Archive of Our Own

 i. Berlin

“You can’t risk the whole plan for a woman. That’s the first rule, Andrés, rule number one. A job can’t be tainted by a romantic relationship, never. Never. It’s not hard to understand.”

* * * * * 

The monks break their vow of silence eight times a day to sing the Liturgy of the Hours. 

Most nights, Sergio finds it soothing - the low, rhythmic chant floating on the warm night breeze out of the chapel windows, across the courtyard, and up into the sky, the sound of all those voices in harmony somehow new every evening, and ancient as the stones, all at once.  His Latin is good, and from time to time when he needs a distraction, he amuses himself by seeing how many Psalms he can translate and name. He likes to close his eyes and let the music wash over him, like a dark river, as the “Salve Regina” which concludes the compline service lulls him to sleep.

Tonight, sleep does not come, and he knows exactly why.

Sergio is no longer sure he believes in sin, at least not the way it was taught to him (certainly he is not unaware that his current project would not be received well by the parish priests of his childhood), but he does have a conscience. And it offends that conscience to feel the things he is feeling, so he would like the feelings to stop.

Surely, however a person defines the word, it must be a sin to be this angry at your own brother.

Especially when your brother is dying.

It feels like a curse out of a fairy tale . . . one son ill as a youth, the other as a man. One lost his childhood, the other will lose his old age. Fitting, in some grim way; Andrés has been Sergio’s shadow self all his life.

Though if you had known them as children, it would have been Sergio - the sickly one, the quiet one, the one whose only friends were books - who seemed the shadow next to Andrés, the handsome and charming one with a bright future ahead of him.

Sergio loves his brother, but he has never felt seen by him, understood by him, and their argument this afternoon has brought decades of suppressed frustrations to the surface, about which they cannot even have a real conversation because Andrés only laughs them off.

It isn’t about Tatiana. Or rather, it is, but it’s so much bigger than that. It’s about the way Sergio gave Andrés only one rule, and Andrés could not follow it. No, not even “couldn’t”; he simply chose not to, because he did not like the rule. There are reasons why the rule exists, why this was a mistake, why Andrés should never have said anything. Sergio has planned this out, he has thought this all the way through, a thing his brother never does.

And when this all goes wrong - as Andrés’ freewheeling improvisational life always, somehow, manages to go wrong - it will be Sergio there to pick up the pieces, the way it has been all their lives, and Andrés will never say thank you.

But when he tried to explain - again, for the hundredth time - his reasoning, Andrés played a card he had never played before, shocking in its casual cruelty:

“It’s so easy to talk about love when you’ve never experienced it.”

Of course. Because Andrés has been married five times, and Sergio never, so of course he cannot possibly know anything about the world, about women, about people.

As though Andrés, continually stumbling into romantic disaster, is really so wise.

Of the two of them, it is Sergio who knows how to remain objective, Sergio who can step back and see the whole field, Sergio who can spot trouble coming a mile away as Andrés barrels heedlessly toward it. And yet still, Andrés thinks he is the wiser of the two, because he gives himself permission to make more mistakes without thinking about the consequences.

Because Andrés loves freely, hands his heart over without question, no matter how many times it has gotten him in trouble.

Sergio remembers, once, when he was young, asking one of the nuns from the hospital why it was that priests were not allowed to get married. He had expected the answer to be something very stupid - some tiresome old speech about women being vessels of wickedness, the kind of thing the doddering old priest at his grandparents’ church used to say - but instead the nun surprised him with a reply that made, he thought, a great deal of sense.

“Because, Sergio,” she explained, “when you are a priest, every child of God belongs to you equally. If a priest loves any one person - a wife, a son, a daughter - more than he loves the others, there is always the risk that that love could pull him away from serving the rest of the community. If your father were a priest,” she went on, stroking his hair, “and you were sick, he would still be here with you, every day, because you are his child and his most important responsibility. But when he went home to the rectory at the end of the day, he would have nothing left to give to the rest of his flock, because he would have given it all - and quite correctly - to his own son.”

“So it is safer for the priest to attach himself to no one,” said Sergio.

The sister nodded. “I have no children, so all of you are my children,” she told him. “This means I can give everything I have to whoever needs it most. I would have less to give you, if I had a son of my own.”

Sergio thought this very sound reasoning, and it has stayed with him all his life. 

He has attempted more than once to explain it to Andrés, but Andrés thinks the whole thing is silly. He thinks the best thing for Sergio would be a torrid affair, or two, or three, to brush off the cobwebs and get all this buttoned-up professorial stiffness out of his system. Andrés thinks he would be more handsome if his clothes were not always so faded and rumpled. Andrés likes to joke that he does not know if his brother’s cock even works. Andrés thinks getting fucked regularly would make Sergio better at his job, and he’s willing to act as procurer if necessary.

