Chapter Text
With a sigh, Fezco tosses his keys onto the entry table and unlaces and kicks off his sneakers. It’s late, only a few lights left off in the house, guiding his path up to their bedroom and the bed he wants to collapse into.
He doesn’t know why he agreed to help Cameron out at the bar. He doesn’t do it often these days, but whenever he does he regrets it. His feet are aching from being on them all day and now all night.
“Gettin’ too old for this shit,” he mutters to himself as he ascends the staircase.
He checks in on Evie first and feels something decompress in his chest at the sight of her sleeping face. She has one arm held up over her head and her already unruly curls are sleep-mussed and messy. He drops a kiss to her forehead before shutting her bedroom door softly behind him.
“Lex?” he calls quietly as he enters their bedroom and finds their bed empty.
“In here,” she calls back from their bathroom.
He pulls off his t-shirt and throws it into the laundry hamper as he follows the sound of her voice.
She’s in the tub, her short hair clipped up and away from her face. The candles she’s placed around the bathroom wash her with a soft yellow glow and there’s an empty wine glass beside her head. The smile she gives him is lazy and relaxed, and he can’t decide if he wants to climb into the bath with her or roll into bed like he planned.
“Hey,” she murmurs in the quiet of the room. “Busy night?”
“Yeah,” he sighs. He perches on the edge of the tub and dips his fingers into the warm bath water. “Ain’t doin’ Cameron a favor again.”
“I don’t know why you did. You’re too nice.” She catches his fingers in hers and squeezes them. “Tired?”
“Yep.”
She smiles softly. “I’ll get out and we can sleep.”
He washes his face and brushes his teeth, as Lexi blows out the candles and drains the bath. In the reflection of the mirror, he watches as she climbs out of the tub, naked body glistening with beads of water.
She’s a little thicker now than she was when they met, ten years ago. One baby and years spent traveling and eating good food have filled out her figure, rounding out and pronouncing her curves.
He’s always loved her ass and her pretty pale skin and her long legs. He loves her new body too — the newer fullness in her thighs and belly, the faint stretch marks that appear in the light and remind him that she carried his child.
He can’t resist reaching out for her and tugging her closer. She giggles as she falls into his chest, a towel held between them.
“I’m all wet,” she protests.
He nuzzles his face into her neck. “Don’t care.”
“You’re tired.”
“Also don’t care.”
Her squeal of surprise and gentle laughter carry through the room, as he lifts her into his arms and carries her to their bed. She falls onto it with a light bounce, her still-damp body leaving tiny wet patches on the sage green comforter.
He kisses his way down her throat and chest to her breasts, tonguing at her nipples as she sighs and arches up beneath him.
“Evie good for you tonight?” he mutters against her skin as he travels lower.
This was their life now — they fucked whenever they could, indulging in each other often and both more than satisfied. But every moment was saturated with the reality of their lives. They were parents first, spouses second, and their intimate moments together were sometimes bracketed by mundane talk about electric bills or interrupted by the sound of tiny footsteps.
“She’s always good,” Lexi replies and he can hear the smile in her voice.
She was right — they got lucky and, excluding the occasional tantrum, their daughter was an angel. Calm and easygoing, and the kind of smart that he knew could give them trouble when she became a teenager. Lexi says she gets the former from him and he knows she gets the latter from her mother.
He focuses his attention on his wife then and the business he needs to attend to, peppering the length of her body with kisses until he’s kneeling on the floor between her thighs. He hooks his hands around her thighs as he parts her with his tongue. This many years in, he’s so familiar with the act of bringing Lexi pleasure that he doesn’t even need to think about it. He knows the exact noises she’s going to make when he touches a certain spot and can always hear the tell-tale hitch in her breathing when she’s about to come.
Her hand comes down to palm the back of his head as she rolls her hips up against face, chasing after the good feelings. Her nails scratch lightly at his scalp and he groans into her flesh, the way she knew he would. She’s familiar with him too.
“Wait, wait,” she says breathlessly. He pulls back immediately, wondering if something is wrong. She looks down at him between her legs. “I want to sit on your face.”
He remembers how shy she was in the early days, too afraid to ask for what she wanted and always holding back a little during their first few times together. All of that hesitancy is gone now as she settles herself over his face, her hands already clutching the headboard, ready to ride him. She isn’t scared to ask for what she wants and he’s always willing to oblige.
In this position, he gets a little rougher, sinking his fingers into the meat of her thighs and encouraging her to rock her hips against his face. It’s messy in the most perfect way, her wetness soaking his mouth and beard and her scent all around him. He’s aching in his pants, desperate to tug them off and sink inside of her, but he wants to get her there first.
