Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alejandro doesn’t drum his fingers against the table, but it’s a near thing. The speaker falters in his rote speech, his eyes darting nervously from the trembling middle distance to Alejandro before returning, and he tucks another pale notecard behind the never-decreasing pile in his hands before picking up the threads of his babble. The meeting is a pointless one, all meaningless bureaucracy meant to make things easier by introducing enough paperwork to drown them with, and Alejandro glances towards his left, at the space where Rodolfo should be. 

It is still empty. 

He’s not worrying. He isn’t.

He should be paying attention to the forms the wavering prayer candle of a man is now holding aloft in one quivering hand. If Rodolfo were here, Alejandro knows he’d be paying attention, skittering out notes with one hand even as he props his chin up with the other, his dark eyes likely half-lidded and calculating. Alejandro scrawls something on the notepad he brought with him, punctuating with a question mark that stabs through the paper to the sheet beneath. The speaker flinches.

Alejandro hadn’t made much of a habit of punctuality when he had been younger, always sliding into lessons a few minutes late with a grin and a wink, ensuring to wriggle into space that Rodolfo had kept for him. They hadn’t spoken on it, simply adjusting to the other like two planets locked in orbit, but with promotions came responsibility and with responsibility came the wide-eyed stares of men who wanted to emulate Alejandro like he is someone important, so he had to learn. Rodolfo had been benevolent in keeping his laughter mostly behind closed doors. 

“Any questions?” The man says, his voice as tremulous as the fluttering of his hands.

“Yes. I was wondering—“

The rest of the sentence fades away into nothing but a dull roar as Alejandro turns, expectant, eager, delighted to see that his sergeant had returned to him. Rodolfo looks much the same as he always does, his uniform pressed and neat and a faint smudge of stubble over his cheeks, but it is the single irregularity on his neck that captures Alejandro’s attention. There is a bruise, dark and recent and high on his neck, just peeking over the edge of his collar.

Well. 

Okay, then.

Alejandro catches Rodolfo’s eye, raises his eyebrow and grins. It’s an interesting enough development as he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the other man fresh out of someone else’s bed or even when he’d last seemed interested enough for a quick fling with someone. It is a good look on him, a hard-earned contentment and a faint flush to his cheeks. 

“Look at that.” It isn’t the words but the tone that catches Alejandro’s attention, sticky and sour, said with a curled lip and a dismissive jerk of the head. The speaker isn’t a man Alejandro recognises at first glance, younger than himself, with the beginnings of sunburn around the edge of his collar and the tips of his ears. “He must be the easiest fuck on base.”

“Really?” The man’s companion tips back in his chair just enough to survey Rodolfo, his brow pinched. Alejandro glances as well, taking in the carefully blank expression Rodolfo wears, the facade only broken by the clenched muscle in his jaw. He can hear them. The meeting finishes and people begin to leave, chair scraping against the floor in their haste in case any other questions are asked.

“Really. I heard a rumour, buy him a drink and he’ll suck you off in the barracks.”

Something snaps in the back of Alejandro’s mind. He has always had a temper, a wildfire burning in his chest and only barely harnessed for fuel rather than destruction. He is a supernova, fated to burn himself out beneath the sheer fury he wields, and he strikes first.

“What unit are you?” Alejandro demands, twisting his pen between his fingers and feeling the plastic give beneath his grip. He won’t stab them with it. Rodolfo wouldn’t approve.

He barely waits for the man to answer before he speaks again, hammering each word home as bluntly as he can. “If you wish to gossip like abuelas , then you can work like one. The flagstones out front, clean them until I tell you to stop. Now.”

Alejandro can’t look at Rodolfo. His nails bite into his palms, somehow still finding the softer hollows to leave marks he knows will haunt him for the rest of the day. His breath comes too sharp, too fast, catching on the ragged edge of his snarl until it is guttural and not enough, his head spinning. The meeting room is nearly empty as they leave, heads down and tails between their legs, but Rodolfo steps forward, stretching down to card his fingers through Alejandro’s hair and tug on the shorn strands. He used to do it when they were younger, when Alejandro had full curls for him to scruff like a misbehaving cat. 