Andrés is dying, of the same illness that took their mother, and Sergio is all he has, and it must be wrong to resent him so much, when they have no idea how much time together they have left.

The bell rings for matins. Two a.m. Sleep is still impossible. 

Sergio lies in his bed, staring up at the vaulted monastery ceiling, listening to the monks singing.

“Ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unum.” ( “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.”)

I swear to God, he thinks wearily. I’m trying. 

 ii. Tokyo

“People find a lot of things sexy. Dancing, muscles, blonde hair, a French accent . . . do you know what’s sexy to me? Intelligence. Men who speak to you and you can’t help admiring them. Doesn’t matter if they’re tall, short, ugly, or good-looking. It turns me on that they talk to me about things I don’t know.”

* * * * * 

He wishes it did not give the girl quite so much obvious pleasure to make his life more difficult.

For the most part, Sergio has generally succeeded in getting along with women wherever necessary by the simple expedient of treating them exactly like men. Or, perhaps more accurately, to treat everyone, of any gender, the same. Andrés does the opposite. Andrés treats every woman in his orbit like a potential romantic conquest, and succeeds more often than he fails. To Sergio this is empirical evidence that one brother inherited good looks and charm from their parents, and the other only stubbornness and pain; but Andrés disputes this vociferously, insisting that the only reason he has more sex than his brother is because he makes himself available for it. Because he is always open, where Sergio is always closed.

The handful of women with whom Sergio has been intimate up to this point in his life (more than zero, he did not quite lie to Tokyo about this, but significantly fewer than any other forty-year-old man he knows) have been obligated to make quite direct overtures themselves, since Sergio’s faith in his own powers of attraction is . . . well, not high, and he finds it difficult to determine when he is being flirted with, so he usually just assumes he isn’t.

The benefit to holding yourself at arm’s length from the rest of humanity, of treating everybody the same, is that you generally know where you stand with people.

This does not work with Tokyo.

Tokyo sees every rule, every boundary, as a personal challenge to herself, and the walls Sergio has built around himself are no different. She is determined to dismantle, or at the very least scale them, and he finds this persistence alarming.

Even if he did not know about Rio (of course he knows about Rio, he has always known about Rio), he would know Tokyo is not serious about him. Or rather, she is extraordinarily serious about him, more serious than she has been about any man in her life, but she is serious in her own particular way. 

It would be easier, he thinks to himself, for the hundredth time, if he could simply ask her, “What do you want of me? Who do you want me to be for you?”, and then they could proceed accordingly.  It would be easier if he could build a box to fit her, and file her neatly away.

But then she would cease to be Silene Oliveira, and he does not want that either.

When he attempts to approach her like a logic puzzle, he gets nowhere. 

She does not, for example, want a father figure. This was his first mistake, and it led to immediate ridicule. (Sometimes still, when he comes across too stern about noisy disruptions at night, she laughs and calls him "Papa" to vex him.) But she also, quite clearly, does not want to fuck him. He suspects that her only goal is to make him think she wants to fuck him, because it makes him nervous. Her flirtatious attentions follow a clear pattern. Daylight, always, and generally in stolen moments alone while others are nearby. There is always an escape, if he chooses to take it. Neutral spaces. Never in the dark, never in his room, and never an outright offer. She is very plainly toying with him, because his discomfort amuses her, and because this is perhaps the only arena in which she can momentarily shift the balance of power between them . . . the only times where she is the one in control, and he is the one with no idea how to proceed.

But today, something was different.

No personal information, he has repeated over and over again; yet all Tokyo had to do was raise her eyebrow and take a sip of wine and smile at him, and suddenly with just a few fumbling sentences he had handed to this girl, still in so many ways a near stranger, the whole of his love life - such as it is, and it isn't much.

"I'm not in a closet or anything."

"I don't mean prostitutes."

Mortifying.

What he doesn't know - and this is why he finds himself tarrying over his preparations for bed, staying up later than usual with his reading; stalling, if he is being quite honest with himself - is whether Tokyo obtained everything she wanted from that exchange, or whether she wants more.

Did she ask him all those questions - is he married, is he a virgin, is he gay - because the answers mattered to her, because it was something she needed to know before making her next move? Or did it simply amuse her to ask?

Is he waiting for her? Is that what he's doing now, taking so much longer than usual to fold and hang his laundry and prepare his notes for tomorrow's class and brush his teeth? Does some part of him believe that tonight will be the night she finally knocks on his door, and asks him for something definitive and clear?

Is she toying with him, because she trusts his adherence to his own rules, because she knows she is safe - not just from him, but from everything - as long as she is under his roof and protection? Because she knows a man like Denver or Berlin would take her overtures at face value and respond in kind, but flirting with the Professor is a harmless pastime that costs her nothing?

