#this is amazing!! also i've never heard of this fossil it's so sweet...

[bluestar22x]

Complicated

The Writing Contest - Chapter 7: Complicated

Summary: Nora meets Nick and Javi's complicated past is revealed

Pairing: Javi Gutierrez x Female!OC (Nora Delaine)

Rating: 18+ Series

Word Count: 3,660(ish)

Warnings: Angst, fowl language

Author’s Note: This is the most angst I can muster for this sweet fluffy fic

xxx

"This place is beautiful, Javi," you observed, taking in all your surroundings from the white fabric chair you were seated upon.

The restaurant you were both inside looked like it should be a museum showing off classical art rather than serving food with its white marble arches and the cupid carvings that lined them and the white walls.

Almost everything was white with a bare minimum of gold trim added to highlight the building's stunning design. Even in the massive but dimly lit main dining room it was a marvel to study.

"I thought you might appreciate it after our last date," Javi said with a proud smile on his face.

Your previous date, your second official one, had been at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and before you'd even gone inside you'd spilled your guts about how beautiful you thought the building looked from the street.

You were both impressed and touched Javi had remembered after all your blabbering about the animal exhibits and fossils.

"It's easy on the eyes and it's got an amazing atmosphere," you declared. Very romantic, you thought. "I just hope the food is half as good."

"I've been here a few times before," Javi told you. "I've heard the food is delicious. Made by one of the most renowned chefs in the country."

"I'll see for myself," you said, not convinced. "Janice's Diner is going to be hard to beat."

Javi chuckled and you smiled at the sound, but you were being serious. Janice's Diner was a little gem you'd found on your own during your first weekend as an official Angelino. It was just a block from your apartment and it reminded you of home. Quiet, unimpressive, aged, but cozy. And the diner happened to serve the best veggie burger you'd ever tasted.

It was also the location you'd chosen for your first date with Javi. He'd loved the burger too. Or so he'd claimed. You were certain he was being honest, but you were also certain this restaurant, with its fancy French name and ancient looking design was much more his style.

You didn't see it as a barrier to your relationship anymore. You saw it as a gateway to getting out of your comfort zone, and for him to get out of his. Janice's Diner was the first time you'd ever seen Javi in a Henley, and even though you'd picked it out for him as a gift, when you first saw him in it you almost combusted.

You'd been thankful you hadn't chosen plaid.

"Did you try the wine yet?" Javi questioned.

You shook your head. "Too busy admiring everything. Did you?"

"I did," he replied, taking another sip right after he spoke. "It's splendid. You must try it."

You grinned. "Javi giving a glowing review to the competition. Scandalous." You shielded your mouth with a hand like you were covering a jaw drop, your shock.

"I'd never lie about good wine," he told you. "Now, your turn."

He nodded at your glass and you tipped it against your lips for a small taste. You'd never be able to properly describe the wine like a connoisseur could, but it was good. Very good. Its smoothness rivaled Javi's wines.

"Wow. Where is this wine from?"

"France," Javi answered. "It's from one of the most prestigious vineyards in the world."

"I don't wanna hurt your feelings but..."

"It's better than any Valley View wine," he finished for you. "I am far from offended. We are not in the same league nor need to be. We are much more affordable."

You'd seen what Valley View's wines sold at. You weren't sure you wanted to know how much the bottle of wine sitting on the table between you cost.

You swallowed another small amount of the wine then turned your attention to the menu set before you and your jaw almost dropped for real.

Every meal on the menu was over five hundred dollars. "Holy crap it's expensive here!" You gasped, barely managing to keep your shocked voice low enough so your neighbors didn't hear.

"You are worth it," Javi declared, warmth blanketing his every word.

He was too sweet. Crazy, but sweet. You scanned the menu for the cheapest meal available that you knew you would enjoy. When the waiter came around you ordered crab and shrimp etouffee, one of the few dish names you recognized. The price was new though. You wondered humorously if flecks of gold were peppered on top.

"Javi?" a distant voice called out, trying for quiet but failing.

You both glanced up and down the rows of tables before you, eyes falling on a man in a gray pinstripe suit and a woman in a shimmering red dress with an updo that took years off her.

You recognized them as a couple from the tabloids, but you also knew the man from at least a dozen movies you'd watched with Sierra.

"Nick! Olivia!" Javi exclaimed, jumping to his feet and hugging his friend with a broad smile on his face. “What a surprise meeting you here!"

"It's more of a surprise seeing you here," Nick countered as they pulled apart. "Are you in town for a promotional event?"

