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When he dreams, there’s a man.
Alejo is sixteen, discovering that his preferences might mean that he enjoys looking at a pretty girl or two, but also mean that he won’t say no to looking at a handsome man, either. The dreams go a long way to helping him with that epiphany. They’re hot and heavy fantasies, he thinks, set in dry climates about hot nights, imagining a broad man’s hands all over him, his mouth on his hot, dirty skin, wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and a gambler’s grin. He doesn’t know what that man’s name is, but he knows that his body wants to arch up under his hands and steal hot kisses from him.
He’s sixteen and he wakes up every morning achingly hard for something he can’t put words to.
His first boyfriend is named Jake and the name feels almost-right on his tongue, but not quite. The kisses are gentle, exploring things with no sizzle or bite and Alejo doesn’t know why he wants Jake to fight back and push at him. He’s not sure why he wants to be rejected, bit, pushed around.
When he tells his parents that he thinks he’s wrong somehow, they give him a sympathetic look, even though they look as if they’re humoring him. “Or,” his father says, clapping a hand on his back, “Jake isn’t right for you and you’re just looking for excuses.”
“You found each other when you were young,” Alejo complains, trying to understand why his soul longs for something so specific and strange. “I know someone is out there for me like that, I thought it was Jake.” He thinks, now, that he’d been wrong.
He keeps dreaming about a man. It’s not a boy, not someone his own age, but someone so handsome it makes his mouth dry. He’s got broad shoulders and strong arms, a tongue as sharp as glass, and eyes as green as the stormy sea. He doesn’t know the man’s name, but he propositions him in this dream, Alejo being older than he is now and more confident in himself. He offers his body and his bed, maybe even implies that his heart is up for grabs.
Except, when that’s all put on the line, he ends up lonely that night.
“Maybe in some other life,” shouldn’t be such painful words, but every time Alejo wakes from that dream, he feels as if he’s grieving for someone who’s died. He’s lost track of how many times he wakes with his cheeks wet with tears and his heart feeling as if someone has wrenched it from his chest.
At seventeen, the dreams become a more frequent occurrence.
Eighteen, he dates a man who is three years older than him that likes to push at him, but never takes what Alejo has to give.
When he’s twenty-three, he joins a man named Sam Chisolm to do good work at an agency that’s been after him for years and can’t understand why everything feels so familiar.
The dreams get worse, then, until he knows exactly what the man of his dreams looks like, could sketch him out of habit, and if he closes his eyes, can isolate the feeling of desire he’d felt for him. He’s also figured out that the grief has to do with him too. He’s no longer Alejo, not a boy, but Vasquez. He’s clever enough to have made it onto Chisolm’s team and knows that whatever his recurring dreams mean, that heart-rending grief has to do with the man in them and it has nothing to do with the rejection and everything to do with his loss.
Then, one day when he’s twenty-five, it all comes crashing down on his head.
His name is Joshua Faraday.
He’s never been more in love, in this life or the last.
How could he have forgotten this? How could his past life have not crashed back into him so much earlier? Twenty-five years of his life, he’s had these dreams, but he’s never once known who the man in them was, not even when that same man had turned up for his first day of work at the agency with a suit and a smile, making Vasquez’s heart beat in double-time from something that he didn’t recognize.
The dreams had become sharper that day, casting Faraday in the main role, but Vasquez had written that off as his subconscious telling him that Faraday had a good shot of dislodging the man in his dreams as new fantasy fodder. How little he’d known, then.
After that, it only takes a seemingly innocent comment for the dominoes to crash and topple on him. They’re at the firing range, Sam behind protective glass with a clipboard as he evaluates Faraday’s skills and Vasquez hangs around him, because he can’t explain why, but there’s nowhere else he wants to be than at Faraday’s side.
“I got six of the targets,” Vasquez boasts, at Faraday’s side as he usually is and has been, ever since the man joined the agency.
“What?” Faraday asks, from where he’d insisted he got six, too. “Shit, I said six? I meant seven.” The lie is easy to rebuke, being that Vasquez can see only six marks on the target, but he’s taken aback by the full force of all the memories of his past life slamming into him and painting context onto his dreams (and worse, onto the nightmares).
It's instantaneous and frightening. Suddenly, the roaring in his ears sounds a lot like dynamite and though Vasquez reaches out to grasp hard onto Faraday’s shoulder to ground him, he staggers away just as quickly as he remembers everything at once, letting out a pained sound.
“I have to…I need…”
He bolts because he can’t be here right now. Faraday calls after him with concern, but Vasquez can hear Sam telling the man to let him go, give him some space. Vasquez isn’t sure whether he’s grateful for it or annoyed, but he settles on the former when the dizziness and the migraine start to set in.
It's the pain of the memories all at once – the rejection, the wounds, the heartache, the loneliness, the desperation – that makes him spend twenty minutes in the bathroom before he can look at his reflection and not see a dirtied, desperate outlaw in it. The worst part is that now he understands why he keeps waking from his dreams with such a grief in his heart.
Vasquez remembers, now, a life stretching out ahead of him without Faraday at his side. He’s surprised to realize how much longer he’d lived without Faraday, though there’s something right about the fact that he’d gone out defending another little town, twelve years on. Twelve years without Faraday, twelve years wondering what might have been.
He'd gone straight to the bar and started drinking when Sam took pity on him and sent him away, roughly around the time that Vasquez forgot how to speak English and made a fool of himself gaping at Faraday at the shooting range when he’d come back from the bathroom and words had failed him.
He’s not sure why they’ve been given a second chance, but right now, Vasquez is drinking for two reasons.
One, he just remembered that the man he’d been quietly and desperately in love with has joined the agency. Two, and much worse? There hadn’t been a flicker of recognition on his face when he’d stared at Vasquez after his little breakdown at the gun range.
Faraday doesn’t know.
“One more,” Vasquez orders miserably, slumping forward onto his folded arms, throwing a pathetic pity party for himself. He rests his cheek on his palm and stares down the line of the messy bar, startling when someone drops a silver lighter and a case of smokes right beside him. “I’m not in the mood for company,” he snaps, ready to tell off whoever thinks they can pick him up.
