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You weren’t even supposed to be there.
Feistl and Van Ness were the Cali team. Not you. Javier had only agreed to put the team together because you wouldn’t be a part of it.
You were supposed to be with him in Bogotà. Being a Supervising Agent meant exactly what it said, supervising . Not busting in, guns blazing.
But then Javi was one to talk.
Busting in guns blazing was his speciality. Javi didn’t know for certain, but he was pretty damn sure that was part of why you got the job in the first place.
You deserved the promotion too, of course.
You were the best agent the DEA had seen in a long time, and Javier wasn’t ashamed to say it. You were cool-headed, skilled, smart as a whip, and diplomatic on top of all the rest. For years, you’d been putting him and Murphy to shame.
But you were a woman, and the assholes back in the States would rather promote his rule-breaking ass first and then tell you to your face you were only there to keep the peace between him and Stechner.
Not that Javi minded having you around. He was angry for you, angry for the injustice of your situation, but deep down he was glad. Murphy’s departure hit both of you hard, but he knew losing you would have been something else entirely.
Something he hadn’t wanted to think about then, in the bar on the night of Murphy’s goodbye party as he sat there and watched some embassy suit talking you up while he felt a heaviness in his chest he thought might crack his ribs until you’d brushed the guy off and came over to sit next to him.
“I don’t want things to change.” You’d sighed, dropping your head on his shoulder. “It’s hard and ugly and shitty but somehow all I can think about is how much I’m going to miss Murphy butchering the Spanish language and tapping his stupid pencils on the desk.”
“Yeah,” He murmured.
You smelled like you, a pleasant mixture of your floral shampoo, the fresh mint of the gum you chewed, and a hint of all the alcohol you’d downed over the course of the evening.
He missed the smell that was so distinctly your own. It calmed him, reminded him of all things good in the world.
You weren’t even supposed to be there.
The Cali team was Feistl’s idea, but you’d made it happen. And you’d wanted to make sure things went well for them on the other side. Just getting them settled with an apartment for the base of operations, making contact with the local CNP precinct, basic set-up stuff. Totally normal, totally safe, and you’d be back in Bogotà in no time.
He should have known the shit would hit the fan.
You’d told him you had a bad feeling about Calderòn, that he might be on the take.
“No Search Bloc this time around, Javi.” You’d said, your voice fuzzy over the phone. “Just us.”
“Keep me updated.”
You’d laughed. “There won’t be much to report, but okay.”
When he called again, you didn’t pick up. Feistl did. And he sounded bad.
“Peña. We were about to call you.” He took a breath on the other line and Javi’s heart plummeted. “Something happened.”
Javi heard everything Feistl said, but only a few words stuck in his mind: Y/N, shot, critical condition, hospital.
He was in the car and peeling out of the parking lot before Feistl had finished talking.
“I’m on my way.”
“Peña, it’s bad. I don’t know if...”
A cold fist of fear clamped tight around Javi’s heart. He grit his teeth, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
“Call me if anything changes.” Javi managed before hanging up and willing the miles that separated him from you to be shorter.
The flight to Cali was the longest three hours of his life.
Every breath he took, every beat of his heart, he heard your name echoing in his head. It pounded against his chest and filled his mind with nothing but you .
“Promise you won’t leave me too. I can’t do it without you.” You’d said, eyes shining in the dim light of the bar.
You got sentimental when you drank, soft confessions and hidden thoughts you usually kept deep inside tumbling out of your mouth. Javi learned that about you early-on, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t suggest a drink or two during late nights, wanting to know what went on behind those beautiful eyes.
Those eyes he might never see again.
Javi made that promise in the bar, whether it was the drink or the heaviness in his chest or the smell of you, he’d given in and sworn he wouldn’t leave Colombia without you.
But he hadn’t asked you to say it back.
There was so much he hadn’t asked you. So much he hadn’t told you.
And why? For what?
Fear, mostly.
