Re: Motel 77: Cris & Sam
There wasn't no hate for her in his gut, the flora there rich in bitter emotion, but not toward Sam. He wasn't that easy to get ridda, huh? Cris held the girl to him like she was keeping him afloat as much as he was her, a buoy in pale skin, and he bent hips in against the thrusta her ass out, cotton on denim, cock soft against the clefta her ass, but responsive to any shift in her movement. For once, it wasn't about fucking. It was being close, and he gathered her up to bare chest, even as she unstuck the tape on his palm and read some faulta hers in the way he'd ruined his own hand on the mirror. He could tell she was thinking it about about her, and Cris, just before his fingers rose up fluted throat, bent more toward Sam to tell her: "Not 'causea you. 'Causea Meredith." And it was easy to see in retrospect—the bathroom, in the hours intervening between Sam slipping outta bed and now, the guy glared at his reflection, everything in him curdling sour and thick 'til he lashed out at his own face coming back at him—and it was about Meredith. It was about the way he imagined her lips on his cock, stretched and pink and bloated, eyes closed with lashes light, and some feeling insidea him that told him to throttle her, even as he'd recoiled in aversion.—He knew the place Sam was at right now, mentally, was a placea blame, huh? A place valleying between reality and unreality, and things rolled downhill, piling up on her, and he knew, given the chance, she'd take this too, even though it didn't really have much to do with her. She'd bear it, shed tears for it, and he didn't want that. "I know you think you messed up last night, with me, but you didn't. I was messed up, 'causea her. I still am. But that's not you."
That was all he said on it, tipping her head back, and he looked down at her, even as those Prussian blue eyes refracted regret to twice its size, larger than the pinheada her pupils, like she wanted to be anywhere but here and now, and Cris bit down the way that hurt him. 'cause what did that matter? "Mami, no one can get through to her. I yelled and screamed at her earlier. I prolly sent her ass to that bar, huh?" He touched her hair, her cheek. "Tienes razón—it was 'bout makin' her look better, but that don't mean you made stuff worse. Even if she wanted to look good, so you'd look bad, she failed, huh? Whatever she went to that hospital with, you didn't do it to her. Cariño, I hate to tell you, but you're not 'xactly strong, not enough to send someone in for a concussion. So she's dramatic and drunk and makin' Neil pick her up. Let 'em deal with that without takin' it out on yourself."
Maybe he didn't care enough 'bout the other guy—or, rather, he cared about him only inasmuch as Sam did. That is to say, he cared 'cause Sam did, and even then, it was anemic and perfunctory, but he was kinda done dealing with their bullshit as it spilled over anything dividing them. He was sicka it hurting Sam, and he was just sick, in general, of the closeness, even if Sam believed, in her coke high, that Neil had never cared for her.—Cris looked down at the gringa as he turned her, as she shook, and he picked her up again after lips to her forehead, and he took her to the made-up bed. One hand leaving her back, he dipped to tear tight-tucked blankets back, and he settled Sam beneath them, drawing them up like bath water, warm and enveloping, before shaking off his jeans from wet-cling hips and nothing beneath, and he crawled in after her.
"What're you doin' to me? To everybody?" Cris pushed up against her, arms thrown over small form. "How many times you need me to tell you I wanna be here? If I was anywhere else right now, I'd wanna be here, with you." He went quiet, brief, before allowing some admission. "I'm not doin' so hot either, mi amor. But I'm better with you here." Penny might say that was pressure, but to him it was just true. Whatever else was going on, it was easier to deal with curled up like this, to believe it'd get better, and nonea Sam's sicknesses or nothing could make him think different.