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“You could’ve called, you know?” you say, feigning annoyance, but you throw yourself into his arms. He embraces you gladly, and you feel yourself sink into chest, smiling at his warmth. “I missed you,” you say, after taking a deep breath.
You let go slightly, and he grabs you by the shoulders, smiles earnestly. This is always what he looks like in your mind: smiling, hair tousled, uniform already half-unbuttoned.
“I missed you too,” he says. His words feel heavy but his expression looks light. That’s Joaquín, always, trying to hide how much he feels.
You take a good look at him - seeing him through video chats and messages is never the same as having him here, in front of you. He always looks so much better in person, a camera can’t even attempt to capture the charm irradiating off him.
Then your eyes drift away to the bag settled heavily on the floor. “Brought back a souvenir?” you ask.
He blinks, like you’ve just snapped him out a daze. “Right,” he says, picking up the bag. He groans as he lifts it, asks with a tilt of his head if he can come in. You let him in and he places the bag on the table.
“Heavier than it looks,” he says, rubbing his arm. “Or maybe I’m just tired.”
“Have you eaten anything?” you ask. You remember you don’t have any food at home, maybe some eggs in the fridge and not much else.
“I landed and came straight here,” he replies sheepishly.
“Wow,” you ruffle his hair, and he sticks his tongue out and moves away, “I didn’t know I was that important.”
“Of course you are,” he replies, but he sounds too serious, and you feel a lump get caught in your throat.
Sure, you’ve known him all your life, but you’re friends , despite what everyone always thinks when they meet the two of you. You’re never the priority.
It does break your heart a bit whenever you have to tell an acquaintance “oh no, we’re just friends,” but you’ve made your peace with it. Anyway -
“I’ll order some food,” you say, reaching for your phone, hastily looking away from Joaquín. “From that place you like,” you say, not facing him.
“Thanks,” you hear him say quietly.
When you finish placing the order, you look back at him. He’s standing under the kitchen lights, staring intently at the bag he’d brought, like he’s pondering what to do with it. His jacket is folded neatly on top of a chair, and you try not to think too hard about how good he looks with that green shirt on.
You divert your gaze from his arms to the bag. “So,” you say, pulling up a chair, “what’d you bring me?”
“Hah!” he says, but the amusement on his face fades quickly. Clearly, whatever this is, it’s taking him out. You reach for the bag but he settles his hand on yours to stop you.
“I don’t know what to do with it,” he says, gesturing at the bag, still staring at it. “And it’s broken, anyway. And it doesn’t even belong to me. Like, he said ‘you can keep it’, but -”
You squeeze his hand. “Joaquín.”
He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes. Then he opens them up slowly, looking at you, and nods. “Right. These are - wings,” he says, wincing at the last word. You know he’s trying to gauge your reaction, so you do your best to act as if what he’s said is completely normal.
“Alright. And you had said - who gave them to you?”
He tenses up, grimaces. “Sam Wilson?” he says tentatively.
“As in, ‘The Falcon’ Sam Wilson?”
He nods.
“The guy you can’t shut up about?”
He nods again, blushing slightly. “Well, I wouldn’t say-”
“He gave you his wings?”
He looks all small now, just mumbling incoherently about “I mean, I don’t even know if he meant it and -”.
You roll your eyes. God, it’s always the same with this boy, isn’t it? You get up, cradle his face with your hands. You inhale, and he takes your cue and inhales too. You exhale, and he follows suit.
“That’s amazing,” you say, and you say it honestly and openly to make him know that you mean it. He nods, looking dazed.
“Like, I said, I don’t know if he meant what he said but -”
“He did,” you interrupt him. You’ve never met Sam, but you’ve had your fair share of hours of listening to Joaquín gush about him through the phone, and you get the sense he doesn’t just say those kinds of things lightly. And if he knows Joaquín, then he knows how much The Falcon means to him.
“You don’t know that,” Joaquín tells you, placing his hands on top of yours. You set your gaze on him, taking in the brown of his eyes, the way his curls fall so perfectly on his face.
“I just know,” you say. You can tell he’s thinking of something. He bites his lower lip, opens his mouth to say something, but a ping from your phone breaks the moment.
You quickly grab it. “It says our food is on the way,” you say, cursing yourself for not having put your phone on silent.
Joaquín takes a couple of seconds to react. He fakes a smile, tries to relax his shoulders. “Great. I’m starving,” he says, but his mind is somewhere else.
