Work Text:
I
Steve considers his relationship with Javier Peña to be complicated at best. They barely speak a kind word to each other during the day and yet can talk for hours on end during stakeouts, boredom and darkness making it easy to spill any secret. The way Peña trusts him with his life during shootouts and chases makes no sense, considering he wouldn’t trust Steve to pick up the correct lunch deal for him. Their friendship is a tentative concept; so fragile and new that Steve tiptoes around it, afraid it will break if he tries to strengthen it. But what else can you call a man who busts you out of Colombian prison?
He thinks about it in the shower, turning the water ice cold in a hopeless attempt to clear his head and numb the pain of his bruised knuckles. There’s a bruise forming on his ribcage, where airport security kicked him while he was trying to get away. He knows Peña didn’t leave; he must be prowling around the apartment. The thought of him rifling through his things makes Steve sober up faster than any time in the shower could; he gets dressed hastily and makes his way to the living room.
Yeah. He’s there.
“You didn’t get there in time?”
Not yet, please. He can’t think about Connie leaving yet, it’s too fresh, too raw. A spot on a nearby shelf catches his eyes, the line of wood visibly darker than the surrounding dust. This is where she kept their wedding picture, in a neat oak frame made by her grandfather. The thought of Connie stuffing the frame into her suitcase makes Steve feel worse and better at the same time. He is vaguely aware of Peña saying something, but it doesn’t matter, it’s just background noise to the vision of Connie staring at their wedding portrait, thinking about their vows, remembering, hopefully, that he still loves her so much it hurts.
“You need to get your shit together; they’ve changed the boss and she’s…”
“Look, piss off already!” Steve explodes. “Thanks a lot, but I don’t give a fuck, they can fire me for all they want.”
Screaming feels almost as good as beating up the cokeheads in the airport bathroom. Something in Peña’s face tells him he is ready to fight, he’s not one to give up a challenge as obvious as this one, and Steve wants him to; he wants him to fight, he wants to scream at him, punch him, get punched back, anything to invite the physical pain back in and dull everything that is screaming in his soul now.
Peña doesn’t fight back.
“Look, stay here. I’ll smooth things over.” He says in a quiet voice, collecting his jacket from the table. He makes his way towards the front door and Steve just watches, stunned by the sudden change in the mood. “Just don’t get into any more shit.”
He’s one foot out of the door before Steve finds his voice back.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You think you’re the only one to go off the rails?” Peña says before shutting the door behind him. The question hangs heavy in the air and Steve wonders briefly if it came out of personal sympathy.
He sobers up the day after and thinks about work, sure that he will be fired or at least stand disciplinary review. He lets himself indulge in that thought briefly, fantasizing about ordering whiskey on the plane back home, before the rational part of his brain takes over and makes him think about the practicalities of losing his career, becoming disgraced in federal agencies and having to take up night shifts at Walmart. When he gets to the office on Monday, nothing happens; Messina, the new boss, shoots him an impassive look but there is no hostility, no consequences. He catches Peña staring at him from across the desk and gives him a small smile. Thank you. He doesn’t smile back but doesn’t frown either. Don’t mention it.
II
He wakes up on the sofa with no hangover; not that he is that quick to recover from a night of binge drinking, he’s simply still drunk. It takes him good twenty seconds to understand what woke him up and then he snatches his cell phone from the coffee table.
“Are you home?” Peña asks on the other side of the line. “I’ll be there in ten.”
That’s not enough time to take a shower so deodorant and fresh underwear will do, Steve decides once the deadline for Peña’s visit hits home. He gets down the stairs, clutching the railing for support; Peña just gives him a quick nod and pulls out of the street before Steve has time to do his seatbelt.
“Is this a raid? Because I’m still… I’m not feeling well today.” Steve lies; Peña only shakes his head but gives him a quick look of absolute pity. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Next time he’ll be a little more careful with his words, Steve decides because he swears that Peña is taking his turns a little more aggressively than usual, probably just to make Steve more nauseous. Some twenty minutes later, the car stops in the middle of the field. This is it, Steve thinks, he’s about to off me.
And then, get a fucking grip on yourself.
And then, ok, but is that impossible? Better men gave up.
“When I was still in the academy,” Peña starts, to Steve’s questioning look. “I had a… mentor, I guess. He said he goes to the field to scream when shit gets tough.”
“What?”
“I came here the other day, after… after Carrillo ki-… he killed a kid, man.” He finally gets it out, voice breaking at the end, before running a hand over his eyes. Steve can swear there’s a trace of tears on the thumb once it falls to his lap. “I come here to scream if nothing else helps.”
