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The apartment feels too loud tonight. Even though there’s no music playing, no television humming, no voices but hers.
Lucía paces the narrow length of the living room, bare feet slapping softly against the wood. Her robe trails behind her like a fallen flag, and every few steps she stops—just stops—to press her palms against her temples, like she’s trying to keep her mind from splitting open.
You watch from the couch, curled under one of her old shawls. You don’t speak yet. You’ve learned not to interrupt when she’s like this. When her thoughts are too fast, too sharp, colliding with each other before they can land.
“They think I’m mad,” she says suddenly, voice shaking. “Loca. They always do, you know. Every time I start to feel—something, anything—they look at me like I should be medicated or locked away or silenced.” Her breath catches on the last word. “I’m not crazy. I’m not.”
“I know,” you whisper.
But she’s already moving again, hands fluttering through the air, tracing shapes you can’t quite catch. “I just think too much. Feel too much. I remember everything and then I forget it all at once. It’s exhausting.”
You stand, slowly, carefully, like approaching a startled bird. “Lucía—”
She spins to face you. Her eyes are wet but furious. “Don’t soothe me. Don’t do that sweet voice. I can’t be calmed like a child. I’m—”
She breaks off, pressing a trembling hand over her mouth. Her other hand curls around the back of a chair, gripping so tightly her knuckles pale. “I’m trying,” she says at last, quieter now. “I really am. But I can feel it again. The edge of it.”
You step closer. “The edge of what?” She laughs, brittle and breathless. “The storm. The spinning. The thing that makes everyone leave.”
You reach for her hand. She doesn’t pull away, just stares at where your fingers meet. Her pulse thrums fast against your skin.
“Stay with me,” you murmur.
Lucía blinks. “I am with you.”
“I mean here,” you say softly. “Right now.”
She swallows, eyes darting between your face and the wall, like she’s fighting to stay tethered. “You don’t understand. Sometimes it feels like there are too many of me. All talking at once. All telling me what to do. Buy a ticket. Leave the city. Burn everything. Jump from the balcony. Call the police. Call my ex-husband. Call God.” Her voice breaks. “And I don’t know which one to listen to.”
You step close enough that your breath touches her cheek. “Then listen to me,” you whisper. “Just me.”
Lucía trembles. Her eyes close, lashes damp. She leans forward until her forehead rests against your shoulder. For a long time, neither of you move. You feel the sharp rhythm of her heartbeat through the thin silk of her robe.
When she finally speaks again, her voice is small. “You make it quiet. When you touch me, it goes quiet.” You nod against her hair. “That’s all I want to do.” Her laugh is a weak, shaky thing. “You’re too young for this.”
“Maybe. But I’m here anyway.”
Lucía exhales. Her hands unclench slowly, resting against your chest. “I don’t deserve you,” she murmurs. You tilt her chin up just enough to meet her gaze. “That’s not how this works.”
Something fragile shifts behind her eyes—hope or exhaustion, maybe both. Then she kisses you, sudden and desperate, as if she’s afraid the world will disappear if she doesn’t hold onto something real.
And you let her. You let her cling, let her tremble, let her unravel. Because she always finds her way back, and when she does, she’ll remember that you stayed. That you didn’t flinch. That even when she couldn’t hold herself together, you held her.
She’s still holding onto you when she says it. Still trembling a little, breath shallow from crying, mascara drying in streaks under her eyes. You’ve guided her to the floor because she didn’t want to sit, didn’t want the couch, didn’t want anything—but she wanted you. So now you’re both on the cold tile in the middle of the kitchen, her robe half-fallen open, her cheek pressed against your thigh.
Your hand moves slowly through her hair, smoothing it back even as it frizzes under your touch. She’s quiet. For now. But the kind of quiet that feels like the stillness before thunder.
Then, softly— “I would kill for you.”
You pause.
Lucía lifts her head just slightly. Her eyes are glassy, wild, too bright. “I would. You don’t believe me, but I would. I would ruin someone’s life just for looking at you wrong.”
You don’t respond. So she keeps going. “I’d set a building on fire. Slash tires. Push someone off a balcony if they ever made you cry.” Her voice tightens, pitch rising. “I’ve never loved anything like this. Not my son. Not my husband. Not even myself—and I’ve always loved myself more than anything.”
