would have been no mafia threat, and Aitor and Lucas wouldn’t have been acting like two boys fighting over the same toy in the sandbox. Curtis would have been there with them, and Montoya, Kike, and Nelson would have enjoyed the day just like everyone else.
It would have just been their day. Their simple, beautiful, perfect day, surrounded by their family and friends who loved them.
The afternoon lunch turns into dusk, candles are lit, and the quartet Don Lorenzo hired as a surprise starts to play. A waltz. Taking a deep breath, Pepa turns to her new wife and offers her her hand.
Silvia looks at her, quirks an eyebrow. Pepa knows exactly what she’s thinking, but Pepa returns her look with a steady gaze, challenging her. She stands up, hand still offered. Silvia’s eyebrow rises still more, slightly amused, but she takes the hand, and rises.
Pepa leads her onto the dance floor. Turning her wife into her arms, she slides her right arm around her waist, gently grasps her hand in hers, and smoothly slides into the first steps of the waltz. Silvia, taken by surprise, falters, but quickly recovers, following the brunette’s lead.
Pepa grins down at her, and Silvia shakes her head.
“Don’t ever stop surprising me,” she says.
“I don’t intend to,” Pepa answers. She steals a glance over at Don Lorenzo, who smiles his encouragement and nods. It does not go unnoticed by Silvia. She narrows her eyes at Pepa, looks at her father, and then back to her wife.
“What exactly went on this morning at Paco’s?” she asks.
Pepa gives her her best innocent look.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Princess.”
By her expression, Silvia makes no secret of the fact that she doesn’t believe a word Pepa just said.
“I don’t know which is worse - you and my father at each other’s throats, or you two becoming friends.”
Pepa grins again, and guides her in a sweeping arc, Silvia now easily going along.
“I guess you’ll find out.”
The party is winding down. Wine has been drunk, and no one can say the dance floor hasn’t been well-used. Family and friends are coming up to the new couple one by one or in pairs.
There are the usual well-wishes and tearful sentiments. Because it’s this group, there are, of course, several less-than-subtle comments about the wedding night, and Pepa watches Silvia blush furiously, especially when she discovers her father mere feet away from them. (It’s a trait Pepa finds especially endearing - that Silvia can talk about the blood and intestines of someone who’s been found in four separate parts without batting an eye, but the mention of their sex life in public sends a flush through her cheeks to rival her hair.) Curtis, naturally, tries to offer his considerable “services” later that evening, which promptly earns him an eye-roll from Silvia, and a none-too-gentle swat from Pepa. He simply grins, shrugs, and dances away, already in pursuit of one of the female waiters.
Don Lorenzo is the last to leave. He embraces his new daughter-in-law, placing kisses on both cheeks.
“Take care of her,” he whispers in her ear.
Pepa nods. “Always.”
And then he’s got Silvia in a fierce hug, crushing her to him.
He whispers something Pepa doesn’t quite catch, but Silvia pulls away, looks at her with tears in her eyes, and then back at her father and nods.
“Okay, then,” he says, and he, too, turns to leave, swiping suspiciously at his eyes as he walks out the door.
Silvia watches her father go, and then turns back to Pepa. Her eyes are tearing, but there’s a happy, contented smile on her lips. Pepa returns the smile, and then grins impishly.
“It’s just you and me, Pelirroja,” she says. Silvia’s smile widens.
“Stay there,” she says. And then she turns, walking to the quartet who’s starting to pack up its instruments. But at Silvia’s approach, the four pause, and after a few words from her, they all take up their instruments and begin to play. Pepa does not recognize the song, but it’s soft and slow and perfect for the waning candlelight and light breeze moving through the doors at the other end of the room.
Silvia approaches her.
“Dance with me, Pepa.”
Pepa moves forward, meets her wife half way, and takes her in her arms.
It is the dance from last night, from the darkness of Cachis, except this time there are no rules to worry about.
