Vaya con Dios

[poorlikeness-blog]

cruentusreus:

Stiles’ heart, already racing in his chest, jolts up to his throat when the door slams behind him, startling him further into the house. It just about leaves him open on all sides, which is all kinds of awesome. 

Well done, Stiles.

When the spirit appears in front of him, he forces himself to stay very, very still.

“I’m Stiles.” Helpful. “Are you Vasquez?”

Vasquez.

His name echoes through time, stirring some long dead part of him, dry leaves under foot, the sun beating down on his back. The smell of saw dust and cheap whiskey. 

The house stops rattling. 

“Why are you here?”

[poorlikeness-blog]

@cruentusreus

He is rage given form and function, the house rattling down to its cross beams beneath the weight of his fury. Faraday was gone, and time has lost meaning. All Vasquez knows is the tightness in his chest, the way anger pounds in his blood and in his ears. 

The door slams shut behind the intruder, lock clicking into place. 

It takes long second for him to corral that rage enough to force himself into view, flickering and furious. 

“Quién eres tú?”

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

 And there it is again. Faith. Bitter and twisted, but faith nonetheless. I know you. You help him because you want to. So much trust that the man who got him killed is a good one, for all that he’s not a man.

“It wasn’t an accident,” he says, still not looking at Vasquez’s face. “Meeting him again, after the first time. After I knew what he was.”

He doesn’t know why he’s telling Vasquez. It’s been over a hundred and fifty years since he rode by this man’s side for two weeks, give or take. No other human has ever left such a mark on him, not even those he’s known for years.

      (He’s not sure where Dean fits in. These things are so much        more easily defined once they are lost.)

“He had books. About every monster you could dream of, and a few you couldn’t. I just kept thinking that there might be something there, on those pages, that – ” he sighs, lifts a hand to press the heel of a palm against an eye, weary.

    “I thought I might find myself in them. I thought he might explain      myself to me. I thought he might know what I am. Jesus, Vasquez,      two hundred years and I’m neither here nor there. I don’t know      where I’m going or what comes next.”

“If you’re lucky...nothing comes next.”

Oblivion would be a great relief after all this time. Vasquez has been angry for so long, damned to repeat that day over and over again. A wound never allowed to heal, the scab ripped from it any time it stopped bleeding. 

“There was no light. No angels singing, no devils reaching for me.” He doesn’t know why he’s trying to offer this man comfort while the memory of bleeding out into the dirt is still fresh in his mind. 

Vasquez reaches down, palms skating against the front of his dingy white shirt. Red blooms in a familiar pattern across his chest, and his arms. Every bullet that landed before he died. 

His fingers come back wet with the blood, the outline of him flickering with emotion and ties to the past. He raises his gaze to meet those green eyes, to try and dig through all the cold fear and white hot pain to find that comfortable warmth that drove him onto the back of a horse and into the arms of death. 

“All there was...was dirt. Cold. And you, Guero. You were the last voice I heard before it ended.”

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

@poorlikeness [ from ]

    “ – not by choice.”

The smile on his face is a weak attempt at pretending he’s unaffected. It’s tired and it’s too-small and he knows for a fact that Vasquez has always been able to see right through him, so why bother with the pretence?

He’d expected to die, that day in Rose Creek. Had even been at peace with it, more or less. His mother had died young, for a fae, and not all that old for a human, so why shouldn’t he be the same? It ought to have worked like that. How could he ever have known that it wouldn’t?

     (How could he have known Vasquez would follow him, with so       much faith? Joshua Faraday is not the kind of person to inspire       faith, or anything like it.)

“I’ll die,” he says, with what for him seems a remarkable acceptance of the fact. “One day. Sooner or later. I’m not immortal, I’m just… playing the long game.” His gaze falls to where his fingers are pulling at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt.

“I saved him,” Faraday confirms. “I had to.”

       “And anyway – the long game is the loneliest.”

“Bullshit.”

A word he had thrown at him, over a hundred years ago, when he was given the bullshit excuse for why Faraday was staying, the night before the battle of Rose Creek. 

I owe him for the horse. 

He hadn’t known at the time. No idea that Joshua Faraday was anything other than what he said he was. Old betrayal rattles to life in his bones, and Vasquez can’t remember what it felt like to be anything but angry. 

“You hide behind the string, but I know you. You help him because you want to.”

A horse. A string. All excuses for someone who didn’t want to be a good man, even though it was who he was down to his core. 

