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It wasn’t really a win.
They hadn’t stopped the drugs. But they killed Escobar.
It wasn’t really a win, but Steve was done, all the same. There’s only so much violence a man can stand, before he starts to get a little fucked in the head.
And so Steve went back to Miami, to be near his daughter. He wasn’t sure Connie would take him back, but she let him through the door, not really happy, not really surprised. She just watched him, trying to speak with her eyes and no words.
Steve didn’t know how to be around her anymore, shaped into some feral animal, a wild snarling thing. It was as if he couldn’t understand anything that wasn’t spelled out in silver or blood.
He was removed from reality, a little separate and wary of it all. A foreigner in his own country. All the stupid fucking people, fat and dumb and happy, with their trivial troubles and complaints. If Steve asked, nobody could even point out Colombia on a map, let alone understand the devastation caused to the people there.
Everything was too bright, too clean. Nobody knew hunger.
He nearly turned and shouted at a kid behind him in line at the airport cafe, whining when his mother wouldn’t let him have a donut. He never heard kids in Colombia whining. Those tough little street kids, watching you with clever dark eyes, tight-lipped and quick-fingered— they learned to take what they could get, fight for survival.
Nobody understood, not even Connie, not really. There was one person who might, except he wouldn’t answer Steve’s calls. It happened sometimes. Usually it meant he needed someone to come see him, put him back together again.
So after three sleepless nights on the living room couch, Steve kissed his daughter goodbye, scrawled a half-hearted note for Connie, and caught a red eye to D.C.
***
The receptionist told him the board was already in session, at 8.15 in the morning, but he was welcome to wait in the hallway. And so Steve folded himself into one of the unforgiving metal office chairs lining the hall, and settled into that unnatural stakeout stillness.
There was a recess at ten, but only a couple of assistants emerged. A few wary glances skimmed over Steve, but nobody bothered to let him know what was going on. He contemplated ducking his head inside the room, but something set his pulse racing in anticipation, kept him glued to his seat.
Just as quickly as they filed out of the room, they were heading back in, the door securely shut again. Until one-thirty, when everyone filtered out with briefcases and jackets in hand, and Steve was on his feet, pulse hammering, when— “Peña.”
Peña turns to the sound of his voice immediately, instinctively, even though he’d spoken too quietly amongst the chatter of staff leaving the room. The sight of his face is so familiar it makes Steve’s chest ache.
Gravel crunching under rubber, “Murphy? What—” and then Peña is in his space, all wrapped around his shoulders. Steve’s fingers claw into the fabric at Peña’s spine and the too-long hair damp at the nape of his neck.
“Javi,” he breathes, then has to clench his jaw tight when Peña makes a little pained noise, so quiet Steve might have imagined it, and tucks his face in against Steve’s neck.
Steve gentles his touch, lets Peña cling to him. Peña lets someone else hold him up for once.
He smooths his hand down the back of Peña’s skull, once, and with a shudder Peña pulls away, visibly collects himself. He doesn’t bother clearing his throat before speaking, allows Steve to hear his voice crack. “You’re here. You… did it.”
“We did it,” Steve says immediately, still standing what’s probably considered a little too close to Peña.
Peña nods at the floor, won’t meet Steve’s eyes as he blows out a breath. “Fuck. You’re really here.”
Steve frowns, suddenly concerned. Takes in the dark circles, chapped lips, limp, unwashed hair. It doesn’t look like the last few weeks have been good to Peña. It makes something clench in his chest.
He goes to reach out when Peña snaps his head up with a forced smile. “Hey. Let’s get a drink. We’re done here.”
***
Peña’s got the keys to an agency car in D.C., and it’s too clean, no half-empty boxes of cigarettes littering the footwells — I thought you were quitting. Yeah, yeah, mañana, gringo. Too quiet once they slam the doors, engine well-maintained and not clogged up with the dust and gravel of unpaved comuna roads.
“Seatbelt,” Peña murmurs, hand clamped on the shoulder of Steve’s seat, his body one long line as he stretches around, smoothly reverses the car one-handed. Steve averts his eyes from the way Peña’s shirt pulls taught against his stomach, almost translucent pressed against his skin. He’s not wearing an undershirt, still dressing for the stifling heat of Medellín instead of Washington.
Scoffing to cover his sudden fumble for the seatbelt when Peña twists back around, Steve raises his eyebrows pointedly. “You too, hotshot.”
Flash of white teeth, little snort as Peña buckles himself in, steering with his knee while he changes gears. “Pain in my ass, Murphy.”
Peña takes them to a dive bar, which is too close to the city centre for how grimy it is. Steve feels his shoulders relax the moment he breathes in the nicotine-air. Smells something like home. Or maybe just like Peña.
He’s directed to commandeer a vinyl booth while Peña goes for drinks. It’s after midday, so Steve’s expecting whiskey. Tequila, if Peña is as bad as he looks.
An ashtray, bottle of Jameson and two glasses are plonked onto the sticky table in front of Steve. Not tequila. Good.
Peña pours himself into the booth across from him, immediately going all slouchy and sprawling in the way that Steve knows if he looked, Peña’s legs would be spread wide. He thinks it’s unconscious, this ever-constant display of availability. Or maybe it's a calculated casualness, the way Peña is when he’s nervous, knows people are watching. Steve isn’t sure who he’s performing for right now.