Or is she lying alone in her own bed, staring up at the bare wooden beams of the ceiling overhead, just like he is now, contemplating the prospect of knocking on his door?

What would he do with her if she did?

He feels vulnerable now, in a strange new way, laid bare by her frank, wry gaze and her casually blunt questions. He feels seen, and it unsettles him. Sergio has never been in love, and Tokyo has uncovered this crack in his armor, and a part of him wishes he had pushed her away before she scaled the wall. How easy it would have been, to pull any story from his brother’s life and retell it as his own, to deflect her from the truth.

But he does not lie to Tokyo, because she would never trust him again if he did, even about something like this.

It must be very pleasant, he thinks to himself, as he drifts off to sleep - with a flash of something he recognizes as very close to bitterness - to go through life the way she does, the way his brother does. People like Sergio set the rules, and draw up the blueprints, and map out layer upon layer of contingency plans for every situation, so that people like Tokyo and Berlin are protected from the consequences of their own unpredictable behavior.

This is how the Professor keeps everyone safe.

This is why he is who he is. Because he has to be.

It must be nice, not to carry the burden of knowing how dangerous love is. They must feel so free.

 iii. Nairobi

“I don’t want to hurt you, but we can’t, Nairobi.”

“No, I think I can take it. Actually, I think you’ve treated me better than any man I’ve ever met.”

* * * * *

This is closer than he has come to saying yes to anyone in longer than he can remember. If it was going to be anyone, it would be her. So the act of saying no to her leaves him feeling oddly hollow.

All of them are dear to him in their own unique ways, but Nairobi has always been special. She is the most alive person he has ever met, vibrant and passionate and quick-witted, and he feels more alive when he is with her, and it is impossible to deny the allure of that. She has made very little secret of her interest, though she never oversteps the line, and her attentions are undeniably more sincere than Tokyo's, who simply enjoys making him uncomfortable.

But Tokyo does not want the Professor to make love to her.

If he came to her room one night - just burst in without knocking and took her in his arms and kissed her, like some dashing hero from an old film - Tokyo would recoil instantly and push him away, horror and anger and disappointment in her eyes, and something fragile but important between them would be broken forever, which Sergio could not bear. Even if he wanted Tokyo in that way, he would never, ever cross that line.

If he burst in on Nairobi, she would laugh with delight, tell him it took him long enough, and shove him down onto her bed.

So he has to be a little more cautious with her.

He found himself, in that moment, lying beside her on that bed, thinking the same thing he had once thought about Toyko: that all of this would be so much easier if he could allow himself, sometimes, to lie to them. Not a big lie, not a cruel one, but a gentle and useful lie to keep everyone safe.

If only he could have said to Nairobi, a long time ago, right from the beginning - "I'm sorry, but I don't think of you that way." She would have had no reason to disbelieve him, and he would not have found himself in her bed, desperately torn between the kind of man he'd like to be and the kind of man he has to be.

But in the end, he tells her the most cowardly version of the truth. He hides behind the rules.

"Relationships are forbidden" is a kind of answer, but it isn't the answer to the question Nairobi is really asking him, and even though she takes it well he knows he's disappointed her. But they don't understand, none of them understand, the rules exist for a reason, no matter how much they tease him and roll their eyes, no matter how loudly and openly Tokyo and Rio go around flouting the rules completely (everyone in the house can hear them having sex, for God's sake), no matter how old and stiff and dusty and repressed they all think he is.

Once, when he was drunk, Denver teased him that the rule only existed because if the Professor wasn't having any sex, then nobody should be having any sex, and everyone at the table had laughed at him, even his brother, so he had laughed too, so Denver would not realize he'd wounded him, and feel badly about it later.

But it wearies him, that none of them seem to understand why this is the way it has to be. They look after themselves; he looks after all of them.

Even Andrés, under this roof, even his own brother, is simply another member of the team. He cannot show favoritism even to his own flesh and blood. It helps, some, to address each other as "Professor" and "Berlin," but still.

So he cannot let Nairobi’s gentle hands go any further than stroking his tie and resting lightly on the fabric of his jacket, as she lies beside him. He cannot give her what she wants.

What does he want?

He doesn’t know.

Sleep does not come easily that night, which perhaps should not surprise him. He is restless, on edge, unsettled, and nothing he does can still his turbulent mind.

It felt so good - it was such a profound and unexpected release - to finally tell someone the story of his father. And it seems right, in its own way, that out of all of them it would turn out to be her. Nairobi is colorful and bold and fearless, with a personality so vibrant that it makes him feel dusty and colorless and old by comparison; but she is also a remarkably sensitive listener, and this surprises him. She goes quiet and patient and still, letting him tell his story in his own words, at his own halting pace, and making no further overtures toward intimacy save for the gentle caress of her fingertips on his cheek, collecting a stray tear. But this is more empathy than seduction, and they both know it. She only wants to ensure that he remembers he is not alone.

