[Fanfiction] Spanish Harlem AU- Prompts from Het Week!
A QUICK NOTE:
Ivelis Rodríguez: GB!Cuba, especially for the Spanish Harlem AU these drabbles are set in.
Emmanuel “Manny” Díaz: Puerto Rico
Matías “Matí” Milla: Dominican Republic
René Legonns: Haiti
“You,” Manny said with all the weight and authority of Fate itself, “are not allowed to read dystopian novels anymore.”
“Why not?” Ivelis asked as they walked down 2nd Avenue. A high-pitched shriek was their only warning as a man dressed in a heavy overcoat shouldered past the two of them, followed closely by a band of children streaked with mud and grass stains, waving sticks and chanting about strangers. The sudden flow of people on the narrow sidewalk had Manny shoved against a brick wall and a bewildered Ivelis pressed up against him in ways he could only both thank and curse God for.
“Because,” he said, casually wrapping his arms around her waist as another group of children went by with a roar, “you just turned my class into a bunch of heathens all because you thought ‘Lord of the Flies’ might somehow be relevant to a talk about strangers.”
She at least had the decency to look sheepish as a third crowd of children rushed past. So he took the opportunity to hold her a little closer, all in the name of safety.
Matí was roused early (too early, the alarm clock only read 3:23 AM in a bright blue luminescence) by pounding on his apartment door and antagonistic shouts that were indistinct. He wriggled out from beneath René’s heavy arm, bitterly wondering when the hell the damn Haitian had snuck in (yet again, and the bastard claimed to be straight). The Dominican groped for his glasses on the bedside table and shoved them on awkwardly, rising on unsteady legs to throw open the bedroom door and trek to the front entry to see what the fuck this was all about.
What he hadn’t expected to see was Emmanuel Díaz, straight-laced-never-does-anything-wrong-or-potentially-expensive-in-either-procurement-or-probable-property-damage Emmanuel Díaz with his fist raised to pound on the door again, smelling of cheap liquor and drunk out of his tiny Puerto Rican mind.
“…can I help you with something, Manny?”
“You,” Manny slurred, swaying unsteadily in the doorway, “you-you need to fight me, be-because…because Ibis. And I can dance better than you, so fight me. Right now. Right now!”
“…this is about winning Ivelis’s affections or something?” Matí asked. His grip on the doorknob tightened to the point that his knuckles went white and the metal creaked ominously in his palm. Manny just nodded seriously.
“You seem to forget that I’m gay.”
Matí slammed the door in Manny’s face and returned to his bedroom. He grimaced as he stared at René, huge six foot three inches René sprawled out across the entire fucking bed. Matí inhaled deeply and grabbed a shoe from the floor, throwing it with unerring accuracy at René’s head. When the Haitian woke with a shout, Matí leaned against the wall and jerked his thumb towards the front door.
“I think Manny’s here to see you,” he drawled, “something about fighting for Ivelis and her latina love and that’s your thing, not mine. If nothing else, go do your job and get the nuisance away from my front door before he pukes on it.”
A sleepy and confused René stumbled to the door as Matí watched surreptitiously from the corner of his eye. The front door closed behind him and there was a brief moment of indistinct shouting that quieted into soft murmurs that went silent, followed swiftly by unsteady footsteps marching away.
Matí bit his lip and glared at the wrinkled side of the bed that René had occupied, already knowing that this had upset whatever weird…routine they had going, and that he wouldn’t be back for days, probably.
So he climbed into His Side Of The Bed and pointedly turned his back to the other side, determinedly ignoring the warmth of the bedsheets that had come from another body.
“I talked to your mother again today,” Ivelis said brightly from the stove, where she was stirring some concoction that Manny wasn’t sure should exist in nature, but smelled edible anyway.
“Really?” Manny felt the pit of his stomach sink, and continued on warily. “What did she have to say?”
“Oh, nothing really. She asked if I got the books she sent me. I told her I got them yesterday. Most of them are pretty interesting, but there’s two I really don’t know what to do with.”
She held out a spoonful of something lumpy and oddly…orange and looked at him expectantly.
“Taste it,” she demanded. Steeling himself, he opened his mouth obediently. Shockingly…it wasn’t bad. At all.
“Good?” she asked hopefully.
“Very!” Manny replied enthusiastically. He tugged the spoon out of her hand and dipped the spoon into the pot again, ignoring her protests by keeping Ivelis in place with a restraining arm around her middle.
“So,” he asked, blowing on the spoon a little to cool the mysterious mixture it held, “what exactly are those other two books?”
She hummed in thought as he chewed patiently.
“Oh. Right. ‘The Joys of Sex’ and ‘The Spiritual Midwife’. Weird, right? Oh God-Manny! Manny, are you choking? Is it bad?!”
“…Ibis, they’re all practically the same.”