“Irish?” Steve hedges, swings a foot at Peña’s knee— confirms; spread, languid— tries to get a flicker of eye contact out of him.
Peña smiles wanly, pulls himself forward to crack open the cap, slosh amber liquid into each glass. He leads with his shoulders, all big, telegraphed movements. It’s good. Peña’s shoulders go tight right before the action starts. Steve always watches his shoulders.
“We’re celebrating,” Peña states, tipping the rim of his glass against Steve’s, nudges their wrists together. “Got a fucking win.”
Didn’t feel like a win, Steve bites down. Peña sees it in his eyes, anyways.
“Viva Colombia.” Clink of glass.
Life moves brisk and orderly outside the window. Steve presses his forehead to it, lets his breath fog up the pane a little. Likes the physical barrier between that world and this one.
“Why’d you come to D.C.?”
“You know why.” Steve takes another sip, keeps looking out the window when he answers. “I did try Miami first. Couldn’t stand her just… watching me, all the time.”
He cuts his eyes to Peña. Brown eyes stare back, unflinching. It doesn’t make his skin itch.
“I wanted to be here for the hearing. Besides, got some of your stuff.”
“What stuff?” Peña asks, sidestepping the topic of his review board. Steve lets him have it.
“Coupla’ boxes I left at the agency. But, uh—” he tugs his wallet out of his back pocket, “This one deserved special delivery.”
Peña sets his drink down before he takes the photo from Steve, fingers carefully not brushing, even as they shake a little. It’s been cut wavy around the edges, decorative as if to distract from the dead body Steve is hoisting half-aloft, front and centre, big sunny grin on his sweaty fucking face.
Steve privately wonders if he’s smiled like that since they killed Escobar.
“Jesus,” Peña breathes, eyes wide as he gapes up at Steve. “Jesus, Steve.”
Steve doesn’t really have anything to say to that, kinda twists his mouth at Peña before taking another long swill of whiskey.
Peña lets the photo fall to the table, mutters something lowly to himself in Spanish and pulls a box of cigarettes from his jacket. Steve flicks a lighter at him before Peña can even start patting himself down, then gently takes the cigarette when Peña offers it to him after only one inhale. He doesn’t think about the dampened filter paper.
After a minute, Peña reaches for the cigarette back, looks at Steve under half-lidded eyes as he tips his head back against the cherry-panelled booth. “I thought we were gonna quit.”
Steve huffs out something like a real laugh, flips Peña off. “That’s my line, man.”
Peña goes still, eyes suddenly swimming with so much emotion Steve freezes, glass halfway to his mouth.
“I missed you,” he whispers, and. Fuck.
That’s the thing about Javier. He blocks any and all attempts to reach him, this stone wall of unrelenting swagger, a smokescreen of drinking and fucking and words like the edge of a blade.
But then one day, he looks at you a certain way, and the whole thing comes crashing down. Suddenly you’ve got this fragile thing sitting in the palm of your hands, just wanting to be gentle, told he can rest, that he doesn’t have to hurt anyone, anymore.
That’s not the worst part.
“Javi—” You can’t let him rest. No matter how much you try, you can’t help the way your hands close in around him, jostling, poking, prodding, always needing something else, something more, just bleed for me a little, one last time.
That’s not the worst part.
“I was scared you wouldn’t—,” he breathes, pressing the back of his hand hard against his mouth, to stop the words, to stop you from seeing the way his chin wobbles, both.
It’s the way you reach for his hand, pull it to you, demand to be let in, to watch. You need it, you need to see him bleed, the crimson-red so that’s what death feels like, huh. It’s the way he lets you, because maybe it doesn’t hurt so bad if your blood is soaking through someone else’s shirt. He wants you to see him.
“Don’t have to be scared anymore,” you soothe, squeeze at his hand, bury the urge to bite at his knuckles when he squeezes his eyes shut, “it’s over now, Jav.”
You let him shudder and suck in air too quickly, rub at the bones in his wrist, let him give himself over to you. You consume him.
This is the worst part. He loves you. You let him. This is the worst part.
***
Peña goes twitchy, restless. He pulls himself together, calms his breathing down, but his eyes are flicking around wildly, looking for a way out. He’s not good in once place for too long. Steve lets go of his wrist reluctantly, tries not to notice the way Peña’s expression washes over with relief when Steve stands, starts moving them on, out the door.
Peña has paid the whole tab, either a guilt complex or hush money after breaking down in front of Steve. Another graveyard of conversation, left dead and buried in the vinyl seats. They won’t ever come back to this place.
Stop stock-still outside the entrance, the day too bright and probing. Steve wonders if Colombia was a dream, or if this world is. Peña is staring at him, then, and he realises he said it out loud.
“It all is,” Peña says. “A dream. Doesn’t matter.”
Yes it does.
“So,” throat cleared, blatant change of subject. “Where are you staying?”
Here it is. Steve goes a little hot in the neck. “Didn’t get that far. I wasn’t really sure.” If you’d want to see me again. If I’d want to see you.
Peña’s expression doesn’t give anything away. It’s his interrogation face. Steve hates it.
“I’ll probably ask the agency if they’ve got a hotel…”
“It’s the Hilton,” Peña cuts him off. “That’s where they’ve got me.”
Steve nods, makes to step towards the car. “Sure, sounds fine—”
“You can stay with me.”
It’s said all in a rush, like pulling the trigger without bothering to aim. Phrased like a favour; not a suggestion, not the polite kind of offer that you’re supposed to turn down.
