Save Me Not by Nina Soelian
Save Me Not
Description
Armando Morales doesn't need saving. He needs his tips, his shifts, and enough rice to feed four siblings before his drunk father notices the money's gone. He needs to survive one more semester on scholarship without anyone finding out who he really is. He definitely doesn't need Tadeo Garcia - golden boy, rugby captain, campus prince - showing up in his life again like the past eight years didn't happen. Like they're still two kids at summer camp, like the world didn't chew Armando up and spit him out while Tadeo was busy becoming everyone's favorite. But Tadeo remembers. And he's not going anywhere. When a spot on the rugby team drags Armando back into Tadeo's orbit, the distance he's fought to maintain starts crumbling - on the field, in the locker room, in a dark closet at a party where seven minutes almost changed everything. Armando knows the rules: don't get close, don't get caught, don't want things you can't have. But Tadeo plays like rules don't apply to him. And Armando is running out of reasons to disagree.
Chapter 1
Jul 9, 2026
Armando’s POV
Getting jumped by five drunk men was new for me.
Just because I look too pretty and too gay.
In high school, the bullies had at least been my size. Kids I could swing back at, even outnumbered, after my orientation got exposed and suddenly every insecure prick in that building needed me as a punching bag.
But these weren't kids. These were grown-ass men from the bar where I worked: two hours of cheap beer and sideways looks at me, until one of them decided I was too feminine to let slide and the rest agreed.
It started an hour ago with comments, like it usually did.
"Oi, come here." The red-faced and the loudest one, with a thick neck and wedding ring, snapped his fingers at me like I was a dog. "You a boy or a girl, amigo? Seriously. The long ass lashes, these puffy lips and face of yours… you're prettier than my wife!"
His friends howled while I set down their beers and said nothing.
I got used to this kind of comments over the years since I looked too much like a woman that produced me. I was mistaken for a girl when I was a kid and getting taller or more muscular than guys at my age usually do didn’t get me far away from that.
"I think he's blushing," another one said. "Look at him — definitely a maricón."
"Nah, nah." The loud one leaned forward, grinning like we were sharing a joke. "You just look like one, right? With that face? Bet you get that a lot."
Bet you’re right. I’ve been called worse than just a faggot, but this specific word seemed to be haunting me.
I picked up the empty glasses from their table, keeping my expression blank and mouth shut. I needed the tips, and more than that I needed to not get fired. I need money to feed and keep four siblings alive at home more than I need my pride.
"Hey. I'm talking to you, maricón!" He grabbed my wrist as I passed. "What, you too good to talk to us?"
I pulled free without looking at him and walked behind the bar. I started my break early because if I stayed near that table another minute I was going to do something that would cost me this job.
So they followed me outside of course, all five of them. I barely had the back door shut behind me before the loud one was in my face, beer breath and spit.
"Where are you going, pretty boy? We weren't done." The first shove came before I could answer. "Hold him!"
The second one put me into the wall and red-faced fucker hissing right in my face. "Not so pretty now, huh?"
The only mercy was that I wasn't making it easy. Running every morning since thirteen and training behind closed doors had built enough muscle to matter. I wasn't bulky, too many skipped meals for that, but I was fast, I was wiry, and I'd been beaten up enough times in my life to know how to stay on my feet.
I cracked the loud one in the jaw hard enough to feel it up my wrist, and he stumbled back. "Hijo de…"
I spat blood onto the loud one's face and smiled at him. "Five of you and I'm still standing. I bet your wife rolls her eyes every time you hint at sex."
"Get his arms!" His face went purple. "I’ll kill this fucking faggot!"
Someone grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms behind my back while the loud one came back swinging with everything he had. A fist connected with my cheek. Another slammed my ribs. A knee drove into my stomach and I folded until the pavement hit my back and the streetlight blurred to a yellow smear.
There are too many of them.
I could take two, maybe three on a good day. Not fucking five.
My arms were getting heavy, my vision kept doubling, and every breath felt like swallowing glass. A few more minutes of this and I wasn't getting back up.
Then the chaos came unexpectedly when a group from the table near the window I saw but didn’t serve came pouring out the back door.
"Oi! Get the fuck off him!" A tall guy with dark curly hair grabbed the loud one by the collar and ripped him backward from me like he weighed nothing.
Two more came after him, both chasing the rest of men who bolted down the alley.
"Grab that one too! No, not him, the other one!" the stocky and fast one screamed at his friend.
"I’m fucking trying, dude!" the lean one with a shaved head hissed back. "They scatter like rats!"
"I'm calling the police!" A blonde girl tried to follow on her heels and hit someone with her clearly expensive purse. One of the men accidentally leaned on her, and her face instantly took on an expression of disgust, shoving him. "Ew! That’s Versace, you prick!"