She can’t be too loud with their daughter sleeping down the hall, so she comes with a muffled cry, her hand covering her mouth as she grinds against his face. He encourages her to ride it out, sucking at her clit even as she shivers with sensitivity.
Aftershocks tingle through her body as she lowers herself down his torso until she’s straddling his hips. She kisses her taste from his lips as she grinds against his length, still trapped beneath his jeans.
“You gotta go on top, baby. Ion know if I got enough energy to fuck you properly,” he jokes.
She rolls her eyes at his cheeky grin but laughs.
“If you want me to be on top, all you have to do is ask.”
His jeans are kicked off to the end of the bed and he watches through hooded eyes as she lowers herself onto his cock and takes him inside. It doesn’t matter how many times they do this — how often he’s inside of her, feeling the heat of her body wrapped around his cock — he can never get enough. Making love to Lexi is one of his greatest pleasures in life and he thanks God everyday that he met her and gets to experience this level of closeness and connection.
She rides him at her own pace and he’s happy to lie back and enjoy the view. She’s so beautiful but especially like this, brow slightly furrowed over closed eyes and lips parted enough for him to see the white of her teeth and the pink of her tongue. He has the perfect view of her body and can marvel at the shape of her above him, his hands roaming across every dip and curve.
But tiredness be damned, sometimes he just wants to rail his wife.
He slaps her ass with a light hand.
“Hands and knees, baby,” he commands.
Her eyes light up at his words and she grins as she raises herself off of him and moves to position herself on the bed.
This angle is his favorite. He loves watching her ass bounce with every slap of his hips and sliding his hands along the smooth dip of her waist. Her hair is shorter now — chin-length, so much shorter than when they met — but still long enough for him to grasp the strands and pull, bending her back into the most beautiful arch.
“Thought you were too tired to fuck me properly,” she teases.
He nips at the junction of her neck and shoulder.
“Never too tired for you.”
She lowers herself to the bed, cheek pressed against the comforter and her ass arching up towards him as he fucks into her. Her fingers clench into the sheets beside her head, her moans muffled into the material. He’s quickly losing his grip on his control, the sight of her so wrecked and open to him almost too much for him to handle.
He slips his hand beneath her body and circles her clit with well-practiced fingers, and delights in the way she trembles through her second orgasm of the night. His hands curl tightly around her hips as pounds into her harder, faster, using her body to make himself come.
The force of his orgasm steals his breath and nothing but a strangled grunt escapes him as he pulses inside of her. His hips stutter as he empties himself inside, pleasure coursing through his entire body. He uses the last of his energy to dot whisper-soft kisses across her shoulder blades, before he pulls out and collapses onto the bed beside her, spent.
She grabs a throw pillow and pushes it beneath her hips. Fezco turns to smile at her.
“Think that one took?”
They’ve been trying for baby number two for over a month. It surprised them both how quickly they conceived Evie and he wonders if the same will be true for their next child.
She grins at him and shrugs one shoulder.
“If not, we’ll just have to do that all over again.”
He hums and rolls onto his side to kiss her.
“It’s hard work but someone’s gotta do it,” he mutters against her lips. She chuckles against his mouth.
They clean up and then return to their bed, comfy beneath the sheets. They trade kisses for a little while until his eyes begin to close of their own accord, his eyelids heavy and sore. She cups his face and scratches lightly at his beard, in the way she knows he likes.
“Go to sleep, sweetheart,” she murmurs, and he’s already slipping away into slumber.
-
She wakes first, even before Evie has decided to rise and make her presence known. It’s a Saturday and they like to spend the day as a family, getting breakfast at some place in town and taking Evie on a little adventure. Fezco usually gets up early, ready to start the day with their girl, but Lexi lets him sleep a little longer. He did a long shift at the garage yesterday before he helped at the bar for a few hours; he’s earned his rest.
Her eyes scan across his peaceful, sleeping face as she lies next to him. The years have been kind to him, gently lining his face and smattering his thick red beard with touches of white. Somehow, she finds him even more handsome now than she did at twenty-two — so attracted to this man, eight years her senior and so different from all the boys she had dated before.
He’ll be forty in a couple of weeks. They’re currently in that short, in-between stage after her birthday, where she is only seven years younger than him. But soon he’ll celebrate his birthday and a new milestone, and she’s so happy she gets to share it with him.
They traveled a lot, during the years when it was just the two of them. Not just the US, but also internationally, visiting European cities and relaxing in the Caribbean and even making the long journey to Australia.