He’s a fucking federal agent, so Steve quickly tamps down the shock on his face, keeps his voice even as he forces out, “With you?”
Peña doesn’t often— in fact never— looks uncomfortable, but right now he looks shifty as hell, shrugging all carefully-casual, as if he invites Steve to stay over on the regular.
“It’s a nice room, big, not like Bogotá. And the mattress is good, too, I mean…” Peña is rambling while Steve fails to string together a reasonable response. His mind can’t seem to decide if it wants to come up with a lie as to why he shouldn’t accept, or why he should.
“I just can’t sleep alone,” Peña blurts out, and Steve can tell from the way his eyes go wide, deer-in-headlights round, that he didn’t mean to say that last part aloud. Steve takes pity, and instead of making some half-hearted jibe about all of Peña’s Colombian girls, he simply says “Ok, Javi,” and moves to open the passenger door.
After a belated moment where he isn’t sure if Peña is going to unlock the fucking car, he unsticks himself from the pavement, movements stiff and unnatural, but the door clicks open, and they buckle themselves in silently. Steve switches the radio on to some classical station before Peña can tap-dance his way out of the offer.
It takes all of five minutes on the too-smooth too-quiet highways before Peña snaps back to himself, relights a half-smoked out cigarette and changes the station, “What is this shit? Nothing good on the radio anymore… country, no fucking way—”
“Leave it.”
Snort, “Fucking hillbilly,” but his wrist drops back across the top of the steering wheel, all the same.
***
He watches openly as Peña paces up and down the side of the road, head ducked as he argues over the phone. They were on a decidedly roundabout scenic route to the hotel when a satellite phone wedged into the centre console began ringing shrilly, making them both flinch. Peña had barely answered before he was pulling over, sliding out of his seat with an unreadable glance at Steve.
Ever-unaffected by the actual temperature, Peña’s shucked his jacket to the backseat and has his sleeves rolled up his forearms. He’s currently working his top couple of buttons loose, because he’s either shameless or completely oblivious to the effect he has on others. It’s something about those loose shoulders, the width of them in contrast to the cut of his waist.
It must be intentional; those tight-fucking-hipped slacks, still with a flare like he hasn’t bought new dress pants since 1975. Almost certainly has not. And really, who does this guy think he is? Steve isn’t sure he’s ever met someone so quietly self-assured, and yet entirely disinterested in what anyone else thinks of him. Peña never preens when he notices he’s caught someone’s attention, just proceeds right along like it’s a sure thing.
He wonders if Peña thinks Steve is a sure thing.
Even now; he catches Steve watching him as he hangs up the call, ambles back over to the open window, and slings his elbows over the doorframe like a comuna puta.
“Agency?” Steve asks lightly, pretends to be absorbed in lighting a fresh cigarette, snaps the lighter shut when his hands shake. Peña looks at him for a long moment, fingers pressed to his forehead.
Drifts his eyes away. “They made a decision.”
Steve sits up dead straight. Peña’s mouth flickers up a little at the corner, recognises Steve trying hard not to ask impatient questions.
“They aren’t firing me,” he says, and Steve lets out a sigh of relief. Then, “They’re giving me Cali.”
Steve dumbly thinks, California?, before— oh. “They… they’re making you—”
They can’t make him go back. They can’t, not to Colombia, not after everything he’s been through. And Steve won’t be there this time. Steve won’t be there to look after Peña. Who’s going to watch his back, stop him getting himself killed?
Peña huffs out a brittle, harsh laugh, eyes too bright as they bore into Steve’s. “Yeah. Ain’t that a bitch.”
Then Peña drops his head to his folded arms with a strangled “Fuck,” and Steve is scrambling to get his door open and round the car before— “Fuck!” Peña shouts, slamming both hands hard at the door. He whirls around with the momentum of it, and Steve quickly steps outside his reach, hands held up placatingly. Peña’s eyes just skate over him, out to the trees. He blows out a lungful of air, squints up at the glaring winter sun with his hands clasped around the back of his head.
There’s barely an indent on the metal door— at least he didn’t go for the window— but Steve places himself in between Peña and the car all the same, shoves his hands in his pockets and leans back against the cold metal to wait it out.
Peña deals with emotion efficiently; smoking, drinking, fighting, fucking. Little blips of something before he returns back to steady state— so unflappable, focused. It’s all in the voice, so calm and quiet and sure.
He doesn’t want to feel things, or has never been made to sit with it. So when something registers with him and one of his usual tactics doesn’t work, he gets flustered. Steve thinks that’s what happened back at the bar, Peña getting overwhelmed with an emotion he doesn’t know what to do with. It’s happening here, too, and when he first saw Steve outside the review boardroom. He’s been teetering on the edge all day.
Steve intervenes when Peña collapses to his knees in the gravel.
“Whoa, hey, Javi,” he soothes, going to ground in-between Peña’s braced legs, getting a hand on his shoulder and around the back of his neck. “Look at me, c’mon—”
“I can’t do it again,” Peña groans, swaying forward a little into Steve’s hold. “I can’t go back, I can’t—”
Steve feels bile rising at the back of his throat. “Javi, c’mon, it’s… it’s going to be ok.”