Glancing up, he instantly tries to walk that back.
“Goodnight,” Vasquez manages, swallowing back old fear for the man’s sharpshooting prowess. He’s every bit as terrifying here as their team’s sniper, but marrying Billy at nineteen has softened the man more than Vasquez could have ever expected. It hasn’t softened him enough that there isn’t still a frisson of fear that bolts through him at talking back to him, though. “I thought you were…”
“Someone else, cher, I know,” Goodnight assures. “Let me buy you a drink or two.”
Vasquez can’t argue that, even if he’s feeling strange around men he’s known for two years. He’d been Goodnight, the strange-named man who had the best shooting in the entire agency. He and Billy had been something of an inspiration to Vasquez, as if they were a road map of a future he thought he wanted. Vasquez had never questioned why they got along so well and so quickly, like they were destined to be friends.
It turns out, they’re just more ghosts.
“When did you remember?” Vasquez asks, when two bourbons on the rocks show up. They’re doubles and generous ones, so Vasquez thinks that maybe Goody had a conversation with the bartender to give him the heads up that it was going to be a trying night.
“I was young,” Goody admits. “Try being nine years old at a carnival, playing one of those damned sharpshooting games, and having your whole painful past life flash in front of you, including dying. I collapsed right there and wept for days,” he says, his voice filled with grief. “My parents got me the best therapy that money could buy, but I needed time. I needed to grow up and into this life, never mind bearing the last one like that damn owl following me around. It helps, though, that I met Billy young.”
He knows this story, too.
Goody and Billy had been young recruits into a specialized camp for prospective agents. Goody at eighteen and Billy at seventeen had been the youngest of that class, but had fostered a friendship and a bond, like they were made for each other.
Turns out, they were.
“He remembered a few weeks into that experience, to my great joy,” Goody says, rolling the bourbon as he swirls his glass. “I had more trouble convincing that petit bastard to marry me.”
Vasquez remembers this part, too, because it’s one of the first things they tell you when you join the agency. They point out the lunchroom, tell you about Sam Chisolm’s habits, and then warn that Billy Rocks and Goody Robicheaux are off limits, having been taken by one another in holy matrimony.
“Out of nowhere, he remembered one night. He was having all these nightmares and kept waking up with my name on his lips,” Goody says, like he’s relishing that fact. “It’s a circular bit of poetic justice, isn’t it? He dies with my name on his lips, he reawakens those memories and his soul with that same name.”
Vasquez snorts. “I don’t think Faraday is going to suddenly remember because he yells at me. We weren’t like you. I didn’t get to have anything with him. I didn’t even think I could.”
It had been another time and while Faraday had driven Vasquez mad, there had been something else there, too. It had been something warm and sparking, like a piece of dynamite ready to blow. He’d even made his offer on the hopes that they could have turned that fire into something passionate and memorable. Instead of a chance, he got grief. Vasquez stares down into his glass, his posture sunken and curved like the bad mood on his back is bowing him over.
“What happened after Rose Creek, Alejo?”
It’s a question that he’s not sure he’s ready to answer. It’s taken him twenty-five years to get back his past life and that life included more years than the man beside him got. Maybe not by many, but still more. The only memory that’s haunting him more than Rose Creek and becoming a wanted man, right now, is the knowledge of how he’d ended that last life.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You want to talk instead about Joshua Faraday?”
Vasquez winces, because no, he absolutely does not want to talk about watching a man he’s in love with stare at him with no recognition on his face. “The bastard shouldn’t look so good,” Vasquez complains. “He’s less of a jackass this time.”
“Do not take it poorly when I say that so are you,” Goody retorts. “Look, Ale, I’m not saying you ought to be pinning him to the wall of the bathroom and sharing all your feelings by way of getting your mouth on his dick, but what happened in Rose Creek was over a century ago and the world’s changed. Maybe Faraday is still full of piss and vinegar and maybe that boy doesn’t want you, but…”
Vasquez glances up from his drink, not sure whether to be hopeful or just sink deeper into the pathetic hole he hopes will swallow him whole.
“But?” he prods Goodnight.
“But I have never in my life seen such awful schoolboy flirting as I did watching Faraday around you. Vice-versa,” is Goody’s sharp reply. “Whether you give it time or you try and push, I don’t think it’s a question about whether you get to have him. It’s just a question of for how long you intend to keep him.”
Vasquez exhales deeply and stares into his glass, not entirely sure that he has a good answer. He wants Faraday as much as he’d wanted him before, but the man is a stranger to him. If he wants to actually ever get to have him in a permanent sort of way, that’s a lot of work to do with a man who’s exhaustingly frustrating at the best of times.
“Think of it this way,” Goodnight says, clapping a hand on his back. “This time, he didn’t insult your heritage the first time you two met.”
“No,” Vasquez allows, but he’s had enough alcohol that he’s slid towards maudlin. “Just my fashion sense.”
Because when Faraday had been introduced to him, he’d taken one look at Vasquez’s skinny jeans, snorted, and asked if that was standard procedure to strangle your balls under the company’s dress code policy
“Man might have a point,” Goodnight informs him. “He’s just the only one stupid enough to say it out loud.”
Vasquez makes a face, giving Goodnight the stink-eye, and then glances down at his perfectly good jeans, the same ones he’d been wearing the day he’d met Faraday. They go well with the skinny tie and crisp white-shirt he wears, along with the suit jacket that highlights his frame. Maybe vanity has followed him from one life to the next, but he still wouldn’t want to dress without knowing how best to show off his body.
“You’re one to talk, useless summer scarves,” Vasquez retorts, flipping Goodnight’s silk gray scarf in his face, worn despite the balmy temperature outside.
“Mon cher, I will wear anything that conveniently gives Billy the chance to tie me up.”
Vasquez lets out a painful sound in his throat, giving Goodnight a desperate look.
“For that, you’re buying at least the next three rounds.”
“Only fair,” Goodnight agrees, clapping Vasquez on the shoulder. “Let’s drink to remembering old times and rising from the ashes.”