Over time, he lost that worldly edge that she always thought he held, simply by being older than her. He definitely had experience that she didn’t, but she almost finds it funny now, how impressed she was by him. He was impressive — in ways that made it so easy for her to fall in love with him — but she thinks it was less about his experience and more about the man that he is. Kind, caring, gentle, but also direct, unwilling to let things become uncertain and always ensuring they were on the same page.
When she turned twenty-nine, they married in a courthouse and settled down in the suburbs, and Lexi thinks they both consider Los Angeles to truly be home now. Evie was planned, a baby they set out to bring into the world, and Lexi feels a sense of contentment she never thought possible when she’s surrounded by the little family they’ve created.
Her palm comes to rest on her abdomen, which she hopes will swell in the next few months. She only wants their family to grow bigger and more loving.
Beside her, Fezco stirs and slowly blinks his eyes open.
“Mornin’,” he murmurs, voice husky with unuse.
“Morning.”
He hooks his arm around her waist and pulls her into his body, pressing all of him against all of her. She tucks her head beneath his chin and nuzzles into his neck, smelling his sleep-warmth and the remnants of the cologne he wore to work.
“Time is it?” he mumbles.
“Almost 7.30.”
“Shit,” he mutters. “Surprised the kid ain’t awake yet.”
She smiles against his neck. “I’m sure she will be soon.”
His hand slips down to her ass, squeezing and kneading the flesh. She almost laughs. His adoration for her body never fails to thrill and amuse her.
“Have you thought about what you want to do for your birthday?”
He grunts, once again uninterested in this subject.
“Ion know, Lex. S’just another day. Do we have to do somethin’?”
“Yes,” she insists. She loops her arms around his waist and squeezes him around the middle. “It’s a big birthday, Fez. We should celebrate.”
He grunts again, clearly not in agreement.
“It doesn’t have to be a huge party. We can just invite our families over, have some food and some beer.”
He leans back to look at her. “You sure that’s a good idea? Cassie and Ash gon’ behave themselves?”
Her sister’s on-again off-again relationship with her brother-in-law did make for the occasional awkward family event, but she knew they’d both make an effort for Fezco’s birthday. Lexi didn’t understand why they couldn’t just sort their shit out and make it work; she suspects her sister is the problem. Past insecurities have never really left her and she still seems to be trying to figure out what she wants in life. Ash, on the other hand, has made it clear that he just wants Cassie.
But that was beside the point — it wouldn’t be an issue.
“They’ll be fine. They’re in one of their on-again periods.”
Fezco snorts. “Got it.”
Lexi blinks up at him with big, wide eyes.
“Come on, sweetheart. Can’t you just let me throw you a tiny, little party and be happy about it?”
He exhales loudly through his nose but there’s a smile at the edge of his lips and Lexi knows she’s won.
“Fine,” he mutters. He stamps a kiss to her forehead and mutters, “Pain in my ass.”
She grins and tilts her chin up for a kiss.
“Mama!”
They pull away from each other at the sound of Evie’s voice down the hall. She was in her big girl bed now but still had the guardrails up and needed one of them to help her out. They also liked Saturday morning snuggles, Evie slotting into their bed between them before they fully rose.
“I’ve got her,” Fezco declares as he climbs out of bed.
She watches him, reclined on her pillow, admiring his form as he covers up his nakedness and slips into some sweatpants. He adjusts the gold chain around his neck and scrubs a hand over his head, so sexy in his ease and casualness, and Lexi hopes she never stops feeling this intense want for her man.
He leaves their bedroom and returns minutes later with their still half-asleep daughter perched on his hip, her auburn curls wild around her head and her footie pajamas creased from sleep.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Lexi smiles.
“Hi, mama,” Evie murmurs, her head tucked into Fezco’s neck, her little fingers twisting at his chain.
“Come on, baby girl. Let’s get cozy with mama,” Fezco says as he carries their daughter to his side of the bed.
They all pile in, Evie settled between them, snuggled in close next to Lexi.
That feeling of want only grows as she watches Fezco with their daughter, asking her what she wants to do today and stroking his hand gently over her curls.
She thinks of being twenty-two and how special he made her feel; how he took care of her and made it so clear that he wanted her, that he loved her. And now she watches him carry out that same care and devotion to their child and it fills her heart with so much love that she doesn’t know what to do with it all.
She must look lost in thought because when Fezco catches her gaze, there’s a little confused furrow between his brows.
“You good?” he asks.
Lexi presses a kiss to the top of their daughter's head and smiles.
“I’m perfect.”