Big round eyes blink up to Steve, shiny-wet and frantic. “Steve— Steve-you’re-not-going-back. Steve. I can’t, m’gonna be alone—”
“Slow down— breathe. Breathe for me, man,” Steve orders, forces his grip to loosen. “There you go, good. It’s going to be ok. Just breathe.”
Peña slumps into him, breath hot and damp against Steve’s neck. Robotically, Steve strokes up and down Peña’s back, murmuring nonsense into his hair. “That’s it, sweetheart. Nice and easy.”
Peña makes a sound like he’s been kicked. “I’ve got you, not gonna leave you. S’gonna be ok, Javi.”
Steve’s knees are numb to the gravel by the time Peña shakes himself a little more upright, head bowed and embarrassed but slow to pull away. Steve speaks carefully, as if trying not to spook a wild animal. “Y’ok, Jav?”
His face is wet when he raises his head to Steve, meeting his gaze head-on, eyes challenging, unrelenting. It’s typical Peña, using even his own vulnerability as a weapon. Someone must have told him a long time ago that if you never really let anyone in, no one could hurt you.
That’s a cold way to go through life.
Steve averts his gaze, submissive, knows better than to let Peña strong-arm his way into a fight. He keeps his eyes on the horizon and one hand firm on Peña’s shoulder, until he can feel the tension drain out of him, shoulder slumping loose under Steve’s palm.
It’s an unsatisfying release, draining all that energy into the dirt instead of your fists. Easier to make each other bleed. But they are good men, and they have suffered enough.
After a few slow minutes of watching the sun battle the horizon and feeling Peña’s pulse settle under his fingertips, Steve carefully slides his eyes back over. Peña is glazed-over and chewing at a fingertip, looking somewhere in the vicinity of the pressed-together scuffed-up knees of their dress slacks.
Steve dances his fingers across his own knee, in Peña’s field of view, gets him to look up. “Man, I am dying to get out of these clothes.”
It was supposed to be funny— an easy opening for a dirty joke, sure to get a laugh out of Peña— except he ruins it with a full body shiver as the sun slips below the tree line. Peña shakes off the dazed expression and snaps into action so quickly Steve feels something uncomfortable sink in his stomach.
“You’re freezing,” Peña states, two big hands coming up to rub vigorously at Steve’s arms. Another helpless shiver wracks his body, and Peña’s mouth turns down unhappily, big sad moo-cow eyes. “Ay, Murph. Why didn’t you say something?”
Any protest is overpowered by Peña’s incessant mother-henning. Once he’s got a task, Peña has a one-track mind. He rises fluidly to his feet, as if he hasn’t been slumped over in the gravel getting Steve’s shirt all damp and snotty for the better part of twenty minutes.
Muttering under his breath in Spanish, Peña yanks Steve upright too, and hustles him back to the truck, arm wrapped around his shoulders like Steve’s some young fair maiden. Steve just lets himself be led, drawn into the undertow.
He almost protests when Peña ushers him to the still-open passenger door, wary of letting Peña drive in his current state. Yet having something to focus on might actually prevent him from spiralling again. So Steve says nothing, buckles himself in and tries to keep his gaze fixated out the windscreen as the engine turns over; instead of letting his eyes roam all over Peña like they are itching to do.
“Here,” Peña says, reaching back and then carefully draping his own jacket over Steve. His fingers linger on Steve’s shoulder and Steve just sort of dumbly accepts the warmth.
It hurts to see Peña when he lets his walls down. His heart is too big for this place . All of them, they’re all just tender creatures, deep down— soft animals that cry out and bleed.
The sad truth is that Peña has managed to develop a new coping mechanism, after all. It’s the one where he drops everything for Steve.
That might be the undoing of Javier Peña, in the end.
***
It might be an understatement to say the day has taken an emotional toll on the both of them. Steve genuinely thinks that he is the first person Peña has allowed to see him like this in a long, long time— maybe ever. He isn’t sure how he feels about it.
Even so, there’s an undercurrent of nervous energy as they pull up to the hotel. Is it a logical or even reasonable decision to agree to stay the night with Peña? Probably not. Is Steve the kind of person to back down when he’s taken a stand? No way in hell.
Peña is fucking wired at this point, nearly vibrating out of his skin with an uncharacteristic nervousness, or from being so emotionally exposed all day. He hustles them through the lobby and into the elevator, rushing like they’re about to miss a meeting with an informant. Then again, Peña is always rushing somewhere. Maybe he’d been like that even before Colombia.
Steve nearly clamps both hands on Peña’s shoulders in the elevator to make him just stay still for two fucking seconds. They weren’t hunting, anymore. No reason to run, no reason to be jumpy. Not really. But then the doors ding open, and Peña is speed-walking down the hall, unlocking his—their?— room.
The single bed was a foreseeable issue.
They both kind of stand just inside the doorway, eyeing up the bed for a pause. Well, at least Peña has finally gone still. Expect for how he’s trying to be subtle about the way he’s looking at Steve out of the corner of his eye, waiting to follow Steve’s lead. It irks him, suddenly.
He turns and looks at Peña. Peña sort of blinks back at him, wary and unsure.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Steve states. He walks to the bed, drops his duffel on it unceremoniously and begins digging out a clean pair of jeans and polo shirt.
Peña hovers at the periphery, which irritates Steve even more. He hates seeing Peña timid, skittish.
“Then we’re going to dinner,” Steve continues mildly, gathering up a folded towel and raising his eyebrows at Peña.