People who don’t know Joaquín will notice that he’s very talkative and assume he wears his heart on his sleeve. But you know him too well, and know that he’s bad at sharing what’s actually going on in his inner monologue. He’s doing that thing he does when he wants to tell you something but doesn’t know how, so you decide to give him time, let him process his thoughts until he’s ready to admit whatever it is he needs to admit.
“So tell me about the wings,” you say, to fill the silence until the food comes. “You said they’re broken?”
“He said that. I haven’t taken a good look at them.”
He takes them out of the bag, pieces of dirt falling on the table. He gives you an apologetic look, then sits on a chair so he can inspect the wings better.
“I think I can fix them,” he says.
“Oh, I’m sure you can, you genius, you. But now -” you set your hand on top of one of the wings, and Joaquín looks at you, “now you’re going to help me set the table so we can have dinner.”
He pouts at you, then grins while getting up. “Oh, but I thought I was a guest? Now you’re making me work?”
You scoff as he grabs the wings and places them back on the bag. “A guest? You’re always here. I think you should start paying rent,” you reply.
“Maybe I should just move in, then,” he tells you with a wink. No, no, no, you think, not a fucking wink. He puts the bag on the floor, in a corner, grabs a towel from one of the kitchen drawers, and throws it at you.
You catch it and start setting it on the table as he grabs some dishes. You watch him set the rest of the table, idly staring as he grabs some forks and knives and glasses. It’s good to have him here, you think. It’s silly, but you can’t help but feel like he belongs in this house with you. And at least, when he’s with you, you know he’s not out there in the battlefield and he’s not getting hurt.
You won’t tell him that, obviously, because he loves what he does and you could never stop him. But you always sigh of relief before picking up the phone when he calls you.
The doorbell rings before Joaquín has the chance to tease you for staring at him, and soon enough you’re both digging into your food.
All you can hear from Joaquín is “Hmm,” and “Yes,” and “This is so good,” as he tries not to speak with his mouth full, and you’re almost sure he hasn’t breathed since he started eating.
“Looks like you haven’t seen food in days,” you say, watching as he devours everything on his plate.
“ Gracias ,” he tells you, when he’s done with his food. You still have most of your food on your plate. “I’m fine, I swear,” he says, noticing your look of concern.
He catches you up to speed on the latest details of his mission as you eat dinner. Technically, he’s not supposed to tell you anything, since everything he does is supposed to be confidential, but in practice he knows you’ll never tell anyone. You’ve always known each other’s secrets anyway, and Joaquín doesn’t seem intent on stopping now.
“So now I have the wings, basically,” he says, while washing the dishes. He had insisted that you sit and rest while he took care of things. You were never opposed to sitting on the sofa while watching him do domestic things, but it’s not like you had done much. If anything, he was the one that had had a long day. Joaquín had practically dragged you to the sofa, though, so you knew better than to argue with him.
“When you say you’re going to fix these wings,” you say as you watch him, “is this another one of your ‘I won’t sleep until I fix this’ kind of missions?”
He laughs at that, turns to you and some water splashes on him. “Maybe,” he replies, with a little devilish smile on his face that just absolutely drives you crazy. If you could just -
“Just so I know if I have to get the couch ready or not, “ you say, “I assume you’re crashing here.”
“One day I’ll pay you all the rent that I owe you,” he says, turning off the faucet. He places the dishes in the dishwasher, wipes his hands, and sprints to the couch, jumping over it and sitting down next to you. You’re much too aware of the fact that his arm is behind your neck. If you sit back you can rest your head against it.
“You better,” you reply, wagging your finger in front of him. He grabs your hand and gently pushes it down.
He shifts his body to face you better, rests a hand on your knee. “But I want to hear about you, first. How was your day?”
When you wake up in the middle of the night, desperately needing some water, you just know , before you even leave the bed, that he stayed up. He’d been toying with the wings before you had gone to sleep, having apparently brought with him all the tools he needed.
“Most of this is just fixing wiring,” he’d told you, and you nod. Joaquín had always been the mechanic, when he was younger you could usually find him taking apart anything electronic he could get his hands on. Once he had taken apart a phone of yours and then had spent two days trying to put it back together.
As expected, when you step outside your bedroom, you find him asleep, head resting on his arms on top of the table. You grab a blanket and drape it over him.