(Unlike Vasquez, doomed to be stuck here for all time, to stew in rage and misery for all time for the lives he took, and the things he did.)

[poorlikeness-blog]

‘ we’re all mortal, you know. ’

“You’re not.”

The empty window frame rattles dangerously, even as his words are soft, barely a breath between them. He’s still in the attic, surrounded by dust mites dancing in the dusk. 

“You lived. You watched me die, and you lived.”

The floorboards creak. The ‘For Sale’ sign in the front yard swings lazily on its hinges. The woman who lived here has not been back, only indifferent men who packed up her things and left this place empty, putting plastic bags where broken glass had been. 

“But you saved the cabron.” He jerks with his chin towards the attic door. Dean isn’t there, hasn’t been in days (weeks? Months? He doesn’t know.) but Vasquez remembers.

He remembers the thin line of silver strung tight between them. Taut. 

[poorlikeness-blog]

I absolutely love this blog, it's absolutely amazing and you're magnificent :)

[sofaradaysogood]

‘ i want everything. ’

It’s a warm night, and another of Vasquez’s quiet days.

That’s what they call it, when the word goes around. Not tomorrow. Boss is having a quiet day. And all the girls and all the staff take themselves off the premises, all except the perimeter guards, who won’t even think about putting a foot onto the villa’s grounds unless something goes wrong.

And Faraday.

Every time the text goes around, it’s Faraday who ensures that everyone knows. It’s Faraday who reroutes deliveries or cleaners or pool boys. It’s Faraday who secures the peace that Vasquez is looking for. And every time he does, he finds Vasquez, and he says, all yours, boss, and waits to be dismissed.

He never is.

They fuck, usually. They fuck with a singular, determined intensity that lights Faraday’s bones on fire and keeps them smouldering, flames licking up through the layers of duty and loyalty that have built up over the years. Vasquez is burning him to the ground, everything he is, and Faraday hasn’t even realised.

         I’m going to look after you. I need you safe, I need you alive, I need you now. What had started as promises he knew Vasquez was greedy to hear had started to carry the ring of truth to them. They trip from his tongue without having to be formulated, first.

Tonight, something is different.

They recline in the moonlight like they’re basking in the early autumn sun that’s not long since set, passing a joint between themselves. When Faraday tips his head back, the slope of his throat is gilded silver, a pale vulnerability he doesn’t think twice about.

   “You know,” Vasquez says, lazily. “It took a lot to get myself here. Money and    blood and death. I thought I might be satisfied.”

Faraday opens his eyes to find Vasquez’s already fixed on him.

   “You’re not?”

   “Not yet. Not ever, maybe.” A shrug, and idle fingers reach out to walk themselves along Faraday’s collar bone. Faraday watches Vasquez’s face, absorbed in watching his own.

   “What do you want?” he asks, and it should scare him that he wants to be the one to promise Vasquez whatever it is that he answers. Vasquez’s fingers still, warm against warm skin.

   “I want everything,” Vasquez says, with one of his feral-sharp grins, like a coyote in the night. After a moment, Faraday’s own smile spreads across his face, dark and smooth like an oil spill in clear waters. His fingers come up to wrap themselves around the wrist at his chest.

   “So take it,” he breathes, and when he leans up and over to kiss Vasquez, another little part of himself catches flame. “Let’s take it all.”

[girlaltar-a-blog]

anne carson sentence starters.

quotes are all taken from various poems and essays by the queen of aesthetes, anne carson. feel free to change pronouns/add things/etc if needed.

‘ you are not a god. ’

‘ we begin in the dark and birth is the death of us. ’

‘ now you’ve crowned yourself one final perfect time. ’

‘ [ name ] was a monster. everything about him was red. ’

‘ what are we made of but hunger and rage? ’

‘ i finally decided that understanding isn’t what grief is about. ’

‘ honey is the sleep of the just. ’

‘ it is perilous to live past the end of your myth. ’

‘ you remember too much. ’

‘ when i desire you a part of me is gone. ’

‘ humans in love are terrible. ’

‘ under the seams runs the pain. ’

‘ men know almost nothing about desire. ’

‘ sex is a substitute, like money or language. ’

‘ what is the holiness of conversation? ’

‘ —you burn me. ’

‘ i ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way. ’

‘ sometimes i just want to stop seeing. ’

‘ we’re all mortal, you know. ’