“Oh, okay,” Peña hesitates, snaps his mouth shut with a frown, and turns to where his own duffel bag is open on the floor. Steve locks himself in the bathroom before Peña can do more than toe off his boots. Maybe the steam will clear out his head.
The radio is on, later, so Peña doesn’t hear the bathroom door open. He’s dragged the armchair over in front of the window, one knee bent with his socked foot propped against the windowsill, smouldering ashtray against his toe. There’s a cigarette dangling between two fingers of the hand he’s got flung out to the side, other arm draped across his own stomach, fingers tapping out a beat in time with the radio.
Something eases in Steve to see Peña all languid, spread out, taking up too much space. It seems like the few minutes alone have brought Peña back to himself, too. A return of that assured self-confidence.
He is gentle because he is capable of great violence.
Maybe one day Steve will stop trying to figure him out.
“Javi,” Steve murmurs, guilty for the things in his head. Peña tips his head back, gives him a sunrise grin. Could be a nice view, out the window. Steve wouldn't know. He never looked.
“Are you hungry?” Peña asks amicably, though he must be able to read the weariness on Steve’s face. Many people have told Steve he does not have a poker face. Including Peña. “I’ll take you to this great bar, they have real wood-fired pizza, not like that street food Medellín crap.”
Steve nods and tries his best to conjure up an enthusiastic smile. Peña watches this as he pulls his boots back on, the unbuttoned neck of his shirt gaping open as he bends over. Steve's looking at the wall.
Peña’s got a funny little smile as he passes over his cigarette and squeezes comfortingly at the join of Steve’s neck and shoulder, ambling to the door. “Like an open book, Murphy.”
***
It’s properly cold now, Peña’s breath huffing out in a cloud as he takes one look at Steve and shrugs out of his own jacket, thrusting it at Steve’s chest.
“I’m fine,” Steve grouches, but reluctantly accepts it when Peña shoots him a murderous look.
“Of course you’d come to D.C. without a decent jacket, fucking gringo,” Peña snorts affectionately.
Steve glares at him, tucking his chin into the collar. Smells like Peña. “I’m just not acclimatised yet, like you are.”
Peña turns to walk backwards, spreading his arms wide like he’s the second coming of Christ in a too-tight short sleeve button-up and womens’ jeans. “Can’t help it, baby, I run hot.”
Steve ignores the way a frisson of heat crackles down his spine at baby, rolling his eyes hugely and shoving at Peña as he walks past him. Can’t manage to tamp down a smile at Peña’s laugh, that cocksure grin.
“Yeah, yeah,” Steve mutters. “Careful with that kinda attitude, Peña— they say talk like that is compensation for something else, if y’know what I mean.”
Peña’s face goes so indignant that Steve has to laugh outright. “Hey!—”
“—Is for horses.”
“More like a fucking stallion. I’ll have you know…”
“Ay— I don’t want to hear it, Javi. Now c’mon, you promised me pizza and beer.”
Props to Peña, the bar is pretty cool; neon lights and plenty of tables in dark corners so you can get a break from feeling like you’re being watched all the time. It’s busy, but in a bustling-Americana sort of way, not in a Colombia-crowded sort of way.
Eyes follow Peña as he crosses the room. Standard operating procedure. He flirts with the waitress to get them a good table— where they can put their backs to a wall and see all the exits— but he pulls out Steve’s chair, bowing like an idiot, so. There’s that.
Peña seems to have expunged all of his feelings for the day and is now content to sit and stuff his face, back to stable baseline. He’s optimistically ordered two full pizzas, and is already on his second beer. Steve orders whiskey.
Steve doesn’t try to hide the way he’s watching Peña, and Peña lets him.
It’s just— how can they be sending Peña back? They must have seen what Colombia has done to him. If Peña is like this now— all brutality and bloodshed patched together with bravado— what is he going to be in a year’s time? Peña won’t survive it, not again.
How is Steve going to survive it, going back to normal life when he knows Peña is out there with a bounty on his head? What even is normal life, anymore? Everything seems so grey here, compared to Colombia. Was it Colombia that made him feel alive? The hunt? Peña?
He’s doing it again— trying to get Peña figured out in his head.
Perhaps if Steve was a little more self aware, he’d try harder to make the connection between his ongoing attempts to adequately characterise Peña, and his avoidance of addressing his own feelings about the man.
But that’s not a helpful thought to explore tonight.
“Murphy,” Peña says, in a tone that means it’s not the first time he’s said it. “I asked if you’ve eaten today.”
“Yeah,” Steve lies.
Peña pries the whiskey glass out of Steve’s hand, slides over a slice of pizza. “Eat,” he instructs, not unkindly.
Steve has to look down suddenly, shoves the pizza into his mouth if only to hide the way his eyes have gone wet-hot. “What would I do without you.”
Peña doesn’t answer. He probably knows it’s a rhetorical question.
“Hey, at least this time you won’t have me in your way, right?” Steve tries to laugh but the joke falls flat. Dark eyes watch him carefully, like they can see straight into his soul.
“Sobrevivirás, cariño,” Peña murmurs, after a moment. Steve doesn’t understand the words, but Peña’s voice is so gentle it makes something turn over in his stomach.
“Here’s what you’re going to do.”
Steve stops and looks at him.
“You’re going to go home, kiss your daughter, and talk to your wife.” Peña lights up a cigarette, inhales. “You’re going to go teach at the academy, fill up all those bright young minds with stories about what we did in the jungle.”