It felt good, to open up to Nairobi. This, at least, is an intimacy he can offer her without compromising himself, isn’t it? He can’t touch her silky hair, he can't permit her hands to move from his tie to his belt, he can’t lift the hem of her thin white tank top for a second glimpse at the warm golden skin of her belly which she bared so easily to them all during anatomy class.

But he can tell her a story he has never told anyone, he can let her touch a piece of himself that no one else ever has. To show her, in his own way, how much she matters. To help her understand that he would, if he could.

Wouldn’t he?

He tosses and turns in his narrow bed, and he turns the question over and over again in his mind.

Nairobi would be patient, and fond, and amused at his inexperience, but she would not judge. It would be nice, he thinks, to let himself be wanted. To let her have her way with him, and do whatever she liked. There has been no one in such a long time, and at least for an hour or two it would be a relief to hold the loneliness at bay.

Yes, and then what? demands the voice of logic inside his mind. What happens tomorrow? How will the others look at you, for breaking your own rule? How will they look at her? Will every gesture of approval from now on be taken as favoritism? Will they begin to resent her? What will happen when all of them are alone together in the Mint, and you are outside, when you will have to trust them to take care of each other?

Tokyo and Rio are enough chaos for one team. He needs to maintain Nairobi’s trust in him, and he needs the others to maintain their trust in Nairobi.

In the end, it is not a difficult decision, and this makes him a little sad.

A part of him wishes he was in love with Nairobi, as dangerous as that would be. A part of him wishes that he could be more like his brother, that he could open himself up to a beautiful woman - a woman he is genuinely attracted to, genuinely fond of - and say “yes” without worrying about tomorrow.

But the prospect of a pleasant night in bed is not enough to supersede the rule, and while he knows that this is the right decision, it feels so bleak and lonely to close that door.

Nairobi received the message. He was gentle with her, but clear. She will not make the offer again.

And if it is not Nairobi, who has come closer to tempting him across the line than anyone else in years - maybe decades - then it seems reasonable to believe, at this stage in his life, that it may not be anyone.

Perhaps some people are simply not wired this way, he thinks. Perhaps, like the village priest, he must divide his affections into equal slices to share them out, and will dutifully receive a slice back from everybody else - a quiet glass of wine late at night with his brother, an impulsive hug from Rio after a particularly successful class, a kiss on the cheek from Tokyo as she makes her way to bed - and that will be all there is, so that will have to be enough.

It is more than nothing, after all. It is more than he thought there would be. He is not, after all, completely alone. There are dinners full of wine and laughter, long walks through the Toledo hills, work to keep them all busy. He has something which is almost like a family, and he has his father’s memory alive inside him, and those are both gifts he does not take for granted.

It would be selfish, to wish for more, when he knows perfectly well there is no more coming.

After all, if not Nairobi, then who could it possibly be?

iv.  Ángel

“In the cafe, I saw you holding hands with that guy. Would you sleep with him?"

“Why not? Yes. Of course. I’m a free, 40-year-old woman, getting laid would be good for me. Because I’d have something different to think about. So what? What’s wrong with that?”

* * * * * 

It begins with Cercedilla.

Later, when he looks back, when he wonders how it all began to go wrong - when he turns his analytical brain on himself, ruthlessly scanning for vulnerabilities and weaknesses the way he has grown so accustomed to doing with everyone else - he will follow the trail of footprints backward to this moment, lying awake in his pajamas and listening to a drunk, self-pitying Detective Rubio dial Raquel Murillo’s phone number.

This is when the alarm bells in the back of his mind begin to ring, warning him that he is steering toward dangerous waters. They will grow louder, over the coming hours and days, but for now they are faint enough to ignore, curiosity triumphing over prudence.

But Cercedilla is where it all begins to crumble, because it is here, on this night, in the middle of this phone call, when the wall between himself and the rest of the story dissolves, and he is pulled into the fray, and he can no longer tell himself he is a neutral observer.

He is the man who was holding Inspector Murillo’s hands in the cafe, which makes him a threat in the deluded mind of Ángel Rubio, who thinks he still has a chance; but it makes him something else to Raquel, something Sergio never once remotely considered.

Gain her trust, yes. Get close enough to her as Salvo to find out what she knows, yes. Create friction between herself and her partner, a bonus. Even the plan which began forming in his mind in the cafe, as she told him about her ex-husband - even this, he can justify. Certainly it satisfies a primal, ruthless knot of fury somewhere deep inside his chest to realize it is in his power not merely to make Alberto Vicuña suffer, but to fabricate a lie which will reveal the truth. To expose the man for what he is. But surely, that is only practical? Surely discrediting the most effective forensic detective on the force can only benefit the team inside the Mint by sowing chaos in the middle of the investigation? 

