Stranded with an ex | Marco

He remembered the waves.

Not like this—not these gentle things lapping at his legs, almost soothing. The waves he remembered were violent. Black water rising up like something alive, swallowing the horizon, the boat pitching so hard he'd slammed into the railing.

He remembered the sky had turned green-gray, that sick color that meant something worse was coming. The tour guide had been shouting something in Islander English, pointing toward the cabin, but the rain was already horizontal, stinging like gravel, and the wind had howled.

Marco remembered grabbing onto something. A railing. A post. His fingers white-knuckled and his feet sliding on the wet deck as the boat tilted forty degrees, then fifty

He was seeing her. Just a glimpse. Her hair whipping across her face, her hands reaching for something, someone, and he'd moved toward her instinctively, because even after a year of nothing, even after she'd walked away, his body still moved toward her like iron to a magnet.

Then the wave hit.

Not a wave. More like a wall. It came from the port side, black and massive, and it picked the boat up like a toy and flipped it.

The sound was deafening—metal screaming, wood splintering, people crying out and then nothing but the roar of water filling his ears, his nose, his lungs—

He remembered drowning. Not metaphorically. Actually drowning. The saltwater burning down his throat, his chest seizing, his vision going dark as the ocean pulled him under and the boat dragged him down with it and he'd thought, in some calm terrible corner of his mind.

I'm going to die here.

Then nothing.

Marco's eyes snapped open.

Gentle rhythm waves. Almost peaceful.

Sand. Wet sand against his face, the tide licking at his calves, the storm completely gone like it had never existed. The sky above him was clear, bruised purple and orange with the dying sun, and his head throbbed like someone had taken a hammer to his skull.

He pushed himself up on shaking arms, spitting grit, coughing seawater. His shirt hung open in tatters, clinging to his chest. The pendant was still there, cold against his sternum.

Where—

A beach. White sand stretching in both directions. Palm trees bending lazily in a breeze that felt nothing like the hurricane that had swallowed them. Dense green jungle beyond, and scattered along the shore.

Debris. Pieces of the boat hull, a shattered cooler, someone's sandal, a life vest torn in half.

No dock. No tourists with their phones out. No sound but waves and wind and distant birds.

Just... island.

He checked himself on instinct—nothing broken, just bruises blooming across his ribs, a gash above his eyebrow crusted with salt and sand. He was alive. Somehow, impossibly, he was alive.

Then he saw her.

A shape in the distance. Half in the water, half on the sand. So still. Too still.

His heart stopped.

Then it pounded.

He was running before he realized it, sand kicking up behind him, legs burning, lungs screaming because—

No. No, no, no—

It was her. Of course it was her. Of all the people on that boat, of course SHE was here, face-down in the surf, hair tangled with seaweed, not moving, not breathing—

Marco dropped to his knees beside her, hands already rolling her onto her back. Her lips were blue. Her chest wasn't rising.

"C'mon," he muttered, tilting her head back, pinching her nose. "C'mon, c'mon—"

He sealed his mouth over hers. Breathed. One. Two. Three.

His palms pressed against her chest, counting compressions. Her ribs felt fragile under his hands. Fragile and familiar.

Again. Breathe. Compress. Breathe. Compress.

"Don't do this," he growled, voice cracking. "Don't you fucking dare—"

Nothing.

Again.

His mouth on hers. His breath forcing into her lungs. His hands on her chest, pushing, counting, desperate.

Please. Please, please—

Then he heard it.

A cough followed by a splutter. Her body convulsing as seawater erupted from her lips, her chest heaving, her eyes flying open wide and terrified—

And the first thing she saw was Marco Delgado hovering over her, dripping wet, shirtless, his green eyes wild with something that looked almost like desperation.

Almost like relief and love he'd been trying to kill for a year.

He sat back on his heels, chest heaving, watching her gasp and shiver. The sunset painted everything gold and red behind him.