After the disaster with Lorraine back home, Javi had been more than happy to shun commitment. For a long time he thought he’d never have more than meaningless sex with an endless string of women whose names and faces started to blur together the moment they walked out of his bedroom.
When you first crept into the back of his mind, he didn’t think too much of it. You were a beautiful woman, there was no denying that, and you spent almost all day every day together. It was only natural for him to have certain... thoughts about you.
But when those thoughts moved away from just slicked skin and your voice gasping out his name in the dark Colombian night, turning instead towards images of you at the counter, sipping a cup of tea while he made breakfast; your feet in his lap as you sat on the couch and watched shitty telenovelas in your apartment; station wagons and dogs and strollers and things he hadn’t thought he ever wanted, Javi started to panic.
Because he did want those things. And he wanted them with you.
But he was afraid. Afraid of fucking up and hurting you the same way he’d hurt Lorraine. Afraid of losing you.
Only now he might lose you in an entirely different way. An entirely worse way.
“La bebida, se ñor?”
Javi snapped out of his thoughts, looking up at the stewardess as she walked by with the drink cart. He ordered a whisky and knocked it back in one gulp. The liquid burned down the back of this throat, but did nothing to ease the fear pounding against his chest.
By the time he got to the hospital, you were out of surgery. But visiting hours were over. Feistl and Van Ness had gone back to the little field office, more than happy to vacate the premises as soon as the nurse told Javi he couldn’t see you.
“No la voy a dejar.”
“ Se ñor, a menos que sea de la familia–”
“Soy su marido.”
The words were out before he’d even had time to process them properly. It felt true. You spent more time with each other than anyone else. You knew more about him than anyone else, even Murphy. He knew your favorite color, the name of your first dog when you were six, how you couldn’t sleep without some kind of background noise, how you knew pretty much every line from Dirty Dancing by heart. You’d taken care of him when he got a nasty head cold, herding him out of the office and back home where you made a big pot of soup and ordered him to sleep for the rest of the day. When your water heater broke, he spent an entire weekend messing around with his tool box on the floor of your apartment until you could shower again.
“It’s like you’re my husband with none of the benefits,” You’d tease him, sitting in the passenger seat during a stakeout, begging for a bite of his taquis. “No stealing your food, no sex, no flowers, and yet I still have to put up with you all the damn time.”
“‘Till death do us part, compañera.” He smirked, popping one of the snacks into his mouth.
You rolled your eyes, laughing. “If only.”
The nurse gave him a look, eyes narrowed as she took him in. He probably looked like shit– suit wrinkled, eyes wild, hands shaking.
“Por favor,” He pleaded. “Necesito estar con la.”
“Muy bien,” The nurse sighed, gesturing for him to follow her down the hallway and into one of the recovery rooms.
The breath left his body in a rush, his shoulders slumping as Javi saw you. Despite the steady beep of the heart monitor, you looked dead. Your skin was sallow and sickly, your expression blank as you lay there, unconscious.
He’d seen you sleep before, after late nights at the office or too long on a stakeout or evenings spent doing paperwork at one or the other’s apartment. This was different.
You didn’t look peaceful, you looked gone .
In a haze, he closed the space between you, leaning over the side of the bed and taking your limp hand in his own. He brushed his thumb over the back of your palm, feeling the emotions that had crowded his chest come bubbling up.
Javi sank into the chair beside your bed, slumping forward with his head resting next to your joined hands.
“I’m sorry,” He whispered, “I’m so sorry, Y/N. I shouldn’t have let you go. I should have–I should have been there.”
He sat up, moving his hand to the side of your face, brushing his fingers across your cheek.
“You can pull through, compañera . I know you can.” Javi’s voice dropped to a shaking whisper. “I need you. I can’t–I can’t do this without you.”
You lay motionless, the only response to his plea being the continued tone of the heart monitor. He took your hand in his once more, settling in for the long wait.