Surely this is still a decision being made by the Professor, the criminal mastermind, and not by Sergio, the man?

And surely, surely, there is a perfectly logical reason - one which will come to him on its own, soon - why he cannot sleep tonight, why he is lying awake with his eyes fixed on the dented metal base of the bunk bed over his head, thinking about Cercedilla.

Did they go in the winter, when the mountains were covered in snow? Did they drink their morning coffee as flurries of white tumbled down outside their windows? Did their hotel room have a big stone hearth, like the rustic lodges so often do, did they stoke up a hearty blaze to take off the late-night chill and make love in the flicker of firelight? Or was it summer, did they go for the hiking, long afternoons of wandering through towers of green and stopping to show one another each glorious view?

Why is he even thinking about this? Why does he care?

Why does Ángel matter, suddenly?

Because you could have a Cercedilla of your own, if you asked her for it, whispers a seductive, treasonous voice in the back of his mind. Because she said no to him, and yes to you.

Andrés would be thrilled at the revelation of Cercedilla. Ecstatic. What could be better ammunition than an affair? Better still, an affair with her partner, the other lead officer in the case. Better even than that, an affair which was never resolved, full of ghosts that still hang in the air between them, seeding doubt into Detective Rubio’s marriage and making Inspector Murillo uncomfortable in his presence. Ghosts that prompt him to drink too much wine and call her late at night, disrupting the first sleep she has had in days, to ask a stupid question about Andy Warhol. He wants balm for his wounded ego, which she gently denies him, and even though their parting is polite, the ghosts are all still there.

He could call Andrés right now. He knows what his brother would say: “How the hell did we get this lucky?”

Andrés would say, Raquel Murillo is a woman in a man’s world and this is a weapon they can easily use against her. He would remind Sergio that the other men in the tent - not just Detective Rubio, but Colonel Prieto, Suarez, and all the rest of them - are primed and ready to resent the woman in their midst who is currently calling the shots, and will turn on her with the slightest provocation. All they need is a little push. Some will be jealous that she fucked Rubio and not them. Some still despise her for trying to smear her husband’s name, and will revel in the opportunity to call her an opportunistic bitch. Some will begin breathlessly watching every interaction between Murillo and Rubio for clues as to whether they are still fucking. Some will want to figure out how much, if anything, Mari Carmen knows. 

The result? Friction, discord, and petty spite, turning the tent into a powder keg ready to explode.

Andrés would say this is a gift.

Raquel Murillo is excellent at her job, and they need her not to be. They need her distracted, confused, flustered, and on the defensive.

This is perfect.

It would be so easy. It could be done with surgical precision. He can think of a hundred ways to do it, all more elegant than the last. Detective Rubio will be right there beside her, during his next call, the tent will be full of men, and everything is recorded. How simple it would be, to throw her off-balance without ever revealing himself, without alerting anyone to the recording device on the detective’s glasses or raising a whit of suspicion in his own direction.

He could simply ask, for example, if she has ever visited the mountains.

He could tease her that she sounds like she needs a vacation, and casually toss out a handful of suggestions for places to take a weekend trip with her daughter, slipping Cercedilla into the middle of the list.

Hell, he could be even more direct than that, he’s already set a precedent for intrusively personal questions - how she lost her virginity, whether she’s ever faked an orgasm. Would anyone even bat an eye, if he commented upon her marriage to a fellow detective and then asked her quite simply if she has ever fucked any of the other men in the tent?

She would not give him a real answer, of course, but she would not have to. The damage would be done. Rubio is a blunt instrument, Rubio’s nerves are frayed, Rubio thinks he has a romantic rival now, Rubio would give the whole thing away without a word from her.

It would be so easy.

So elegant in its simplicity. A masterpiece of chaos. A perfect distraction.

So why does he already know he will never do it?

Why, after studying her life in meticulous detail for months - from medical files on her pregnancy to the restraining order on her ex-husband - is he suddenly balking at this? Why is an eight-year-old affair suddenly a bridge too far?

What has changed between himself and Raquel Murillo, between the moment she answered her partner’s phone call and the moment she hung up?

He does not want to search too vigorously for an answer here. Because if he discovers it, and finds that it is connected to that jolt of electricity which surged through his body at her two simple words - “Why not?” - then he will be forced to step back from the brink of the cliff, which frankly he ought to do anyway, for everybody’s sake, and is not quite sure why he is resisting.

Sergio is a rational, enlightened man. He is calm and patient, he prepares for everything, he is never taken by surprise, and he has built a labyrinth of careful walls inside him which lock every dangerous emotion away. He is a mind, not a body. Intellect over instinct. It’s men like Andrés - not him - who let their sex drive, their primal bestial nature, get the better of them in the presence of both women and other men, who engage in primitive, immature battles for dominance over the prize of female attention.