Javi shook his head. "We are here for presumably the same reason you are."

"A date?" Olivia prodded, curiosity piqued.

"Si." Javi gestured at you with a hand. "This is Nora Delaine. Nora, Nick and Olivia Cage."

"Hi," you waved at them awkwardly. "Neither of you really needed to be introduced to me."

"You didn't need an introduction either," Nick promised you. "I remember you and your friend. Tell Sierra hello."

"She'll die," you warned him and he guffawed.

"But she survived our video chat?"

"Hardly."

He grinned. "Well, tell her anyway." He then turned to Javi. "We'll leave you two to enjoy your date, but you should swing by our home after, Jav. You too, Nora. It would be nice to catch up. Play a game. It's been a while."

Javi's hopeful eyes fell on you, a plea for you to agree to it, and you smiled. "I would love to, if you're up for it, Javi?"

"Always," he said enthusiastically. "What time should we arrive?"

"Nine?" Olivia suggested, eyes meeting Nick's. He bobbed his head in agreement.

"Sounds good to me," you said and Javi nodded.

Nick patted his friend's back as he and Olivia walked past your table. "Great. See you both then. Bring your bottle of wine. I've never tried that one."

"Sure." Javi beamed, giddy.

Adorable, you thought.

x

Your date with Javi went smoothly as usual, a product of having been friends long before you were something more. It was a relief to be dating someone you already felt comfortable and safe with because you knew him.

The only disappointment that resulted from the outing was your meal. It was excellent, tasty, the best shrimp you'd had, but it didn't have gold flakes mixed into it like you thought it should have at its price.

You left the restaurant in high spirits as you often were in Javi's presence, delighted by a pleasant night out with a handsome man whose kiss you could swear actually made your stomach flip.

It was nearly ten o'clock by the time you arrived at the Cage's residence with your nearly half empty bottle of wine. Their mansion was even bigger than Javi's, but you were greeted happily by the recently remarried couple.

Olivia broke out wine glasses for everyone and a couple bottles of one of the most expensive kinds of wine Javi's vineyard sold, and you all settled down in the entertainment room. It was fancy like the rest of the mansion, but didn't contain a lot of furniture besides the three couches and two chairs that almost circled the massive TV on one side of the room. The remaining space was filled in by an actual bar with four stools and a pool table.

You felt like you were in a club rather than a home.

"We should play Pictionary to pass the night," Olivia suggested.

You lit up at the idea. "Yes! Girls vs. guys."

Olivia grinned. "Sounds like a fair game. What do you say boys? We'll even let you go first."

"Sounds like we've already won the game," Nick boasted playfully with a smirk.

"Right," she scoffed. "We'll see about that."

You sat together on two couches as couples, but you were as far separated as you could be through that night's friendly competition.

Javi started the game off with a fake kick and a headbutt to the air, and everyone quickly got what his gestures meant.

"Soccer!" Nick shouted surely, finger pointing as he downed a good amount of the wine he’d poured out from the restaurant bottle.

"Football," Javi corrected, "But si."

You, Nick, and Olivia all groaned at his insistence.

"I bet the card says soccer," Nick mumbled and you laughed.

"Alright, my turn!" Olivia declared happily, placing her glass on the coffee table before her.

She picked a card and studied it for a few seconds before standing in front of the TV, looking at you confidently as Nick flipped the timer.

She leaned her head back and started running her fingers through her hair that had been pulled loose and you immediately knew what she was portraying. "Showering!"

She nodded and gave you a high five on the way back to her seat. "We're going to fuckin' smoke them!"

"No contest," you added, grinning ear to ear. You probably hadn't even known Olivia for an hour yet, but you already liked her.

"Big talk," Nick said, "But I'm up next."

He took the center stage of everyone's attention and started silently acting out popping something round into his mouth.

"Pills!" Javi exclaimed. Nick shook his head.

"Grapes!"

"Yes!" Nick nodded.

Then it was your turn. Javi took control of the timer and you got to work.

Your card having been mime, you started doing the classic "invisible box" performance with a bewildered look on your face.

Olivia giggled a little. "Mime. Definitely a mime."

"We need more difficult cards!" Javi declared, digging out another stack from the game box.

You were several rounds in before the cards actually started getting hard to act out, and it wasn't because you were all a little buzzed.

Then you finally hit one Javi couldn't figure out before the timer ended, despite Nick shooting everyone in the room with an imaginary gun and flashing his invisible badge at your bodies after.