Silvia is close and they’re swaying together, lost in the music and each other. Pepa’s hands stroke over her wife’s back, her shoulders, the nape of her neck. She delights in being free to touch every part of her, and Silvia obviously feels the same. Pepa feels her hands sliding around her waist, feathering over the small of her back. She feels like she could almost purr, and her lips part as she drops her head closer to Silvia’s.
“Pelirroja,” she breathes.
Silvia tilts her head to look up at her, and Pepa can easily read the look in her eyes. She loves that look in Silvia’s eyes, the one that says she wants Pepa and only Pepa. She leans up and her mouth comes tantalizingly close to hers before pulling away again.
“Pepa,” Silvia whispers against her lips.
Pepa is thinking that the anticipation running through her could possibly kill her right now.
“Yeah?” she manages.
Silvia reaches up to touch her cheek and steals the smallest, most chaste of kisses from her.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
The three words actually make Pepa go weak in the knees. She always assumed that was just an expression. She shivers and Silvia gives her a knowing smile.
Giving into the fact that she is, after all, only human, Pepa leans forward to capture Silvia’s mouth in a much more substantial kiss. She is rewarded when the redhead whimpers and opens her mouth under hers. Pepa can taste the champagne that Silvia has been sipping all evening combined with the flavor that is uniquely hers.
Pepa is vaguely aware that they’re giving the quartet quite a show, but she simply has no room to care. If the entire San Antonio police force was standing on the sidelines right now, she’d still kiss Silvia just as hard.
Pulling away far before she wants to, Pepa nods her assent.
“Best. Idea. Ever,” she says, her voice catching on each word.
Silvia’s lips quirk, and taking Pepa’s hand in hers, she leads her wife off the dance floor. She thanks the quartet on their way, and the newly married couple receives smiles and winks as they head out the door and up the stairs.
“You realize what those guys are thinking about right now, don’t you?” Pepa asks, following Silvia up the stairs.
Silvia tugs on her hand.
“Let them,” she says, throwing a suggestive glance back at Pepa. “They have no idea how good it’s really going to be.”
Lying tangled up with her wife, Pepa’s first coherent thought in more than an hour is that “good” does not even begin to describe it. It is, in fact, such a poor choice that Pepa dismisses it outright. There may actually be no word for it. She thinks it’s possible that Silvia might know one, but she is in no condition to offer suggestions. The redhead is sound asleep. It always amuses Pepa, how utterly spent Silvia is after they make love. It is one time when Pepa cannot fault her perfectionist tendencies - she can never say Silvia does not give one hundred percent.
Pepa props herself up on one elbow and studies her new wife sleeping beside her. Her eyes sweep over the red hair that her fingers were so recently tangled in, now curling in damp tendrils around her face. She lingers for several moments on the mouth that traveled so slowly over every inch of Pepa’s skin. She shivers at the memory and has to bite her lip to keep from making a sound. Pepa’s eyes continue over the pale shoulder, the curve of her breast under the white sheet, the rise and fall of her ribs as she breathes. When her eyes reach the flare of Silvia’s hip, she reaches out and gently palms it, the memory of Silvia arching into her vivid and immediate.
Silvia stirs, stretches. “Why are you staring at me?” she mumbles.
Pepa smiles. “How do you know I’m staring? You were just asleep.”
“I can feel you,” her wife explains around a yawn. She shifts to the side and the sheet covering her falls.
Dear God.
Pepa’s self-control is not this good.
“I just wanted to look at you, Princess,” Pepa says, unable to help herself as she leans down to place kisses across Silvia’s flat belly. She moves lower, and when she encounters the half-moon scar across her wife’s lower abdomen, she reverently traces it with her mouth. “I have to memorize you so I can tell our kids how beautiful their mother is.”
“Mmmmm….” Silvia responds, and Pepa isn’t sure if she heard what she just said. She’s reaching for Pepa, but suddenly Pepa evades her hands. There is something she needs to say, and she needs Silvia to hear it. She crawls back up so she’s eye level with her wife.
“Silvia, open your eyes,” she instructs.
Silvia, only half awake, does not immediately respond.
Pepa palms her cheek. “Hey, Princess, come on, open your eyes.”
