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When he’s somewhere between five and seven, Fezco finds out that his life is just a little different than others. That’s not his name yet -or maybe it always is- but the solemn look on his face is already taking hold, a thousand yard stare that lets him be anywhere else but here. He walks alone to school and passes lines of parents sending their kids off with hugs and kisses and well wishes, and the whole thing seems so foreign that the first time he just stops and stares.
He doesn’t seek out attention from his father, and he certainly doesn’t seek physical contact, although that happens anyway, more frequently as he gets older. It's the girls at the club who play pretend with him, like they're the parents outside the school and he's somebody's son. Sometimes they sit and talk to him. Sometimes they yell at him for being too close to a purse, somebody’s makeup. They call him names that aren’t his, but they don’t always sound bad.
Once he leaves, there are nights he misses them. Grandma is the most love he’s known in his young life, but she’s not the touching type. He gets a pat on the back if he’s real good (good when he’s young means quiet and quick and willing to take her word as gospel) but sometimes he wishes she’d take him into her lap like the girls used to, kiss his head and say things they wanted to say to someone else.
He grows up, and like most little boys do, learns that physical affection isn’t something you should crave. It’s years before someone else tries to hold him like that again. Despite the tough rep she's desperately trying to cultivate, Rue is touchy; not overly so, but enough that it feels weird at first. She hugs him tight, arms around his neck like she’s clinging to a raft, afraid to drift off. She grabs his arm and laughs on his shoulder. It’s hard when she’s not together enough to keep up with the joke, though.
But he likes the way it feels when Rue curls up on the couch, feet pressing against his leg while they watch some old western. It’s the same feeling he gets when Ashtray falls asleep on the couch and looks innocent, wholesome, wrapped up under a blanket with a half eaten bag of popcorn in his lap. He looks like a kid, in those moments.
(There are times Fez’s subconscious reminds him he’s the one robbing his brother of a childhood, the same thing denied to him by a loving family member. That he doesn’t know how to love without ruining something. Someone.)
Rue is different, though. It’s not his fault she’s the way she is; although, he certainly didn’t hinder anything on the addiction front. Not quick enough, anyway, and when he looks in Rue’s eyes and sees she’s on another fucking planet, that’s the kind of thought that makes him want to throw up.
But when she’s good -and actually good, not just pretending so she can too casually ask if he’s got anything- it’s so nice and easy. Comfortable, to watch shit reality tv and sit on the roof while she complains about some bullshit fight with her sister or why Jules got mad yet again.
Rue comes in waves, spending days at a time knocking at his door or not calling him for weeks. In the beginning, he’s jealous of Jules. He only has so many friends (okay, one), and once she’s gone, he starts doing some real weird shit.
He rubs Ashtray’s shoulder one morning, passing behind his chair to get to the kitchen, and the kid chokes on his cereal.
“What?” He whips his head around to the door, like he’s waiting for something. “What’s up?”
“Nothin’, man,” Fez tries to play it off, but Ash’s forehead is crinkled, and he’s still looking around.
“What was that-“
“Nothin-“
“What are you touching me for?”
“It’s- I dunno,” he doesn’t want to think about how fucked up it is that Ash only interprets the touch as a warning sign, and not just- you’re here and you’re my family and I’d like to say I love you.
Ash clicks his tongue, but he doesn’t mention it again. Fez puts all thoughts of a brotherly hug out of his mind, even if sometimes he wants to hold Ash like the child he is, tell him just how very sorry he is.
(Three nights later when Ashtray passes out on the couch, he pretends to still be sleeping as Fez scoops him up and carries him to bed. He knows he’s not, can hear how his breathing changes as he struggles to hoist him up, because he’s 12 and not a toddler anymore. But Ash lets him do it anyway, and maybe that’s his version of an apology.)
Lexi takes a little while to touch him.
(Not like that, although he does think of it embarrassingly early. Like, two minutes into their first conversation early. How her delicate fingers would look on his chest, wrapping around his back. What her hair feels like drifting over his skin.)
But the first time she comes over to his place, she sits herself in the far corner of the couch, so he takes the other side. She gestures with her hands while she talks, but they’re too far away to accidentally bump each other. It’s fine, because from this angle he can properly see how animated her face gets when she’s telling a story, appreciate the little movements she does as she gets to the really good part.
She barely brushes his arm when he holds open the door for her to leave, but he’s glad for the cool night air and the darkness outside, because his face feels like it’s burning from just that slight touch.
They get closer next time, legs pressed together on the couch when she asks, in a low whisper, if she can try a hit of his blunt.