Right now, Vasquez just wants to drink to forget the sparkling mischief in Faraday’s eyes and the complete lack of recognition behind them, wants to drink enough to black out and prevent having that old nightmare now that he knows it’s not just a dream. He’s not sure how many glasses that’s going to take, but he has a feeling he intends to make Goodnight pay for all of them.
Five years later, Vasquez is fairly sure that he’s managed to make Faraday like him. That’s a lie. He knows Faraday likes him and that with the right word, he could have him in his bed and dating him and probably could even be in a relationship once they got past Faraday’s tendency to fuck up when asking for it. Vasquez could make it so easy and he could have what he wants, but somewhere along the line, Vasquez got stubborn about wanting to wait until Faraday remembered him.
At first, he’d been convinced that it would be soon. There would be times when Faraday would blink fuzzily out of the conversation when they were smoking or drinking or at the gun range. Vasquez would hang back, think this is it, and wait. Except, then, nothing happened. He’s been waiting and wanting, pissing off everyone else given that they all know that Vasquez and Faraday have a thing for each other. Vasquez knows why he’s not acting on it, but he’s not sure why Faraday can’t manage to get his shit together.
Not that Vasquez wants that to happen, seeing as he’s not sure whether he’d even say yes, if it happens prior to Faraday getting his memories back.
“Just ask him out,” Emma had warned him before the fateful mission lands on his desk, information on Bogue dragging them into the office while his hangover pounds in his head after drinking too much with Faraday, again. “Who gives a damn if he doesn’t remember your flashy gun-spinning and your dirty fucking breath?”
Clearly, his non-verbal refusal to answer her had been the last straw, what with her putting him and Faraday on this mission together posing as newlyweds and going after McCann of all people. Sometimes, he wonders if this isn’t payback for their first meeting in the last life, but he probably deserves it.
He shakes himself clear of those memories and stretches out wearily, staring at Faraday lying flat on the bed in front of him. They’re a few days into the mission to observe and report on McCann and everything is going strangely smoothly. That is, apart from Vasquez’s constant angst as he wonders whether he’s ever going to take his chance with Faraday.
“Faraday’s asleep, I’m signing on for my shift,” Vasquez reports into his comm, checking his watch to note the time.
It takes him twenty minutes to make sure the equipment is all working, ten minutes for Teddy to do some calibrations, and five for Billy to ask him whether he’s told Faraday about their past lives yet. Despite the fact that Billy isn’t even there to see Vasquez’s impressive glare, he gives one, taking mind not to be too loud and wake Faraday, even though his snores make it seem like a parade of elephants could charge by and he wouldn’t wake.
“I’m not rushing it,” he hisses over the comms.
“If you don’t, you could end up dying of old age before he remembers,” Billy deadpans. “He’s known you for years, if you don’t light a fire under that stick of dynamite…”
Vasquez hisses sharply between his teeth.
“Too soon,” he protests.
“It’s been a goddamn century and change,” Billy replies sharply. “Tell him.”
“Goodnight, collect your man,” Vasquez complains.
He knows that he’s been successful when he hears the scuffle on the other end of the comms and then blessed, blissful silence. He knows he’s not alone, knows that Red and Horne are still monitoring the line and if he’s stupid enough to pick this fight, they’ll just pick up where Billy left off, so he fidgets and switches his device to a listen-only mode, not wanting them to hear whatever it is that gets said within this room. At least, not right now. He knows Teddy could flip the switch and turn the channels back on, but not for at least an hour; they need to realize that Vasquez has done something, first.
Leaning forward, he rests his elbows on the edge of the bed and reaches out to tentatively brush a few strands of hair back from off Faraday’s forehead. He’s so close to remembering, Vasquez can feel it. The signs have been all there lately, from the way he looks at Vasquez to all the bad dreams and even the way he thinks he’s going mad. He’s going to remember, Vasquez knows it. He’s just getting tired of waiting for it to happen.
“Why won’t you remember now?” he asks with a sigh. He glances skywards, up to God, but he’s not sure that he’s allowed to have any prayers answered.
They all managed to get a second life and they’re here and alive and the same age. He knows he’s not making up the interest on Faraday’s face and he has a real chance to be with the man the way he hadn’t been, before, but he wants him to remember. It’s important that he does, because otherwise there will be secrets between them and that’s not how Vasquez wants to start this off.
Faraday mumbles in his sleep, twitching uncomfortably. Vasquez rests his palm flush against Faraday’s neck, leaning forward until his lower back protests and he wonders if this would have been an echo of the past if Faraday had somehow managed to survive and Vasquez was the one to keep bedside vigil.
“Remember me, Josh, please,” Vasquez pleads, a low and steady demand that he’s not sure he’s owed. “You have to make everything so difficult, don’t you? I want to be with you, I do, I want us to get that second chance we’ve been after, but I want you to remember how we met and how you insulted me. I want you to tease me that I called you guerito, that I let you think that guero meant handsome.”
He doesn’t think that he’s asking for too much, but maybe it’s his fault that he’s been so stubborn and waited so long. Maybe he’s supposed to do something about it and then the universe is going to fold and let him have Joshua Faraday back, for all the good and all the plentiful, frustrating bad.
“Come back,” Vasquez mutters, rapping his forehead gently a few times like he’s trying to get through to whatever it is that’s lurking beneath (once, someone had assumed it might be common sense). “It’s time for that other life, Faraday.”
He's not sure that he can take not being with him a second longer, because for all he knows, what if this second chance only lasts so long? He’s put this off for almost five years with the hopes that they would have plenty of time, but what happens if that’s not the case? What if this is going to be all that he gets?
In hindsight, he shouldn’t have even begun to think that. He’s pretty sure that he’s the reason the universe had been so sorely tempted to let what happens next occur.
“I got it, I have it!” Vasquez shouts victoriously, the faint note of disbelief and panic still in his words. He scrambles on hands and knees back to Faraday to share his buoyant joy, smile brimming with disbelief as his hands take the opportunity to shake now that their lives don’t depend on them. He’s already making plans and banking on the fact that Faraday’s memories have come back to him, but one look at the other man snaps Vasquez back to reality. They don’t get to walk away like nothing has happened because Faraday is slumped over, his hand bloody and red, his face pale, and his whole bearing sluggish from McCann’s lucky shot to his gut.
