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There’s so many different kinds of heat.
There’s Leonida heat, which leaves all drenched with sweat and sticking to the concrete like the beer bottles and overpriced matcha until you can escape to somewhere with AC. There’s swamp heat, which is bad enough to make you wanna jump into the muck the gators live in. There’s the heat people who aren’t her give him, when they look at him with their eyes bugging, like some mongoloid goon or cretaceous pimp, whose brain is in his shoes and whose gun is just an extension of him, like his arm or his dick, and that only died out when he acted like her partner and not her John. There’s cop heat, the reason he’s been holed up in the trillionth variation of a shitty cash only motel room for his entire life, the reason he’ll probably get fucked out of a military burial in a few years, his folks up in Casey, Illinois, or Ripon, Wisconsin, or Chillicothe, Ohio, or Escanaba, Michigan, or Winona Lake, Indiana, or whatever midwestern rust belt shithole they scurried off to getting told that their first born had gotten blown the fuck up, and them only caring if they got the military pension.
There’s her heat, which makes it all worth it.
And there’s desert heat.
The heat that he could never shake.
He awoke with a start but did not move an inch. Preparation before panic, especially here. If he had some sort of manic episode and began wailing on Lu, chances were he would catch something sharp to the neck and good night Jason, that would be.
No, instead, he lay allowing his mind to scramble out of its fight or flight mode and settle down enough to not implode right there within his skull. When it figured out that it could not have the head, to the rest of the body it went. His cotton mouth sunk into his gums, his jowls, his teeth and his jaw, locking down all forms of communication. The scars the flames had left in that valley between his shoulder blades sung a symphony of agony, and only when he flipped from his belly to his side did they hush.
She lay basked by the neon light that the sign of the Sleep-Rite Mo’Tel flickered on her, her toffee colored skin dancing with artificial raspberry blues and slime greens. Her waves of raven colored curls-tousled by sleep but still remarkably smooth and lose-washed over her shoulders, running down the faded Mantees jersey she wore. She wore only that shirt and a sneering huff, a light grin resting on those precious lips. She was fully at peace, almost happy in a real way, not some Vice City bullshit with poppers and lines and tequila and tight dresses. She looked at peace, serene almost, knowing even in sleep that she was the only one who could bring Lucia Caminos down, so resting easily.
He stared at her, watching her rise and fall right by his side, and wondered why the fuck a goddess like her gave him a fucking chance. A burly, edgy, brutish, grotesque, fucking stupid ex-jock turned ex-marine turned ex-civilian turned pro-criminal, who’d fucked around enough, who’d drank around, who hung out with bums (sorry Cal), who was getting fat in the belly and skinny in the arms, who had no skills besides shooting people who had to be shot, who still dreamed in arabic, who didn’t understand shit about people except where to hurt them so they didn’t give out immediately, who’d prefer an ambush of insurgents with RPGs and pickup trucks and AKs over HR ladies and QR codes and fucking office talk, who should be another broke-dick loser pushing his coins together to get another Logger Light at the bar and ogle the pretty girl at the end of it, not be in her fucking bed.
Not be in her fucking life.
A kid from El Paso back in the forces who’d caught a RPD round to the belly had told him before that sleep was as close to death as someone could get without really going, so Jason wondered how the fuck she could still look this gorgeous on death’s doorstep before he moved.
He leaned over her body and draped himself across it slowly, caring in his movements not to alert her and still going slow as could be for her when she stirred and groaned.
“Ja-“
“Shhh.”
He kissed the mesh and laid his head upon her chest and listened to her heartbeat, that slow, steady, grounding thump of life being passed through her system, and when he was confident enough she would be there in the morning for him, he closed his eyes and fell asleep to her heat, and only hers.