“Ale,” Rodolfo murmurs, then stops. Alejandro tips his head to look at him, his gaze catching on the bite mark on Rodolfo’s neck before he meets his eyes. “What are you like, pendejo ?”

It isn’t the bitemark or the nebulous someone somewhere. Alejandro never wants to deny Rudy any happiness. If the other man asks, he’d carve his own heart out of his ribcage and give it to him, still bloody, still beating, it would be worth it if it made Rodolfo smile. 

“I’m like I’ve always been,” Alejandro answers, reaching up to squeeze Rodolfo’s hand with his own. He’s warm, like he always is, and Alejandro lingers for a moment to dispel the chill that had settled in his fingers over the course of the meeting. “You know that.”

“Yeah.” Rodolfo grins, crooked and distant. “Yeah, I do.”

Chapter Text

Alejandro knows the way to Rodolfo’s room better than to his own. His rooms are fine, functional to the extreme with a bed that is only two steps above sleeping on the ground but it had been a hard-earned two steps, most of his clothes except for the selection that had wound up mixed in with Rodolfo’s that he had yet to reclaim, a few trinkets he had picked up more because he thought he should. Alejandro’s office is a closer match to what he is like with his paperwork attempting to be organised and his single piece of memorabilia being a photo of himself and Rodolfo when they were younger. 

He just likes Rodolfo’s room better. No reason behind it. 

Alejandro knocks once and pushes the door open in the same instant, adding his shoulder into the mix to encourage the frequently sticking wood along. 

“Ale,” Rodolfo says from his perch in front of his desk. They have the evening off again and Alejandro realises, several minutes too late, that Rodolfo may be heading out once again to see his mystery date. Mystery man? 

They had never spoken of things like that and it breaks Alejandro’s heart that he may have been doing some wrong by Rodolfo. 

“Rudy,” Alejandro answers, pausing by the back of Rodolfo’s chair to wrap his arm around his shoulders, leaning down for a hug. He has some sort of fragrance on, the scent rich and still familiar, and Alejandro breathes it in before releasing Rodolfo. The other man’s hands had been pressed against his arm, his touch solid and confident in a way that few people were with him. To them, he is their Colonel, a leader plucked straight from the ending minutes of a telenovela and he doesn’t bleed in their eyes. Rodolfo knows better.

Alejandro tips himself onto the bed, noting, as he does so, that Rodolfo had already hollowed out a space for him by tucking the spare blanket in a line against the wall and moving the extra pillow to prop up the scant one Rodolfo prefers to sleep with. It’s already folded to give the thin material the extra height Alejandro prefers. He swallows against the wildfire in his chest and tastes ash. “Going out again tonight, I take it?”

In another life, Alejandro would be getting ready alongside him, wriggling into jeans two sizes too tight and getting smaller with every ill-fated wash after contact with questionable floors. But he is temporarily grounded for the sake of his stitches, medical advice he would have ignored if not for the presence of Jorge in the bed next to him, the shiny boots of the recent recruit a familiar sight as he hovers around Alejandro. So, being a good example, responsibility, all that.

Instead, Alejandro leans up on his elbow to study Rodolfo. The thought of him out with someone else shouldn’t hurt. It doesn’t, not really, the sensation is closer to an ache, unrelenting and flaring like a beacon with every breath. It didn’t matter, he could ignore it like he is ignoring the faint twinges of pain from his stitches. Nothing else mattered as long as Rodolfo was happy.

“No, Ale. I’m getting dressed like this to sit in my room with you.” Rodolfo pauses and winks,  before reaching for a silver chain dangling on the edge of the mirror. It’s similar enough to his dog tags that Alejandro hadn’t noticed it and Rodolfo’s mouth twists as he begins to fumble with the catch.

There’s no other choice at all.

“Let me.”

Rodolfo blinks at him, his expression indecipherable. If Alejandro had to put it into words, he’d compare it to the heartbroken expression of the stained-glass saints staring after their salvation in the church windows. He holds out his hand, the barest tremor to his fingers, and Alejandro takes the chain.