He hadn’t been there in the field with Faraday during those last moments, but it doesn’t take a genius for Vasquez to understand what’s happening as he watches consciousness flicker and Faraday start to be pulled away from him, again.
“No, no, no, you can’t do this to me, not again,” Vasquez pleads with Faraday or God or anyone who wants to listen as he crawls on his knees to collect Faraday into his arms, breath short and sharp. Faraday reaches out for him, his bloodied hand grabbing his. “Josh,” Vasquez exhales, barely more than a word.
“Should have…” That’s all Faraday says. Then, he passes out, bleeding and unconscious in Vasquez’s arms. He shouldn’t be ashamed to admit it, but he is, for the fact that his eyes are cloudy with panicked tears even as he hears heavy boots trample into the room, signalling Red and Horne’s arrival.
All that he can do is sit there, numb, staring down at Faraday in his arms. Would this have been better, he wonders? If he’d been in that field, would it have been better to be there to hear Faraday’s last breath? He’d known that man for only weeks. The man in his arms now, he’s known and loved for over five years, and Vasquez feels like he can’t breathe.
Panic is lodged heavy in his chest as he stares up at Red and Horne, not thinking clearly enough to know what he’s supposed to do.
“Son, is he alive?” Horne asks.
He barely manages the nod of his head when he checks for a pulse and breath signs, but he does. “Yes,” he gets out, curling his fingers tighter into Faraday’s warm skin, refusing to let go of him right now. He sees Red on the phone behind him, sees medics trampling into the room and Emma hot on their heels.
Everything is a haze, but he remembers a few distinct things.
He remembers the medics talking to him and sounding like they’re echoing as they pry Faraday out of his arms. He feels Emma dropping a blanket over his shoulders. Worst of all, he distinctly hears one of the medics talking about how Faraday’s heart is slowing and they need to get him into surgery immediately before they roll him away.
They’re gone and it’s like the world snaps back into focus.
The trouble is that for all he knows he should get to the hospital, he can’t move. “Alejo,” Emma says worriedly. “Alejo, you’re barely breathing.”
Isn’t he? He stares around the room wildly, noticing that Red and Horne are gone and so is the bomb. It takes him a moment to realize that he isn’t breathing more than shallow little things and that there’s a pit in his stomach that feels like it’s making him sick and might actually envelope him completely. He hasn’t had a panic attack like this in years, but that’s what it is.
Emma seems to realize that, too, bearing down on him and hugging him from behind forcibly. Her smaller body is pressed to his as Vasquez stares down at his bloody hands and thinks about Faraday being shot and dragged away into surgery. He needs to get up and follow them, but his whole body feels frozen and stuck.
“I can’t,” he ekes out, staring up at Emma with worry because he means that he physically doesn’t think he can move.
“Okay, Vasquez, okay,” Emma replies, hugging him and pressing her hand flat on his chest. “What we’re going to do, now, is you’re going to breathe in and out with me when I tell you to. Got it?”
She goes through the motions and he listens, he does, breathing in when she tells him and then out when she orders it, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. He just keeps seeing Faraday shot and bloody, not just in one life, but in the other. It’s not like Vasquez wants this to be happening, but he feels paralyzed with inaction and an inability to do anything but stare forward at where Faraday’s blood is staining the hotel carpet.
“What if he dies again? What if this life is just like the last?” He’s swallowing big gulps of air, but they’re not doing anything for him. Vasquez keeps talking himself down this paralytic rabbit hole of panic, forcing him to confront things that he’s tried so long to avoid. “What if we’re doomed to do the same thing again and again?” he asks, pressed back against Emma’s body. What if Billy and Goody will die, what if Emma loses Matthew?
How do they know that anything is actually bound to change?
“That’s bullshit, Vasquez,” Emma counters bluntly.
“How do you know? How do you know it will be any different?”
“What I’m about to tell you does not leave this room, do you hear me?” she warns. “If Matthew finds out that I told you before I told him, he will never let me live it down. Do you know how I know that things won’t be the same? I’ll tell you, Alejandro, it’s because they’re not.” She keeps that tight grasp on him, refusing to let go, which Vasquez is grateful for, because it’s keeping him upright. “Ask me how I know that.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m pregnant, Vasquez.”
The shock of her news slaps him in the face and it’s so big that Vasquez forgets, for just a split second, that Faraday is in any trouble.
“Pregnant?” he echoes.
“Baby growing inside me and all, which I didn’t get to do last time around,” she says, giving him a pointed look. “That’s how I know we’re not doomed to repeat history. Matthew and I get to have a family this time around and I will move hell and heaven to do it, but I’m not letting Faraday get himself shot to death this time. You’re too pretty to mope all the time,” she says, rubbing his chest in soothing circles.
That seems to be what he needs to get him out of the worst of the panic.
Vasquez inhales as deeply as he possibly can, pulling in breath, and lets it out. He repeats the same thing a few times until he feels like he can actually think straight, glancing back to Emma with gratitude brimming on his face.
“Does this mean I’m godfather?”
“You menace, you know that’s going to be Sam,” Emma snorts. “Make you a deal. You keep yourself and Faraday out of trouble and you can be godfather for the next one.”
It sounds plenty good to Vasquez, who finally finds the strength to push to his feet. His knees creak as he stands, feeling wobbly and unsteady, but he’s on his feet and he’s breathing normally again, which means that he’s ready to face what’s happened without letting himself slide into paranoia and worry that the past will just happen again.
“Can you give me a ride to the hospital? I can tell you my favorite baby names while we drive,” he says, feeling the life come back to him.
Emma shakes her head at him, but she’s getting out her keys. “I’m going to regret telling you, I already know.”
“Maybe so, but I’ll build you a crib to make up for it.”
“You got a deal, so long as you make sure you keep up that other end of the bargain.” She’s not joking when she looks at him, worry heavy in her eyes. “You have to take care of the both of you.”