“They are not,” she argued back. “First of all, they’re all primary colors, and that’s different. Second of all, that one tastes like an off-brand of an off-brand, and that one tastes like hernia cream!”
“How do you know what hernia cream tastes like-”
“The point is,” Ivelis interrupted with a triumphant ring in her voice, “that the Chocolate Malt is the best flavor of Ovaltine and that’s the one I’m paying for, variety be damned.”
Manny sighed and waved a dismissive hand at her as she plucked the reddish-orange tub of Ovaltine mix from the shelf and grinned victoriously as she wedged it into her already too-full shopping basket.
“Anything else, mi diosa?” he called sarcastically as he followed her fast stride down the aisle with a leisurely stroll.
“…well, actually-!”
Emmanuel resigned himself to yet another long trip.
“Make whatever jokes you like in the office about your secret admirer that makes your lunch being your wife, I don’t much care, but if you’re going to insist on staying here and leaving your crap everywhere, you are my bitch and I have a few rules you need to learn, protocols you need to follow, and general household drudgery you’ll need to get used to.”
“You lost me after ‘leaving your crap everywhere’, Matí.”
“It’s Matías, for the last fucking time. Christ, Legonns. I knew you were an idiot, but-”
“My name is René,” the Haitian whined from where he was sprawled across a very comfortable and likely very expensive sofa.
“And I’m sure your mother was very proud that she was capable of enough coherency to tell the doctor that after she was done pushing you out,” Matías replied in a flat monotone, “all the same, Legonns, you’re going to shampoo these carpets. Today. Right now.”
René tilted his head backwards to examine the much shorter Matí, upside-down and glaring at René with crossed arms and stiff shoulders. His gaze wandered to the veritable expanse of white carpeting that stretched from wall to wall in every direction, pristine and pure and looking as untouched as the Virgin Mary herself.
“Matí, these carpets are already spotless,” René said slowly, “if I clean them, they’ll get so bright that they might blind someone.”
“Then go blind, see if I care. These carpets get cleaned twice a month, because like hell I’m going to let my asshole of a landlord do anything with my deposit. Get to work.”
So René sighed and stretched, pulling himself upright and “accidentally” knocking over Matí’s glass of red wine that had been set upon the coffee table, just to hear him scream.
“The ironic thing,” Matías drawled from behind Manny, “is that nobody actually loves love handles, you know. Maybe you need to put down the sofrito and pick up the iceberg lettuce instead, fat ass.”
“Fuck off, Milla. I do not have love handles, Jesus Christ.” Manny muttered, perusing the shelf of canned goods before him with fierce interest. Matí hummed agreeably, which meant Manny should brace himself for some sort of scathing retort.
“Blasphemy from an elementary school teacher, that’s charming. So do you eat like a frat boy because you enjoy it or because parents don’t tip school teachers like they do waitresses? It has to be pretty embarrassing, I mean, that your own not-girlfriend brings home more of the bacon than you do, so it’s not like she would even respect you, since all you do is play with kids all day-”
Alaskan salmon, Alaskan salmon, green beans, sliced yams, his hands around Milla’s throat-
“-but Ivelis seems more the type to like tall, fit men like René anyway.”
Twenty minutes later, there were three police cars with their sirens wailing outside the small supermarket, desperate shrieking over the PA system for a clean-up on aisle ALL OF THEM, and Ivelis was in her uniform, dabbing at Manny’s split lip and bruising eye with ice wrapped in a napkin.
“So. You done sulking? Ready to tell me what the hell this was all about?”
Manny glanced away in what he assumed was an expression of stoic brooding. Ivelis’s lips pressed into a thin line at his pouting.
“…he called me fat,” Manny muttered at last.
Life had become a lot brighter with the introduction of Ivelis into it.
The sunlight coming through the smog-frosted windows seemed clearer, the rooms were faintly scented with jasmine and the soft smell of clean linen, two mugs in front of the coffee maker every morning instead of just one, dates written in on the calendar in small, looped handwriting with bright green ink.
Small things became more significant; movie night popcorn tasted better even if Manny did have to spend more time cleaning it out of the rug than usual, on his hands and knees picking crushed kernels out of the carpet fibers as Ivelis laughed and propped her feet on his back.
Small things like waking up early on his day off (blasphemy, practically) to spy Ibis in the bathroom, standing on her tiptoes and making faces at the mirror with foam dripping down her chin, borrowed bright orange toothbrush poking out of her mouth, and Manny’s oversized t-shirt falling off her shoulders.
She overheard him trying to stifle a laugh by biting on his knuckles and glanced at him with a wide smile, flecks of white foam still sliding down from the corner of her lips.
“Good morning!”
Ivelis Rodríguez: GB!Cuba, especially for the Spanish Harlem AU these drabbles are set in.