‘ i am the shape you made me. filth teaches filth. ’

‘ why does tragedy exist? ’

‘ you’re a beauty. ’

‘ madness and witchery are conditions commonly associated with the female voice. ’

‘ it made me merciless. ’

‘ desire is no light thing. ’

‘ i do not exist. there is nothing left. ’

‘ gods are stubborn. so am i. ’

‘ we had been seduced into thinking that we were immortal. ’

‘ i am someone who did not die when i should have died. ’

‘ why are you so in love with things unbearable? ’

‘ everything can collapse. ’

‘ someone will remember us. even in another time. ’

‘ my mind is burning. ’

‘ each night, about this time, he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing. ’

‘ love does not make me gentle or kind. ’

‘ i can give you reasons not do die. ’

‘ passivity is killing her. ’

‘ they are victims of love, many of them. ’

‘ he is a young god. ’

‘ you touch my soul, you pain my mind. ’

‘ it’s something of a cliché to say that we all think we’re monsters. ’

‘ i fear your sorrows make your tongue grow wild. ’

‘ it’s what they call ‘ecstasy’. ’

‘ a man who can’t die is no tragic hero. ’ 

‘ i want everything. ’

‘ it was like a beautiful dance where your partner turns and stabs you to death. ’

‘ to survive you need an edge. ’

‘ girls are cruelest to themselves. ’

‘ we are dust. ’

bonus! further quotations from award-winning poet and author anne carson:

‘ i am a philosopher of sandwiches. ’

‘ pilgrims were people glad to take off their clothing, which was on fire. ’

‘ english is a bitch. ’

‘ i wish i were two dogs. then i could play with me. ’

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

The smile makes him into a different man.

Faraday wonders how many people get to see it. The only smiles he’s seen Vasquez wear so far are sharp-edged things. Almost feral. This one is genuine and almost carefree. Infectious, too; Faraday’s lips quirk at the edges without consent from his mind.

“I like breakfast burritos,” he confirms, tone just a little defeated even in its good humour. There’s no point in resisting, after all. “Who doesn’t?”

"Good."

He can cook a great many things, but these are the easiest. Eggs are cracked into a sizzling pan with one hand, shells tossed into the trash.

(This is a dangerous amount of ease. He should know better. But he is hungry for more than just food and fullness. Vasquez is starving for company.)

"My mother used to make the tortillas herself." He pauses for a moment, tongue against the back of his teeth as he searches for the words in English.

"From scratch."

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

A breath spills from his lips as Vasquez coaxes his head to one side; something bitter. He knows what the man is looking at even before hot breath dances across scarred skin. These silvered fingers aren’t much, but in the knot of the scar, the sensation would be half-lost on him, dulled by the re-knitting of burned flesh.

His hands are greedy. They drag down Vasquez’s stomach, pushing under the band of his boxers to find the sharp cut of hip and follow it. They rake across his side, they grasp and linger and map out every inch that they can reach.

Lips in turn demand their share; they brush against Vasquez’s earlobe before teeth scrape in their wake. 

“Since you’re too stubborn to admit it,” he says, words pressed against the slope of Vasquez’s bronzed neck. His hips press forward, deliberate, hands pulling Vasquez against him to illustrate his point. “I want you.”

He is being distracted.

A sensitive subject, then. Though he doesn't think there is a way for a man to be so wounded without it being a sensitive subject.

Vasquez shudders against those insistent touches, heat rising in his blood. Every time he thinks he must be sated, Faraday touches him in a way that leaves him desperate and wanting.

(And yet, the guero has never so much as hinted at this control he has, in the light of day. He has never exerted his power where it wasn't wanted. It feels... Safe. A safe place to want and need without risking his life or his empire.)

"Tell me." The words come out hoarse, a hitch of defiance from a man who will beg in short order.

"Tell me how you want me."

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

Faraday’s lips chase Vasquez’s own at their retreat, and he growls at their absence. Vasquez is at ease, here; a man who fits this space entirely, who inhabits it with a careless simplicity. It’s infuriating, somehow.

Faraday toes off his boots, leaves them where they fall. He’s already following Vasquez as his shirt is peeled over his head, and dropped on the floor. He catches the Mexican before he reaches the bed, hooks an arm around him. Hand splays wide across the solid swell and dip of abdominals, pulling their bodies close together. Deja vu. The hot press of skin against skin.