“He has to make it through the surgery first…”
Emma seems to sense Vasquez is about to spiral out again, which is why he’s so grateful for her hand pressed firmly against his shoulder to squeeze, leading him towards her car and beginning a long ramble about names she’s particular about and how she hopes that any child of hers is a redhead, even though she’s utterly aware that if the child is a redhead, she’s going to hear no end to Faraday’s joking remarks that it’s his.
It’s exactly what he needs. It’s a happy topic and a reminder that this is a new life, all in one. Vasquez latches onto it like a lifeline and lets Emma lead him back to Faraday, who’s going to be just fine if Vasquez manages to stubbornly get his way. He hasn’t met a problem he can outstubborn, not yet, so he figures he’ll be just fine.
By the time he gets to the hospital, Faraday has already been brought into surgery. Vasquez spends that whole time in the chapel on his knees, praying for mercy and patience and all sorts of divine intervention he’s not sure he deserves. That’s how the doctor finds him almost eight hours later, half-asleep, to give him an update on Faraday’s condition. The doctor seems optimistic, but warns that there might be complications given a piece of shrapnel they hadn’t been able to get out. “It shouldn’t cause any trouble,” the doctor had said, “but we’ll monitor him. Once he wakes up, we’ll be out of the deep woods.”
With that news singing in his head like relief, Vasquez lets the doctor lead him to Faraday’s room (already half full with get well flowers and gifts, which means Teddy must have been quick to alert the gift shop) and sinks down into the visitor’s chair that he drags beside the bed. It seems so easy that all Faraday needs to do is wake up, but he’s still unconscious on the hospital bed in front of him, probably helped along by the intense cocktail of drugs pumping through his system. He’s too still, too quiet, too pale, and it’s starting to push Vasquez back to that worried place.
Every hour that passes beside Faraday’s hospital bed without him waking feels like an eternity. Even though he’s calmed down from the worst of it, this all feels much too terrifying and like an echo of the last life. As much as he doesn’t want to leave Faraday’s side, he eventually allows Billy to keep watch while he heads outside for a smoke (or four) even though it’s a habit he’s been unsuccessfully trying to kick since the first cigarette he picked up over a decade ago, but old chain-smoking habits die hard, apparently. Once he stumbles out to the alley behind the ER, he lets his back hit the wall, exhaustion bleeding from his every limb.
“You got another one of those?”
Vasquez squints through the darkness to see Sam approaching. “I thought you quit.”
“Special circumstances,” Sam promises. Vasquez reaches out and hands over a cigarette from where he’s been stockpiling them in his front pocket. When he reaches for one, that’s when he realizes that he hasn’t changed his clothes yet and is still wearing the suit from their mission-date in the restaurant.
Had that really only been hours ago? It feels like another lifetime. That whole disaster would have fit right into the mess in Rose Creek, but it’s just more tragedy in a different life.
“I spoke to the doctor,” Sam says as he leans forward to allow Vasquez to light him up with the terrible gas station lighter that Faraday had bought for him, bearing the picture of a taco on it, “They seem to think he’s going to be just fine.”
“When he wakes up,” Vasquez corrects.
“That boy is stubborn as a mule. He’s got breath in him, he’ll wake,” Sam vows. “I take it he remembers everything now, given that little show on the comms you two were keen to give.” Vasquez resolutely stares down, not willing to let Sam shame him into blushing. “That’s what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t think he’d remember on the same night he got shot,” Vasquez says darkly. “I thought we’d have a chance to talk about things, so we could make sure that we’re on the same page before we started, so I could make sure the reasons he turned me down last time don’t happen this go around.”
“Maybe you’d even tell him about the years after?” Sam suggests. “Particularly how they ended? Maybe even that you never really moved on to anyone else?”
Sam is the only one apart from Vasquez who knows how he’d gone out, mainly because Sam had been the one to call in a favour and bring him to that little town to help, twelve years on. He’d been there.
“You want me to tell the man I love, who almost just died, how I died last time? Sam Chisolm, you’re still loco,” Vasquez accuses, because he doesn’t see the point in any of that. It will only lead to a pained conversation and more hurt than he wants Faraday to bear right now. The familiar echo of words that harken back to the first time they met last time around seems to kindle fondness in Sam, judging by the warmth of the smile on his face.
Vasquez can’t help it, he ends up snorting, feeling weary and exhausted, but grateful on top of it all.
“What about Bogue?” Vasquez asks, trying to remove the personal bias from this mission from his mind. They might have prevented the Rose Hotel from going down in a pile of rubble, McCann and his cronies have been dealt with, but they still don’t have Bogue himself behind bars.
He knows that neither Sam nor Emma plan to stop until the man is behind bars (or dead) in every life, but Vasquez isn’t sure he’s willing to throw himself and Faraday into the flames this time around. It feels like tempting fate, provided they come out of this unscathed (wake up, Faraday, you just need to wake up). From the determined glint in Sam’s eye, he knows that this fight isn’t over. Vasquez will just have to hope that he and Faraday will get to sit on the sidelines for a breath or two.
“McCann will give him up,” Sam says with a knowing nod. “Man that gets paid for his work doesn’t bear much loyalty when there are deeper coffers to dive into.”
Vasquez lets out a disbelieving huff as he inhales sharply. “Do you have a book of these proverbs?”
“Don’t act as though you don’t enjoy my wisdom,” Sam replies. “Go on,” he says, adding in a cluck of his tongue as if Vasquez is a spooked horse. “I see the way you’re twitching talking to me. Go get back to his side, watch him breathe until it settles you.”
Vasquez hadn’t even noticed, but Sam’s right. His foot is tapping against the ground and he’s been glancing back over his shoulder every time the door opens, checking his phone as if it’s been vibrating. The cigarette has settled him a little, but no matter how stressful it is upstairs, he needs to be there in case Faraday wakes up.
“Thanks,” Vasquez tells Sam, offering him the pack of cigarettes in case he wants one more.
“Haven’t you heard? I’m quitting,” Sam waves them away with a serene smile. “Go upstairs. Take some time. I’m putting you on post-mission leave, just until things settle and then I’ll keep you in command central, let Horne and Red have a turn on the frontlines while the team works on getting to Bogue.”