He flutters his eyelashes and opens his eyes slowly when you make too much noise reaching for a glass.
“Sorry,” you tell him quietly.
He slurs his words, “‘s fine,” he says. He lifts his head, looks at the wings, and then outside the window. “I was just resting my eyes, and then…” he trails off, yawns.
He looks adorable like that, drowsy, looking like a mess. It looks good on him, the whole “haven’t slept in a week” look. Everything looks good on him, really.
You tap him on the shoulders. “C’mon,” you say, “Time to go to sleep.”
“I’ll prepare the couch, don’t worry,” he says, his eyelids heavy, his voice dripping with exhaustion.
You help him get up from the chair, and then you stand behind him, your hands on his back. “No, let’s go. You sleep on my bed, just like when we were kids and had sleepovers.”
“Is this a sleepover?” he asks. You can tell he’s smiling from the way he says it, and you push him towards your room.
“Isn’t it always?”
You wake up with his arms wrapped around you, his body pressed tightly against your back. When you try to move, he just pulls you in closer. You don’t want to wake him up, because he really needs to rest, so you decide to just lay there, feeling his breath against your neck. It’s not like you’re complaining; this is the most comfortable you’ve ever been. You’re sure that if this was what you woke up to every day, you would never leave the bed. Goodbye, productivity.
You fall back asleep with the sun warming your face.
The next time you wake up, it’s to Joaquín gently tapping you on the shoulders.
“Hey,” he whispers, and smiles. He holds up a mug in front of you, “I made breakfast.”
You blink a few times, to make sure you’re not dreaming, but when the smell of coffee finally hits you, you feel awake.
You sit up. “Thanks.”
“Ah, no, it’s the least I can do,” he replies, shrugging. He hands you the mug and you take a sip, letting it wash away the sleepiness. “You didn’t have much but I made some scrambled eggs and cut up some fruit.”
He looks embarrassed when he says that, his cheeks flushed. “Would you rather have breakfast in bed? Or will you come to the kitchen?”
“No, I’m going, I’m going,” you say, handing him the mug. He extends his arm so he can help you up.
He spends the whole day hunched over the wings, working on them. You had given him some clean clothes - he always forgot his hoodies at your place, and you had some shorts that fit him - and you had insisted that he stay and work on his “mission”, as you were calling it, much to his despair, while you went grocery shopping.
To make up for it, he had promised you he’d cook, a deal you had gladly accepted because if there was anyone that could cook absolutely delicious traditional Mexican food, it was Joaquín. Besides, he looked cute with an apron.
Because it’s the weekend, you spend the day catching up on a book you’d been trying, and failing, to read, while hearing him curse from time to time every time he got a shock or burned himself by mistake.
Nearing the evening, he says, “Okay, I need a break,” while wiping his face with his hands.
He gets up, stretches his arms above his head, then bends down to touch his toes.
“Sure,” you tell him, watching as he does his stretching routine, “what do you want to do?”
He stares at you for a second, then shakes his head, as if shaking away a thought. “Uh. I don’t know. Let’s get some fresh air?”
The whole walk you feel like he’s too close to you. You can feel his fingers brushing against yours, his arms almost next to yours.
“I assume today is another sleepover day?” you ask him. He’s tracking some birds with his eyes, distracted.
He hesitates in his reply. “Uhm,” he says, his face going a toned down shade of red again. “Would that be so bad?”
His awkwardness is clearly contagious because now you’re the one not knowing what to say. You feel him slowly interlacing his fingers with yours, and so you decide to hold his hand. You hear him hitch his breath, so you grip it tighter. You think, I sure hope I’m picking up the right signals .
He turns to face you, sunset light goldening his skin. He places his hand on your hip, then quickly takes it away, then looks panicked and like he doesn’t know what to do with it. So you grab it and place it on your cheek. I hope I’m not messing up anything , you think, and you inch closer to him.
“Can I…?” He asks, his face close to yours, your noses almost touching. You nod, and you let him bridge the gap between both your mouths.
His lips are warm and soft, and you let your head lean into his hands. You’d imagined this moment more times than you cared to admit, but this, right here, felt as real and solid as the ground beneath your feet. You wrap your hands behind his head, gently digging into his curls, and you smile into the kiss.
“We really should’ve done this before,” he says, breaking away from the kiss.
“Shut up,” you tell him, pulling him in again.