#best places in Colombia

[travelernight]

Colombia`s Magic: Explore 10 Captivating Destinations That Will Enchant You

[trustherkindheart]

When is the next match? And do we know who they’re playing???

Nope, this was the end of the group stage and they're going to re-seed before the knock-outs start. The first round of knockouts is this weekend but we don't know whether we will play Saturday or Sunday or what time.

I think the most likely scenario is that us and Colombia are the #4 and #5 teams and play each other. Canada, Brazil, and Mexico will be the group winners more than likely and play the #6 - #8 teams. I think we end up the 2nd best 1 loss team on GD and come #5, with Colombia at #4.

[yopossum]

The Laredo Javi gifs made me do this. I was powerless against them.

Main Masterlist

The Secret Place

Pairing: Javier Peña x best friend f!reader

Rating/Warnings: E - 18+ only! Post S3 Javi, Laredo, no age gap, friends to lovers to no contact to friends and lovers like no time ever passed, filthy fluffy smut, Chucho being the best and also a troublemaker, brief mentions of narcos and sex workers (Javi uses the word whores, paraphrasing the people who bother him about Colombia), drinking questionable whiskey, oral (f and a tiny bit of m receiving), boob in mouth action, PIV with a condom *and* on the pill good job guys, sex in an old treehouse probably not a great idea irl. Reader is described as having dark, prominent nipples and genitalia, grown out black pubic hair, heavy hanging breasts, thick dimpled thighs and a fleshy waist and belly. Her hair (on her head) is not described, nor is her skin tone (she does not blush or redden). Both Javi and reader speak Spanish, which is in italics.

———————————————————————————

“Javier Peña. Long time. Back for good?” You reached out for a friendly handshake.

“Nah, for evil.” He winked, holding your hand in his a little more firmly, a little bit longer than he would anybody else’s. You acknowledged it with a fond squeeze, undetectable to curious eyes.

“Sounds about right. Catching up with everybody?”

“Trying to avoid it.”

You laughed, hand on your hip. “No surprise there either. Well, I just came over to your table to ask the handsomest man at the wedding for a dance.” You smirked.

“I’m not sure that’s me, cariño,” Javi said, eyebrow quirked and jaw tensing skeptically.

“Never said it was, Javi. I was talking about Chucho.” It was your turn to wink.

He huffed out his nostrils and shook his head with a smile as you turned to his father with outstretched arms, yelling, “Take me for a spin, viejo! Let’s remind your boy where he got all those smooth moves.”

“He won’t know what hit him, mija,” Chucho laughed, standing to take your hands. “Watch my beer, Javier.”

“You got it, Pop.” He nodded at the older man, whose eyes were crinkled shut in laughter at the way you twirled onto the dance floor and beckoned to him. Javier nursed his own drink, dark eyes following you under heavy lids as you and Chucho spun around the floor.

After several songs, Chucho bowed out, making his way back to the table, and Javi lost track of you.

“You’ve still got it,” he murmured to his father around the lip of his beer bottle.

“Damn right!” he crowed. He took a long sip of his beer, looking out at the wedding reception, and sighed. “Listen, I know it’s been a long time, but—”

“—Pop, don’t.” Javier cut him off, shooting him a stern look.

Chucho raised his palm. “Let me finish, son. You know it was always her. I know it was always her. Hell, all of Laredo knows it was always her.” He stared intently at Javi’s face. “Folks weren’t as surprised as they acted when things went sideways with Lorraine. Doubt Lorraine was.”

“Yeah.” Javi looked at the table, ran his thumb along the label of the bottle, the condensation on the glass making the paper ball up and peel as he rubbed over it. “Everyone knew. I was an idiot, fucked it up.” He swallowed the dregs of his beer and stared through the empty brown glass, his own frowning distorted reflection wobbling back at him.

“You got that right,” Chucho chuckled, running a weathered hand along the brim of his white cowboy hat. “Was saying, mijo, it’s been years. Don’t you think you’ve punished yourself long enough?”

Javi scrubbed his hands down his face, careful not to muss his hair and ruin any of the photographs, incur the wrath of a coven of tías like he had at Danny’s wedding. “The shit I’ve done? A life sentence wouldn’t scratch the surface, Dad. Things change, life goes on. Looks like your dance partner left, anyway.”