This time, Silvia does. Pepa looks directly into them.
“You know we’re going to have them, right?” she asks earnestly.
Silvia’s eyebrows knit together. “Have what?”
“Kids, Silvia,” Pepa says softly, “We’re going to have kids. As many as you want.”
Her wife looks at her with complete adoration, her eyes large and liquid.
“Really?” she asks.
Pepa nods, touching her forehead to Silvia’s.
“Really, Pelirroja.”
It is at this point that Pepa wakes up.
The thought of Silvia holding a child, their child, is too much for even her subconscious to bear. She sits up in bed, flinging the clammy sheet off herself, shoving damp hair away from her face.
She gets out of bed, paces, her heart racing.
The dream will repeat itself in the weeks to come. Not all of it together, not after the first night. It will come in snippets, like a movie trailer. Sometimes she will be dancing with Silvia, and sometimes Curtis will be playfully leering at them. Sometimes Silvia will have her head thrown back, calling out Pepa’s name, and sometimes Don Lorenzo will be telling her to take care of his little girl. And there are nights when they will lie quietly together and make a promise to start a family.
The first night, Pepa thinks she will never be able to sleep again. She cannot imagine being reminded again and again of what she has lost. Of what she never had.
But eventually she has to sleep, she cannot avoid it. And after the first few nights of waking up gasping for breath and clutching damp sheets hard in her fists, she learns instead to welcome the dreams. Because in the dreams, Silvia is alive and whole and Pepa can touch her and talk to her.
She learns to use them. The images drive her, fuel her. When she wakes each morning, alone, the aching loss just as fresh as the morning before, she lets the anger of it permeate every inch of her. And it is how she knows with each passing day that her plan is the right one. The only one.
Rating: R
A/N: Okay, we're going to take a break from the angst for a second. Well, maybe not entirely. But I hope this chapter at least brings a smile to your face. It made me smile to write it, bittersweet though it was.
Read Chapter 1 here
Read Chapter 2 here
Read Chapter 3 here
Read Chapter 4 here
Chapter 5
The first time Pepa dreams about her and Silvia’s wedding, she does not dream about how it was. She dreams about how it should have been.
And there are days when Pepa is hard-pressed to decide which is worse.
There would have been no El Gordo, no gunshot. There would have been no mafia threat, and Aitor and Lucas wouldn’t have been acting like two boys fighting over the same toy in the sandbox. Curtis would have been there with them, and Montoya, Kike, and Nelson would have enjoyed the day just like everyone else.
It would have just been their day. Their simple, beautiful, perfect day, surrounded by their family and friends who loved them.
The afternoon lunch turns into dusk, candles are lit, and the quartet Don Lorenzo hired as a surprise starts to play. A waltz. Taking a deep breath, Pepa turns to her new wife and offers her her hand.
Silvia looks at her, quirks an eyebrow. Pepa knows exactly what she’s thinking, but Pepa returns her look with a steady gaze, challenging her. She stands up, hand still offered. Silvia’s eyebrow rises still more, slightly amused, but she takes the hand, and rises.
Pepa leads her onto the dance floor. Turning her wife into her arms, she slides her right arm around her waist, gently grasps her hand in hers, and smoothly slides into the first steps of the waltz. Silvia, taken by surprise, falters, but quickly recovers, following the brunette’s lead.
Pepa grins down at her, and Silvia shakes her head.
“Don’t ever stop surprising me,” she says.
“I don’t intend to,” Pepa answers. She steals a glance over at Don Lorenzo, who smiles his encouragement and nods. It does not go unnoticed by Silvia. She narrows her eyes at Pepa, looks at her father, and then back to her wife.
“What exactly went on this morning at Paco’s?” she asks.
Pepa gives her her best innocent look.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Princess.”
By her expression, Silvia makes no secret of the fact that she doesn’t believe a word Pepa just said.
“I don’t know which is worse - you and my father at each other’s throats, or you two becoming friends.”
Pepa grins again, and guides her in a sweeping arc, Silvia now easily going along.
