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It’s been a long day and Diego doesn’t have the energy or the patience to deal with Mateo’s anxious ass.
They had just gotten changed out of their scrubs, another patient whisked off to a hotel room post (not) surgery and another guaranteed thousand dollars in Diego’s pocket.
Cecilia had been ever so kind as to grant them a small, concrete, windowless room for them to rest in between all the driving around, chatting up patients and performing fake surgeries. Diego scratched a hand through his hair as he made his way toward the small leather couch in the corner of the room, nodding to Mateo as he went. He flopped down next his co worker and leaned his head against the back of couch, eyes closed, looking forward to finally getting some rest.
Diego had finally gotten comfortable when he heard the incessant tapping of Mateo’s boot on the concrete floor. Normally he wouldn’t mind but he had had a long fucking day, after pulling an all nighter for his taxi job and this was one of the only places you could find quiet in the warehouse. It was annoying but not annoying enough for him to pull out of his stupor and tell Mateo off.
But then tapping escalated into a deep crease between his brows and fidgety hands, essentially all the signs of repressed frustration coming to a head. Diego knew if he didn’t do something to fix this now he’s be dealing with a bitchy Mateo all day. So he sighed and reluctantly asked,
“What’s wrong?”
Mateo, startled, looked toward Diego and dumbly responded with,
“Huh? Oh uh nothing.”
“Don’t bullshit me you’ve been fidgety all day.”
Mateo looked away rather stubbornly as he had a tendency to be sometimes, so Diego prompted,
“Cmon.”
“I’m just tired of doing all this you know? I have no time to spend doing shit I wanna do.”
That wasn’t what Diego was expecting him to say, maybe some bullshit about how he wasn’t getting laid enough and then they’d devolve into stupid jokes as per usual, which wouldn’t fix the problem but at least it would prevent him from being a cunt the rest of their work day, but judging by Mateos tone of voice, he was genuinely upset.
“What would you rather be doing?”
“I don’t know, I,”
Mateo shifted in his seat, presumably taking time to consider his next words, he looked up for a moment as he admitted,
“I wanna be home, I miss spending time with my daughter.”
Diego turned his head to gape at Mateo. He has a daughter? Damn, Diego knew he was older than him but he didn’t think he was that much older. Diego briefly gave Mateo a once over seeing if he could imagine his scrawny sometimes immature but at his core awkwardly charming friend as someone’s dad. Nope. Not possible.
“You got a daughter?”
Mildly offended Mateo asked,
“Yeah? why you so surprised I feel like I’ve mentioned her before?”
“Yeah you might’ve,
Diego took a brief moment to consider the fact that if he had a daughter there was actual proof that Mateo had been with a woman and could potentially still be with one. He uncomfortably took note of the jealous feeling settling in his gut.
“God dude..”
“What?”
“Who’s her mom?”
At the mention of this potential partner Mateo visibly tensed and leaned away from Diego.
“Why you wanna know?”
So it probably wasn’t that he was with someone currently or he wouldn’t have had any qualms about word vomiting about his lovely or nagging wife. Diego noticeably relaxed at this realization and then promptly shook his head at his bizarre reaction to finding out his friend was single. Trying to mask his discomfort he joked,
“I just wanna know what hooker lowered her standards enough to fuck you.”
Mateo laughed in that way someone does when it’s more because of shock than anything else.
“Man fuck you,”
He thought about it some more, threw his arm over his face, and continued to laugh at how morbidly fucked that joke was.
“Oh my god that’s fucked up!”
Diego, kinda concerned he might have actually struck a nerve or something, asked,
“Sorry man, was she actually someone you cared about?”
Mateo let his hand fall to his side, letting out one last chuckle before timberly speaking,
“No she was just a one nightstand with a hooker that ended in a baby I wasn’t ready for.”
Diego was confused as to why he was so hush hush about it when it was something that was incredibly common, I mean Diego himself was an affair baby, it’s shameful and has led a lot of his family to not like and treat him like shit, but it’s normal and not the worst way to end up with a kid you didn’t plan for. Although ask him about it and there would be absolutely no way he would admit to it. If there’s one thing Diego Cortez won’t do, it’s rat on the people he cares about. Confused he asked,
“Why’s it so fucked then?”
“We had a plan for when after the baby was born we were gonna do a co parenting typa thing, she’d have her for a couple weeks, I’d have her for a couple weeks kinda thing,”
Mateo briefly considered sugarcoating the ending of the story, maybe say that she just ran and he hadn’t been able to contact her, but he figured it would do him good to talk about it, so he heavily remembered,
“Everything was going really well despite the fact that me and her mom couldn’t tolerate each other outside of sex, the system was working and we were managing, but, when she was about 3 months old I went to drop her off at her moms shitty apartment, like usual, only to learn from her roommate she had overdosed the week before.”