"¡Por Dios!" Another girl with curly hair ran past the blonde. "Helena, just talk to the police already!"
"Right, right… Yes, hello! Behind the bar on Calle…"
The whole group chased after the drunk men, and then it was just me, the brick wall, and the taste of copper.
But one guy stayed. The biggest one of the group.
"Are you okay there?" He asked, crouching beside me carefully like I was something that might bite.
When I didn’t answer, he tilted my chin toward the light with two fingers and checked the split lip, the swelling cheek. Then disappeared only to come back ten seconds later with a cold beer bottle and pressed it against the bruise blooming under my eye.
"What started that?" he asked.
I could tell the truth, I know that. But I would rather die. Literally, physically die on this sidewalk, than let one more person find out I was gay and was attacked because of that.
"They were drunk," I said instead. "Wanted trouble. Found an easy target."
He didn't push, just held the cold bottle steady and watched my face. I looked at him properly for the first time. He was big, the kind of build that didn't happen without money behind it: good food, good coaches, good everything. Designer jacket, clean hands, jaw like something carved for a catalogue.
Then something shifted behind his eyes, like he wasn't checking injuries anymore. Like he was trying to match what he was seeing before his whole expression cracked open.
"Holy shit… Are you..?" Almost a whisper. "Armando? Armando Morales?"
I blinked at him through my one working eye. There’s no way in hell someone like him knows someone like me.
"It's me, Tadeo!" His voice climbed, a grin splitting his face wide open, bright and stupid. "Tadeo Garcia from rugby camp León. Remember?"
Oh… I remembered. How could I not?
How could you forget your best friend at eleven years old, your first love?
The kid who talked too much and laughed too loud and picked me as his person on day one like it was already decided. Those two summers at camp were the closest thing to escape I'd ever had, and Tadeo was the reason.
He didn't care about my duct-taped bag or my falling-apart shoes or the fact that I flinched when people raised their voices. We wrote letters after — actual handwritten letters, because I didn't have a phone.
For a while it was real, the one good thing in my shitty life.
Then my father got worse. Money disappeared and any camps became impossible, eventually even stamps cost too much when my siblings needed to eat. And just like that I was forced to simply vanish from his life, to erase him from mine.
But that was a lifetime ago.
And the gap between us became even more visible.
Now I sat bleeding on concrete outside a bar that paid me under the table, doing math on whether there was enough rice at home for breakfast for four kids. Hoping my alcoholic father hadn't already found my savings, because if he had, that was grocery money gone — swallowed by whatever bottle or fix he could get his hands on.
Tadeo on the other hand knelt beside me looking like he'd stepped out of a different world entirely, smelling like money and a bright future.
He'd grown since camp, but the change wasn't subtle. He was taller, broader, built like the athlete he'd clearly become. Jaw sharper, shoulders wide enough to block the streetlight behind him, draped in designer clothes.
The golden boy who never knew a bad day.
I shifted sideways, putting distance between us. "Yeah," I said flatly. "I remember."
Tadeo lit up like I'd given him something precious. "I can't believe it! I mean, not like this…" He gestured at the blood, the alley. "But you're here, in Valencia. When did you…"
"This semester, Santa María. Construction Trades Scholarship."
I should've stopped there.
"Wait, seriously? That's my college!" So fucking brilliant. "I play rugby there, I'm captain actually, and…"
"Good for you."
Tadeo didn't even register the cold. Same energy as when we were kids, just bigger now — that particular kind of warmth that had always made him impossible to ignore.
"God, I missed you," he said. "We could pick up right where we left off, you know? Still good old friends. Remember how we used to stay up past lights-out talking about everything and nothing? I still have your letters. All of them. Oh, and remember how we…"
"We were never friends, Tadeo." The silence covered us. He stared at me while I kept my voice flat and even, like I was stating a fact and not just guarding my heart before I’d be broken against the reality. Again. "You just wouldn’t leave me alone. None of it meant anything, so drop it already. You’re giving me a fucking headache."
I watched a flicker of surprise behind his eyes. Like the idea that I wouldn't be happy to see him hadn't even occurred to him.
Because why would it? In Tadeo Garcia's world, people were always happy to see him.
But he didn't break, flinch or look away. He stayed right where he was, crouched on the dirty pavement beside me like he had nowhere better to be, and the smile that came back was smaller now, quieter.
"It’s never too late to start," he said.
"Keep dreaming, rich boy…" I said standing up and getting ready to leave.
"Well, good thing then that I know how to dream big," Tadeo said with such confidence that I got goosebumps. "And I always get what I want."
Save Me Not
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