“She sure did, pendejo!” Chucho laughed from deep in his belly. “Why the hell d’you think I’m talking to you about it now? Our girl fue al lugar secreto, she told me to tell you.”

Javi’s guts stuttered, and he tried to school his features into a convincingly stoic look. “The secret place, huh? Not sure I even remember where that was.” His eyes were pulled to the clock on the wall. 9:40.

“No manches, Javier. You know exactly where it is.” Javier avoided his gaze. Of course he knew exactly where it was.

Chucho turned to chat with a relative while Javi rolled his empty bottle on the tablecloth. Several songs played through, the party still boisterous. From across the dance floor, Javi locked eyes with Lorraine, who smiled brightly. She waved, and Javi groaned, feeling obligated to stand and cross to his ex would-have-been wife.

“Lorraine.”

“Javier. You look good.”

“Thanks. You too.”

“Oh gosh, you think so?” Lorraine tucked a lock of loose blonde hair behind her ear and flushed. “The kids make me feel so haggard sometimes. They sure keep me busy!”

Javier gave a half smile. “Sounds like it. I’m glad you, uh, got the life you wanted. I’m sorry, for… all of it.” He pursed his lips and glanced at the clock again. 9:57.

“Yeah, I know,” she nodded. “I forgave you a long time ago, Javi. Lord knows I wasn’t entirely innocent. And now I have Randy; I have the kids. It would’ve been wrong, the two of us.”

“Definitely,” Javi snorted, dimple deepening in his cheek. “Well, just… thought I’d say… something. You really do look good, Lorraine. I’m glad life’s treating you well.”

Lorraine smiled soft and a little bit sad. “Thank you. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Javi gave her a tilt of his chin in farewell as a blur of a child crashed into Lorraine’s legs before striding back to his table.

“Taking a piss, Pop,” he muttered to Chucho, who was still deep in conversation with whichever cousin. He clapped a hand to his father’s shoulder.

“Sure you are, son,” he replied, patting his son’s hand without looking back at him. “Dile que I owe her another dance. See you in the morning. I’m cooking breakfast.”

Javier rolled his eyes and bit back a reply, just squeezed gently and made his way out of the reception hall into the night. 10:10.

———

“Took you long enough, Peña.”

“Mierda. How the hell did we used to do this every day?” Javi grunted, swinging precariously on the old knotted rope as he clambered into the treehouse.

“For starters, we weren’t fucking old,” you laughed, taking a drag of your cigarette. You offered it to Javi as he pulled the last of his body through the hole in the floor and flipped the hatch shut, sending the hanging lantern swinging.

“Nah. Tryin’ the gum thing.” He flopped onto the wooden floorboards and tried to find a comfortable way to angle his wide frame in the small space. Their lugar secreto.

“¡No mames!”

“En serio.”

You spit on the floor and stubbed the cigarette into it. “Well shit. Good for you, Jav. Must’ve taken a lot of willpower — I don’t imagine you have any less need for vices now.” You grinned at him.

“Yeah, no fucking kidding,” he sighed. His fingers tapped on the ground, antsy.

“You’ve always been a stubborn asshole, though, so if anyone could do it, it’d be you,” you said with a cackle.

“Vete a la chingada,” Javier grumbled warmly.

“Quite the mouth you’ve got on you, Javi,” you tutted, turning to sit with your back against the opposite treehouse wall and stretching your legs out parallel to his.

“You know better than most how true that is,” he said, eyebrow quirking suggestively.

“Sucio,” you chided. “Glad to see some things haven’t changed.”

Javi smirked, sat silent. He let his head tip back against the wall, looked up at the stars through the open hole in the roof of the old treehouse. The wood there had rotted through years before the two of you found the place, when your necks and shoulders had ached from sunburns and monkey bars instead of tension and grief. Back then, before Laredo was haunted, you’d climbed up here and patched each other’s hurts with bandaids, hugs, shitty liquor, and eventually, after some years, soft touches, kisses, hot skin sticky and desperate against hot skin.

“You’re not gonna ask me about Colombia?” he said eventually, leveling his eyes back at you.

You shrugged. “Do you want to talk about Colombia?” you asked.

“No.”

“I figured as much. No, I’m not going to ask you about Colombia.” The treehouse was silent again.

“I came home, few years ago. Went back.” Javi said, eventually.

You hummed thoughtfully. “Why?”

