What Is Love?

Quick Escalation

Author's Note: This is pure PenaVega smuff (mild smut/fluff) ft. Leah and Bruno & I'm not even sorry. 😂 Give it a chance, it might surprise you. 😂 I can just picture Carlos and Alexa being like closeted hoes in with regards to their marriage and where the line is drawn physically (and otherwise) And when everyone, if anyone ever realizes it they'd react like 😳😏🙊🙈 but also 😂 so, yeah. So this takes place after this week's (6) show. 👌😊
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Her face crumpled instantly; like a deflated balloon, the life was viciously sucked out of her, paling her cheeks, those now colorless becoming sunken and worn, with Tom's voice like a pin to her flesh: "Alexa and Mark...you are in jeopardy."

He craned his neck to look at her behind him and in that moment he watched, rendered utterly helpless as she curled into Mark's chest, murmuring tear-soaked words, lips puckered as though she may lose it right then and there. As he watched, a feeling of  jealousy, however misplaced, overtook him - he wanted to be the man comforting her, he needed to be.

There was a shift of the camera and in that split second when he and her were no longer in the frame, he reached out and tapped her hand. "I'm here Lex. You'll be okay. It's okay." Though, assumably, his reassurance fell on deaf ears, because she didn't even acknowledge it, just shut her eyes and sniffled as Mark's hand ran the length of her head in an intimate gesture that ultimately irked him. Before he could act on his emerging annoyance, the camera was back on that side of the stage and, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from her, he hugged Witney closer in a hug that felt stiff and awkward in the light of such progressives.

"3...2...1...The cameras are gone, Carlos. You can go to her now. I know you're itching to," Witney whispered in his ear a few seconds later.

"Thanks Wit, was I that obvious?"

"Extremely." She nodded at someone close by and Carlos turned, seeing Mark behind him, but only Mark. "She's waiting for you man, She needs you right now."

Carlos looked over to where Mark was gesturing, and there, with her knees to her chest, off in a corner by herself, was she. There were people coming up to her individually and sometimes all at once, their intentions clear and well-meaning. but she shook them off.

He walked over to her and knelt down beside her. No words were exchanged, nor were they needed when he pulled her flaccid body, bones tired and muscles aching, into his arms. He began to card his fingers through her hair with such effortless strokes while allowing it to fall along her shoulder blades and down her upper back, before beginning again. This continued for a brief minute before she finally spoke, and when he answered her his hands never halted their motions.

"Say something babe. Please."

Her vocalization was raspy, her throat dry and sticky with salt residue of tears only just dissolved, and the lump that remained at the base of her throat compromised the  overall succinctness  of her desire.

"I tried to before baby, but you just ignored me. I said that - "

"Los, I know what you said. I just wouldn't have been able to respond without busting into a waterfall of tears. I just love you so much and this is going to sound kinda dumb but baby I want you to be with me for the rest of the competition, ideally, but I've also grown to love Mark as a friend, like, platonically, and the thought of being eliminated at this point in the competition scared me to death. I'm not ready to leave yet."

"And you haven't. You won't. You're one of the best here, aside from me, just kidding, but seriously Lex you are the bomb, a beautiful, beautiful, woman who was so fearless tonight. A woman I admire immensely."