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Even if you eventually won the war, Javier mused, it still managed to beat you up somehow. At some point it would take something from you. Your pride. Your family. Your freedom.
Your sanity.
Not that they were anywhere close to actually winning the war against Escobar. But the leader of the Medellín Cartel was not the only problem, he knew. The moment Escobar died—and in his line of trade it was quite remarkable for how long "El Patrón" had been managing to evade both cops and cartel-paid sicarios alike —, another ringleader would pop up somewhere in Latin America and happily resume his business.
It never ended. It was like rolling a stone uphill and watching it roll all the way down over and over and over again. It took its toll on everyone.
Javier looked at Steve, who now slept on his couch, more precisely with his head on Javier's lap. The man was beaten up.
Honestly, Javier did not often entertain men in his apartment, and much less on his lap. But his partner had been looking so despondent after being released from custody that he could not bring himself to simply drop the man at his now vacant apartment, to stare at the walls and mull over Connie's absence and probably drink himself under the table.
After the first night sleeping off his alcoholic haze on Javier's couch, it did not take much encouragement for Steve to practically move into Javier's place. These days, he only stopped by his and Connie's apartment to pick up fresh clothes. Javier was not too keen on what he perceived to be a glaring intrusion on his privacy, but in the end he took upon himself to look after the other agent and make sure he did not ruin himself any further at work.
The last week had been uneventful for them, which gave Steve some time to get his bearings again. Both Peña and Murphy were tied down to menial desk jobs, like two wayward boys who had made daddy look bad, courtesy of Steve's drunken altercation at the airport and Javier's own underhanded methods at work. He knew Massina was trying to get Colonel Pinzón to see they needed all men available to the Search Bloc out in the streets, but the man had been so far completely unyielding and she clearly did not want to risk overstepping any boundaries. In the end, every man (and woman) had to watch after their own asses and that's the way it had always been.
Why he was choosing to watch over Steve's ass, as the blond man nearly drooled on his jeans, was something he made a point of not dwelling on. They could not claim to have been best buddies from the start, but they had surely grown a lot closer over their time investigating Escobar, and even more so after Connie returned to the US.
"...Javi?"
"Hey there Sleeping Beauty," Javier answered, in a slightly mocking voice.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to sleep on your..." Steve said sheepishly, waving his hand in the general direction of Javier's legs in lieu of finishing his sentence.
"That's fine," Javier deadpanned. "It's not like I've been having many people fighting for a spot on my lap since you decided to move in."
Steve immediately understood the dig behind Javier's comment and blushed in a way hardened DEA Agents should not be allowed to. Now, Javier did not make a habit of finding coworkers cute, but he couldn't help it when it came to Steve.
"Yeah, about that... I should probably go home..." Steve mumbled, sitting up awkwardly and stretching his back.
They sat in silence side by side for a few minutes, each lost in his own thoughts. Javier watched Steve out of the corner of his eye, noticing the man's tired features, the way he rubbed his eyes nearly raw before staring at his own feet as if they would detach themselves and walk away if he didn't. He made no movement to actually get up and go back to his own place though, and Javier needn't be a detective to notice he was dawdling, putting off the inevitable.
"She'll come around, you know."
"What?" Steve asked, sounding confused.
"Connie," Javier said, trying to keep his voice neutral. "She just needs time to... digest this whole situation, I guess. And when she does, she'll come back."
"Yeah..." Steve said, his slumped body posture disagreeing with what he was saying. That prompted Javier to turn fully towards his partner.
"Is there something else going on?"
Steve threw him a commiserating glance, before looking away once more. He tsked, licked his lips, his eyes shifting around the room as if searching for a way out. Yep, there was definitely something else.
"Well?" he egged Steve on, wanting to help the man with his burden but also hoping to satisfy his own growing curiosity.
"Well," Steve started, with a deep sigh. "Connie and I, we... I love her and I know she loves me too. But... I'm not sure how much in love we are anymore, y'know?"
Not really, Javier thought, the labyrinthine ways of marriage not being his expertise. But he nodded vacantly and let the other continue.
"She asked for time... not just for safety but also to figure out where we stand. And it's... I get it, you know, it's not fair for anyone to move away from home and put their life on the line to be with someone they ain't sure about."
"But... if you love each other..."
"We do," Steve said, with absolute conviction. "But over the last couple of years it has turned into a kinda... sibling... love thing, you know?"
Ah. Yeah, now he got it. Feeling poorly equipped for the daunting task of relationship counselling, Javier blurted out the first platitude that crossed his mind. "Maybe it's just a phase."
Steve eyed him sympathetically, as if both amused by Javier's clumsy attempt at consolation but also appreciative of the effort. And then he smiled for the first time in days. Javier couldn't help but find it contagious, and his own mouth curved into a grin despite himself.
The silence stretched itself for a few minutes, signalling the end of their conversation and giving Javier the opportunity to get up and fetch them cold beers from the kitchen. Although Javier had no desire to nurse an intoxicated Steve back to life anytime soon, camaraderie always tasted better with a drink, or at least it gave him an excuse to escape touchy-feely topics that were way beyond his comfort zone.
As he handed Steve the perspiring glass bottle, Javier realised there was something about the other man that always seemed to awaken the caregiver in him like few other people ever managed to. From his first days looking completely out of his depth in Colombia, passing through the sad murder of his cat (and Javier had really meant it when he said the cat was DEA and would get avenged), and now to his complete dejection after being left by Connie... everything that caused Steve grief seemed to find its way into Javier's heart pretty fast, and gave him a visceral urge to fix whatever it was.