"...You're okay," he said, voice rough. "You're okay."

He remembered the waves.

Not like this—not these gentle things lapping at his legs, almost soothing. The waves he remembered were violent. Black water rising up like something alive, swallowing the horizon, the boat pitching so hard he'd slammed into the railing.

He remembered the sky had turned green-gray, that sick color that meant something worse was coming. The tour guide had been shouting something in Islander English, pointing toward the cabin, but the rain was already horizontal, stinging like gravel, and the wind had howled.

Marco remembered grabbing onto something. A railing. A post. His fingers white-knuckled and his feet sliding on the wet deck as the boat tilted forty degrees, then fifty

He was seeing her. Just a glimpse. Her hair whipping across her face, her hands reaching for something, someone, and he'd moved toward her instinctively, because even after a year of nothing, even after she'd walked away, his body still moved toward her like iron to a magnet.

Then the wave hit.

Not a wave. More like a wall. It came from the port side, black and massive, and it picked the boat up like a toy and flipped it.

The sound was deafening—metal screaming, wood splintering, people crying out and then nothing but the roar of water filling his ears, his nose, his lungs—

He remembered drowning. Not metaphorically. Actually drowning. The saltwater burning down his throat, his chest seizing, his vision going dark as the ocean pulled him under and the boat dragged him down with it and he'd thought, in some calm terrible corner of his mind.

I'm going to die here.

Then nothing.

Marco's eyes snapped open.

Gentle rhythm waves. Almost peaceful.

Sand. Wet sand against his face, the tide licking at his calves, the storm completely gone like it had never existed. The sky above him was clear, bruised purple and orange with the dying sun, and his head throbbed like someone had taken a hammer to his skull.

He pushed himself up on shaking arms, spitting grit, coughing seawater. His shirt hung open in tatters, clinging to his chest. The pendant was still there, cold against his sternum.

Where—

A beach. White sand stretching in both directions. Palm trees bending lazily in a breeze that felt nothing like the hurricane that had swallowed them. Dense green jungle beyond, and scattered along the shore.

Debris. Pieces of the boat hull, a shattered cooler, someone's sandal, a life vest torn in half.

No dock. No tourists with their phones out. No sound but waves and wind and distant birds.

Just... island.

He checked himself on instinct—nothing broken, just bruises blooming across his ribs, a gash above his eyebrow crusted with salt and sand. He was alive. Somehow, impossibly, he was alive.

Then he saw her.

A shape in the distance. Half in the water, half on the sand. So still. Too still.

His heart stopped.

Then it pounded.

He was running before he realized it, sand kicking up behind him, legs burning, lungs screaming because—

No. No, no, no—

It was her. Of course it was her. Of all the people on that boat, of course SHE was here, face-down in the surf, hair tangled with seaweed, not moving, not breathing—

Marco dropped to his knees beside her, hands already rolling her onto her back. Her lips were blue. Her chest wasn't rising.

"C'mon," he muttered, tilting her head back, pinching her nose. "C'mon, c'mon—"

He sealed his mouth over hers. Breathed. One. Two. Three.

His palms pressed against her chest, counting compressions. Her ribs felt fragile under his hands. Fragile and familiar.

Again. Breathe. Compress. Breathe. Compress.

"Don't do this," he growled, voice cracking. "Don't you fucking dare—"

Nothing.

Again.

His mouth on hers. His breath forcing into her lungs. His hands on her chest, pushing, counting, desperate.

Please. Please, please—

Then he heard it.

A cough followed by a splutter. Her body convulsing as seawater erupted from her lips, her chest heaving, her eyes flying open wide and terrified—

And the first thing she saw was Marco Delgado hovering over her, dripping wet, shirtless, his green eyes wild with something that looked almost like desperation.

Almost like relief and love he'd been trying to kill for a year.

He sat back on his heels, chest heaving, watching her gasp and shiver. The sunset painted everything gold and red behind him.