At some point during Mateo’s little monologue Diego had leaned back in his seat to take in what he was saying but when that ending hit him like a ton of bricks he sat up in his seat to get a good look at Mateo’s somber face.
“….”
Not put off by Diego’s silence, Mateo quietly finished,
“Ever since then it’s been just me and her.”
Diego shifts,
“I’m so sorry dude that fucking sucks.”
“Don’t feel that bad,“
Mateo takes a breath and straightens up, looking to reassure Diego that he didn’t seriously upset him,
“it’s not like I really cared about her, I just hate the fact that she left me alone with her.”
Thinking of his mother and himself and how they really struggled after his father left and basically all their extended family abandoned them, Diego questioned,
“You two doin alright?”
Slightly warmed by the thought that Diego cared for him enough to have the courtesy to ask, a respect he didn’t really see him extend to Gabriela and Valentina, he said,
“Yeah it’s hard sometimes but we make it work.”
He says his next words rather quickly and without out much thought,
“Besides it wasn’t all bad with her, at least she helped me realize women aren’t really my thing,”
Diego stops. Did he hear that right? Better to ask just to be sure,
“What?”
Mateo thinks. He trusts Diego right? He’s a good guy and even if admitting this would drive a wedge between them he could still live with himself knowing Diego would never talk to him with as much care as he use to. But Diego’s kind enough that he would still be civil and he has astonishingly good ears so there really wasn’t much point in lying. So Mateo takes a leap of faith,
“I like guys”
“You sayin you’re gay?”
Diego didn’t really mean for it to come out as harsh as it did but he couldn’t help it. Hearing Mateo openly admit something like that struck a vulnerable chord in him. Seeing Someone as cowardly as Mateo get the balls to openly admit something like that made him feel especially weak in comparison. ( he cares about Mateo but even Diego can acknowledge he’s a little bitch)
Mateo timidly reiterates,
“Yeah,”
“I just,”
Diego pauses letting himself stew in the shock of this realization,
“Never heard anyone just admit it like that before.”
“You’re the only person I’ve told, on that note could you maybe not mention it to anyone else?”
Diego doesn’t respond. Mateo could deal with anger, mockery, he’d prepared for all of it but this genuine shock and silence was not something he was ready for, it was freaking him out far too much, so he tried again to get Diego’s attention, and the reassurance that Diego won’t go shouting this new found, very personal, information about Mateo from the rooftops, because let’s be honest it’s 2001 in Mexico, something like that could seriously fuck up a reputation,
“Please?”
Diego figures if Mateo is comfortable enough sharing this with him he might as well return the favour,
“Dude can I be honest with you for a second?”
Scared that Diego is gonna call him disgusting or perverted or maybe even a slur, Mateo doesn’t know, he lost the ability to predict what Diego was going to say next in this conversation a long time ago, he figures trying to remedy this situation with what little control he has left couldn’t hurt,
“Listen if it really bothers you I don’t have to talk about it anymore,”
Diego’s Clearly given Mateo the impression that he’s going to blow up on him, with the way Mateo’s begging him, so he exasperatedly tries to interrupt what he can tell is the beginning of a tirade with,
“Mateo,”
Mateo turns to him to start pleading,
“I never have to talk to you again at all outside of any of this,”
“Mateo,”
Diego’s voice raises in volume as Mateo gears up to offer him basically anything in favour of him not telling anyone about this. Mateo starts pleading again desperation incredibly evident in his increasingly high pitched voice,
“You literally will never have to see me ever again, I’m sure I can talk to Cecilia and make it so you never have to breathe the same air as me again-“
Diego can’t take hearing Mateo get so desperate that he starts offering things he doesn’t have to give, let’s be honest if he went begging to Cecilia it wouldn’t matter if he suddenly developed a mortally serious allergy to being in the same room as Diego, she’d tell him to go fuck himself, respectfully. It’s more just the fact that he can think so low of Diego that really sucks, so he cuts off Mateo’s rambling with a loud,
“Mateo!”
Mateo stops. He opens his eyes expecting to see Diego’s face, contorted into a look of disgust or hatred, but instead he’s met with a pair of very worried, conflicted eyes.
“….yeah?”