Emmanuel “Manny” Díaz: Puerto Rico
Matías “Matí” Milla: Dominican Republic
René Legonns: Haiti
- Ivelis teaching ‘stranger danger’ to Manny’s class. (Not exactly what you asked for, b-but the image wouldn’t leave my head…)
“You,” Manny said with all the weight and authority of Fate itself, “are not allowed to read dystopian novels anymore.”
“Why not?” Ivelis asked as they walked down 2nd Avenue. A high-pitched shriek was their only warning as a man dressed in a heavy overcoat shouldered past the two of them, followed closely by a band of children streaked with mud and grass stains, waving sticks and chanting about strangers. The sudden flow of people on the narrow sidewalk had Manny shoved against a brick wall and a bewildered Ivelis pressed up against him in ways he could only both thank and curse God for.
“Because,” he said, casually wrapping his arms around her waist as another group of children went by with a roar, “you just turned my class into a bunch of heathens all because you thought ‘Lord of the Flies’ might somehow be relevant to a talk about strangers.”
She at least had the decency to look sheepish as a third crowd of children rushed past. So he took the opportunity to hold her a little closer, all in the name of safety.
- Manny and Matí having a dance off to see who can impress Ivelis
Matí was roused early (too early, the alarm clock only read 3:23 AM in a bright blue luminescence) by pounding on his apartment door and antagonistic shouts that were indistinct. He wriggled out from beneath René’s heavy arm, bitterly wondering when the hell the damn Haitian had snuck in (yet again, and the bastard claimed to be straight). The Dominican groped for his glasses on the bedside table and shoved them on awkwardly, rising on unsteady legs to throw open the bedroom door and trek to the front entry to see what the fuck this was all about.
What he hadn’t expected to see was Emmanuel Díaz, straight-laced-never-does-anything-wrong-or-potentially-expensive-in-either-procurement-or-probable-property-damage Emmanuel Díaz with his fist raised to pound on the door again, smelling of cheap liquor and drunk out of his tiny Puerto Rican mind.
“…can I help you with something, Manny?”
“You,” Manny slurred, swaying unsteadily in the doorway, “you-you need to fight me, be-because…because Ibis. And I can dance better than you, so fight me. Right now. Right now!”
“…this is about winning Ivelis’s affections or something?” Matí asked. His grip on the doorknob tightened to the point that his knuckles went white and the metal creaked ominously in his palm. Manny just nodded seriously.
“You seem to forget that I’m gay.”
Matí slammed the door in Manny’s face and returned to his bedroom. He grimaced as he stared at René, huge six foot three inches René sprawled out across the entire fucking bed. Matí inhaled deeply and grabbed a shoe from the floor, throwing it with unerring accuracy at René’s head. When the Haitian woke with a shout, Matí leaned against the wall and jerked his thumb towards the front door.
“I think Manny’s here to see you,” he drawled, “something about fighting for Ivelis and her latina love and that’s your thing, not mine. If nothing else, go do your job and get the nuisance away from my front door before he pukes on it.”
A sleepy and confused René stumbled to the door as Matí watched surreptitiously from the corner of his eye. The front door closed behind him and there was a brief moment of indistinct shouting that quieted into soft murmurs that went silent, followed swiftly by unsteady footsteps marching away.
Matí bit his lip and glared at the wrinkled side of the bed that René had occupied, already knowing that this had upset whatever weird…routine they had going, and that he wouldn’t be back for days, probably.
So he climbed into His Side Of The Bed and pointedly turned his back to the other side, determinedly ignoring the warmth of the bedsheets that had come from another body.
- Manny’s mother being nosy and trying to play matchmaker
“I talked to your mother again today,” Ivelis said brightly from the stove, where she was stirring some concoction that Manny wasn’t sure should exist in nature, but smelled edible anyway.
“Really?” Manny felt the pit of his stomach sink, and continued on warily. “What did she have to say?”
“Oh, nothing really. She asked if I got the books she sent me. I told her I got them yesterday. Most of them are pretty interesting, but there’s two I really don’t know what to do with.”
She held out a spoonful of something lumpy and oddly…orange and looked at him expectantly.
“Taste it,” she demanded. Steeling himself, he opened his mouth obediently. Shockingly…it wasn’t bad. At all.
“Good?” she asked hopefully.
“Very!” Manny replied enthusiastically. He tugged the spoon out of her hand and dipped the spoon into the pot again, ignoring her protests by keeping Ivelis in place with a restraining arm around her middle.
“So,” he asked, blowing on the spoon a little to cool the mysterious mixture it held, “what exactly are those other two books?”
She hummed in thought as he chewed patiently.
“Oh. Right. ‘The Joys of Sex’ and ‘The Spiritual Midwife’. Weird, right? Oh God-Manny! Manny, are you choking? Is it bad?!”