"...You're okay," he said, voice rough. "You're okay."

━━━ 🏝️ ISLAND STATUS ━━━ 📍 Day 1 | ☀️ Clear (post-storm) | 🌊 Low tide ❤️ Marco: 65% (bruised ribs, cut healing, exhausted) | 💕 Affection: 55% | 🌶️ Tension: 10% 🎒: Nothing yet — scattered debris on beach 🎯 Assess situation, find fresh water, build shelter ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The raft wasn't going to work.

Marco knew it. Somewhere in the rational part of his brain—the part that had kept him alive through the shipwreck, through the drowning, through the first week of surviving on an island that didn't care if they lived or died—he knew that a bamboo raft wasn't going to carry them fifteen kilometers across open ocean.

The currents would shred them. The wind would push them the wrong direction. One good wave and they'd be swimming, or drowning, or worse.

He knew this.

He kept building anyway.

His hands worked the bamboo methodically, stripping the outer hull with a piece of salvaged hull metal he'd sharpened into a crude knife. Cut. Strip. Bind. Repeat. The motions were mechanical, almost meditative, giving his brain something to focus on besides the sound of her breathing in the shelter behind him.

Don't look at her. Don't think about her. Just work.

The raft sat on the beach like a promise he wasn't sure he could keep—three layers of bamboo lashed together with vines, a mast waiting for a sail he hadn't made yet, a steering oar carved from driftwood. It was taking shape. Slowly. Imperfectly.

It was something to do with his hands.

Something to do besides watch her walk out of the shelter every morning in that borrowed tank top that didn't quite fit, water dripping from her hair after she'd bathed in the stream, her skin golden in the sunlight and—

Putangina. Focus.

He drove the binding knot harder than necessary, the vine creaking under the pressure.

A week. Seven days since he'd pulled her out of the surf and forced his breath into her lungs and felt her ribs under his palms and watched her eyes fly open like she'd been born again. Seven days of building and hunting and providing and trying so hard not to think about how she used to look at him like that, like he was the only man in the world, before she'd decided he wasn't enough.

The camp was good, at least. He'd made sure of that.

The shelter rose on the tree line—a proper structure, not some desperate lean-to. Elevated on bamboo stilts to keep out the rats and the damp. Thatched nipa roof that actually shed rain. Walls of woven palm fronds that gave them privacy, real privacy, with enough space inside for both of them to sleep without touching.

Without touching.

He'd been very careful about that. Very deliberate. They slept on opposite sides of the shelter, a careful distance between their bedrolls, and if he woke up in the night reaching for her—reaching for the warmth he used to know—he stopped himself before she could notice.

The fire pit was outside, ringed with stones, a rack for drying fish beside it. He'd built a second, smaller shelter for storing food—coconuts stacked in piles, smoked fish hanging from the rafters, a cache of crabs he'd caught in the morning. Fresh water in salvaged plastic bottles, lined up like soldiers. Taro plants he'd transplanted closer to camp for easier harvesting.

He provided. That was what he did. That was what he knew how to do.

Even when she didn't ask him to. Even when she tried to help and he took the task from her hands with a grunt and that look on his face that said I've got it better than words ever could.

Even when providing was the only way he knew how to say the things he couldn't say.

The bamboo groaned as he forced another binding tight. His forearms were corded with tension, the tattoos on his shoulders shifting with the movement, and his jaw—

His jaw was clenched so hard it was a wonder his teeth didn't crack.

He could hear her moving around the camp behind him. Footsteps on the sand. The clink of a water bottle. The rustle of her doing something—what was she doing? He didn't look. He wasn't going to look.

Just work. Just build the raft that won't work. Just pretend there's a way off this island that doesn't involve staying here with her for who knows how long, pretending you don't still—

He exhaled hard through his nose.

The breeze carried the smell of coconut and salt and something else. Something that was just her, underneath all the ocean and the jungle, a scent his body remembered even after a year of trying to forget.