He hands it over silently and she fits it awkwardly in her mouth. He offers a light, and it’s a long inhale and a very quick cough, before she wrinkles her nose and hands it back to him.
“Sorry, I’m not-“ she coughs again, twisting her body away from him. “Not really a natural.”
She’s not, by any means, and usually he hates being around first timers, but Lexi makes almost anything she does endearing, somehow. It’s like she’s been programmed to make him smile that stupid grin, the one he gives his phone every time she texts, the one Ash clowns on him for because it’s so goddamn obvious.
“You good.”
She tucks her hair behind her ears, glancing down at her hands in her lap. She picks at the tip of her pointer finger, where she’s accidentally rubbed the ash from the paper. After a beat, she looks back over at him, and before Fez can realize what she’s doing she’s grabbed his hands in hers, holding them up for inspection.
“Mine would be filthy if I smoked like you do,” she says, and then seems to rethink that statement. “Not that, like, you do it too much, or anything. I’m not your mom.” Lexi chuckles nervously, dropping his wrist and returning her hands to her lap.
If he were a brave person, he’d reach out and just hold her hand again, because it felt like the softest thing in the world, and he wants to see how her fingers fit against his. But he’s not -at least, not when it comes to her- so he just fiddles with the blunt, tries to sound way more cool and collected than his insides feel.
“You get used to it,” he tells her.
Lexi nods seriously. She sort of twists her mouth, then brushes her hair behind her ears again (he realizes she does that when she’s thinking about something, like the extra second will calm her nerves).
“Can I ask you a question?”
She’s asked him several questions today, most of them related to the house and the movie posters (he makes sure she knows they’re Ash’s picks) and if he’d "really, genuinely wants to come to the play" because he "totally didn’t have to if he was busy, or something."
Fezco wonders who first told her that she talks too much. They were unequivocally wrong, but he knows the cruelty of high school students even if he’s never been one, and people like Lexi -smart kids, with good heads and pure hearts- are targets in a world that’s only kind to the rough.
But it’s insane to say those things to a girl who has come to his house twice, who has held his hand for a fraction of a second and left him with sweaty palms nonetheless.
“You can ask me whatever,” he says instead, and she gives a tiny smile before continuing.
“Do you like what you do?”
What he does. Like he works at fucking Home Depot, or some shit. He wants to play dumb, complain about customers at the store or something, but Lexi looks at him with those big eyes, as if she genuinely wants to know.
“Nobody likes this game,” he offers, and her face darkens.
“So, why do you do it?”
He thinks if this were anyone else he’d say money, but she’s not gonna buy that any more than Rue would. It’s true until it isn’t, because if it were honestly about the money, he’d try to get a whole lot higher on the food chain than dealing at high school parties.
“I don’t really know what else to do,” he answers, and it’s as honest as he can get.
“I mean, I think you could do whatever you want, you’re really smart, so-“
He laughs at that one, but the shocked look on her face makes him quiet down instantly.
“What’s funny?” Lexi asks, like she truly doesn’t get it.
She’s an honor student and she’s out here telling some middle school drop out he’s really smart.
“I don’t hear that much,” he chuckles lightly, and Lexi frowns.
“Well, other people are fucking idiots,” she reasons. “And you are smart, ‘cause I don’t like hanging out with fucking idiots. And I real- I like hanging out with you.”
Fez thinks that for the first time in his life, his cheeks are going to hurt from smiling.
Lexi changes the subject soon after, circling back to some documentary she just finished, but her voice repeats in his head long after she leaves.
You could do whatever you want.
She’s bolder, after that. She sits right next to him on the couch, squeezes up alongside the register counter when she visits the store. She grabs his arm when she’s telling a story, trying to hold his attention in her little hand.
Like he’d ever look away, even for a second.
She starts to hug him goodbye when she leaves. He counts each one, the way he thinks young kids count their kisses, holding onto the special moment you realized maybe there was enough right with you that someone else could fathom the idea of having you around all the time. It’s four hugs before she starts to slow down as she leans back, lingering close to him for just a moment before she whispers bye and heads for her bike.
He knows what she’s doing, and he’s spent enough time with Lexi now to recognize that she’ll goad herself out of making that first move, but she’ll have all the grace of a baby deer in attempting to nudge him in that direction. And he’s not sure how to fit something as good as Lexi Howard into his life, but goddamn, does he really want to try.
He doesn’t need much convincing, after all. There’s another mansion rager on a Friday night, one where Lexi wears a short blue dress and wraps her hair around her head in that long braid. He wonders how long that took her to do. He wonders if she thought of him while she did it.
