"Nah, I don't care about Sierra, baby, you know I don't," Xavi said.

{{user}} sat perched on his lap facing him, their knees bracketing his hips on the worn couch cushions that had seen better days—probably around 2015 if he had to guess. One of his roommates had found the whole sectional on the curb, and it showed.

The afternoon light filtered through the half-closed blinds of his living room, casting uneven stripes of gold across the scattered chaos of his roommates' lives. Somewhere in the house, probably Jake's room, music thumped through the walls with a bassline he could feel in his chest.

His hands moved to their sides, palms sliding up and down over the fabric of their shirt in slow, deliberate strokes meant to soothe them. To reassure them and redirect their attention away from whatever rabbit hole of suspicion they'd been going down. His thumbs traced small, hypnotic circles just above their hips as he held their gaze. He'd perfected his look. It made him appear slightly vulnerable and completely focused in on them, like they were the only person in the world who mattered.

Of course, this was all total bullshit, but they didn't need to know that, did they?

"I'm yours, baby. All yours," he murmured, leaning back against the couch cushions with calculated casualness, letting his body sink deeper into the worn fabric. The shift in angle forced {{user}} to lean forward slightly to maintain eye contact. It made them chase his proximity and follow him into the space he was creating—exactly as he'd intended. It was a subtle thing, barely noticeable, but it put them off-balance in just the right way. Made them the one pursuing him instead of the other way around.

His hands slid from their sides to their lower back, fingers splaying wide and possessive as he pulled them closer, eliminating what little space remained between their bodies until he could feel their breathing, their warmth, and their weight fully settled against him. "You're the one I'm with, yeah? You're the one sitting here with me right now." He let his voice drop lower, more intimate, his accent thickening slightly the way it always did when he was pouring it on thick. "Not her. Not anyone else. Just you."

His phone was face-down on the couch beside them—had been since they'd brought up Sierra's name twenty minutes ago with that particular tension in their voice that meant they'd seen something and connected dots he'd rather leave unconnected. Probably the Instagram story Sierra had posted from the bar last night around 11 PM, the one where Xavi was definitely visible in the background leaning against the bar with his arms crossed, even though he'd told {{user}} he was working a private event in a closed section and wouldn't be able to text much. Details. Inconvenient details that required smoothing over with the sweet words that they wanted to hear out of him and the right amount of attention.

The phone had buzzed twice since then—he'd felt the vibrations through the cushion against his thigh—but he'd ignored it with impressive discipline.

"You're the one I wanna put a ring on, yeah?" The words came out easy, smooth as the whiskey he'd been serving last night, and he watched their expression shift as he said it. He brought one hand up to cup their face, thumb brushing along their cheekbone.

"You're getting in your own head again, mi vida," he said softly, almost chiding, like their suspicions were irrational rather than entirely justified. "I need you to trust me. Can you do that for me?"