“You thinking of asking them to pose as a couple?” Vasquez can’t help his smirk and the sharpness of that jibe.
Sam gives him an unimpressed look. “Get back to Faraday.”
He doesn’t need to be told again. Vasquez walks briskly back inside the hospital, trying not to run so that he can convince his mind there’s nothing to run for. When he rounds the corner of Faraday’s room, he’s grateful to find that nothing has changed and then gets angry that nothing has. Faraday is still unconscious, his chest rising and falling with every breath. Billy is sitting beside him and fiddling with his cast. Beside Billy, though, are a pile of clothes.
“Goody brought them for you,” Billy says. “He figured you’d appreciate the chance to change.”
Goodnight had been right, thinks Vasquez, as he stares longingly at the comfortable clothes on the table.
“Go,” Billy coaxes. “I’ll watch him until you change.”
Vasquez nods his thanks and reaches for the sweatpants and long-sleeved jersey, taking them into the bathroom to change. The fluorescent light above him flickers to life, casting sallow shadows on his blood-stained face. Vasquez grimaces at his reflection, running the tap and grabbing a washcloth, stripping as he waits for the water to heat. He leaves the suit in a crumpled pile on the floor, having already handed his weapons to Emma before he entered the hospital.
He takes his time washing his face, finding the reflection in the mirror strange for its clean-shaven appearance. With everything that’s happened today, he feels closer to the man he’d been in his last life, but he looks starkly different. He has a house and safety here, hasn’t killed anyone that hasn’t been contracted to be killed, and it’s led to a life of much easier living. Of course, things like espresso and cell phones and central heating all help, too, but still, Vasquez understands how lucky he is.
He changes quickly into the fresh clothes, tying up his sneakers, and running wet fingers through his hair to tame it. Despite the cost of the suit, he balls it up and leaves it in the trash because blood comes out, sure, but not the amount of blood he’d managed to get on it.
Stepping out, he turns off the light and rolls up his sleeves as he gestures for Billy to go.
“I’ll watch him,” Vasquez says, as if there’s any other option. Billy squeezes his shoulder as he limps away, tucking a black sharpie into his pocket as he goes (which Vasquez notices has been used to graffiti one of the Get-Well balloons, much to his amusement). He drags the chair that Billy had been in a little closer to the bed and readies himself for a long wait until Faraday wakes.
He's waited five years for the man to remember him.
What’s a few hours more, knowing that this time might actually give them a chance at a real life together. Vasquez reaches out and tangles his fingers with Faraday’s, squeezing firmly as he lifts those knuckles to his lips to press a kiss there.
He doesn’t wake, but then, Faraday has never been Sleeping Beauty and Vasquez is no prince.
That’s fine by him, so long as he can work their way around to getting some kind of happily ever after. Vasquez closes his eyes a little tighter, pressing a harder kiss to Faraday’s knuckles, and settles in for the wait.
Physical therapy, it turns out, is one of Faraday’s most hated things in the world, up there with tonic water, dry counties, and bastards named McCann. “God damn it, I can’t do this,” Faraday snaps when his body gives out on him and he has to lean all of his body’s weight back on Vasquez to avoid crumpling in a heap on the ground.
They’ve been trying to get him mobile again, forcing him to stand and walk for prolonged periods of time. There’s something that’s mentally blocking Faraday from doing it and Vasquez suspects it's because last time, he hadn’t even had the chance. He’d gone and managed to get himself shot a whole lot more last time, stupid pendejo that he is.
“Let’s make a deal,” Vasquez finally snaps, when Faraday looks like he’s going to keep bitching about his poor luck. Vasquez’s little deal with Emma in order to calm him down at the scene of the hotel had made him think about it, because it had worked so well, and he knows that Faraday is easily incentivized with prizes and treats.
Faraday exhales a huff of angry breath and glances over his shoulder to where Vasquez is pressed up against him, hands splayed over his hips as he holds him up to prevent him from falling. “I’m listening.”
“You walk from here to the wall and back,” Vasquez begins, shooting Faraday a sharp look that says he’s not allowed to argue yet, “and I will tell you how I died in the last life.”
It’s something that he knows Faraday desperately wants to know. It’s also something that Vasquez hasn’t told anyone who doesn’t already know, holding onto that personal secret like it’s something that only one person deserves to know. Now, he has that person back in his life and Faraday remembers. The air between them has been cleared and they’re finally getting to have this chance together. It’s time for Faraday to know everything.
Vasquez doesn’t love the idea of talking about it, but it’s time.
“Here I thought you were just going to offer me your body,” Faraday replies, falling flat when it comes to making that sound light-hearted. “You sure about that, Alejo? It’s a pretty big thing to tell someone, you don’t have to.”
“You’re the only person I want to tell,” Vasquez says firmly, hoping that Faraday understands the gravity of those words and how much Faraday means to him. It’s probably too early to be asking for the forever kind of future that he wants (even with half a decade of friendship and flirtations behind them), but there’s no one in this life or the last that Vasquez wants more. “Wall,” he says pointedly, “and back. Maybe you won’t make it and I won’t even have to tell you,” he baits, trying to get Faraday pissed enough to get stubborn.
He's not surprised when Faraday’s whole expression washes over with determination. He knows his man well. “Fuck you, I’ll do it twice,” he snaps.
Vasquez reluctantly lets go of him and steps back, ready to burst into action and catch him if he needs the help. Luckily, this time, it’s only one very good shot to his gut, but Vasquez worries as though it were four and an explosion, unable to help himself.
Faraday sweats with every step, holding his torso with an arm slung around it, wincing and grimacing the whole time. By the time he slams his palm against the wall, he’s cursing heavily and red-faced, but staring back at Vasquez with determination.
“I don’t need you to do it twice, guero,” Vasquez insists, standing at the self-made finish line and gesturing for Faraday to come back to him. “Come here,” he coaxes. “Come back to me.”