~
You shouldn’t have gone in there. You knew that. It was reckless and dangerous, but you had to. If the five years spent chasing Escobar had taught you anything, it was that you had to seize the opportunities as they arose. You couldn’t hesitate, you couldn’t even blink.
That was how they won.
Someone had tipped them off. You weren’t sure how, since you’d expressly kept Calderòn out of the loop, but they still knew you were coming. And they were ready.
You didn’t feel it at first. The adrenaline and shock of the gunshot overwhelmed you for a moment before the white-hot pain of the bullet finally registered.
After that, things got hazy.
You remembered more shots, dimmed and muffled by the ringing in your ears. You remembered Feistl pressing a handkerchief to your side and Van Ness lifting you up from where you’d slumped against the wall.
You remembered wanting Javi so badly it nearly overshadowed the pain. You didn’t want to leave him. Not like this. You didn’t want to die without telling him the truth.
You loved him and he would never know it.
There were so many times you’d tried to say it, tried to get the words out so they’d stop echoing inside your skull every time you looked at him.
You’d tried to tell him on the night Murphy left, when the crushing weight of saying goodbye to your best friend was already bad enough, but the thought of the love of your life walking away too...it was too much.
You were trying to drink the feelings away, to wash them out with the bittersweet burn of alcohol down your throat. You’d gone up to get another glass when some guy tried to hit on you. He was nice enough, good looking enough, but he wasn’t who you wanted.
He didn’t look at you with those eyes that held so much– so many experiences and stories and traumas and emotions that he never expressed. He didn’t know you better than you knew yourself. He didn’t understand all of your fears and your doubts and your nightmares because he’d been through it all with you. He wasn’t Javi.
So you excused yourself and walked back to the booth, propelled by the intense emotions crowding your chest, clouding your mind. You sat beside him and leaned your head on his shoulder.
“I don’t want things to change.” You’d sighed, dropping your head on his shoulder. “It’s hard and ugly and shitty but somehow all I can think about is how much I’m going to miss Murphy butchering the Spanish language and tapping his stupid pencils on the desk.”
“Yeah,” He murmured.
You could feel it coming, the words bubbling up like lava about to erupt. I love you. Don’t leave me. I love you. I love you I love you I love you.
But you were still afraid. Afraid of the rejection that might follow. Afraid of losing him entirely.
“Promise you won’t leave me too. I can’t do it without you.”
He’d looked at you then, with those eyes you swore could see straight through to your soul.
“I promise.” He murmured, kissing the side of your head.
This is enough. You’d told yourself. Having him in some way is better than not having him at all.
You hadn’t even thought about making the same promise back to him. You thought it was an unspoken certainty. You would never leave him.
Until now.
Somewhere between the comuna and the hospital, you lost consciousness. Your mind slipped in and out of silent black. At one point, you dreamt that he was there, his hand on the side of your face.
“ You can pull through, compañera .”
And then he was gone again, fading away with all other thoughts as you fell back into the blanketing darkness of unconsciousness for hours, maybe days.
When you finally awoke, the sun was streaming through the window beside your bed, dappling the blanket across your lap with golden light.
“Buenos días,” A nurse stood beside the bed, adjusting your IV bag.
You blinked slowly, your eyelids heavy and your eyes bleary. Turning your head, you took in the rest of the room. A vase of flowers sat on the table next to your head, all sweet-scented purple and white orchids like the kind you kept all around your apartment.
An empty chair was pulled up next to the bed, a familiar dark suit jacket draped across the back. Despite the residual grogginess and haze of pain medication, your stomach fluttered at the sight.
“Javi,” Your voice came out rough, barely above a whisper.
“Oh,” The nurse clicked her tongue, grabbing a cup with a straw from the counter and bringing it over to you, “Aquí tienes cariña.”
You drank gratefully, your throat soothed by the cool liquid.
“ Tu marido volverá enseguida. Se fue a tomar un café.” The nurse assured you.
“My husband?” You blinked at her, confused. “Que?”