He mindlessly lit a cigarette and sat quietly beside Steve, mulling the whole thing over. Maybe it was Steve's boyish looks and (now a bit less) candid disposition that attracted him and made him go all white knight on him? Not that Javier planned to ever put this theory to test. Any ambiguity in regard to his own sexuality had been carefully concealed since arriving in Colombia, as he knew that anything less than one hundred percent straight could easily get you tortured and killed in many parts of the world. And he doubted the local police would grieve much for the death of a marica, regardless of his status as a DEA agent.
His thoughts were interrupted by his partner's voice. "Connie told me I need to figure out what I want too," Steve remarked casually, though the big swig he took from the bottle seemed to imply otherwise.
"In what sense?"
He turned to face Steve only to find the man already looking at him, his eyes intense and still. Javier could tell something was being communicated right there, through the silence, through the eyes that refused to break contact, but he could not read it. Would not read it. Steve was the first to turn away.
"Hm, you know... things and... stuff," Steve mumbled, incoherently. "Nothing important."
It was obviously something important, but Javier was feeling uncharacteristically awkward after their strange exchange. He finished his cigarette, crushed the butt into a nearby ashtray and decided it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.
~*~
Connie told me I need to figure out what I want too...
Javier watched the ceiling fan make its thousandth revolution, still wide awake despite the many hours he had been attempting to hypnotise himself into sleep. He couldn't get Steve's words out of his mind.
Correction—he couldn't get the implication of Steve's words out of his mind. And the more he rolled his last conversation with Steve around in his head, the more they seemed to point at something. Something that filled Javier with the sort of dreadful expectation he only remembered feeling when making out for the first time with his high school sweetheart. Now, he had racked up a lot of mileage since then, so he shouldn't really be nervous... but what if Steve...
Fuck. Javier leaped out of bed as if jolted by a cattle prod and marched to the living room. So much for letting sleeping dogs lie.
"Hey, Steve," he called, standing by the couch. When the other didn't answer, he leant over and shook him by the shoulder a lot more roughly than he had first intended. "Hey!"
Steve startled awake and scrambled blindly for his gun. Then he saw Javier standing there, only in his underpants, and seemed to understand that this was no emergency.
"What did she mean?" Javier blurted, crossing his arms over his chest.
Steve lifted his body slightly from the couch, propping himself up on his arms. "What?"
"Connie said you had to figure something out. What is it?"
With a groan, Steve let himself fall back on the cushions. He rummaged through the pile of clothes discarded beside the couch for his wrist watch.
"It's 3 in the morning Javi. Don't you wanna have this conversation some other time?"
"No."
Realising the futility of trying to dissuade Javier of an idea when it got stuck in his head, Steve sat up, rubbing his eyes. Javier paced the floor, eyeing him like a suspicious cat.
"It's complicated to explain..."
"Try me."
Steve huffed indignantly, as if he had been awoken in the middle of the night to teach arithmetics to a house brick. Then he seemed to accept that he would not escape this interrogation, so he just gestured for Javier to sit down beside him, which the other did, moving stiffly and staying as far away from Steve as it was possible. If the blond man thought it weird, he didn't let on.
"Well," Steve began, leaning with his forearms on his knees and interlacing his fingers. "You know I grew up in West Virginia and... it's not a very open-minded place, right?"
Javier nodded indulgently, holding back the urge to spur Steve on.
"Then I went to Miami when I started working with the DEA, and I met Connie right after so... I didn't exactly go around... having a lot of different experiences... But that was fine 'cause I was always happy with her, and I'm not the type to have a wandering eye and get curious and all... "
Javier continued to nod, this time a little less patiently.
"I mean, Connie was surprisingly a lot more open... to things and stuff... than me, and I guess that's why she noticed something was... different..."
"Yes?" Javier asked rhetorically, through gritted teeth.
"Yeah. I mean... I guess what I'm trying to say is that..."
Javier didn't notice Steve had crossed the small distance between them on the couch until his lips were captured in a tentative kiss.
Ah. Yeah, now he got it.
The kiss was short and Steve quickly pulled back, his blue eyes wide with worry, as if he had committed the greatest of all sins by kissing his very male coworker. Before he could retreat further and sink into self-doubt, Javier grabbed him by the face and gave him a real, open-mouthed kiss filled with all the pent-up attraction he had never truly acknowledged until now.
Steve surprised him by responding in kind, his hands curling around Javier's biceps, as if unsure whether to draw him closer or to push him away. Javier could feel the tickle of Steve's moustache against his lips and smell the clean musk of his body being so close. It did something to him, made him want to throw the other man on his bed, shred his good boy white undershirt with his bare hands and show exactly what "things and stuff" were all about.
They were both panting when they parted. Steve's pupils were the size of dinner plates, and his face was flushed. Javier couldn't claim to be less hot and bothered, but at least his darker skin concealed his state better.
His underpants, on the other hands, didn't. Well, I guess this cat is out of the bag now.
"Did that... satisfy your curiosity?" Javier asked nonchalantly, trying to get his heart back to its normal rate and hoping his half-erection would fade away quietly.
Steve looked at him right in the eye. "Not by a mile," he answered in a whisper. "I just... I mean, I have never..."
"Done it with a guy?" Javier asked, with a knowing grin. "Don't worry man, I got you covered... if you want."
Steve didn't answer verbally, but flushed even redder in the most adorable of ways. This time Javier simply smiled, and allowed himself to bask in the warmth that Steve always sparked in him so effortlessly. Then he got up to fetch them a couple of beers. Things and stuff always tasted better with a drink.