She lets out a shaky laugh, then pushes up into a kneel so she can take your face in her hands. Her fingers are cold, but her grip is sure. “You’re the only thing that makes me want to be quiet. Still. Safe. But I would destroy the whole world if it tried to take you from me. Don’t you know that?”
You look at her—this woman who lives in technicolor, whose thoughts crash and spark like live wires, who forgets names and dates and entire days but never forgets you. “I know,” you whisper.
“No, you don’t,” she insists. Her thumb drags under your eye, not rough, just desperate. “You think I’m dramatic. You think this is performance. It’s not. It’s bone-deep. It’s cellular. It’s chemical. You are a part of me.”
“I know,” you say again, firmer now.
Lucía breathes in like she might start crying again. But she doesn’t. She just looks at you, like she’s trying to memorize every detail, like she’s scared it might disappear.
“I’d die for you,” she says. “But I’d rather kill for you.” You don’t flinch. You don’t laugh. You just lean forward, brushing your nose against hers.
“You don’t have to do either,” you murmur. “Just stay.” She curls into you, small and hot and trembling with all the emotion her body can’t contain. And you let her. You hold her like you always do, like you always will.
Because whatever Lucía is—unpredictable, obsessive, broken in ways she can't always hide—she’s yours.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧
The apartment smells like coffee, smoke, and that old vanilla perfume Lucía always oversprays when she’s in a good mood.
It’s not even noon yet and she’s on her fourth cigarette. The window is cracked, but the Madrid air can’t compete with her habits. There’s a pink ashtray overflowing on the counter, a pack torn open beside it like she’d been too impatient to open it gently.
You watch her from the bedroom doorway, half-dressed in one of her old shirts, sleeves rolled up past your elbows. Lucía’s perched on the windowsill in her slip, legs crossed, robe slipping off one shoulder like it always does—like she wants it to.
She looks like a painting. A painting someone smudged at the edges and left unfinished. “I love you,” she says for the fourth time this hour, exhaling a ribbon of smoke like it’s punctuation.
You smile, soft. “I know.”
“No, no, no,” she sings, pointing at you with the cigarette. “Don’t do that. Don’t ‘I know’ me. I mean it. I love you. Like... ruin my whole life for you, hijack-a-plane love. The kind they write symphonies about and also go to prison for.”
“You told me that last night.”
“Did I?” Her brow furrows. “That doesn’t count. I was crying and crazy.” She waves the smoke away like it’s a bad memory. “This is different. This is morning love. Sane love.”
You raise an eyebrow. “You’ve had three cups of coffee and half a pack of cigarettes.” She shrugs. “Exactly. Clear-headed. Lucid. Enlightened.” She leans forward suddenly, urgent and wide-eyed. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”
You blink, lips parting.
“I mean truly,” she says, almost breathless. “It’s distracting. I can’t focus on anything else. I went to butter toast and forgot what toast was. I just stood there with the knife in my hand and tears in my eyes.”
You try not to laugh. “Lucía—”
“I love you,” she cuts in again. “God, I love you. I want to take your picture and hang it in every room. I want to write your name on the walls in lipstick. I want to marry you in a cathedral and then again in Vegas just for the absurdity of it. I want to press your name into wet cement so it’s there forever.”
She takes another drag, lips staining the filter deep red, fingers trembling just slightly from the nicotine and emotion and sheer intensity of being Lucía.
“Baby,” you murmur, walking over, “that’s your fifth cigarette.” She glances down at it like it just appeared there. “So?”
“You said you were cutting back.”
“I did? When?”
“Two days ago. You made a whole speech about lungs and freedom and reclaiming your body.” She frowns. “That sounds like me. God, I’m annoying.”
“You’re not annoying.” She bats her lashes at you, all wounded theatrics. “Then why are you trying to take away my joy?”
“I’m not.” You reach out and gently pluck the cigarette from her hand, stubbing it out in the ashtray before she can protest. “I’m trying to make sure you don’t die before you get to hang my picture in every room.”
Lucía looks at you like you’ve just offered her the moon. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.” You smile. “Yeah?”
She pulls you into her lap without asking. Her legs tangle with yours, her fingers already reaching for your face like she can’t stop touching you. “Don’t ever leave me,” she says, serious now. Still flushed with smoke and love, but a little quieter. “Promise?”