The nurse tilted her head, studying you. “Necesito revisar tu memoria más tarde...Tu marido. El hombre del bigote y los ojos cansados.”
Javi.
“You’re awake.”
You turned away from the nurse, noticing the figure standing in the doorway, seeing the very tired eyes she’d just described. He stared at you for a moment, as if unsure whether to believe you were real.
“You look like shit.” You croaked, managing a small smile.
He did. He was unshaven and clearly hadn’t changed out his suit in at least a day, probably hadn’t slept for longer.
Your voice broke him from his trance. Javi moved quickly to your side, abandoning his cup of coffee on the nearest counter. He reached for you, as if about to take your hand, and then stopped.
He hesitated, his hand hovering in the air between you. Relief at seeing him again and the heightened vulnerability of your medicated state only intensified the love you felt expanding in your chest.
You lifted your hand shakily towards him. He took it.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” His voice shook slightly, and you looked up in surprise.
Javi met your gaze, eyes shining. You felt a lump growing in your throat, not daring to believe the emotion you saw in his face, not daring to believe it was the same as the one you felt burning you up from the inside.
“Te daré dos algo de tiempo.” The nurse said quietly, slipping out of the door.
“You scared the shit out of me, compañera.” Javi ran his thumb over your knuckles.
“It’s payback for the shit you pulled with los Pepes.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t make jokes right now.” He frowned, voice breaking with the next words, “I thought I was gonna lose you.”
“Hey,” You squeezed his hand, staring him straight in the eyes. “I’m here. I’m okay. I didn’t go anywhere.”
“ Promise you won’t.” He murmured. “I can’t do it without you.”
A tear slipped down your cheek and his thumb brushed it away.
“I promise.”
Javi nodded, clearly trying to hold it all together. He sat down in the chair again, keeping your hand in his grasp. The two of you sat there for a few moments, the air heavy with words still unspoken.
“You told them you were my husband.”
You waited for the joke. The easy smirk and flirtatious quip that brushed it off and left you wondering in equal measure. It never came.
“Yeah.” He nodded, his expression intensely serious.
“Why?”
Javi looked away for a moment, jaw ticking as he chewed on the words waiting to come out. You felt your own confession pushing past your chest and up your throat, heavy on your tongue.
You spoke at nearly the same moment, his words hushed, yours rushed and tumbling.
“Because I want to be.”
“I love you, Javi.”
He blinked rapidly, his brain catching up with the moment just passed. You took a deep breath, already feeling lighter, better, at having said it.
Your smile only spread as you finally processed what he’d said.
“You want to be my husband?”
He opened his mouth and then closed it. And then opened it again, cheeks darkening.
“You always complain about putting up with me without any of the benefits. I had to put up with you too and you don’t fix the shit in my apartment when it breaks.”
“You’re right. If we were actually together, things would be easier. More...equitable.”
Javi studied you carefully, trying to parse out the meaning beneath the teasing. “...right.”
“We could save on gas by driving into work together. Save on food by cooking together. You’d save money by not sleeping with–”
“Okay, hey, I haven’t done that since I got back.” Javi frowned.
“I know.” You squeezed his hand.
His jaw ticked again, and you knew he was waiting to say something.
“Did you...did you mean it?” He asked, uncharacteristically vulnerable as he stared at you.
You smiled. “Yeah, I did. I do.”
“Me too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Javi coughed, as if clearing his throat of the sentimentality.
“Well,” You said, biting your lip. “I’ve been putting up with you for a long time. There’s a lot of benefits to make up for. Five years’ worth at least.”
A smirk lifted the corner of his mouth as he leaned forward, hovering over you. “You’re right. Better get started.”
“Chop chop, Agent Peña.”
Javi didn’t need to be told twice. He closed the distance between you, pressing his lips to yours in a gentle kiss. His hands cupped your cheeks gently, cradling your head as he leaned his forehead against yours.
That moment, with him, was exactly where you were supposed to be.