"Argh, you just about named every other law enforcement agency in the book!" Nick exclaimed in frustration. "You'd think after being surveillanced by the CIA it would be the first to spring to mind!"

You blinked as his words set in, confused. "Why would the CIA have been interested in Javi?"

Everyone stared at you. Javi's expression turned into one of panic.

Nick whipped his head around to look at his friend. "You didn't tell her?" He shook his head in grim disapproval.

"There was never a right time!" Javi blurted, eyes darting around the room before falling on you. "I'm sorry I never told you."

"Told me what?" you asked wide-eyed, a panic of your own settling in.

"Everything in the movie was exaggerated," he replied quickly, "But it all happened. Hiring Nick for my party. My cousin. Nick's daughter getting kidnapped. All of it."

He'd conveniently left one major detail out of it.

"You were part of a cartel?" you gasped. Your sweet Javi was actually a criminal?

"The face of it," he amended in a rush. "I never wanted to be a part of it. My cousin forced me to. I had no choice!"

"There's always a choice, Javi!" you spat, anger flaring at his deflection.

He clamped his mouth shut and swallowed hard, eyes pleading with you, begging you to hear him out.

"I need a moment," you decided instead, feeling a need for it in your bones, the air in the room suddenly too stuffy.

You rushed out of the mansion onto its giant back porch that overlooked a pool with an attached hot tub and an artificial waterfall, so close to sobbing that it got caught in your throat.

You were consumed by the emotions coursing through you. Anger. Hurt. Fear. And lost in the lingering memories of your first flight to California, when you'd watched The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent for the first and only time.

It'd been such a silly little movie. You hadn't considered that the parody of Javi and Nick's first meeting could have had any basis in reality. People weren't part of cartels. That didn't exist in your sheltered little world.

The one that had just been shattered with one sentence.

Nick had always had a flair with the one liners.

You were surprised but grateful that Javi didn't follow you out immediately, Nick and Olivia having probably warned him not to, to give you the time you needed to process and cool off.

When he finally did walk out onto the porch to join you, you leaned on the railing in front of you and waited, unsure of what you wanted to say to him. What you wanted to ask.

"I'm so sorry, Nora," he said lowly, ashamed. "I should've told you sooner. You deserved to know what kind of man you were getting into a relationship with."

You straightened up in your spot and craned your neck to watch his face. "And what kind of a man is that, Jav?"

"A coward," he answered, eyes unable to meet yours, self loathing evident in his voice. You'd never heard it before. Never realized there were emotions he'd bottled up around you. Ones you'd felt too many times before.

"For a long time I couldn't escape that life cause I was scared," he continued. "I knew if I left my cousin would find some way to drag me back in. Threaten the life I'd made for myself. Maybe even kill everyone I loved. He would've done it smiling." His expression turned darker than you'd ever seen it before. "I should've killed him myself. If I had, Nick wouldn't have had to do it. His daughter wouldn't have been kidnapped."

"Javi," you hesitated, not sure you wanted the truth to what you were about to ask. "Did you ever kill anyone?"

"No one that didn't deserve it," he replied.

You nodded. You could accept that. Your brother had killed too. It may have been for his country, but he'd still had blood on his hands, as noble as it was supposed to be.

It was because of your brother that you also had an idea of what taking a life cost. No matter how evil the enemy had been, your brother's conscious had never let him forget each time one of his bullets had dropped someone.

"I'm sorry you had to do that," you murmured.

He stared at you, surprised. "I thought you were furious at me."

You huffed. "I was and kinda still am. But not because of your past life. I assume if you really deserved to be in jail the CIA wouldn't have let you off easy, let alone hop the Atlantic to settle down in the US." You sucked in a breath. "It's the fact you kept it from me that bothers me. Because I DID deserve to know the truth. I've never kept anything from my past from you. Not on purpose. But I can recall times where I mentioned The Unbearable Weight or your family and you got all vague or changed the subject."

"I'm sorry," Javi gasped out, tears in his eyes. "It was selfish. I didn't want to lose you."

Your heart went out to him without your permission. Even after this huge, earth upturning reveal, you couldn't help but feel bad for being upset with him. He was a grown man, and you had good reason to be, but those soft brown eyes made your barriers weak.

"Make it up to me," you ordered him. "Tell me everything."

Once he started he couldn't stop. He told you about his father, how he was the head of their family's cartel, how he'd wanted him to take over when he died, but he'd refused. He hadn't been interested in that life at all, preferring his books and movies and the finer things in life to guns, and he told you about how enraged his father got when he tried to avoid him every time he wanted to teach Javi about their family business. The real one. Not the olive farm cover up that would have never allowed them to maintain their rich lifestyle. He'd blamed Javi's late mother, who had died in a car accident when he was twelve, for his son being too soft. For shielding him from that side of their lives for too long.