“You’re going to get fat and happy sitting behind a desk all day. You’re going to retire to a nice quiet life with lots of grandkids, maybe write a book about it all, and you’re not going to think about me again.”
Steve can’t speak for a long, drawn out moment, as Peña eyes him up like a challenge, expression calculating behind the smokescreen.
“Javi,” he hedges, careful, “We could do it together, Jav.”
“I wouldn’t let you come with me, even if you asked,” Peña says. It’s a cruel thing to say and he knows it.
Steve has to look away, rotating the edge of his glass around in slow circles against the table. “Trying to hurt me isn’t going to stop me worrying about you, Javi. Pendejo.”
Peña’s whole face comes alive with something, before he schools it back into bemused neutrality. Steve can see it in his eyes, though. It makes his neck feel hot.
Is this how he looks at me when I’m not watching.
Then Peña reaches out, snatches Steve’s whiskey and downs what’s left in one go. He breathes out with it, wiping the back of his wrist against his mouth. “We’re going to need a lot more of that.”
***
Steve’s never seen Peña this drunk before, and he can’t believe he was missing out. Turns out Peña is a happy drunk, which surprises him, and also very tactile, which doesn’t.
It’s somewhere around the bottom of the second bottle of whiskey that he realises Peña is suddenly sitting a lot closer. Had his chair moved, or was the table smaller?
“Stevie,” Peña’s giggling, tipping back the last of the whiskey. “Y’ve gotta promise me something, ‘kay?”
Steve’s nodding too much, trying to look serious. Attentive. Stevie. “Of course, Javi, anything.”
“Anything,” Peña parrots back with a quiet snicker. “No, Stevie, ok. You have to promise to get a new cat. And name it in my memory.”
He doesn’t like the underlying assumption there. “If I’m gonna name anything after you, it’s gonna be a jackass.”
It wasn’t that funny, but Peña nearly topples backwards in his chair. Steve dives over to yank him back upright, which causes Peña to ricochet into Steve’s chest; slumping against him, still cackling.
“Jesus,” Steve huffs, getting a hand under Peña’s chin to get a look at him. “I never seen you this drunk, Jav.”
“I ain’t never,” Peña giggles, making fun of the way Steve’s accent thickens when he’s drinking. He pats at the side of Steve’s face as he says it, though, so that Steve knows he doesn’t mean anything by it.
“You boys want another round?” A waitress materialises at the edge of their table, and Steve straightens up, goes to pull away from Peña reflexively.
Peña won’t let him get very far, though, slings a warm arm around his neck and flashes a huge smile at the waitress. “Bottle of tequila? Any shelf, darlin’, thank you.”
Steve turns to look at him, nearly going cross-eyed in the close quarters. His cheek brushes the bare skin of Peña’s bicep. When he inhales, his eyes drift shut on a slow blink. Clean sweat and a familiar spicy cologne.
“Murphy,” Peña murmurs, except it sounds like darlin’, and Steve’s lips part a little as he breathes out slow.
Wordlessly, the waitress places a bottle of tequila and fresh shot glasses on their table. Peña withdraws his arm to start pouring, then passes a glass to Steve with a flourish. They tip the shots back, and Peña laughs freely at the sour face Steve pulls.
And there was something about Peña drinking tequila. It was supposed to mean something; but Steve can’t remember when Peña’s all lit up, eyes and teeth shiny under the purple neon, face flushed and happy and all of it directed at Steve.
The tequila burns out any resistance in his body, melts it away until he’s bumbling along happily as Peña drags him out onto the cleared area serving as a dance floor. Most people there are bopping rigidly to the music, clutching at drinks and shouting in each other’s ears.
It’s unsurprising that Peña is a sucker for the limelight, using his body to carve out a space in the crowd with wide, sweeping movements. He shouts something at the DJ in rapid-fire Spanish, and then there’s a face-paced Latin dance track threatening to burst the speakers.
Watching the somewhat-scandalised faces of the local customers is entertaining enough, but then Peña sidles up to him, reaching for his hand with a dramatic half-bow. He’s got the biggest shit-eating grin Steve’s ever seen, so Steve takes his hand, allows himself to be tugged in close.
“Try and keep up, gringo,” Peña growls in his ear, and Steve stumbles immediately. Peña chuckles, takes the opportunity to place his other hand somewhere between Steve’s waist and his hip.
“Why do I gotta be the girl?” Steve huffs out, stepping back quickly as Peña guides him.
Peña flicks a look up at him. “Because you like when I’m in charge.”
Steves chokes on his own tongue, nearly tripping again as Peña sends them sideways. Peña just grins, stepping on the toe of Steve’s boot intentionally. “Now settle down and follow my lead.”
Limbered up with tequila, Steve lets himself be spun around the dance floor. He isn’t a bad dancer, but between Peña’s footwork and physical proximity, Steve has a hard time keeping up.
“Javi—” he’s laughing when suddenly Peña kicks a leg out from underneath him, and the world whirls as Steve is flung backwards in a precarious dip. He goes boneless with it as Peña’s grinning face comes into focus, hovering above him.
Enthusiastic applause erupts around them as Peña heaves them both upright, a hand on Steve’s lower back and at the base of his neck.
“Sorry,” Peña says, except he doesn’t sound sorry at all. The music has stopped.
“Can we go home?” Steve blurts out, and Peña’s expression flickers, settles on a smile.