He cracked his knuckles. “Got in some shit. DEA told me to leave. Then they asked me to come back. So I did.”

“You done now?” you asked simply.

“Yeah.”

“Feel like a hero?”

Javi gritted his teeth. “Feel like a piece of shit, usually.” He clenched his hands into fists, released them, repeated the action without looking up from the toes of his boots alongside your knees.

“Well, hey, at least you don’t look it,” you offered, and Javi couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re much better looking than you were in the 70s, even if your clothes haven’t changed.”

“Fuck you,” he snorted. “You didn’t seem to have any complaints back then.”

You scrunched your nose at him and stuck your tongue out. “I didn’t know any better back then. You’re not the only one who expanded their horizons, Peña.”

The smile slid from his face and he bit at his lip, a sneer creeping into his expression. “You too with the brothel shit, huh? Christ. All anybody fucking wants to talk about, what narcos I shot and what whores I fucked.”

“Did I say any of that, Javi? Jesus. Don’t try to pick a fight with me, it won’t work. I’m glad you were fucking around down there. I’m sure it was hell. Sounds like burying your traumas in warm pussy helped bring you back alive. I’m grateful for that.” You looked at him plainly, like it was the most obvious reaction in the world for you to have, like his confusion at your response was the strange thing.

“Besides,” you added, “I’m sure you treated them well. I know better than most, right?” You waggled your eyebrows at him and his frustration and surprise melted away, dripped out of his mind.

“So, I was memorable?”

“Stop fishing for compliments.” You whacked one of his boots with the back of your hand, and he tipped it back toward you, pushing at the hem of your skirt with his toe.

“You were memorable,” he said quietly.

When you glanced at him, moonlight brightening the piloncillo brown of his eyes, his expression was softer, less closed off. Echoes of a younger Javier, your playmate and closest friend and confidant and co-conspirator and lover, here in your secret space like he’d never left, never grown out of Laredo, never been hardened by the cruelties of the world.

Your Javi.

“So you definitely remember what we used to get up to in here, then?” you teased, reaching for a lidded crate shoved into the corner and pulling out an ancient bottle of whiskey.

Javi’s mustache twisted up at the corner. “I remember you were a handsy drunk,” he said, grabbing the bottle and twisting off the lid, taking a slow pull from the mouth of it and wincing. “God, this is awful.”

You laughed and took the bottle back from him, taking a sip of your own. “Beggars couldn’t be choosers! We didn’t have many options for sneaking liquor.” The whiskey warmth flowed through your body like bitter sunshine. “And handsy, hm? I don’t think I was usually the one to start anything.”

Javi pawed at the bottle, downing another gulp, and you watched his Adam’s apple slide down his taut, tanned throat. “Hm, maybe not,” he mused, rocking his jaw to the side and letting his eyes rake down your body. “But I always made sure you finished,” he grunted.

You grabbed the whiskey for a final slug and capped it, sliding it back against the wall before pressing yourself up to your knees. “Is that a habit you’re still holding onto, Peña?”

You leaned forward and placed your palms flat on the ground, crawling, partly seductively and partly pragmatically because you couldn’t stand upright in the treehouse, along the length of Javi’s legs. You knelt immediately next to him and reached out to smooth the red and blue plaid collar of his flannel, then cupped a hand to his cheek.

Instinctively, Javi turned into your touch, letting his eyes close for a second and giving a gentle kiss to the meat of your thumb. He looked back to you and let his face rest in the cradle of your palm.

“Still holding onto it. Held on to everything that had anything to do with you.” He worried at his plump lower lip with his teeth, then tongued at the plush cleft there.

You swung one leg over his lap and sat in a straddle across the tops of his thighs, denim of his jeans scratching against the bared skin under your dress.

“Should’ve held on to me, Jav.”

Javi placed his hands at the flare of your hips, splaying his wide thick fingers to knead at the flesh there, more plentiful and pliant than the last time he’d touched there. Where the world had made him rough, shattered, sharp, you’d been tumbled like sea glass. Smoother, softer, light shining right through you, spilling onto him.

“I should’ve.”

“I could’ve held tighter too.”

“I wouldn’t have let you.”

“You’re right.”

“That’s a first.”

You both snickered, and you let your body rest against Javi’s chest. He threaded his arms around your waist and pulled you tight to him, pressing the bridge of his nose into the shelf of your collarbone to inhale deeply.