Sergio despises men like this. 

But still. She chose him.

Or, more precisely, she chose Salva, a fact of which he must keep reminding himself. And this, too, he can rationalize, this too is part of the con, isn’t it, this is simply more evidence that she suspects nothing and all his tactics have worked.

“I’m sure that if you and I had met in a bar, you would have completely ignored me,” he said to her, but suddenly he knows that isn’t true.

She could, of course, be lying. Sergio would not blame her. It could simply be a line in the sand, reminding Ángel that the past is not the present, that he is married and he is her colleague and she does not wish to be pursued any further. It could be no more a polite but firm way to keep an unwanted suitor at arm’s length, affirming her lack of interest in one man by feigning interest in another.

But maybe it isn’t.

Maybe she, like Sergio, was caught off-guard by the unexpected question, and she simply told the truth.

Maybe she is lying in bed, staring up at her own ceiling, and she is thinking of him right now, the way he is thinking of her.

Raquel in Cercedilla, naked and golden in a white bed, skin bathed in firelight, caramel-colored hair spilled out like warm shadows against the linen sheets, thick flurries of snow tumbling down outside the window and wrapping the whole room in a bubble of wintry silence. The image is almost unbearably alluring, as graceful in its eroticism as a Renaissance painting, and the distasteful thought of Ángel Rubio’s naked body grunting and thrusting on top of her feels like an unspeakable violation. He would rather imagine her there alone. Peaceful, smiling, happy, soothed into slumber by the quiet.

“Because I’d have something different to think about.”

The words run over and over through his mind. He lays them out, one by one, as though on a surgical table, dismantling the sentence to examine its inner workings, studying it until all its possible meanings are known to him.

Different from what? 

From loneliness? From night after night alone in an empty bed? Sex as an interlude of connection in the long, weary stretch of an isolated life?

Or different, does she really mean, from Alberto? 

What if there has been no one else since him? What if the last time Raquel Murillo took a man to bed, it was the man who hurt her?

What if the greatest gift Salva could give to her is a good memory to block out the bad ones?

What if he could distract the inspector, and help the person, at the same time?

Sergio grew up alone, and has been alone most of his life, even in rooms full of people. His inner world, his imagination, has been his only real home, and he is happiest when he can disappear inside it, the way he does now. He closes his eyes, and the gray metal bunk, the dingy hangar with its dank wet floors, the cold empty space that surrounds him, all dissolve, and suddenly there he is, in Cercedilla, where everything is warm firelight and soft music and starlight and snow, and Raquel Murillo in his arms.

The ache between his thighs which has come on gradually is too powerful to ignore, so he surrenders to it, one trembling hand sliding hesitantly beneath the waistband of his pajamas. Even at forty, he struggles to suppress a flush of guilt sweeping over his skin at the act, still timid even at his own touch. Not because it’s a sin, he has long since outgrown that, but because he worries it could be a violation. Is he, really, no better than Angél Rubio? Is it wicked of him, to lie here in his bed and stroke himself and imagine that it is Raquel’s touch instead?

Raquel, to whom every word he has ever said is a lie. Raquel, who does not even know his real name.

Oh, but he would make it so good for her, he thinks, if he was only given the chance. It may be true, as he inadvertently revealed to Tokyo, that he has not shared a bed with many women in his life; but when your only friends are books, you learn a great many things in theory that you may not yet have experienced in practice. (He has never been to Egypt, either, for example, but if suddenly dropped without warning into the center of Cairo, he could navigate himself perfectly well.)

He would teach Raquel everything he has ever learned. It would be the best night of her life. He could do it. He knows how. He would study her, he would memorize every response, he would listen to the sounds of her gentle sighs and feel the rise and fall of her breathing until he could write a book of his own on Raquel Murillo’s body. Before he entered her, before he even turned his attention to his own pleasure for a moment, he would kiss every inch of her skin, he would bathe her in tenderness until she forgot there had ever been an Alberto or an Ángel, he would cradle her body against his own with hands she knew would never hurt her, not ever, not even by mistake, not once. And she would not have to fake anything, because he would wait as long as he had to, he would wait until she came so many times that her body in his arms would tremble softly with exertion, until he could feel her heart hammering against his own, until her golden hair was tangled and her body damp with sweat, until she was soaked between the thighs and aching to be filled. And then, only then, he would let his body sink down onto her own, and wait for her to reach down and take him in her hand and guide him inside of her, opening herself up to him completely. And as the firelight flickered over their glistening bodies he would bend his head low to kiss her throat and murmur broken fragments of love poetry into her ear, all the poems he can remember, and she would arch her back and look up at him and smile, and her fingers would tangle in his hair and pull his mouth down to her own and as their lips met he would feel her mouth his name in sheer ecstasy as he wrapped his arms even more tightly around her and their bodies moved together as one.