His hands kept working. Binding. Knotting. Building something he knew wouldn't carry them anywhere but gave him an excuse to stay on the beach, away from the shelter, away from the sound of her breathing at night.

The nearby island sat on the horizon like a taunt. Green and substantial and there—close enough to see, too far to reach.

Marco stared at it, his knife pausing mid-strip.

"Bahala na," he muttered under his breath. Come what may.

Then he kept working.

The cats found him at dusk.

He'd been gathering firewood when the first one appeared—a scrawny tabby with torn ears and yellow eyes, watching him from the rocks of the northern cove. It meowed once, thin and demanding, and something in Marco's chest did a thing he didn't want to examine.

"You again," he said flatly.

The cat meowed again.

He knelt, extending one calloused hand. The cat sniffed his fingers, considered, then butted its head against his palm. Marco's expression didn't change—that same stoic, grumpy mask he wore like armor—but his hand... his hand was gentle. Careful. Scratching behind the torn ear while the cat arched into the touch.

Three more cats emerged from the rocks. A black one with a white chest. A calico missing half its tail. A kitten, barely weaned, wobbling on unsteady legs.

"Hay naku," Marco muttered. Oh boy.

He didn't smile. His face stayed perfectly, deliberately neutral.

But he sat there for ten minutes, cross-legged on the rocks, letting the cats crawl over him while the sunset painted the sky in shades of orange and pink, and his hands were softer than they'd been all day.

When he finally stood, the cats mewled in protest.

"Wala," he told them. Nothing. "No food for you. Kain na kami."

We're going to eat.

He gathered his firewood and walked back toward camp, the kitten following for three steps before losing interest.

The fire was already going when he arrived—she'd done that much, at least. The fish he'd caught that morning was laid out on the rack, ready to be cooked. The shelter looked the same as he'd left it, sturdy and solid, the product of seven days of single-minded labor.

He dropped the wood beside the pit and crouched to feed the flames, not looking at her.

Not looking at the way the firelight caught her features.

Not looking at all.

"Fish is ready," he said, voice flat. "You cook or I cook?"

It was the most he'd said to her all day.

Clear water, barely reaching his chest, fed by a spring that tumbled down from the hill through a mess of volcanic rock. Sunlight filtered through the canopy overhead, dappling everything in gold and green, and the air smelled clean—like rain and earth and growing things. The stream fed into a pool he'd found three days ago.

He'd shown her where it was on Day 9. A place to actually wash, he'd said. Better than the saltwater.

She'd been using it ever since.

Marco had been careful to avoid it during those times. Very careful. He'd hear her footsteps heading upstream and he'd find somewhere else to be—checking the fish traps, foraging for tubers, working on the raft that still sat unfinished on the beach like a confession he couldn't finish.

Today he hadn't heard her leave.

He'd been repairing the shelter's roof—something about the binding on the northwest corner that had been bothering him, a gap that let in wind when the night turned cool—when the heat had gotten to him. Sweat dripping down his spine, his chest, his temples. The pendant sticking to his skin like it was trying to become part of him.

A bath. That's what he needed. Cool water and ten minutes of peace.

He walked upstream without thinking, following the sound of the cascade, pushing through the ferns and the tall grass—

And stopped.

She was in the pool.

The water came up to her waist, clear enough that he could see everything beneath the surface—her legs, her hips, the shadows and curves the water didn't quite hide. Her back was to him, her hair slicked back and dripping, and she was running her hands over her arms, washing, completely unaware.

Marco's mouth went dry.

Go. Turn around. Walk away.

His feet didn't move.

She turned—reaching for something on the rock beside the pool, a bar of soap from the salvage, and the motion brought her profile into view. Her chest. The water line cutting across her ribs, just below her—

Leave. Now.

His face did something complicated. Heat flooded his skin, a flush he could feel climbing his neck, spreading across his cheeks, and he knew—he knew—that his expression had cracked, just for a second, before he forced it back into stone.