The metal is barely skin-warm and he cups it in his palm as he rises, his knee cracking in stark warning of what old age could bring. Rodolfo winces, screwing his nose up in a parody of dislike. “I won’t let you go on any more training missions by yourself if you come back to me hobbling like an old man.”

“Oh?” Alejandro flicks the catch open and moves to stand behind Rodolfo. The other man cleans up well, is a vision in the rare occasions they need to wear dress uniforms, and this night is no exception. His t-shirt is tight, stretching around the curve of his arms and across his chest and his hair is artfully dishevelled. Alejandro brushes a strand back into gelled place. “What is your plan then, Sergeant Major Parra?”

“I’ll go with you.”

Alejandro barely manages to bite back a laugh, fails utterly when Rodolfo raises an eyebrow at him in the mirror. “And you think that will work?”

“Yes.”

It would. And they both know it.

“So.” Alejandro loops the chain around Rodolfo’s neck, assessing the length in the mirror before slackening it. “Same person as this morning?”

Silence hangs so heavy, so consuming that Alejandro wonders if this is the mine beneath his boot that would destroy his life. One step, one question, and he hadn’t even known that he would ask.”

Rodolfo’s gaze doesn’t move in the mirror, locked onto the planes of his own face. His mouth twitches, reciting a countdown that only he can hear, each tiny rosary bead held taught by Alejandro’s grip.

“Same man,” Rodolfo says. His jaw is set as if he is bracing himself for a blow but not shying away from it, simply accepting it. 

“He treats you well?” Alejandro doesn’t brush his fingers across the bruise on Rodolfo’s neck, the colour beginning to fade slightly around the edges. It would be gone in a day, sanctified only in memory, and Alejandro will remember it. 

“Well enough.” Rodolfo shrugs in the self-same particular way of his, one shoulder rising and his head tipping towards it. In a crowd, Alejandro thinks he’d still be able to find Rodolfo easily from his walk, from his laugh. Hell, he knows he could know Roldolfo while wounded and lost by the press of his hand.

Rodolfo continues. “There isn’t a future for us, we both know that.”

Alejandro hums quietly, tucking the label of Rodolfo’s shirt back beneath his collar. The shiver is incidental, a reflex to an accidental touch, nothing more and nothing less. 

“There is some truth to the rumours, Ale.” Rodolfo speaks quickly now, loading his words and firing them before he can reconsider, his hands still steady where they are clasped in front of him. “But if they bother you—”

He can only guess at what Rodolfo would say next; Alejandro had enough notches in his belt to account for the sharpness of Rodolfo’s tongue, even when the only target is himself, and he knows what the downward curl at the corner of Rodolfo’s mouth foretells. Alejandro would rip the universe in two to keep Rodolfo happy, stopping him from turning the bitter edge of his thoughts against himself is a simpler task. 

Alejandro wraps his arms around Rodolfo’s shoulders, pressing his cheek against the other man’s skull, breathing in the smoky scent that clings to him. It is the same position as when he had first entered the room, holding Rodolfo close, wanting to be closer still because surely that would fix something, would make something better, easier. Rodolfo’s breath catches in his chest, the tentative gasp of a drowning man thrown an escape, and he reaches for Alejandro’s arm, holding on tight enough to bruise. 

They would match, bruises for bruises. 

“They don’t bother me like that,” Alejandro says. “Not in that way. I want you to be happy and I hate that they speak of you with anything less than the respect you deserve.”

“Ale…” Rodolfo sighs, tipping his head forward to press his cheek against Alejandro’s hand. They’re pressed as close as they could feasibly be, a far cry from the single-man tent they had once had to fold themselves into, too cold to take any layers off but Alejandro had still twined his fingers with Rodolfo’s the entire night. 

“Rudy,” Alejandro echoes before continuing. “I only want good things for you. I do love you.”

It is true. It still feels hollow like it isn’t enough. He doesn’t know what is missing, but he can feel the absence of it, only able to squeeze Rodolfo tighter, trying to imprint himself on the other’s bones and hold him together. 

“I love you too, Ale.” Rodolfo grins like he couldn’t stop himself, the edges still sharp and cutting but almost mournful. “Lord knows I do.”