He feels the ripples of a stunningly powerful climax begin to rise up from deep inside him, as his hand begins to move faster and faster, with a raw slick sound so obscene it would make him flush with mortification again, if he were not too far gone to be conscious of it. But he is inside Raquel now, and she is about to come too, and he is lost to everything else as her small, powerful body beneath his grows more frantic, hips lifting to meet his, eyes warm with affection, lips soft on his, and he is so close, but it isn’t enough, he needs more, so he pulls her even closer, thrusting so deep inside her that she cries out, fisting his hair to tug him down against her breast, shuddering with pleasure as he pants into the hollow of her throat.

“Salva,” she murmurs shakily, in that throaty, intimate voice he has come to know so well, “Salva, please, don’t stop.” 

And he doesn’t stop, he’s so close now, they’re both so close, hovering over the edge of a cliff and willing themselves to tumble over it, but it doesn’t happen and doesn’t happen and doesn’t happen, something about this is wrong, something isn’t working, his cock is hard as iron and aching in his hand but nothing he does can bring release. The climax buried inside him simply continues to swell and swell and swell until his whole body is taut and quivering and desperate, until the pleasure is so intense it’s very nearly a kind of pain.

Then, “Sergio,” whispers the dream-Raquel in his arms, “oh God, Sergio, yes,” and there it is.

His hips rise up off the mattress with a violent stutter and the darkness behind his eyelids explodes into starlight and his entire body releases, and a kind of animal cry he does not even recognize is torn from his throat.

He does not let himself think, as he tidies his own mess, straightens his clothes and sinks back into sleep, about what any of this means.

He says nothing about any of it to his brother.

v. Raquel

 “I think it’s about time we stop being so formal with each other, don’t you?”

* * * * * 

The presence of Raquel Murillo in his life has divided him into three different men. 

There is the Professor, that criminal mastermind she knows only as a gravelly metallic voice on the phone who asks her impertinent questions and divulges nothing of himself. 

There is Salva, gentle and nervous and kind, who held her hand in the cafe and made Detective Rubio jealous and to whom she has become attached in some way.

And then there is Sergio, the only piece of himself which is real, the beating human heart behind both of these facades, and the one she will never know. And no matter which man is speaking, Sergio is always in control. He is the one with the strategy, the layers and layers of plans, the quick facility for improvisation, for thinking on his feet, the one who has prepared for every eventuality. When the Professor speaks, he is Sergio playing a role, carefully crafted to reveal only what he chooses, and to achieve a specific effect on Raquel. The intrusively personal questions, for example, are deliberate; to irritate or disarm her, to throw her off-balance with the unexpected, to sexualize the one woman in the room in front of her male colleagues, to tease out personal information which may be useful later.

And he is always Sergio when he plays Salva, too, no matter how guileless the character; even tonight, as she calmly holds him at gunpoint under the table and force-marches him back to the warehouse, he has not turned off his strategic brain. He has taken precautions, of course, he has prepared the room in case she ever chose to come back here with him, nothing suspicious visible anywhere. His fumbled awkwardness is calculated; the naive worries over whether perhaps he needed a permit for his cider press, whether he is breaking the law by sleeping in a building which is not zoned for residential use, these are careful tactics to make her partner look like an irrational bully and himself nothing more than a confused, indisputably innocent citizen.

It all works exactly according to plan.

Then she kisses him.

The first kiss is hesitant, uncertain, and he remains Sergio all the time, the gears inside his head whirring as he recalculates his own position from here. Raquel has expressed interest in Salva, he knows this, he heard her say it to Detective Rubio, this can be leveraged, she is more likely to trust him now than she is to trust Angél, he can use that, he can delicately and carefully widen the rift between them - 

Then she kisses him again, and something happens which has never happened to Sergio Marquina before in all his life.

His mind goes silent.

Because Raquel is kissing Salva, her mouth is warm and hungry on Salva’s mouth, he is giddy with delight and desire with this extraordinary woman in his arms, this woman who wants him with her entire body like no one has ever wanted him, this woman who sees him, somehow, in a way he has never before been seen, even though everything she knows about him is a lie, and he wants so badly for Raquel to be kissing the real him that he does the only thing he can do, he becomes Salva, he sinks down deeper into his alternate self than he has ever gone before, he lets Sergio dissolve completely.

This, he will realize later, is where it all went wrong.

But he can’t think about that right now, because Raquel cannot get undressed quickly enough, cannot stop kissing him, cannot tear her hands away from his shoulders, his hair, and if Sergio existed anymore he would be unable to stop himself from thinking that no one he knows would recognize him in this moment.