You press your forehead to hers. “Promise.” Lucía kisses you like the world might end tomorrow. And knowing her—it might. But for now, she’s here. Still glowing. Still trembling. Still a little too much. And still yours.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧
It starts with a slammed drawer. You look up from the couch just in time to see Lucía in the bedroom—barefoot, wild-haired, and draped in a velvet robe she probably hasn’t worn since Easter—tossing scarves into the air like she’s divining the future from fabric.
“We’re going out,” she declares. You blink. “Out?”
“Drinking.” She turns to you, eyes glittering. “I want wine. I want noise. I want strangers to look at us and be jealous.” She’s already pulling open another drawer, ripping through silk blouses, tugging at hems like they insulted her.
“Lucía, it’s barely—”
She whirls on you, pointing a manicured finger. “Don’t. Don’t tell me the time. Time is fake. I’ve decided it’s nighttime. I’ve decided you’re going to wear the little black dress with the slit that makes my heart stop, and we’re going to drink until we forget how to say no.”
You stare. “…I don’t have a black dress with a slit.” She gasps like you’ve just admitted to murder. “Then why do I see it in my head?!”
“Because you made it up.”
“No,” she says, spinning on her heel, cigarette already back between her lips. “No, no, no, I saw it. You wore it in my dream last week. We were on a rooftop and you were glowing and I was crying because you were so beautiful I thought I might fall off the edge just looking at you.”
You bite back a smile. “And this made you want to get drunk?”
“Yes!” She snaps, exasperated with how slow the world moves compared to her brain. “Because I want to feel that again.I want to sit in a dark bar with lipstick on my glass and your hand on my thigh and men watching who hate that I’m the one who gets to take you home.”
You stand slowly, cautiously. “You haven’t even eaten today.”
“I’ll drink grapes. It’s the same.
”
She’s already digging through your side of the closet now, her cigarette trailing ash dangerously close to your clean laundry. “What about this?” she says, holding up a skirt you haven’t worn in months. “No, wait. Too modest. You’re not modest. You’re mine.”
She tosses it away like a rejected script. You come up behind her and gently pull the cigarette from her lips, stubbing it out in the tray she abandoned on the dresser. “Maybe we pick something together,” you offer. “Something you don’t destroy in the process.”
Lucía turns to you, cheeks flushed, lashes clumped from leftover mascara. “You’re so reasonable,” she says, voice warm with awe. “It’s disgusting how much I love you.”
“I’ll take that as agreement.”
“Dress,” she says, snapping her fingers. “Thighs. Lipstick. Now. I want you to look like sin.”
You raise a brow. “That’s a tall order.” Lucía grins, unhinged and utterly radiant. “That’s what I want on my grave.” You laugh and press a kiss to her forehead. She sighs like you’ve just saved her life.
And twenty minutes later, you’re letting her do your makeup with shaking hands and a glass of wine already in her system. She keeps stopping mid-eyeliner to murmur things like "I love your eyes, they’re smarter than mine,” and "Promise me you’ll never die.”
The dress is too short. You told her that three times.
Lucía didn’t care. She said it shows off your ass and makes men weak and that’s the point. Now it clings to your hips like a second skin, rides up every time you take a step, and you’re pretty sure you left the house with one of her lipsticks still in your bra.
Now she’s got your wrist in her hand, tight, urgent, dragging you down the street like the city belongs to her. And maybe it does.
The heels she loaned you click too loud against the pavement. Her own heels are ridiculous—red and strappy, the kind she threatens to throw at people during arguments. Her robe’s been swapped for a too-tight dress and a vintage jacket she swears used to belong to a famous actress she once slapped at a party in 1982.
The air smells like car exhaust and last night’s wine and her perfume, thick and sweet and dizzying
“You’re walking too slow,” she huffs, turning to glance back at you, curls bouncing, eyes wide with the thrill of movement.
“You didn’t let me put on tights,” you shoot back. “My whole ass is out.” Lucía grins, unrepentant. “Good. They should know what I get to come home to.” You laugh, breathless. “You’re insane.”
She stops short in the middle of the sidewalk. Turns to face you. Her cigarette dangles between two fingers, lipstick smudged from where she’s bitten her lip too hard. “You knew that when you moved in.”
