Deflower

✿(ALTERNATE UNIVERSE)✿: Where the Flowers Still Bloom!

Vincent and Lourdes in another world, a better world, after.

*

The Bible's in the Guerrero home are torn, or sliced, or water-logged, covered in ink, ripped in half.

*

Lourdes and Vincent run away into the still of the night and by morning, they pull over for breakfast at a lousy little bar that must have a kitchen in the back, and a vinyl tiled dance floor tucked away in the corner. Men and women mingling at tables or up along the bar, but no kids. Lo picks a table with a little jukebox on it, and feeds it quarters. The Doors, as always. Vincent grins. He takes her arm when they're done with their sandwiches, but not to pull her out the door: he pays the tab and pulls her out onto the scratched tiles, instead. To dance. Like they used to. He sways with her, his arm around her back and her scars burning through her sleeve, burning into his skin. She leans against his hard chest.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"Don't apologize."

Nobody in this little bar is looking at them. His big hand slips into hers.

*

They go where they know no one will find them. Vincent starts stealing his way across the country, and by the age of twenty, there is not a dialect of theft that he isn't fluent in: fingers as nimble as they are on Lourdes' soft skin. "In some countries, men are hanged for less than this," she would say from atop the bed in their small hotel room. She remembers the description of hanging victims she read as a child, tongue protruding, skin going dark, bowels loosening. She doesn't like to think of it happening to Vincent. She doesn't like that he steals. The jewels he brings home, the ones she hates, reflect a brilliant light and juxtapose brightly against the tan of her skin.

Lourdes still protests that there's no need to steal: they can come up with other ways to make the money they need to survive. She doesn't want to lose Vincent. Not when he is all she has ever truly loved. But the boy shakes his head, vowels broad with his accent, after Lourdes' warning, to ignore her completely. "I've learned a lot. The thieves that get caught are the ones that were never learned how to stop when they were about to get caught. I know when to stop, baby."

Reassured, Lourdes lets Vincent teach her how to distinguish sapphire from spinel and obediently bites the gold he brings back to her.

*

At night, in bed—and sometimes during daylight, and sometimes nowhere near a bed—Vincent and Lo make love. Vincent likes to think he's street-smart, that Lourdes is the one who's endearingly innocent and naive, but there are times when she tries out something she learned in one of the books her mother kept by the bathtub, and Vincent's eyes go wide. (Every once in a while, Lourdes even makes him, big boy, bad boy, blush. She's especially proud of those times.)

Sometimes she thinks of Thomas. And of all the filthy ways he must have imagined her — all the filthy ways that now belong to Vincent and only Vincent.

"The difference," Lourdes sometimes whispers against the skin of Vincent's arm, "is context."

*

She sleeps curled up in his lap. Her hair hasn't been washed in days, gone springy in the heat. She's as beautiful as ever to him.

*

Lourdes, curious in her nature, wants to see every city, examine every building, look into every face she passes. With the money they make, with the money Lo took from home, she insists on trying every foreign food they come across, and even the ones she hates make her laugh as she screws up her face in disgust. She doesn't speak any languages but English, but that doesn't keep her from trying to communicate with shopkeepers and flower vendors. Vincent, more skilled in the artistry of language, hurries to translate, but most of the time it's unnecessary: Lo's stumbling gestures and ready smile bridge the gap.