“Sure thing, buddy. I’ll meet you outside.” Peña pulls away, heads for the table to retrieve his jacket, and Steve tries not to shiver at the loss of his hands.
***
Peña stands too close as they wait for a cab to pull up, comfortable in taking up Steve’s personal space. He offers Steve his cigarette, laughs as he greedily accepts the warmth.
Steve blows smoke past Peña’s ear. “Where’d you learn to dance like that, Tex?”
Peña laughs again, still riding the tequila high. “Had a little cousin who wanted to be a ballerina. Tía wouldn’t let her take ballet unless she took Latin dance classes, too. Mama made me take her every day after school, except Alej was too shy to get up there by herself and no way would she dance with some strange boy. So,” he shrugs, “I just joined in.”
It’s the most words he’s ever heard Peña string together in one sitting. He can’t remember ever hearing about Peña’s family like this, either. He tries not to think of it like a test.
“So does that mean you dance ballet, too?”
Peña shoves at him, laughing. “Pendejo.”
A cab pulls up, and Peña opens the rear door, sliding across to the far seat as he gives the driver directions. Once Steve pulls the door shut, it’s immediately too quiet in the small space. He can feel himself getting tense, sobering, and Peña must sense it too, because he tips sideways, leaning heavily into Steve’s side.
Kinda makes Steve want to cry, the way his pulse calms as soon as Peña settles against him. He busies himself watching the city drift by outside the window instead.
Peña’s humming something against his shoulder, and Steve must drift off because the next thing he knows he’s being gently shaken, eased out the open door.
“Still with me, cariño?” Peña says lowly, close to his side as they stumble into the lobby.
“You’re stuck with me, Jav,” Steve mumbles, eyes closed as he tips his head back against the mirrored elevator wall.
“Gonna make it to bed or need me to carry you?” Peña jokes, and the mention of the single bed has Steve’s eyes snapping open. Peña’s already watching him, the corner of his mouth turned up knowingly as he makes his way to unlock the room.
Slowly, Steve toes off his boots. Peña is pouring himself a nightcap— or maybe it’s just another drink when you’re already tipsy. Steve shakes his head when Peña holds the bottle up in offering, then carefully goes to sit at the head of the bed.
Peña looks at him, takes a drink, and drops into the armchair to take his own boots off. He begins, “You know we don’t have to—”
“I know, Javi,” Steve’s face heats.
Peña holds up both hands placatingly, then tosses his boots in the corner near his duffle. He stands again, and Steve panics for a second that he’s going to jump straight into bed, but he only pads across the room to pick up his drink.
“Well, you might be ready for bed, old man,” Peña grins, flicking the radio on low, “but I’m not, yet.”
It pays to be cautious when Peña does something unusual. Steve raises an eyebrow, “Oh?”
“Sí, mi lindito,” Peña purrs, finishing the rest of his drink and setting the glass on top of the dresser. Controlled, he slides one socked foot out to the side, rocks back a little and pushes off, raising to the ball of his other foot to perform a perfect pirouette, grinning up at Steve when he lands in a half-curtsey.
Momentarily speechless, Steve can only gape at him. “Are you serious?”
“Dancing is good exercise.”
Steve starts laughing, hands coming up to rub at his tired eyes. Peña giggles along like an idiot, then suddenly the bed dips with the weight of another body. Steve drops his hands from his eyes like he’s been burned. Peña is watching, careful, sitting with his hands on his knees.
“Hi,” he says, and Steve can’t help the way his mouth twitches up.
“Hola, Javi.” It gets a big smile out of Peña, eyes crinkling up with it, then—
“Ay yai yai,” Peña sighs out, inexplicably, turning to flop onto his back. “Ay, mi cariño.”
He uses more Spanish when he’s drinking, or tired. “What does that mean?”
Peña rolls his head against the duvet, lifts his chin in question.
“You keep saying it. Cari yo?”
There's a beat of silence.
“Cariño,” Peña says to the ceiling, letting his eyes close.
“Yeah. What does it mean?”
Peña turns his head again, gives Steve this unreadable look. “Earlier today, when I got that phone call. You called me ‘sweetheart.’”
All the air shocks out of Steve.
“Yeah,” Peña whispers, looking anywhere but Steve, “it’s something like that.”
Steve makes this involuntary, shaky noise like a whimper, eyes going wide as Peña shifts, sort of rolls half on top of him, tips his face up under Steve’s jaw.
“Javi,” Steve breathes, turns his mouth against Peña’s temple. Digs his nails into Peña’s side, shoulder blade.
You are mine, I am yours. Let’s not fuck around.
“I can’t do this without you,” Steve chokes, eyes hot.
“You have to,” Peña mumbles into the crook of his neck, presses him down into the mattress in a way that feels sorry.
The tears spill over, Steve’s chest hitching as he tries to quiet his sobs. Peña just holds him in place, strokes at his hair, his side, keeps his mouth pressed into Steve’s throat.
For all that Peña’s methods of emotional regulation may be caustic, he’s still got one up on Steve. Steve does not deal with emotion. He flat out avoids it, drowns in it, lets it build up deep down until he has a breakdown or does something stupid. It just builds, and builds. Connie could see it happening, see the blow up coming, but she could never manage to derail it. Peña’s the only one who can reach him.
Steve is scared of what he’s going to turn into, without Peña.