She takes a long drag, then steps into your space without asking. Her free hand comes up to adjust your straps, tugging them gently back into place like it matters. Her fingers trail down your collarbone, slow and possessive. Her thumb brushes over your lip. “You’re beautiful,” she murmurs.
“Lucía—”
“Shhh. Let me have this.” You let her look at you. Let her drink you in. Let her be a little mad. And then she’s tugging you again, back into the current of the street, her laugh echoing against the stone as she weaves through the crowd. A few heads turn.
One man whistles low under his breath. Lucía turns on her heel, flips him off, and blows him a kiss.
“¡Consigue una vida!” she snaps.
“What did you say?” you ask, catching up. She grins. “I told him to get a life. I was being very polite.” You don’t believe her for a second.
The bar is just ahead now. Lit in red and gold, music spilling out into the street. She reaches for your face again as you approach, smoothing your hair, fixing your lipstick with her thumb like she’s painting you for a gallery.
“I’m going to make everyone in there hate me,” she says dreamily.
“Why?” She leans in until your foreheads touch. Her voice is a whisper now. “Because I get to kiss you, and they don’t.” And then she takes your hand, pushes open the door with a flourish, and pulls you into the neon light.
The bar is warm and golden, lit like the inside of a honey jar. Low ceilings. Loud voices. Music playing faintly under the noise—something with a guitar and too much yearning. The tables are small and crowded close together, bottles of wine already sweating in silver buckets, candles in mismatched glasses burning low.
Lucía's hand never leaves the small of your back. Her fingers slide a little too low when she leans in to whisper in your ear. She laughs too brightly at something you didn’t quite catch. You ask to sit at quiet table in the back, Lucía says no. She wants one near the middle. The center.
So everyone can see.
You settle into a booth, the cracked red vinyl cool against your thighs. But Lucía doesn’t sit across from you. Of course she doesn’t. She slides in beside you, then pulls you—gently but insistently—into her lap.
“Lucía,” you murmur, half-laughing, “you can’t be comfortable like this.”
“I’m not,” she says, already hooking her chin over your shoulder. “But I’m content.” Her arms wrap around your waist like iron. Her perfume clings to your skin. Around you, people are drinking, smoking, flirting—Madrid spilling over itself in every direction. But Lucía only sees you.
Her fingers trace the hem of your dress, right at the place where your thigh meets the seat. “They’re looking at you,” she whispers, almost pleased. “All of them. I told you that dress would drive them mad.”
“They’re not looking.”
“They are.” She shifts, presses a kiss just below your ear. “And if I weren’t sitting here with you in my lap, I’d have to kill someone.”
You huff a laugh, but her voice is different now. Lower. Darker. “I mean it,” she murmurs. “I’ve never been good at sharing.”
“You don’t have to.”
Lucía exhales slowly. Her breath fans over your neck. “Dios, I don’t deserve you,” she says, half-drunk already on adoration. “But I’m keeping you anyway.”
You turn your head slightly to meet her gaze. Her lipstick is a little smeared now. Her pupils blown wide. “I want to brand you,” she says quietly. “I want you to wear me like a bruise. Like perfume. Like a secret you can’t stop repeating.”
“You kind of already do that.” She smiles, lazy and a little unhinged. “Good.”
The drinks come. Something red and heavy for her. Something sweet for you. She barely touches hers. Too busy touching you. Her hand resting high on your thigh now, her fingers moving slowly under the hem of your dress like she’s etching her name into your skin. She doesn’t speak for a moment. Just breathes against your cheek, lips brushing soft as petals.
Somehow you don’t remember leaving the bar. You just remember laughing. Loud, breathless, gasping-for-air laughing. Lucía with her head thrown back, your arm around her neck, your lipstick smudged halfway across her cheek.
The streetlights blur. The cobblestones trip you on purpose. Madrid spins slow and golden around you like a music box winding down.
You’re clinging to her like a lifeline, your heel caught in a grate for the third time, and Lucía is trying to pry it loose without spilling the last of the wine bottle she somehow convinced the bartender to let her steal.
“You’re drunk,” she says, voice high and singsong, but steadier than yours. You nearly fall into her. “You’re drunk.” Lucía squints at you, swaying slightly. “I am glamorous. There’s a difference.”
“‘M serious,” you mumble, forehead pressed against her shoulder. “Why are you walking like that if you’re not drunk?”
“I’m staggering with style.”