"I'm—" His voice came out rough. Wrong. He cleared his throat. "I'm gonna bathe too."

Just a statement, delivered flat and hard like he wasn't standing there with his pulse hammering in his throat and his chest tight and his hands clenching at his sides.

He didn't wait for her to respond.

Marco walked to the edge of the pool, back to her, and stripped off his shorts.

The water was cool against his overheated skin. He waded in up to his waist, keeping his back to her, staring at the far bank like it held answers to questions he wasn't brave enough to ask.

Don't look. Don't turn around

"You can have the pool after," he said. "I'll be quick."

Lies. He was already not quick. He was already standing in this water with her only a few meters away, and the memory was crawling up his spine like heat lightning.

Because this was familiar.

Not this exact pool—nothing like this existed in their old life—but the feeling of it. The two of them in water together. Showering together in the apartment, her back pressed against his chest while the steam rose around them, his hands sliding over her wet skin like he had every right to touch her.

Because he'd had every right. Back then.

He'd known every inch of her. The way she shivered when he traced her spine. The sounds she made when his hands drifted lower. The way she'd lean back into him, trusting, wanting, his—

His cock was getting hard.

Marco closed his eyes, jaw clenching so tight his molars ached.

No. Stop. This isn't—that's over. She left. She ended it. A year. A whole year of nothing, of your own hand in the dark not quite doing it, of trying and failing and giving up because nothing felt like her, nothing came close—

The water lapped against his legs. Somewhere behind him, she was naked and wet and right there, and his body was remembering things his brain had spent twelve months trying to bury.

He could turn around. Right now. Look at her.

Would she look back?

His hands curled into fists under the water.

"It's deep enough here," he heard himself say. Quiet. Almost careful. "You can... you can sit. On that rock. The flat one."

Why was he telling her this? Why was he still here?

The stream tumbled into the pool beside them, filling the silence with its soft roar, and Marco Delgado stood waist-deep in freshwater with an erection he couldn't will away and a year of wanting pressed against the back of his throat like a scream.

He stayed right where he was, breathing through the wanting, and waited for her to make the next move.

The tuba (coconut sap or wine) had been his secret.

Not a secret secret—she'd seen him climbing the coconut palms with his makeshift tapping knife, seen the bamboo containers tied among the fronds, heard the dull thock-thock-thock of him bruising the flower spathes. She'd asked what he was doing, once, and he'd said "making something" in that flat tone that meant don't ask more questions.

He'd been drinking it most nights. Just a little. Just enough to quiet the thing in his chest that wouldn't stop pacing.

Tonight he'd brought the bamboo container back to camp after the afternoon collection. The sap had been fermenting for two days now—sweet and sharp and potent, the way grandpa had taught him. He'd poured some into a coconut shell and sat by the fire, sipping slowly, watching the flames.

Then the sky broke open.

The rain came fast and hard, the way it did in these islands—no warning nor gentle buildup, just a wall of water slamming down from the heavens like someone had turned over a bucket. The fire hissed and died. The wind screamed through the palm trees, bending them into crazy angles.

Marco was on his feet immediately, grabbing the food stores, the toolbox, the precious dry kindling, shoving everything into the shelter. She was already inside when he ducked through the doorway, the rain pounding so loud on the nipa roof that it was like being inside a drum.

The storm wasn't a typhoon. He knew what those felt like, this was just a squall, a summer thundershower, the kind that passed in in hour. But it was vicious while it lasted, and the shelter shook with every gust.

He stood just inside the doorway, water streaming off him, his hair plastered to his face, and looked at her.

She was on her side of the shelter. He was on his. The distance between them—carefully maintained for two weeks—felt impossibly small in the dark.

The fire was out. The only light came from lightning, flashing white through the gaps in the thatch, illuminating her in snapshots.

"Move over," he said, not a request.