“… What?” Steve repeats, feeling dumb. Peña sighs, undoes his seatbelt, and gets out of the car. He takes a couple of steps away from the car and then lets out the most ferocious, guttural scream Steve ever heard in his life. It bounces off the trees, floats around and shoots straight into Steve’s heart, a wave of an indescribable feeling hitting him hard, something between fear, despair and bewilderment.
“You go.” Peña says once he settles again in the driver’s seat. Steve stares at him incredulously.
“I’m not going to scream in the middle of a fucking field.”
Peña just shrugs and lights a cigarette. Another five seconds pass before Steve huffs and gets out of the car, understanding that, in a strange twist of his life, a safe return to the wonders of civilisation hinges on him scaring the cows off with his wailing. He takes good twenty steps away from the car before feeling moderately secure in his choice of screaming space and screams. Well, means to scream, but the sound coming out of his throat is more of a barely audible squeak. He casts a glance over his shoulder; Peña is watching him like a hawk.
Another try gets him a good scream that echoes around him. Bolstered, he draws a sharp breath and lets out a shriek; a flock of crows departs abruptly nearby, berating him.
Another breath.
“I’ve had enough! I’ve had enough, I’ve seen enough, I want out!” He shrieks until his lungs burn, his knees bend and he has to take a breath before continuing, a strange fist of sorrow clenching his heart. “Let me fucking out of this! I want fucking out!”
His knees give out and he sways before falling to the ground, the alcohol in his head protesting violently but it feels good, his throat burning and his nostrils filled with a grounding, earthy smell of the soil. His hand runs over the soft blades of grass and he lets out a sigh that turns into a sob once he realises the burning in his eyes is tears, dangerously close to spilling out. I want out, I want out, I want to go home, I want to be with Connie, he murdered a man, I don’t want to be a murderer.
He takes the walk to the car with his head hung low to obscure his damp cheeks. Peña doesn’t say anything, just puts out the cigarette and gets the engine going before starting a silent drive home.
III
It feels like the walls are about to crush him.
Messina left some time ago, mumbling something about a call to the ambassador; her hand was trembling when she was pressing the door handle. This leaves Steve and Peña, only two of them in the big, silent room but it feels like he’s in a crowd, unable to breathe or stand firmly.
The radio’s mic is hanging off the desk, swaying lazily in mid-air. Steve takes a couple of experimental steps towards the window and then slumps, the weight of adrenaline and grief too much for him to keep his balance.
What just happened?
He risks a look at Peña, sitting on the other side of the room. The sight makes his breath hitch; he looks like a man that’s beyond broken, like a man whose heart and soul have just been stomped on, crushed so relentlessly that there are no pieces left to be picked up. Like a man that thinks he sent the leader of the Search Bloc and a dozen men to certain death.
“Hey, man.” Steve starts, his voice hoarse from screaming at the radio. This was deliberate. This was planned. This was an ambush. “This isn’t on you.”
“Don’t give me a speech.”
“This isn’t on you.” Steve repeats, desperately trying to drive this truth home, at this point less for Peña and more for himself. This couldn’t be on any of them, could it? They couldn’t do anything more, he’s sure of it but a memory intrudes his thoughts; Carrillo asking if the tip is legit and Peña confirming. What did we miss? How did we not figure out they were trying to lure us out?
He takes the wheel on the drive down to the ambush site; Peña slumps in his seat, training his eyes on the road ahead. He’s almost afraid to take a breath or make a noise; it feels like the sanity of both of them is hanging by a thread. They watch in silence as the paramedics zip up the black bag over Carrillo’s body. I wonder how they’ll lift him, he’s pretty buff, Steve thinks before he can stop the ridiculous thought.
Later, at home, he shuts himself in the bathroom before dialling Connie’s number; the call drops and he remembers she’s not in Colombia anymore. He tries her American number; she picks up after four rings.
“Steve? Are you ok, baby?”
“Horacio is dead.” He informs her plainly, sliding down the wall to the tiled floor.
“What? Who?”
“Messina ordered us to stay behind.” He continues, ignoring her questions altogether. It feels less like he needs a conversation and more like he needs to release his thoughts on another human being. “I would have died. They would have killed me. I would have died.”
He thinks about Carrillo, a force of nature, both a leader and a symbol of their fight, both an unstoppable force and an unmovable object; motionless on the ground, blood pooling around his battered body, face smashed beyond recognition by the bullets. He thinks about Messina grounding them, about how furious he was at her order to stay behind. He has to bite down on his forearm to stop himself from sobbing out loud, the pain temporarily distracting him from the realisation that he was one act of disobedience away from a body bag being zipped over his head.
