Leather and Lace - (m.f.)

I.

Mike Fuentes likes what he calls “real women.” He likes women with curves and an ass that can swallow a g-string. Women covered in tattoos and piercings in unconventional places, women that fill a room with their presence. He likes women that spit fire.

 

Which is fitting, considering he’s often touring with Pierce the Veil, so having someone to come home to is kind of pointless when you call a moving vehicle your home more often than not. He prefers the road anyway. Something about waking up to a different sunrise every morning is refreshing. Plus, how many people can say they do what they love every night, and see the world while doing it?

 

Point being, Mike was not born to be tethered. Especially not to a pretty little woman that waits for him to come home and makes him dinner and wears little dresses and flowers in her hair.

 

Naturally, when a woman that fits that description almost alarmingly well starts flitting around to help the movers move boxes into the next-door house, Mike rolls his eyes and shuts his blinds.

 

“I swear to God, if another fucking salesman is at our door…” Mike’s older brother, Vic, grumpily peeks through the blinds. “Oh someone’s finally moving in next door,” he says, lifting the blinds a little higher.”She’s a little thing, isn’t she?”

 

“She looks like a toddler,” Mike says dismissively, cracking open a beer. Vic eyes the bottle, half amused, half disapproving.

 

“It’s like two in the afternoon.”

 

“Never too early to start partying.” Mike winks, draining half the bottle in one go.

 

“Speaking of, Jaime wants to go clubbing tonight, since we don’t have to be back in studio ‘till Monday, you wanna go?”

 

“Always. Tony coming too?” Vic pulls his phone out of his pocket, tapping away at the screen.

 

“I kinda assumed he was, but I don’t actually know. I’m calling him now.” With that, Vic walks out of the front room, enthusiastically greeting the guitarist as he starts up the stairwell.

 

Mike takes a smaller sip of his beer, eyeing the movers as they set boxes down in the garage. His new neighbor seems to have set up a little folding table, a plate of sandwiches and some beers accompanying one of those pretty water dispensers adorned with painted-on flowers. While annoyingly cutesy, Mike begrudgingly finds the gesture sweet.

 

That doesn’t stop his from rolling his eyes when she plucks a few dandelions from her overgrown lawn and starts weaving them through her braid.

 

Her braid also kind of reminds him of fire, practically bursting into flame when it glints in the generous sunlight. He catches himself staring a lot longer than he wants to admit, shaken out of it only when Vic curses loudly after stubbing his toe on the kitchen door frame.

 

Ignoring his brother’s obvious discomfort, Mike takes another sip of his beer nonchalantly.