Not Andrés, not Tokyo, not Nairobi, not anyone.

Because there are no cobwebs, there is no hesitation, you would never know this was a man who was mocked all his life for holding himself at arm’s length from everybody else. He is frantic and passionate and astonishingly decisive at just the right moment, and he meets Raquel’s intensity with his own.

Raquel deserves better than the dented metal bunk bed, but there is little better to offer her except one good sofa, so they stumble in that general direction, laughing, hands everywhere, kicking off shoes and shedding excess clothes as they go, and then for a long, long time there is nothing but the weight of a woman’s body on top of his own, kissing and kissing and kissing him like no one has ever kissed him before. It is perfect, she is perfect, and if there were nothing but this all night long Salva would still sink down to his knees tomorrow and thank God for it, but Raquel is restless and demanding and starving for him. He can feel her begin to grind more fiercely against his body, leaning back into the hands gripping her ass and pressing down to seek friction from his thighs.

“Salva,” she whispers finally, voice hoarse with desire. “I need you to take my clothes off.”

“I don’t,” he fumbles hesitantly, “I don’t have . . .”

Because why would he? Here? Anywhere, really, he doesn’t carry them around with him, he’s not that kind of man, it doesn’t exactly come up regularly.

But Raquel doesn’t care.

“I had surgery after Paula,” she says, “and there’s been no one since . . . my ex, so I’m clean.”

It gives him a visceral thrill that she refuses even to say his name.

“I am too,” he says, because, well, of course he is, it’s been about nine years since there was anyone.

Raquel beams at him. “Then let’s not waste any more time,” she says, tugging her silk camisole over her head, and sighing with pleasure as Salva reaches behind her and unzips her skirt.

It’s clumsy and awkward and a little ridiculous, trying to get undressed while horizontal because they can’t stop kissing each other, but the moment Raquel sinks down against the leather sofa with her golden skin bared to him, holding out her arms, the laughter stops.

“Oh,” she murmurs, looking up at him with wide dark eyes that appear almost startled, as his hand moves between her thighs and begins gently, tentatively, to stroke her. “Salva, yes.”

“Is this all right?” he breathes, forehead resting against hers. “Is it good, like this?”

The hesitation, suddenly, the shy sweetness she has come to think of as Salva’s defining trait, has returned; now that he has her in his arms, skin against skin, he is suddenly so careful with her, so gentle.

“Salva, you can fuck me,” she laughs, a little breathlessly. “I’m ready. I’ve been ready.”

But he doesn’t. Not yet.

He just touches her, for a long, long time.

They don’t kiss anymore, they can’t tear their eyes off one another. Salva does not want to miss a single flicker of expression on Raquel’s lovely face. He wants to see how her breath catches when the tip of his finger brushes the aching rosebud of her clit, the way she bites her lip and inhales sharply when he caresses the soft folds that surround it. He wants to memorize everything.

“Salva,” she whispers. “Please.”

And she doesn’t wait, she reaches for him, wrapping her slender, powerful hand around his length, and she guides him inside her, and then it’s his turn to gasp in astonishment and stare at her with wide, stunned eyes, because never, never, not once in all his life - 

Time stops altogether, in that room. Their bodies melt together, slow and liquid movements at first, undulating like ocean waves, slowly rising to a frenzied staccato climax, sharp cries of pleasure and frantic inarticulate murmurs, until they melt back into each other again, breathing deeply, skin gleaming with sweat.

The cycle repeats, and repeats again, with variations. Salva sits with his back against the sofa, Raquel on his lap, or sinks down onto the cushions and lets her straddle him with her slim, muscular thighs, riding him until he shudders. They stop counting, eventually. Instinct takes over. Time has lost all meaning. Nothing exists outside this room - not Detective Rubio, not the Royal Mint of Spain, not Berlin and Tokyo and Nairobi, not Alberto Vicuña, nothing. Just skin and breath and hands and hair and sweat and bodies and joy.

No one has ever wanted him so badly that waiting for him to grow hard again makes her impatient. No one has ever torn off her clothes and thrown them on the floor without a second thought in her haste to feel his skin against her own.

No one has ever looked up at him, as he moves above her, as he brushes a strand of golden hair back from her forehead, with eyes that glow with desire and affection like this.

By the time their bodies finally give out altogether and they collapse, laughing ruefully - conceding that, for the moment, this is all they have in them until they get some rest - he has broken his own rule so thoroughly that if, at this very moment, his brother had burst in the door and repeated it back to him, verbatim, he would not have recognized the words at all.

Nothing in the entire world has ever mattered as much as the woman he is holding in his arms.

Andrés was right, that day in the monastery, though he will never get to hear his brother say it.

Until tonight, Sergio Marquina had not known what love was at all.