Later, in bed, he thinks over Connie’s question and realises he never referred to Carrillo by his first name. On the day of the funeral, he gives Peña a quick nod and says Javi by way of greeting.
IV
The terrifying reality of Javi leaving for the States doesn’t fully register before he parks at the airport.
It feels as though he’s going through the stages of grief, much like he did after Carrillo’s death. Denial, when Javi told him they are summoning him to stand disciplinary review and Steve just said “Right, good one.”. Anger, when he lashed out about Javi’s work with the Cali Cartel, his apartment walls repeating to him the are you fucking serious? Are you dumb? You going down the route of ‘whatever it takes’? long after Javi stormed out. Bargaining, when he swore he will go to Messina, to the ambassador, to the fucking George H. W. Bush if he had to, that this was too important for Javi to leave now, they were so close, so fucking close that the DEA just couldn’t ruin it for them. Steve is at depression now, with anger still trailing behind. Acceptance seems like a distant concept.
He knows, deep down, that eventually they’ll have to say goodbye, that this is just one assignment in their hopefully long careers. What he was hoping for was a proper dinner, cold Budweiser on tap, people shaking their hands after they off Escobar, the heroes of the DEA. What he got was a rickety table at the airport lounge, two bottles of lukewarm beer, last-call notifications on speakers and the crushing feeling of somehow being the biggest loser of this game.
“I don’t see a way out of this.” Steve admits and takes a long swig out of the beer bottle to hide how his voice cracks at the end of the sentence. If there ever is a time for confessions, it’s now, when he’s being left alone and the hope that’s been driving him for months is starting to fizzle out.
Javi leans over the table.
“The way out is you putting a bullet between Escobar’s eyes.”
Before the boarding, Steve pulls Javi into a tight hug and holds on for maybe a few seconds more than socially appropriate; everything he can’t say with words, he’s trying to put into this embrace. I love you, brother. I need you here. I love you.
Javi doesn’t pull away.
V
The bust on Escobar turns out to be shit, one more disappointment to add to the ever-growing list.
Steve takes shelter in a nearby café with a couple of other police guys, all suddenly feeling hungry after the focus of the operation falls. Trujillo hands him a chicken sandwich and offers a shrug and a lopsided smile, as if saying don’t worry about it, man, there will be another time. Steve knows he must be just as disappointed but maybe he isn’t just as hopeless yet.
“Murphy, you there?” Martinez comes to life on the radio. “Are you still in the area?”
“Me and seven of ours, sir.” Steve responds, biting into the sandwich. The chicken tastes somewhat suspicious but it will have to do.
“They got a visual on Escobar.”
For a split second, they all sit stunned before adrenaline kicks in and they rush out of the café, jumping onto the cars. Steve looks around briefly, out of habit, searching for Javi, before Trujillo calls to him and he has to sprint to the car already starting to pull out of its’ spot.
They should have known that Escobar will not simply give up. Steve takes chase, jumps over one of theirs slumped on the ground, narrowly avoiding a bullet flying towards him. A cabinet on the ground, a wall spraying him with plaster debris after a bullet meant for him clips the corner, he won’t give up, he is so close, this is it, take your aim, take the shot, this has to work.
He spots a body on the roof tiles and for a terrifying second thinks it’s another of his men before his mind registers that the clothes are decidedly not the green fatigues of the police. He sprints down as fast as he can on the unstable roof.
“You just shot Pablo Escobar!” He hollers to the soldier on the balcony and for a moment the tuft of black hair he can see behind the rifle reminds him of Carrillo; he’s half expecting him to stand up and rejoice with them, having finally accomplished the goal he devoted half his service to. But the soldier leans to the side and it’s not Carrillo, obviously. A spike of grief shoots through Steve’s heart.
We did it, guys, he thinks as he’s crouching down by the body and staring at the camera’s lens, weirdly self-conscious about the red shirt he’s wearing. Even in the haze of the moment, the adrenaline of the chase still buzzing in his brain, he’s aware that this picture will be broadcasted all over the world. If he knew, he would’ve worn something more fitting for the occasion but then again, no one expects you to gun down the world’s number one narco in a three-piece suit, do they?
I wish you were here, he thinks as he falls into the driver’s seat of his car, shutting the door and drowning out the commotion outside. His fingers hover around his cell phone as he thinks about breaking the news to Javi. Will he be happy? Relieved? Pissed off that he’s in the States and Steve just finished their work on his own? The adrenaline is dying down and he feels himself shaking with exhaustion.
I did it for you too. Forgive me for being the last one standing.