“I guess you’ll find out.”
The party is winding down. Wine has been drunk, and no one can say the dance floor hasn’t been well-used. Family and friends are coming up to the new couple one by one or in pairs.
There are the usual well-wishes and tearful sentiments. Because it’s this group, there are, of course, several less-than-subtle comments about the wedding night, and Pepa watches Silvia blush furiously, especially when she discovers her father mere feet away from them. (It’s a trait Pepa finds especially endearing - that Silvia can talk about the blood and intestines of someone who’s been found in four separate parts without batting an eye, but the mention of their sex life in public sends a flush through her cheeks to rival her hair.) Curtis, naturally, tries to offer his considerable “services” later that evening, which promptly earns him an eye-roll from Silvia, and a none-too-gentle swat from Pepa. He simply grins, shrugs, and dances away, already in pursuit of one of the female waiters.
Don Lorenzo is the last to leave. He embraces his new daughter-in-law, placing kisses on both cheeks.
“Take care of her,” he whispers in her ear.
Pepa nods. “Always.”
And then he’s got Silvia in a fierce hug, crushing her to him.
He whispers something Pepa doesn’t quite catch, but Silvia pulls away, looks at her with tears in her eyes, and then back at her father and nods.
“Okay, then,” he says, and he, too, turns to leave, swiping suspiciously at his eyes as he walks out the door.
Silvia watches her father go, and then turns back to Pepa. Her eyes are tearing, but there’s a happy, contented smile on her lips. Pepa returns the smile, and then grins impishly.
“It’s just you and me, Pelirroja,” she says. Silvia’s smile widens.
“Stay there,” she says. And then she turns, walking to the quartet who’s starting to pack up its instruments. But at Silvia’s approach, the four pause, and after a few words from her, they all take up their instruments and begin to play. Pepa does not recognize the song, but it’s soft and slow and perfect for the waning candlelight and light breeze moving through the doors at the other end of the room.
Silvia approaches her.
“Dance with me, Pepa.”
Pepa moves forward, meets her wife half way, and takes her in her arms.
It is the dance from last night, from the darkness of Cachis, except this time there are no rules to worry about.
Silvia is close and they’re swaying together, lost in the music and each other. Pepa’s hands stroke over her wife’s back, her shoulders, the nape of her neck. She delights in being free to touch every part of her, and Silvia obviously feels the same. Pepa feels her hands sliding around her waist, feathering over the small of her back. She feels like she could almost purr, and her lips part as she drops her head closer to Silvia’s.
“Pelirroja,” she breathes.
Silvia tilts her head to look up at her, and Pepa can easily read the look in her eyes. She loves that look in Silvia’s eyes, the one that says she wants Pepa and only Pepa. She leans up and her mouth comes tantalizingly close to hers before pulling away again.
“Pepa,” Silvia whispers against her lips.
Pepa is thinking that the anticipation running through her could possibly kill her right now.
“Yeah?” she manages.
Silvia reaches up to touch her cheek and steals the smallest, most chaste of kisses from her.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
The three words actually make Pepa go weak in the knees. She always assumed that was just an expression. She shivers and Silvia gives her a knowing smile.
Giving into the fact that she is, after all, only human, Pepa leans forward to capture Silvia’s mouth in a much more substantial kiss. She is rewarded when the redhead whimpers and opens her mouth under hers. Pepa can taste the champagne that Silvia has been sipping all evening combined with the flavor that is uniquely hers.
Pepa is vaguely aware that they’re giving the quartet quite a show, but she simply has no room to care. If the entire San Antonio police force was standing on the sidelines right now, she’d still kiss Silvia just as hard.
Pulling away far before she wants to, Pepa nods her assent.
“Best. Idea. Ever,” she says, her voice catching on each word.
Silvia’s lips quirk, and taking Pepa’s hand in hers, she leads her wife off the dance floor. She thanks the quartet on their way, and the newly married couple receives smiles and winks as they head out the door and up the stairs.
“You realize what those guys are thinking about right now, don’t you?” Pepa asks, following Silvia up the stairs.