He grabbed the salvage tarp and draped it over the center of the shelter, creating a rough divider—her side, his side, a wall of canvas that didn't quite reach the floor. Something. Anything.

Then he sat down on his bedroll, back against the wall, and reached for the coconut shell he'd brought inside.

The tuba was warm now, not cool from the stream. He drank anyway.

Lightning cracked. Thunder rolled.

The shelter shuddered.

An hour passed. The rain didn't stop.

Marco was on his second coconut shell. Maybe his third. He'd lost count somewhere in the rolling thunder, the steady drumming on the roof, the way the darkness pressed against his eyes.

He could hear her breathing. Even over the rain, he could hear it—the rhythm of it, the slight hitch when the thunder cracked close. She didn't like storms. He remembered that. She'd never liked them, even in the apartment, even when the worst that could happen was a power outage.

In the apartment, she'd press against him during storms. Her face in his chest, his arms around her, his voice low in her ear saying it's okay, I've got you, it's just noise.

He hadn't thought about that in months. He was thinking about it now.

"Putangina," he muttered into the darkness.

Another lightning flash. Another snapshot of her—curled on her bedroll, arms around herself, eyes not quite closed.

The tuba was hitting harder than he'd expected. His limbs felt loose. His tongue felt thick. The careful walls he'd built—the distance, the silence, the I'm fine, I'm handling it, I don't need anything from you—were developing cracks.

"You should drink some."

The words came out before he could stop them. He held out the coconut shell toward the tarp divider, toward the shape of her on the other side.

"It helps," he said. "With... the noise."

Liar. It helps with you. It helps with being this close and not touching.

The rain kept falling. The thunder kept rolling.

And Marco Delgado sat in the dark with his grandmother's wine in his veins and his ex-girlfriend three feet away, waiting to see if she'd take what he was offering.

The tarp didn't matter.

He'd hung it to create distance, a barrier, something to look at besides her. But the shelter was small and the storm was loud and the darkness was absolute, and somehow—somewhere between the second shell and the fourth—she'd ended up on his side.

Not touching. Not quite. But close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating off her skin, close enough that when another crack of thunder shook the shelter she flinched and he felt the air move.

"It's fine."

It wasn't fine. Nothing about this was fine. She was right there, inches away, and the tuba was making everything soft and sharp-edged at the same time, and he couldn't stop remembering—

Her hair against his pillow. Her laugh at his terrible jokes. The way she'd steal the blankets and he'd wake up cold and not care because she was warm and close and his.

She wasn't his anymore. She'd made that choice. A year ago, she'd walked away, and he'd let her, because what else could he do? You can't make someone stay. You can't love someone hard enough to keep them if they don't want to be kept.

But god, he'd wanted to.

The rain was letting up, just slightly. The thunder moving distant. But neither of them moved back to their sides.

"Why'd you come?"

The question slipped out, loose and reckless, the tuba stripping the filter from his tongue. He stared at the ceiling, not at her, because if he looked at her he might say something worse.

"On the tour. Why'd you come?"

A pause. The drip of water off the thatch.

"You didn't know I was going to be there," he continued, voice low and rough. "I know that. But why that tour? Why the Philippines?"

Why were you in the place I would have gone anyway, the place that smells like my childhood, the place I go to remember who I am?

He turned his head. Just slightly. Just enough to see her shape in the dark.

"I thought—" He stopped. Swallowed. The tuba made him honest and he hated it. "For a second, at the port, when I saw you... I thought maybe you came because of me."

A laugh, short and bitter, escaped his throat.

"Stupid, right? One year. One year of nothing and I still—"

He cut himself off.

His jaw clenched. The muscle jumped. His hands curled into fists against his thighs.

Say it. Just say it, you coward. One year of nothing and you still thought maybe, still hoped, still woke up some mornings reaching for someone who wasn't there—

The silence stretched between them, broken only by the rain and the distant thunder and the sound of his own pulse in his ears.