“It was always you. You know that, right?” he breathed against your skin.

“I do. I knew then, I know now. Things happened how they happened. It’s been a long time.” You spoke the words into the dark waves of his hair, tickling at your mouth and chin.

Javi’s voice was smaller than it had been, more hesitant. “Do you think…” He paused for a beat. “Do you think it’s been too long? Or, not long enough?”

“I don’t know. Me vale, Javier. I don’t give a shit. ¿Sabes?” You ran a finger in a small circle around the top button of his shirt.

“I don’t know if I do,” he answered honestly. His grip on your hips tightened slightly, and he scooted you just an inch or two further up to the apex of his thighs.

“I think it’s a series of miracles that you’re here and I’m here and we can still manage to squeeze our ancient asses into this treehouse,” you said frankly. “I don’t need to figure anything else out right now. Tonight? It’s enough for me to know we’re both still here, that this is still here.” And when you said this, Javi knew you didn’t mean the treehouse, but the real lugar secreto, the secret place that lived inside you both, where neither of you had ever let go of the other.

“Lie back against the wall, cariño,” Javi ordered in a soft, even husk.

You climbed off his lap and crawled back to the place you’d been sitting before, legs out in front of you.

“Knees up,” he rasped. You obeyed, skirt of your dress slipping down your raised thighs to pool at your waist. “Let them fall open nice and easy for me, baby. Just like that,” he murmured, coming up onto all fours and rubbing a thumb on your ankle bone as you let your knees drop outward.

Javi failed to bite back the moan that fell from his mouth as you spread before him, only a slip of your black thong visible as the thin wet gusset nestled into your sex, dark lips and an Eden of black curls devouring the fabric. He, too, wished to be devoured.

He reached his hands up under your ass, hooking his fingers into the floss of your underwear and peeling them from your center, wiggling them down your legs and tossing them aside. Javi carefully lowered himself to his belly, flat across the floor, his body longer than he used to be so his knees were bent and his feet rested against the opposite wall. He looked up with wide, curious eyes, asking silently for permission.

“It was always you, Jav. Still is.” You carded your fingers through his thick hair and he growled.

Javi slid his hands along your thick thighs, trying to memorize the feel of every new dimple and stretch mark on the once-familiar canvas. When he reached the end of your legs, that divine join, he used the breadth of his shoulders to press your knees even further apart, sliding his forearms under your legs to grip around your hips.

Your folds pulled open languidly as your legs spread, stretching glossy strings across your entrance, the long dark sticky swollen petals of you blooming like something rare and tropical, heady and intoxicating. Javi nudged forward, nose brushing through the course hairs as he nuzzled its strong curve against you, dragging it in a lazy back and forth over your clit. Your pussy fluttered and you drew in a sharp breath through your nose.

“Looks like she remembers me too,” Javi chuckled darkly.

He pressed sloppy open-mouthed kisses to the creases of your thighs, over your puffy mound, running up and down along the seam of you, puffing hot wet air over your asshole to see it clench and quiver.

“She wants you to stop teasing,” you whined, but your complaint was cut short with a gasp when you felt a broad lick along your slit, Javi sliding the flat of his tongue through you and flicking at your clit with its pointed tip.

Your legs fought to fold closed on Javi’s head, but his arms kept them pinned open, on display for him, bisected and dripping. He ran his tongue over and around every fold, prodding and sucking and nibbling, stretching you gently with his teeth and slotting his lips with yours in an intimate, hungry kiss.

His tongue moved through you instinctually, patiently, reverently. A disciple, attending to the temple of his deity. Javier Peña did not believe in God. He believed in worship.

Javi slid one thick finger, then another, through your shining slick, swirled them at your clit before pressing them inside of you up to the knuckles. He relished the groan that clawed out of your throat, the clench of you around his digits, as he pumped them in and out, fingertips dancing on the spongy spot that made you writhe for him. He watched your face, lips parted and panting, brow glistening, both exactly as he’d remembered you and more perfect and beautiful than you’d ever been before this moment. And you’d always been perfect and beautiful.

He dropped his face again to suck the bead of your clit between his soft lips, alternating slurping around the hood with laves of his tongue as he continued to thrust and curl his hand inside you. The obscene thick wet sounds of your pleasure wove with mingled moans and soft gasps. Javi felt, sensed, the small escalations in your as they built on each other — the flickering tense of your leg muscles, the tightening of your stomach, your affrettando breathing. He increased his efforts, dribbling a stream of spit onto you, into you as he stuffed his fingers into your pulsing cunt over and over again.