She yanks your shoe free and you both stumble forward, nearly collapsing into a bakery window. She kisses your temple instead of stabilizing you. Or maybe that is how she stabilizes you. Everything is warm and spinning and a little too bright.
You don’t remember the last few blocks. Only the sound of her humming something under her breath. Her arm looped tightly around your waist. The way she kept turning to look at you like she couldn’t believe you were still there.
You crash through the front door of your apartment together.
Lucía kicks it shut behind you with her heel and immediately drops the wine bottle into the sink with a loud clang. You don’t even take off your shoes. She doesn’t either.
You both smell like cigarettes, sugar, and sweat. Somehow, through instinct or luck or pure gravitational pull, you both stumble toward the bedroom.
You fall onto the mattress in a heap, limbs tangled, heels digging into the sheets. You’re still wearing your dress. She’s still in her jacket. Her earring catches on your hair. Someone’s giggling and you think it’s you. Or her. Or both of you.
Lucía rolls over you and half-slides down your side, her head landing just above your ribs. “This was the best night of my life,” she says into your chest.
“You said that last week,” you mumble, eyelids heavy. “I mean it this time.” She drapes an arm across your stomach. “You’re so warm. Like bread. Or revenge.”
Your lipstick is on your teeth. Her mascara’s on your collarbone. The bed smells like perfume and humidity and the street.
Lucía looks up at you suddenly, eyes half-lidded and shining. “Do you know,” she slurs softly, “that I would still love you if you threw up on my shoes?” You giggle into your wrist. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“But don’t test it. These are vintage.”
She shifts, still fully dressed, heels still on, and tugs you closer until her face is buried in your neck. Her fingers slide lazily under the hem of your dress, not to tease—just to anchor herself to something soft and real.
“I hope you never leave,” she whispers, and this time there’s no dramatics. No crescendo. Just quiet. Just the sleepy, slightly slurred truth of a woman who thinks maybe, just maybe, she’s finally come home.
You murmur something—maybe “never,” maybe “love you,” maybe nothing at all. And then you’re asleep. Lipstick. Heels. Music still echoing in your bones. And Lucía curled around you like a prayer she’s too drunk to say aloud.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧
You wake to the scent of smoke and roses.
The room is dim, all shadows and the faint orange glow of a dying candle somewhere on the dresser. The city hums softly outside the window—far-off cars, a barking dog, the low buzz of late-night neon.
Your head is in Lucía’s lap.
At first, you don’t register it. You’re too groggy, your body still heavy with wine and warmth, your dress bunched around your hips, your heels somehow still on. Your cheek is pressed to the soft of her thigh. Her legs are warm under you. Bare. Smooth. Familiar.
Then you feel it—her fingers in your hair. Not brushing. Not stroking. Petting. Soft and repetitive, like she’s soothing a nervous animal. Like she’s memorizing you in half-sleep.
You blink slowly, eyes adjusting to the dark.
Lucía is propped against the headboard in her rumpled dress, legs stretched out, jacket slipping from one shoulder. Her eyes are fixed on the middle distance, faraway and quiet, and her cigarette glows faintly between two fingers, smoke curling upward like something holy.
You don’t say anything. She notices you anyway.
Her hand slows in your hair, then rests lightly at your nape. “Shh,” she whispers, eyes still on the wall. “It’s too early to be awake.”
You shift just enough to bury your face into her thigh. Her skin smells like vanilla and smoke and the ghost of earlier. “I thought you were asleep,” you murmur.
“I was.” She flicks ash into the tray on the nightstand. “Then I wasn’t. Now I’m watching you breathe. It’s better than dreaming.”
You hum softly, already drifting again. Lucía leans down and presses a kiss to your temple. Her voice is slower now. Sleepier. “Go back to sleep, mi amor.”
You nod against her. You don’t even try to sit up.
Her fingers resume their soft rhythm in your hair. She hums something under her breath—a half-remembered lullaby, off-key and tender.
You feel her body beneath yours, her warmth around you, the weight of her devotion like a second blanket. The bed still smells like smoke and perfume and something sweet you can’t name.
And before your mind can catch another thought, you’re already sinking again. Back into the dark. Back into her. Lucía exhales slow. She takes one last drag of her cigarette, then snuffs it out with a sigh. And stays awake just a little longer, just to hold you while the world sleeps.