Faraday’s half-hard already, just with the anticipation, and he dips his head to trail an open-mouthed line of kisses across Vasquez’s freckled shoulder. Vasquez may be playing games, but Faraday has always played with a singular determination to win.

The thud of a shoe is what draws his attention, but a glance over his shoulder doesn’t do Faraday justice. That pause, the greedy look trying to soak up all of him is enough time for the other man to clear the space between him, to put a territorial hand against his belly and pull him close. 

It ignites fire in his veins, being pulled and pushed. 

Vasquez murmurs something warm and too affectionate querido on his tongue as it stalls, the silver line of scarred skin along Faraday’s fair skin drawing his attention away. 

He turns, catching Faraday’s chin in his hand so that he can get a better view of his scar. 

But it isn’t just one scar. It’s a network, spread down his back and across his shoulders. Something terrible imprinted on his skin for the rest of his life. A burden that no man should ever have to bear. 

He leans in, mouthing hot and sweet across whatever scarred skin he can get to, without a word.

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

Faraday is, for a split second, taken aback. It’s covered quickly, but the sudden full focus of Vasquez’s attention, the directness of the question, the realisation of what he’d inadvertently revealed in that word – need – knock him sideways for just a moment.

You have to seem like more than just a man, that’s what his training is telling him. You have to seem like the most reliable bodyguard this man has ever had. Professional. 

And then he thinks about Vasquez’s hips pushing back against him, the entreating words falling from desperate lips, the heat of the man around him in the half-dark. Perhaps he’s already crossed that line.

     “ …. I could eat.”

Faraday is rewarded with a big, beaming grin. 

It completely changes Vasquez, making him look years younger, and years happier. It makes the skin at the corner of his eyes wrinkle joyfully, and he bites down on his bottom lip for a moment before he plucks the tortilla off of the burner and onto a plate. 

He ducks down to grab a cast iron skillet, hip checking the cabinet back closed after he’s done. 

“You like breakfast burritos?”

It’s not that he can’t cook for himself, so much as it’s part of the image of wealth, having someone cook for him. 

(And who wouldn’t like an Abuelita to cook for them?)

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

Faraday only grins at that, and offers an unrepentant shrug.

    Mi casa es su casa, that’s what Vasquez had said. Faraday’s     only making good on the offer. He always takes men at their     word. You can learn a lot about a guy by doing it. So far, he’s     learned that Vasquez is good for it.

He shakes his head, watching nimble fingers.

“I don’t need any.”

He barely even notices he does it - that shift from want to need. Comes from living a life that belongs to something else. Some other cause, some other agency. Need is the key. Want is only secondary.

Need is one of those words that always gets to him. It rings some primal bell inside of him that resonates down to the marrow. Vasquez likes to provide. He needs to be needed. 

And something about that response has him turning his attention away from the tortilla (after he flips it, of course) to watch Faraday. 

“But do you want any?”

The smell of the tortilla blackening on the burner reminds him of his childhood, of splitting a single tortilla between him and his three sisters. Living with a perpetually hungry belly.

Never again. 

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

Faraday’s eyes narrow, just a little.

He’s an impatient man who’s been taught patience only through necessity. But what need is there for it, here? So he drops his arms to his sides and pushes away from the door and he stalks towards Vasquez, his intentions clear in the very lines of his muscles, in the set of his jaw.

“I don’t like metaphors,” he says, as he brings himself to a sudden stop as close to Vasquez as he can be without touching. His head tilts almost of its own accord, anticipating Vasquez’s lips. “Lot of words to say not much. How ‘bout we just say what we mean?”

He doesn’t touch. Not quite. But he’s close enough that hot breath must ghost against Vasquez’s own, and he can almost feel the warmth rolling from these bare and easy limbs. His eyes dip to Vasquez’s lips; his tongue darts out to wet his own.

    (This is a bad idea. This is a bad idea.)

“Tell me you want me.”

    (All the best ones are.)

Those are dangerous words. 

Even if he knows that this place is safe, that he’s surrounded by people who are loyal, if not trustworthy. Because those words speak to things he’s kept hidden for years, things that would have him ousted from this place he’s carved for himself, all because of what he wants.

Who he wants. 

And God, he wants the man before him with dizzying intensity. 

Vasquez leans forward, warm breath intermingling becoming lips just brushing against lips before he speaks. 

“Make me.”

And then he’s chuckling under his breath, turning his back on Faraday as he pads towards the bed on bare feet. 