Faraday steels himself as he rolls his shoulders back and fixes a line on Vasquez, like absolutely no one and nothing else exists in the world. His steps are shuffling and weighted towards his good leg, even though in this life, there isn’t a bad leg. Vasquez bites his tongue to avoid asking about whether those are ghost pains, inching forward to catch Faraday in case he falls.
The last few steps are slow-going and he barely makes it back to him. In fact, Vasquez strides forward to catch Faraday when his torso slumps over and he pitches right into Vasquez’s arms, careful not to press too hard against the healing gut wound.
“There and back,” Faraday announces, his voice thin and strained. “I believe you owe me a story.”
“First, let’s get you some water and sitting down,” Vasquez says, heart aching for how poorly Faraday looks.
“You’re just trying to avoid telling me!”
“Deal’s a deal, guero, I’ll tell you, but first I want to make sure you won’t pass out on me.”
He’s not entirely sure his heart can take watching Faraday pass out on him again. He adjusts his hold on the man to curl his arm around his waist, keeping him snug against Vasquez’s side as he brings him over to a wide double chair in the physiotherapy office, settling himself down into it first and coaxing for Faraday to join him with a crook of his fingers.
The arrangement seems to please Faraday, who gives Vasquez a delighted grin. “I get a story and the benefit of your lap? What am I going to have to do next, tap-dance for you?”
“Just get down here,” Vasquez retorts irritably. “Before I decide you don’t deserve to know anything about the twelve years after you.” It’s the beginning of a story and already tells Faraday something that he hadn’t known before.
Faraday seems to see that for what it is and gingerly sits himself down in the wide chair beside Vasquez, enough so that he can drape one leg over Vasquez’s knees, tilted just enough so that he can look at Vasquez’s face while he talks.
“Twelve years,” he breathes out. “Shit. You didn’t run out after me and get shot, then?”
“No, I had a little more common sense than that.” Only a little, he doesn’t say, and mainly because Faraday managed to deal with the Gatling gun. If he hadn’t, it would have been him or Red, he knows, riding out into that field to finish what Faraday had started. “I saw your body, in that field. I had to know, for sure, that you were gone. Once I had, I left town with Sam and Red Harvest.”
Faraday looks as though he’s holding his breath, like he’s not sure when or where or what to say in this story. Vasquez would rather he not be interrupted, so he hopes that whatever comments Faraday has, he keeps them to a minimum. He’s not sure he can get through this otherwise, seeing as he’s never talked about it before.
“Sam and I, we kept in touch. As much as you can keep in touch when you’re trying to make sure no one takes off your head. There were a few close calls in the years, times that I would let my guard down because I had felt safe for so long. It didn’t take very long after those times for me to get nervous again. Sometimes, he would track me to a town with a new job offer, but never as dangerous or profitable as Rose Creek. I only ever saw Red one more time,” he admits, “Sam needed him to track some very bad people down for us.”
He still remembers the way he’d started to feel older and without direction. He’d known Faraday for only a short amount of time, but the man had opened up a path of possibilities and hopes. Of course, that door had been slammed on him almost immediately after, leaving Vasquez rudderless and without direction.
Faraday has tangled his fingers into the hair at the nape of Vasquez’s neck, absently stroking there the way that Vasquez likes it. He appreciates the small gesture and affection, which settles him into a calm state of mind that encourages him to keep talking.
“I started to get tired. Ten years on, I was still a wanted man, even if there were less people who came after me. Sam tried to convince people that I was already dead, but no body, no proof,” he points out. “He asked me to come defend a small town from a crooked sheriff and I went, this was twelve years after Rose Creek. I was so tired of it all. I couldn’t be with anyone because of the warrant and your ghost looming in my head and Rose Creek was so far away, but sometimes I would still dream about it.”
“Tell me you didn’t go there seeking your death,” Faraday interrupts for the first time, his grip on Vasquez’s hair turning sharp and reprimanding.
“I didn’t,” Vasquez assures, yelping at the sharp tug. “Josh, carino, I swear. I was in the middle of town and I remember that I thought they were all gone. I was moving some of the women and children out when one of the bent deputies got a lucky shot in.” He taps two fingers over his heart, smiling sadly. “Sam found me, before I went. He promised that I would have a good burial, I asked him to take me back to Rose Creek,” he says, clearing his throat to get past the lump there. “It was the closest I had to home, after I lost my first one.”
One thing that he hasn’t done, that he can’t bring himself to do, is go back to that area of land and see if there’s any record of them. He’s not that strong, he doesn’t think.
“I’d like to think they laid me to rest with the four of you,” Vasquez says. “Somewhere that I did good for people, where I was responsible and not a coward.” He closes his eyes, that truth finally told, sagging into Faraday’s warmth when the confession is off his chest.
It’s not quite a church, but it feels as good as one.
“Did Sam ever say whether he brought you back?”
Vasquez shakes his head. “I’ve been too scared to ask. I don’t really like talking about how I died. You’re the first one who knows other than Sam, despite Goodnight’s many attempts at finding out.”
Faraday leans in, kissing Vasquez with far more sweetness than he probably deserves for telling the truth, but it’s exactly what he needs. Vasquez cups Faraday’s cheek and soaks in that tenderness, leaning in desperately until he can bow his forehead against Faraday’s, taking solace in this second chance he’s been given.
“Worth the effort of the wall and back?” Vasquez asks, when he’s managed to compose himself. He has no intention of moving from the human tangle of limbs he’s found himself in with Faraday, comfortably draping his arm around him and settling in for what are definitely not the physiotherapist-mandated stretches that she’d left Vasquez in charge of doing with Faraday.
“That’s worth about six times there and back,” he vows. “How about we make another deal?”
“Hm?”
“If I can do that three times over, tomorrow, you’ll go ask Sam if he kept up his end of the bargain.”
Vasquez should probably know better than to gamble with a known cheat, but he also knows that Faraday won’t take no for an answer. Pressing a kiss to Faraday’s forehead, he sighs and gives in to his fate. “Deal.”
It’s little surprise to Vasquez when, the next day, Faraday makes it to the wall and back four times, and even manages the core strength routines that he’s been allowed to do, now that it’s been six weeks since the surgery and he’s nearly cleared for all manner of physical activity.
