Can I ask for a Mayan request? Can you do one where the girl is Miguel’s younger sister and like her relationships with everyone on the show?? It would be awesome if she was dating Nestor to. Thanks!
A.N:So, this one is going to be a two-parter because it got away from me lol. This first half will be focused on the MC, the next will be from the Cartel side. The second part should be posted sometime early next week, as I have a few Coco and Angel prompts coming up. I’ve also cut out some MC members, as I don’t think they would have had much interaction with such a character; Taza, Tranq, Creeper, Gilly. All that said, I really hope you enjoy this little slice, look forward to the next part, and as always, have a request? Drop it in!
Bishop is… Weary. You know that saying? All that glitters is not gold? Yeah, he’s a big believer of that one. And, hearing of Galindo’s sister, a young woman who, according to the grape vine, is a prominent charity fundraiser, volunteers at local hospices and does outreach work in underprivileged neighborhoods, those alarm bells are ringing.
On the few occasions they meet, he takes to questioning her subtly. He asks her how work is going, if it was the hospice up on fifth that she worked at, even though he knew it was on forth, just to see if he can catch her out. He never does. She smiles, flashing dimples, and is always cheerfully polite. To be honest, it pisses him off.
No one, and he sincerely meant no one, was spotless. Especially if they had Galindo blood. Still, he isn’t outrightly hostile, he isn’t about to risk his and the MC’s relationship to the Galindo cartel because he can’t keep his mouth shut or paint on a smile when needed, and neither does he take his doubts further than the odd question to see if her answer matches the Intel he has.
He knows how to play the great game.
Bishop is the type of man who likes knowing. And he doesn’t take anything at face value. It’s what’s kept his MC above water, and he himself as a dangerous president. He didn’t get, and most importantly, keep that position by not being an inch on the suspicious side. So, meeting this little sister, who for all the world looks like she is heading towards sainthood, and watching the way Miguel seems to look towards her, care for her, plain for all to see, you can bet Bishop is going to do a little digging, weighing up what exactly this means for him and his crew.
If she might be a… Problem.
He comes up with nothing but more sickeningly good deeds. Open craft nights for orphans. Funding rescue homes. Food shelters for the homeless. Fuck, the girl is in medical school, learning to become a doctor, where, from what he’s heard, she plans to volunteer in poor districts. Either she really is this spotless, and if so, damn, the world needs more people like her in it, or she’s so good at hiding her own shit that even he can’t smell it… And that is something he can respect.
Riz is fond. He met her once, down in the brothel by the border, where she was doing some outreach work with the women there. At the time, he did not know it was that Galindo, and when he did find out when one of the women told him after the girl had left, he was surprised. More than surprised.
A Galindo? Are you sure? Really?
Nevertheless, he watched the way she was respectful to the working girls. She didn’t judge them. She wasn’t snooty or condescending. She really just wanted to help. He could tell.
She offered out free protection, gave out numbers for local shelters should the girls need it, counselling for any abuse if they wished to take it, and went as far as giving out her own number should any of them wish or need to simply talk to an open ear without condemnation or judgement.
From then on, he liked her.
It wasn’t often anyone cared about the little man, not unless the little guy could do something for them, and as an underdog himself, from less than stellar beginnings, Riz appreciated the work she was trying to do for those just like him when he was younger.
Most importantly, she didn’t make it feel like charity work. There was no photo’s splattered about the place, on the front of newspapers, taken of her sitting with kids less fortunate than her, only to get back up, walk away and not look back. She didn’t boast about the work she did, in fact, most of it, especially her involvement, was kept under the table.
She wasn’t afraid to go out into the field herself, rather than just simply pumping money out and getting a grunt to do the leg work, and, seemingly, enjoyed that most. It’s where she thrived, in the thick of it, meeting new people from all different walks of life, and she did, honestly, seem invested in each and every person she met.
And that was something he could respect even more.
She had a big smile, and an even bigger heart. So, one day, when she returned to the brothel to catch up with the ladies, if there was a bouquet of roses waiting for her with a simple note saying ‘thanks’, it was the least Riz could do to show her that at least one person appreciated her efforts.
Ez feels… Conflicted. To him, the Galindo’s are what is wrong with the world. Cutthroat. Duplicitous. Bloody. You don’t get in a Galindo’s way, unless you want to get dead.
He’s formed a sort of picture in his mind. Perhaps over exaggerated in some aspects, grossly under exaggerated in others, this is a cartel family after all, and it’s very hard, especially for Ez, to move away from that picture.
But she breaks that picture mercilessly.
She’s exactly everything opposite to what he expects a Galindo to be. Kind. Caring. Perhaps a bit overly cheerful. And he can’t add the name, Galindo, to her face. It just doesn’t fit.
Maybe it’s a bit of jealousy, her brother is married to his ex, an ex he still has strong feelings for, and by association, she’s guilty too in the beginning. However, with each time they meet, running into each other, the more Ez realizes she’s not her brother, and the more conflicted he becomes.
He doesn’t want to like her, but he does.
He’s passing over info about the Galindo’s to the feds, it’s his ticket to freedom, and that includes Miguel’s sister, anything at all the feds can use against the cartel leader, and a sister was prime real-estate in that battle, and, with each passing over, guilt begins to gnaw at him.
Because he knows, when the time comes, the feds will use everything he has told them, including things about her, against Miguel. And she doesn’t deserve to be dragged into the vicious dog fight about to be unleashed.
He doubts she would survive it.
He hopes she proves him wrong.
Angel likes her, and that’s the problem. She’s a Galindo, and Angel, well, he had set himself squarely in the Los Olvidados camp. Unlike Ez, though, there is no guilt in the beginning.