It’s blatant, there’s no other word for it. 

Make me.

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

Faraday doesn’t move as Vasquez approaches. He stays, resolute, and even when the man is in his space, and Faraday has to tip his chin a fraction to keep their gazes level.

His lips quirk at the eventual request – Spanish, not English, but Vasquez’s meaning is clear. Faraday’s not sure whether he imagines that they’re close enough that he can feel the word in the hollows of his bones.

He moves, gracious, settling instead two feet to the left. If he’s surprised by Vasquez’s apparent intentions to actually cook, he doesn’t show it.

“Always,” he says meaningfully, but then tips his head. “Don’t you worry ‘bout me. I’m a well-fed man.”

His gaze snaps over, a moment of shared camaraderie, because Vasquez knows what it means to be starving. It’s been years since he’s been able to whet that hunger, and he can’t remember it ever feeling like this. 

“Si, I know. I pay the grocery bill here.” And as minute a thing as it is, he keeps track of who eats what. Maria is a good woman, she takes care of them all. And if she suspects any of his men are dipping into the product, because they’re eating less, then...

Faraday eats like a horse. 

He flicks on a burner, tossing the tortilla onto it. 

“So you don’t want any?”

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

“Let’s see.”

Faraday pushes himself away from the doorway, but only far enough to kick it closed behind him. Then he leans back once more, arms still folded to keep from reaching out and touching, from giving in to screaming siren-song of temptation.

“I kept a civil tongue in my head, despite my nature.” Not untrue; he’d managed to avoid telling ‘Ethel’ to go fuck himself. “I let her have the damn TV. I had a drink, maybe three, and I won some money. Honestly, from dishonest men.”

Fingers tap against forearm, unable to still themselves entirely. Though his hands are held in check, his eyes have no such restraint. They drag themselves along sloping plane of hip and abdominal, trace the dark trail of hair that sinks below the line of boxers. They take in every freckle, dusted across arm and bicep. They climb the column of his throat.

“At no point was anybody screaming.”

It’s his voice. 

For the first time, Vasquez is able to pinpoint the knot in the network of strings that make up Faraday that holds him fast and won’t let him go. It’s the laziness of his drawl, the way words travel idle from his tongue. 

He speaks like he would imagine the man makes love, and he’s absolutely certain it’s intentional. 

Faraday wears his practiced ease in the line of his shoulders, the looseness of his hands, the silken curl of his tongue. 

But Vasquez has seen what’s beneath that exterior, he’s caught glimpses of the fire in his eyes and the heat in his bones. And he’s desperate to feel that fire against his skin again. 

“A man has to make do, you know.”

There’s no less than seven paces between them. Where Faraday is crossed arms and thinly veiled jealousy, Vasquez is open armed and unashamed. This is his sanctuary. No one can hurt him here. 

“Sometimes, you can’t have steak. So you settle for chicken.”

He shrugs, slow and easy. 

“But then you become full, but not satisfied.”

[poorlikeness-blog]

sofaradaysogood:

Faraday watches Vasquez’s fingers wrap around the girl’s slight wrist without ever actually taking his eyes from the man’s face. The smile that crawls its way up one side of Vasquez’s face – defiant, knowing – is filed away in his growing list of things that might be useful.

   Jealous.

Faraday matches it only with a smirk of his own.

“You should eat, boss.” No doubt the plate in front of Vasquez is cold by now, unpleasantly so. Faraday himself eats at the crack of dawn, putting away more than he’d usually consider first thing in the morning. But being the first up and the last out goes a long way to making you seem reliable, a fixture. Something about seeing your bodyguard eat breakfast makes him too human, when he should be machine-constant. “Got to keep that energy up, huh? Since you got a busy evening planned.”

His eyes dart down to the plate in front of him, the egg yolk congealed against the plate. No, he wouldn’t be eating that, and he’s already sent Maria to the grocery store for the weekend. 

Vasquez makes a tch sound at the plate and then dumps it into the sink before he moves over to the fridge, dangerously close in the other man’s space. They linger there for seconds too long, seconds when anyone could walk in. 

All he can hope is that it looks like a matter of pride, not want.

“Disculpe.”

He’s got a hand curled around the fridge’s stainless steel handle, waiting. Faraday smirks as he moves away with a flourish. 

“Are you hungry, Guero?” He pulls out a pack of tortillas, tossing them onto the kitchen island.