“I know, I know,” Peña is murmuring, interspersed with Spanish. He’s pressed up against Steve, shoulder to knee, but it’s not enough, he’s not close enough. Steve wants to consume him.
With a frustrated noise, Steve arches up underneath him, yanks at his shoulder, isn’t sure if he’s trying to throw Peña off or pull him closer. Peña tenses, braces a knee between Steve’s legs and keeps a hand firm on Steve’s chest as he raises up on one elbow.
Steve can’t read the look in his eyes. Grunting, he tries again to flip Peña; twists his fingers in the hem of Peña’s shirt when he can’t get enough room to buck his hips.
“You’re ok,” Peña soothes, hand closing around the fist Steve’s made in his shirt. He uncurls Steve’s fingers, presses their joined hands into Steve’s stomach. The feel of Peña’s knuckles on his belly makes Steve want to bite down on something.
“Javi,” Steve cries out when Peña won’t let him drag their hands back to Peña’s belt. He gets his other elbow up, grips tight at the forearm Peña has solid across his chest. “Javi.”
“Not like this,” Peña presses out, eyes pained as he shakes his head. Blinking back embarrassed tears, Steve stops struggling, turns his head away into the mattress so he won’t have to look at the pity on Peña’s face. Peña breathes out in a rush, presses his lips to the exposed column of Steve’s throat. “Cariño. Te amo. Not like this.”
He keeps repeating it, te amo te amo, until Steve takes a big, shaky breath, blinks open wet eyes. Maybe he thinks Steve doesn’t understand what it means. Maybe he thinks he does. Steve swallows, knows Peña can feel it against his mouth.
“Steve?”
Peña lifts up patiently as Steve turns his head, big gentle eyes meeting his. Steve doesn’t know if he’s ever looked at someone the way Peña is looking at him now.
“What are we, Javi?” Steve whispers.
Peña lifts one side of his mouth, gives Steve’s hair a final stroke. “We’re DEA.”
It shocks a wet laugh out of Steve. He wipes his face into the crook of his elbow, dissolving into hiccuping giggles. Peña flashes him that sunrise grin, then carefully rolls to the side. He props his head up on one hand, watches Steve with quiet look as he settles.
“Jesus,” Steve huffs out, tips his head to Peña.
Shit-eating grin. “Just Javier is fine.”
With a little growl, Steve shoves his hand into Peña’s tangled up fringe, and Peña let his head be rocked back with the force of it, pliant, smiling big and dopey.
“You’re going to break my heart, Javier Peña.”
Peña leans into Steve’s touch, shuts his eyes so Steve can’t see. “All’s fair in love and war.”
We already lost the war.
Steve drops his hand. Tries to memorise the lines of his face. “Will you promise to be safe?”
Peña opens his eyes. “Don’t ask me to lie to you.”
Nodding, Steve turns to look at the roof. They breathe quietly, for a moment, then the bed shifts as Peña rolls. Steve thinks he’s getting up, leaving, but he just takes something from the nightstand, turns back over.
It’s the photo from the rooftop. Wavy edges. Big grin. Blood on his hands.
Peña holds it aloft, so that Steve can see. “What did it feel like?
What did it feel like? He doesn’t answer, and after a moment Peña hesitates, goes to put the photo back, “You don’t have to—”
Steve reaches over, takes the photo from him. He stares at it for a moment, then grabs a pen from the nightstand, scrawls something on the back in block letters, so Peña won’t forget.
He hands it back, and Peña reads it slowly, looks at Steve for a long moment, nods. He rolls to his feet, takes the photo and props it up against his empty whiskey glass on the dresser. As Peña walks back towards the bed, he flicks the light off, closes the chapter.
IT FELT LIKE NOTHING.
***
Steve isn’t sure if it’s the sunlight or the cold that wakes him in the morning. He flounders for a second, disorientated, then sits up with a jolt, remembering.
Peña isn’t there.
He left a while ago, if the coolness of the sheets is any indication. Steve’s still in his clothes from the night before, and his head is killing him. He pulls himself out of bed with a groan, rubs at his bleary eyes as he does a slow lap of the room.
Peña is gone.
Steve feels his throat go tight as he does another search of the room, but it doesn’t change the fact that Peña’s bags are gone, his toothbrush, razor— any trace that he was even here at all.
Then something catches Steve’s eye— a whiskey glass sitting on the dresser. It’s got a smudge on the rim, and it’s evidence that Javier Peña was real, he was here in this room with Steve. Then Steve notices the photo and the box of cigarettes standing up against the glass.
The cigarette box is full, but it’s not a gift. It’s Peña’s brand. It means he’s quitting. Steve doesn’t let himself wonder whether it’s a metaphor for quitting something else.
He remembers Peña leaving the Escobar photo here, last night, but that’s long gone, now. In its place, there’s a battered polaroid, the kind that looks like it’s been riding around in someone’s wallet for too long.
It’s from Christmas, that office party that Peña dragged him along to. In the photo, Steve is smiling begrudgingly for the camera, holding up a coffee mug filled with liquor, and Peña is laughing around one of those rare crinkled-eye smiles, his arm slung across Steve’s shoulders. They look so young. Steve puts the photo back.
He looks at the polaroid and the box of cigarettes. It’s the undoing of Javier Peña.
On the back of the photo, Peña has written four words, block letters, so Steve won’t forget.
IT FELT LIKE EVERYTHING.