It looks like Vasquez gets to ask Sam the question he’s been putting off.
Though, he shouldn’t have worried, it turns out.
“Of course I did,” Sam says, when Vasquez gets up the courage to ask him one evening when they’ve had enough drinks that he feels safe broaching the topic. “You don’t ignore a man’s last request, especially when that man helped you with all manner of problems for over a decade. Truth is, I probably still owe you.”
Faraday squeezes Vasquez’s shoulder as he calls for another round, but Vasquez is occupied with the grateful nod he gives Sam, reaching over to pat the man’s hand as a throaty, rough, “thanks,” slips past his lips.
“Don’t make me bury you again, though,” Sam warns. “I’ve only got so much patience.”
“Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on him this time,” Faraday announces cheerfully.
Sam glances to Goodnight and Billy, all the while Emma lets out a disbelieving huff. “That doesn’t exactly reassure me.”
“Don’t worry,” Vasquez promises, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.”
“Mite better,” Goodnight says, “but only a little.”
Vasquez grins at Faraday, who looks back at him with every bit of glinting mischief that he knows means that they’re never going to make life easy for each other, but that it’s going to be incredible.
“Car is a damn sight better than that wild horse of mine!” Faraday shouts, the top of the convertible down (against Vasquez’s protests). He reaches over and does the stupidest thing ever, taking his eyes off the highway so that he can kiss Vasquez, despite the persistent shoving to get him looking at the road again.
“Watch the road, idiota, or you’ll kill us both!” Vasquez gripes, tightening his grip on the ‘fuck me’ handle on the side of the car, as he so loves to call it when Faraday is driving.
“Babe,” Faraday drawls. “This car is loaded with more tech than the bionic man. Do you really think Teddy wouldn’t outfit this thing with automatic braking and lane-watch and all the other scary spy-tech he works on in his spare time?”
Vasquez glowers at Faraday from the passenger seat.
“All I hear,” he says, making a few motions with his hand to mimic Faraday yapping away, “is ‘come give me a blowjob, Alejo, it’s safe’.”
“Is that what you hear?” Faraday asks, sounding so innocent that Vasquez knows he’s got his number. “Nah, I don’t think that’s it. Though, the gear shift does slide out of the way in a handily convenient sign…”
“This is not how we’re starting our honeymoon,” Vasquez says, hoping that’s the end of the argument. He yanks his hat off (too tired of holding it down) and shoves it under his feet as he holds onto the car handle a little tighter, grateful when Faraday seems to get the hint and slows down just enough that he won’t end up a newly-married flattened mess on the side of the road. “Why the rush?”
“You’re telling me you don’t want to get down to Mexico, to your people?”
Vasquez snorts derisively. “We’re going to a cushy five-star resort that will be filled with more tourists than I want to count. More of your people there than mine, guero.”
“Mean,” Faraday retorts, grinning like an idiot because he likes it when Vasquez is pricklier than a cactus. “Didn’t Emma tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Well, apparently she was so impressed you kept your mouth shut about the baby, which I’m still pissed you didn’t tell me about, that she called in a few favors with the hotel management and the entire block of cabins near us are going to be sold out for the duration of our honeymoon stay. She said, and I quote, ‘feel free to fuck him as loud as you’d like, so long as I don’t have to hear about it later’.”
Vasquez feels a lump in his throat, strangely emotional about this display of affection coming from Emma. Faraday glances at him with alarm on his face, clearly not having expected this much of a reaction.
“Don’t cry,” Faraday pleads. “C’mon, Alejo, no tears, not when I’m still thinking I can talk you into some road head.”
“In your dreams,” he retorts, composing himself by staring at the passing landscape until he feels settled. He slides his fingers over the gearshift and squeezes Faraday’s thigh, probably too much given how firmly he’s denied him this, but he’s always been a tease. “Maybe it could be my hand? Once you pull over,” he adds sharply.
Faraday looks at the road, looks at Vasquez, then looks down at Vasquez’s hand on his thigh. Decision clearly made, he slams the hand brake and twisting the steering wheel so that the car does a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin, setting them on the shoulder of the road and Vasquez’s heart in his goddamn throat.
Swearing in Spanish, that hand on Faraday’s thigh leaves long enough to smack him angrily in the chest. “I married an idiot! You could have killed us there, and then what, I won’t take you back in a third life, I’ll know better that time than to marry your stupid ass!”
“No takebacks,” Faraday replies, eyes gleaming with determination and mischief. “Now, come on, you made me a promise. Besides,” he croons, “you know you love me.”
Vasquez grumbles and wishes that Faraday weren’t so right.
When they check into the hotel a few hours later, Faraday’s fly is still open, Vasquez’s mouth is redder and more swollen than he’d like (how he lets himself get talked into these things, he’ll never know), and the concierge gives them a knowing look as she hands them a key for the honeymoon suite, reciting facts about the hotel in a monotone, like she knows that neither of them are paying any attention.
“Not a bad second chance, is it?” Faraday whispers, as the bellboy leads them to their room.
Vasquez glances at Faraday, keeping his expression neutral because of how he knows it annoys Faraday. “So far, so good,” he can’t help teasing, plucking the keys from the bellboy along with their bags and placing the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door immediately as they enter the room. “Come on, let’s go see if Goody is right about honeymoon sex.”
Faraday follows him in, a disturbed look on his face. “When were you two talking about…?”
“I think you should start working on fucking that information out of me,” Vasquez says pleasantly, carrying both bags into the room. He probably should have expected the frantic push of Faraday’s hands in determination to do just that, but he still cackles as he nearly trips on their bags, the happiest he’s ever been in this very moment. “Easy, Josh! We’ve got time.”
“Oh, not nearly enough for all the things I intend to do to you,” Faraday warns.
Alejandro Vasquez is thirty-three years old and the only dreams he has, these days, are ones about the man he’s married and vowed to keep for better or worse. Knowing Faraday, the latter will definitely exceed the former, but honestly? He doesn’t give a damn.
It's perfect, as far as he’s concerned.