Diego takes a deep breath. He looks away from Mateo, taking a moment to consider his options. He could open up here, return the favour and let Mateo know he’s also riding the gay train, or he could just, at the very least let Mateo know that this doesn’t change anything between them, that essentially either way he won’t be a dick about it. But clearly if he tells Mateo about his own fairy ness, he won’t tell everyone about it, he’s not that big of an asshole. So Diego readies himself and speaks, much softer than before,
“I think I,”
He looks right into Mateo’s eyes, and my god are they very very blue, not in a your eyes remind me of the sea type of way but more an enticing shock of blue amidst the dark of his hair and tan of his skin, god he can’t be waxing poetic about his eyes that’s so stupid. Diego gathers his Witts and quietly says,
“Like men too.”
“….”
Receiving no response but just a, blank, mildly confused look, he starts to revel in how uncomfortable it is to finally say something like that, something that Diego’s spent years repressing, out loud. He looks away from Mateo and his elbow on his knee, resting his forehead on his hand, realizes,
“God that’s such a stupid sentence, it feels so wrong to say out
Mateo is dumbfounded. Never in a million years would he have guessed that Diego was gay. But just as he learned when it came to himself, you can never assume. He sits there in stunned silence staring at the slumped form of Diego for what is probably an uncomfortably long amount of time when he finally musters up the courage to say something,
“I-
“The fuck are you two doing in here?”
The both of them jump at least a foot in the air when Valentina suddenly slams open the door. After recovering from the shock, Diego takes stock of what she’s wearing, a long sleeve red dress that rests just above her knees, that hugs her just well enough to tease but not so much that it’s uncomfortable, knee high black stockings, and a red heel. She’s clearly going to head out tonight, she won’t get a payment from Cecilia until Thursday so she probably has to. Diego isn’t sure how she feels about her job but it’s pretty safe to assume she’s not absolutely in love with it considering how prickly she gets every night before she has to go out for a job. Diego is very thankful that he scored his taxi job as opposed to being forced into truly awful shit like Valentina and Gabriela.
After he’s finally calmed down, clutching his chest, Mateo interrupts Diego’s train of thought to say,
“Oh my god, can you please knock Valentina, you scared the shit out of me!”
She scoffs and looks toward Mateo with a lilt of playful mockery in her eyes. Diego finds it difficult to describe the relationship between the two. It was something of a older sister younger brother despite the fact that Mateo is older than her. They argue the most out of everyone in their little group, with how whiny Mateo is and how head strong Valentina is, it’s not uncommon to hear the two of them bitching. Even so when they argue it’s not hard to tell that it’s only surface level and they feel a connection by way of both being shit heads in an unforgiving world. They suck and they’ve been hurt and in a terrible way it ties them together. It’s only now that Diego knows about the mother of Mateo’s child that he starts to consider that he may have a soft spot for Valentina in Lew of her.
“You big pussy, how the hell did that scare you?”
Mateo responds indignantly as his heart rate returns to normal,
“I’m not a pussy, you bi-“
Diego turns to Mateo trying keep this from becoming a petty spat between the two of them,
“Shut up. Valentina what do you want?”
“Cecilia wants you.”
Fuck, Cecilia calling for you means shit news especially if she sends someone else to get you instead of talking it out in a public place, she’s not especially fond of showing off her nastiness in front of everyone, despite everyone know just awful she is.
“Why?”
“I don’t know she doesn’t tell anyone jack shit,
Valentina shifts her weight and her voice is getting increasingly agitated, obviously annoyed at being cut off.
“She sounded pissed though so I would get down there fast if I was you,”
Double fuck, he better get down there in case she decides to leave him with cuts rather than bruises, purely for the crime of leaving her waiting. God she’s so fucking entitled. To attention, to money, to undeserved respect.
“Aw shit, uh, We’ll talk about this later”
Diego gets up and rushes past Valentina out the door. She watches him go before turning back to Mateo who is now just sitting alone on the couch.
“Talk about what?”
Mateo looks up at her, he’s fucking sick of the emotional roller coaster this stupid night has been. He’s really not in the mood to talk to her right now, he needs to process some of this shit on his own.
“Fuck off Valentina”
His tone lacks the familiar light that usually starts off one of their fights. Annoyed that she won’t find a distraction in either of her co workers and will have to immediately deal with going back out into a shitty bar and getting touched by a nasty man in a dirty car or bathroom who views her as even less than a warm body to spend a night with. God she hates her fucking job.
“Fine, I don’t get paid to deal with your shit anyway”
And with that she turns on her heel and promptly walks out of the room leaving Mateo to stew in whatever the hell all of that was.