- Manny/Ivelis and ovaltine
“…Ibis, they’re all practically the same.”
“They are not,” she argued back. “First of all, they’re all primary colors, and that’s different. Second of all, that one tastes like an off-brand of an off-brand, and that one tastes like hernia cream!”
“How do you know what hernia cream tastes like-”
“The point is,” Ivelis interrupted with a triumphant ring in her voice, “that the Chocolate Malt is the best flavor of Ovaltine and that’s the one I’m paying for, variety be damned.”
Manny sighed and waved a dismissive hand at her as she plucked the reddish-orange tub of Ovaltine mix from the shelf and grinned victoriously as she wedged it into her already too-full shopping basket.
“Anything else, mi diosa?” he called sarcastically as he followed her fast stride down the aisle with a leisurely stroll.
“…well, actually-!”
Emmanuel resigned himself to yet another long trip.
- Matí/René and DEM CARPETS
“Make whatever jokes you like in the office about your secret admirer that makes your lunch being your wife, I don’t much care, but if you’re going to insist on staying here and leaving your crap everywhere, you are my bitch and I have a few rules you need to learn, protocols you need to follow, and general household drudgery you’ll need to get used to.”
“You lost me after ‘leaving your crap everywhere’, Matí.”
“It’s Matías, for the last fucking time. Christ, Legonns. I knew you were an idiot, but-”
“My name is René,” the Haitian whined from where he was sprawled across a very comfortable and likely very expensive sofa.
“And I’m sure your mother was very proud that she was capable of enough coherency to tell the doctor that after she was done pushing you out,” Matías replied in a flat monotone, “all the same, Legonns, you’re going to shampoo these carpets. Today. Right now.”
René tilted his head backwards to examine the much shorter Matí, upside-down and glaring at René with crossed arms and stiff shoulders. His gaze wandered to the veritable expanse of white carpeting that stretched from wall to wall in every direction, pristine and pure and looking as untouched as the Virgin Mary herself.
“Matí, these carpets are already spotless,” René said slowly, “if I clean them, they’ll get so bright that they might blind someone.”
“Then go blind, see if I care. These carpets get cleaned twice a month, because like hell I’m going to let my asshole of a landlord do anything with my deposit. Get to work.”
So René sighed and stretched, pulling himself upright and “accidentally” knocking over Matí’s glass of red wine that had been set upon the coffee table, just to hear him scream.
- Manny and Matías discussing food
“The ironic thing,” Matías drawled from behind Manny, “is that nobody actually loves love handles, you know. Maybe you need to put down the sofrito and pick up the iceberg lettuce instead, fat ass.”
“Fuck off, Milla. I do not have love handles, Jesus Christ.” Manny muttered, perusing the shelf of canned goods before him with fierce interest. Matí hummed agreeably, which meant Manny should brace himself for some sort of scathing retort.
“Blasphemy from an elementary school teacher, that’s charming. So do you eat like a frat boy because you enjoy it or because parents don’t tip school teachers like they do waitresses? It has to be pretty embarrassing, I mean, that your own not-girlfriend brings home more of the bacon than you do, so it’s not like she would even respect you, since all you do is play with kids all day-”
Alaskan salmon, Alaskan salmon, green beans, sliced yams, his hands around Milla’s throat-
“-but Ivelis seems more the type to like tall, fit men like René anyway.”
Twenty minutes later, there were three police cars with their sirens wailing outside the small supermarket, desperate shrieking over the PA system for a clean-up on aisle ALL OF THEM, and Ivelis was in her uniform, dabbing at Manny’s split lip and bruising eye with ice wrapped in a napkin.
“So. You done sulking? Ready to tell me what the hell this was all about?”
Manny glanced away in what he assumed was an expression of stoic brooding. Ivelis’s lips pressed into a thin line at his pouting.
“…he called me fat,” Manny muttered at last.
- How things have changed
Life had become a lot brighter with the introduction of Ivelis into it.
The sunlight coming through the smog-frosted windows seemed clearer, the rooms were faintly scented with jasmine and the soft smell of clean linen, two mugs in front of the coffee maker every morning instead of just one, dates written in on the calendar in small, looped handwriting with bright green ink.
Small things became more significant; movie night popcorn tasted better even if Manny did have to spend more time cleaning it out of the rug than usual, on his hands and knees picking crushed kernels out of the carpet fibers as Ivelis laughed and propped her feet on his back.
Small things like waking up early on his day off (blasphemy, practically) to spy Ibis in the bathroom, standing on her tiptoes and making faces at the mirror with foam dripping down her chin, borrowed bright orange toothbrush poking out of her mouth, and Manny’s oversized t-shirt falling off her shoulders.
She overheard him trying to stifle a laugh by biting on his knuckles and glanced at him with a wide smile, flecks of white foam still sliding down from the corner of her lips.
“Good morning!”