They talk outside by the pool, where the noise of some dumb rich kid’s hot tub almost drowns out her explanation of the original Little Ceaser’s double pizza business model. Which is insane, because this is shit absolutely no one in the world would care about, but she does. So, Fez finds that he wants to care too.
Some asshole jumps into the pool fully clothed, and the too-blue water splashes up on them. Lexi wipes at her legs with a groan, then looks up and laughs.
He can feel the droplets sliding down his face (momentarily, he wonders if he looks like he’s crying) but she just reaches over and brushes the liquid away with soft strokes over his cheekbone, his forehead. She lets her hand slide down his cheek, until her fingers just barely slide over his lips, and he’s really only so strong.
Lexi tastes like chlorine, or maybe he does, but it’s quickly pushed aside by the way she fits herself just against his chest, knee nudging into his thigh, torso pressing against him.
It’s quick for a first kiss, before she pulls back and ducks her head. She’s blushing, and he probably is too, until Rue comes barreling over and plops down beside them, effectively dampening the mood.
“You guys are not going to believe the shit I just saw-“
There’s a rhythm to Lexi’s touches. The hugs she gives when she arrives at his place, the way she squeezes his hand at a party when she thinks no one can see. The little kisses she drops on his shoulder when she comes up behind him, stretching up on her toes. She feels like safety in a way he’d really, really rather not think about, because then he’d have to put together the much larger puzzle of how does someone like this possibly have a place with him. Lexi has a smart mind and a long future, and he’s okay if he just gets to be a blip on the radar. He’ll take whatever crumbs she wants to throw for as long as it takes for her to wise up and realize this is no fucking life to be a part of.
But she makes room for herself all the same. It's unfamiliar, yet comfortable, to be the one who's cared for, instead of the caretaker. He knows she has experience carrying a family on her back too, and maybe that's why they click so much. She tells him (late at night at some party, after a cup and a half of whatever punch they're serving, with something like resignation in her eyes) that she feels that she just lingers on the sidelines of everyone else's life. But he knows that's not true, because it isn't three weeks after their first kiss that she's leaving her books on his dining room table, silk ribbons on his bed. The logical part of him knows he should slow things down, but logic is nothing compared to what it feels like when she tucks her cold feet under his thighs on the couch, or rests her head on his shoulder in bed. When she straddles his waist and plants her hands on his chest, eyes sparkling with earned confidence and the knowledge of what she does to him. Does for him.
At night he curls up behind her, buries his head in her neck. It’s pathetic, probably, how good it feels to just be here with her. Lexi giggles when he ghosts his hands over her ribs, wraps her fingers around his so they’re entwined, and he thinks he’s not alone in the electric feeling he gets when their skin touches.
He's unclear just what he did right in life to find her, this delicate girl who doesn't fit -shouldn't fit- in his world, but who lays her head in his lap when she reads, who blows kisses across the living room when she’s making lunch in the kitchen. Who folds him into her on those days where the ringing in his head feels like it’s going to split him open again. She touches him with reverence, like he's something she wants to admire. She touches him like she's done it a thousand times and she'll do it a thousand more, comfortable and familiar and easy. He gets used to it way too quickly; to her presence, the feel of her in his arms. Kissing her against the hall closet at another stupid party he knows she doesn’t want to be at.
It feels like indulging in a huge meal after starving for days. If he wants to get fucked up, to mix up the good parts and the terrible things in his world, it feels like getting a fix. And he knows, deep down, that he is fucked, because he's seen so many people go down this road, swearing they're in control until it's beyond clear they're not.
He knows what comes when you're cut off.
He’s never spent much time thinking about the future (what’s the point, when the things that can hurt you are right here in the present) but every now and then he has a fantasy of them together in five, ten years. They do have a mansion, fucking tigers and all. Lexi names one of them Raja, and the cat can bring her breakfast in bed, curling up at her feet while she writes all day. Rue lives in the guest house and Ash goes to Berkeley or some stupidly expensive school to set him up for life.
He has another one where they live in a suburban house on a suburban street not unlike the one he drops Lexi off on late at night. There’s a backyard and a swing set and a dog. One of those yellow ones that can’t intimidate anyone. There’s letters from family on the fridge, pictures of her and Rue as kids in the living room. A crib upstairs, maybe.
They’re both equally fantastical and equally impossible, but he’s found it’s nice to indulge sometimes. Maybe reality can lie somewhere between the two, if he’s really lucky.