Javi had made amends with his father when he was hospitalized and dying from lung cancer, but with his death Javi traded one bully for an even greater one. His cousin Lucas.

With his lack of interest in his family's illegal sales of guns, his father had willed the business to Lucas, who had always been anxious to dig his claws into it. Most of the money had gone to Lucas too. The only thing Javi's father had left for him was the mansion and its surrounding property. Given, Javi could've sold it and moved away, like he had done after the events that ended with Lucas' death, but at the time he'd been young and unsure of what he wanted out of life. He only knew if he wanted to stay home, he'd need to bargain with Lucas. He couldn't continue to live his life as it was without some of the money his father had given to his cousin. And Lucas knew that. He gave Javi an ultimatum - become the face for their family's cartel or get out. Not knowing a better alternative at the time, Javi had accepted.

"It was easy to forget most of the time," he admitted. "I usually spent my days by the pool or on my boat or writing, hardly a care in the world. Until Lucas showed up needing me to meet someone for him for one of his shady deals and then the fantasy would be broken."

"He only let you stay to use you," you surmised. "With you pretending to be the head it kept the heat off of him. You were his shield. His decoy for both other cartels and all the federal agencies that might take interest in the cartel."

Javi nodded and sighed. "Saddest part is he pretended he was also doing it for my own good; that without his protection I'd be an even bigger target - and at the beginning I actually believed him. Wanted to. We were close growing up, almost like brothers, but after my father died, not long after my thirty-sixth birthday, that all changed. Lucas became completely blind to his power hunger."

"Who's running the business now that Lucas is dead?" you inquired nervously.

"One of Lucas' security team members," Javi answered. "We were the last of our family so they basically battled it out while I escaped, with the help of the CIA. In exchange for intel they gave me a passport to anywhere I wanted to go. I remembered visiting wine valley one autumn with my parents when I was eight or nine. It was a fond memory, even though I couldn't drink any of their products. Though if I remember correctly my father might have allowed me a taste from his glass once or twice."

"So no one's gonna come after you?" you quizzed. You were both worried for him and yourself. You may have been sheltered but you knew enough about cartels to know most people didn't leave one alive.

"No," Javi said. "I'm sure of it. The new boss isn't worrying about me. I'd be dead by now if that was the case."

"Well, that's reassuring," you muttered and he chuckled.

"Is there anything else you want to know?"

You frowned as you pondered it, then remembered the part in the movie where he and Nick took LSD for writing inspiration.

"Do you still take drugs?"

Javi's expression dropped again. You had a feeling he was recalling that your brother had succumbed to addiction. That you frowned on recreational drugs for that reason, no matter if they were hard to overdose on or not.

"Just weed," he assured you. "I stopped taking LSD when I arrived in the states. I didn't want to screw up the life I was building here. Didn't want to be caught with illicit drugs. So I only took legal ones."

"Good," you said, nodding.

"I can stop that too if it would make you feel better," he offered. "I don't want to lose you over a recreation."

You thought about agreeing to it, but something in you wanted to see middle ground. "I don't want to be that uptight girlfriend, especially when something is legal." For a few beats you mulled over what you could live with. "Edibles. You can still take edibles. I won't get upset. Just...use it responsibly."

A flash of surprise crossed his face, but Javi nodded. "Deal."

With your conversation over, the consequences of your the late night out and the wild emotions you'd just come down from sunk in. You were exhausted.

"Can we go back to my apartment now?"

"Certainly," he agreed. "Just let me tell Nick and Olivia we're going."

"I'll be in the car," you told him, grateful that he hadn't suggested you go in to say goodbye too, and that he was driving you home. You were barely able to keep your eyes open after you slid into the passenger seat and as he drove you back.

You were outside your apartment door in the empty hallway when another question sprung up in your head.

"Do you still have a room dedicated to props from Nick's movies?"

Javi frowned, hesitant to tell you, even after how much turmoil his lying had caused that night, but he eventually did the right thing and nodded solemnly. "I do."

"Show me next time I'm in the valley?" you inquired with no judgement in your tone. You'd taken a part in more than one fandom in your lifetime.

He couldn't help but beam at you, delighted that you were taking interest in his secret room, reassured that you didn't think it was crazy by the serious expression on your face.

"Of course."

xxx

Tagged: @harriedandharassed

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