In the world they lived in, you either stepped on a few toes, or you had your own toes stepped on. Angel liked his shoes just how they were, thank you. It was nothing personal.
The thing is, that sort of mentality was easier said than done. When you begin to get to know someone personally, that tends to start blurring the whole ‘business is business’ excuse.
He didn’t like the way she was easy to get along with. He didn’t like the way she shared the same sort of humour as him. Dark, unexpectedly so for someone so fucking preppy, sardonic and bitter. Like black coffee. He didn’t like how she asked personal shit, like asking after how he was doing, if he was alright, and expected nothing in return. She really just cared. He wasn’t used to that. He was the older brother. He was the one to check up, not be checked up on. He liked none of it.
Because it fucked up his whole ‘nothing personal’ rationalization.
So, he starts distancing himself. When they cross paths, he walks by, acting as if he hasn’t seen her, seen her smile at him in greeting, growing confused as he ducks his head down and slinks off. When she waits in the car out in the scrapyard, when Miguel is down and in the temple checking off points with Bishop, he turns his back and pretends he doesn’t hear his name being called, only to go ignored.
Again, nothing personal. It was just what had to be done. He had already started backing Adelita, and, at the time, thinking she was going to take down the cartel, Miguel’s sister included, Galindo’s appeared to come in a package deal, it seemed the best course of action.
Yet, he feels like shit for it.
Angel’s not used to being rude, unfriendly or even unsociable. Especially to someone so... Kind, It never sat right with him. So, when he learns Adelita’s plans were never one of obliteration, but of getting into bed with the Galindo’s, he feels fucking stupid. Real stupid.
He feels even worse when, after spotting her in the car waiting out front of the temple for Miguel to finish, he greeted her, the first time in months, and she acted as if nothing was amiss, as if he hadn’t been treating her like a leper for the last six months.
In fact, her first words were asking how he was doing, and fuck, she was a good kid. Better than most. Still, Angel doesn’t apologize. He can’t. If he apologizes, he recognizes he had changed towards her, and if he recognizes that, then he has to recognize the reason, and he doesn’t need anyone, especially a Galindo, no matter how nice they are, analyzing his shifting moods.
Yet, he apologizes without words. A strawberry frappe, those frilly drinks that don’t really belong in a coffee house, her favourite, is always waiting for her when the Galindo car pulls up to the MC. There’s always an extra slice of cheesecake left in the garage fridge for her. And there is, now, a bowl on the side of the bar, filled with her favourite chili chocolates.
The kid has a sweet-tooth a mile long.
Coco is distrustful. He’s met plenty of people like her before. Social workers who came milling about when he was a kid, promising to protect, help,only to finish their paper work and move on to the next sorry case.
That’s all they were, kids, people like him, numbers and statistics, bad stains on societies face that needed to be fixed. Quickly. They pretend they care, they pretend they want to help, but they don’t. Not really. They just want to finish their work quota, file away the day and get home.
When they get to their bed, they could tell themselves they did something good today and sleep tight. Lies. All of it lies. Pretty, but false. The truth was that alcoholic dad they were giving anger management lessons to would still hit his kids, only in places people couldn’t see now. That druggy mother they had put in rehab? Yeah, she was back on the street scoring by the end of the week, leaving her kids at home, hungry and scared. That prostitute they had gotten to swear not to work the corner again? She was back to hopping men for cash within the hour.
He knew that one personally.
Call him cynical. He just knew how people worked when they weren’t being watched.
At first, he thinks she’s just another cog in the machine. The pretty face to the ugly truth of the Galindo cartel, something her brother uses to hide behind. A come look at me, look how good we are, how could we be conducting illegal drug rings, sort of deal.
And then one night, on the ride home, he sees her down an alley way. It’s the type of alley no local would go down. Filled with trash, blankets where the homeless crash when the nights get chilly, where shady drug deals go down. Coco doesn’t know why he stops, but he does.
He didn’t recognize her at first, having only saw her in brief passing before. No. That night, he simply see’s a woman crouching down in the dark, hunched. He parked up at the side of the road, still not really knowing what he was doing, why he was doing it, but there he was, getting off his bike, walking over.
Call it his good deed of the year.
Imagine his surprise when, through the flicker of the street light, he finally got a glimpse of her face and realised who it was. Now, imagine that surprise going tenfold when he saw her, crouched there, talking away to some woman, obviously down on her luck, black eye and all, and, upon seeing the woman’s bare feet, socks holey and damp, she sat right down in the middle of that alley way, plucked her own boots right off, and handed them over without so much as a blink.
The woman took them, after some urging, and as bright as a sunbeam, she gave her some money, all she had in her wallet, told her were the local shelter was, and as if she was strolling off to Disneyland, stood up and started walking down the street, sans shoes.
He didn’t know why until he catches up. He tells her to come back, he has a bike, that she shouldn’t walk around, barefoot, at night, in this sort of place. She says thank you. That it was really kind of him. He didn’t need to go out of his way for her. She’ll pay him for the gas when she gets home and gets her bank card. Coco waves her off.
This girl was something else.
When he pulls up to the place she told him to drop her off, he realizes it’s the hospice she volunteers at, that she has a night-shift she’s planning to take… Barefoot. Coco doesn’t say anything. She smiles at him, wishes him a good night, and she’s off, full of endless energy and smiles.
However, come morning, by the time she has to leave to head home, there is a pair of new boots waiting for her at the front desk, new tags still hanging on the zip. Kindness deserved to be rewarded, even just a little. Perhaps, Coco thought, there really was people out there who were kind. Who really did care. For once, Coco felt hope.
A pair of boots seemed a good price to feel that way again.