Silvia tugs on her hand.
“Let them,” she says, throwing a suggestive glance back at Pepa. “They have no idea how good it’s really going to be.”
Lying tangled up with her wife, Pepa’s first coherent thought in more than an hour is that “good” does not even begin to describe it. It is, in fact, such a poor choice that Pepa dismisses it outright. There may actually be no word for it. She thinks it’s possible that Silvia might know one, but she is in no condition to offer suggestions. The redhead is sound asleep. It always amuses Pepa, how utterly spent Silvia is after they make love. It is one time when Pepa cannot fault her perfectionist tendencies - she can never say Silvia does not give one hundred percent.
Pepa props herself up on one elbow and studies her new wife sleeping beside her. Her eyes sweep over the red hair that her fingers were so recently tangled in, now curling in damp tendrils around her face. She lingers for several moments on the mouth that traveled so slowly over every inch of Pepa’s skin. She shivers at the memory and has to bite her lip to keep from making a sound. Pepa’s eyes continue over the pale shoulder, the curve of her breast under the white sheet, the rise and fall of her ribs as she breathes. When her eyes reach the flare of Silvia’s hip, she reaches out and gently palms it, the memory of Silvia arching into her vivid and immediate.
Silvia stirs, stretches. “Why are you staring at me?” she mumbles.
Pepa smiles. “How do you know I’m staring? You were just asleep.”
“I can feel you,” her wife explains around a yawn. She shifts to the side and the sheet covering her falls.
Dear God.
Pepa’s self-control is not this good.
“I just wanted to look at you, Princess,” Pepa says, unable to help herself as she leans down to place kisses across Silvia’s flat belly. She moves lower, and when she encounters the half-moon scar across her wife’s lower abdomen, she reverently traces it with her mouth. “I have to memorize you so I can tell our kids how beautiful their mother is.”
“Mmmmm….” Silvia responds, and Pepa isn’t sure if she heard what she just said. She’s reaching for Pepa, but suddenly Pepa evades her hands. There is something she needs to say, and she needs Silvia to hear it. She crawls back up so she’s eye level with her wife.
“Silvia, open your eyes,” she instructs.
Silvia, only half awake, does not immediately respond.
Pepa palms her cheek. “Hey, Princess, come on, open your eyes.”
This time, Silvia does. Pepa looks directly into them.
“You know we’re going to have them, right?” she asks earnestly.
Silvia’s eyebrows knit together. “Have what?”
“Kids, Silvia,” Pepa says softly, “We’re going to have kids. As many as you want.”
Her wife looks at her with complete adoration, her eyes large and liquid.
“Really?” she asks.
Pepa nods, touching her forehead to Silvia’s.
“Really, Pelirroja.”
It is at this point that Pepa wakes up.
The thought of Silvia holding a child, their child, is too much for even her subconscious to bear. She sits up in bed, flinging the clammy sheet off herself, shoving damp hair away from her face.
She gets out of bed, paces, her heart racing.
The dream will repeat itself in the weeks to come. Not all of it together, not after the first night. It will come in snippets, like a movie trailer. Sometimes she will be dancing with Silvia, and sometimes Curtis will be playfully leering at them. Sometimes Silvia will have her head thrown back, calling out Pepa’s name, and sometimes Don Lorenzo will be telling her to take care of his little girl. And there are nights when they will lie quietly together and make a promise to start a family.
The first night, Pepa thinks she will never be able to sleep again. She cannot imagine being reminded again and again of what she has lost. Of what she never had.
But eventually she has to sleep, she cannot avoid it. And after the first few nights of waking up gasping for breath and clutching damp sheets hard in her fists, she learns instead to welcome the dreams. Because in the dreams, Silvia is alive and whole and Pepa can touch her and talk to her.
She learns to use them. The images drive her, fuel her. When she wakes each morning, alone, the aching loss just as fresh as the morning before, she lets the anger of it permeate every inch of her. And it is how she knows with each passing day that her plan is the right one. The only one.