“Oh, oh, Javi. Fuck, Javi. I’m…” Your legs began to shake, some overwhelming and impossible pressure building deep inside you. Javi didn’t slow, just lavished prayers into your pussy and ground his hips against the old creaking floorboards.

“I know, baby, I know,” he chanted over you, “I’m here, baby, it’s me, I’ve got you.”

Your fingers were thrust into his hair and twisted around the soft dark strands, and you tugged, pulling a guttural roar from Javier’s chest. “Dámelo, mi vida,” he snarled. You felt the irresistible urge to bear down on Javi’s hand, walls seizing up around his fingers until that delicious pressure burst. You arched and shrieked as a dizzying pulsing gush erupted from your cunt, cascading over the man between your thighs as he groaned, swallowed and suckled desperately as he rutted into the floor. The sensation continued to crash over you, waves smashing against a cliff without end. Your vision was flashing, teeth chattering violently as you keened and bucked at the overstimulation. Javi withdrew his fingers from your channel and slid them around your clit, using your release to slip rapid circles around the swollen pearl until the world around you exploded, a razor sharp orgasm ripping through you on top of a final wave of warmth that poured out from your wrenched body.

Javier looked up through long lashes, his pupils blown and lips swollen and red. He was dripping with you, drenched and devoted, as though he’d been dunked in a baptismal font.

You gestured faintly at him, not able to move your hands beyond a small wave up your body. Javi got the message, clambered up over you and let you throw your sagging arms around his neck so he could roll with you onto his back and drape you over him. You melted against his chest, still panting, and he ran his hand over your shoulders, down your spine, over the curve of your ass. His cock throbbed against the zipper of his jeans, straining painfully in the tight denim, but he tried his best to ignore it. To just hold on to you.

“I think I owe your informants a thank you card,” you wheezed finally, breath slowing closer to its normal pace. Javi snorted into your crown, kissed your forehead at your hairline.

“Quite the mouth, huh?” he teased softly, and you pinched at his waist through his shirt with a chuckle. “Mierda. That was…” Javi trailed off, running a hand through his sweat-curled hair.

“Yeah. It was,” you agreed, neither of you needing to finish the sentence. You reached up to touch his face, the deep furrows that creased his skin there smoother and shallower now. “So. Mi vida, huh Peña?” You smirked up at him.

Javi’s cheeks pinked and he bit at the inside of his mouth, bashful as if he hadn’t bathed in you minutes before. “Too much?”

“Nah, I liked it. Did you mean it?”

Javi paused before answering, looking down at you almost meekly. “If I did?”

You smiled against him. “Then I like it even more. Kind of how it’s always been here, right? How it’s always been for us.”

He smiled back with relief. “Yeah,” he huffed out. “Yeah, it has been. Could still be, maybe? It feels like… like we… fuck. It feels like this is the first time in a long time I’m where I belong. Here, with you.”

“Between my legs?” you said with a laugh playing at your eyes.

“Sí, yes, Christ, forever.” Javi groaned again, licked the taste of you from around his lips, nostrils flaring when his dick twitched insistently. You clocked it.

“Enjoyed yourself, guapo? Need some attention?” You rolled your hips slightly, pleased when Javi sucked in a breath through his teeth and shivered.

“Are you… can you…” he stuttered out, and you shushed him with a finger to his lips, which he kissed.

“Can I stand? No,” you chuckled, shaking your head. “But I want to stay right here in your lap and let you fuck me, Jav. Te quiero.”

Javi sat bolt upright, holding on to your body as he scooted to the wall and leaned back against it. “We’re gonna be so fucking sore tomorrow. Fucking in the treehouse.”

“We don’t have to,” you offered breezily, teasing. “If it’s too much for you in your old age.”

“Don’t you dare. Pinche chiflada. Yes, we fucking do,” Javi objected immediately. “Besides,” he jabbed with a pointed finger, “we’re the same age.”

You laughed at his urgency. “Ahí está. ‘Atta boy, Peña. You’re overdressed, in that case.” You moved to unbutton his flannel, revealing more of his smooth, freckled chest. “This is a nice shirt, by the way. You looked handsome as hell tonight.” You undid the last button and slid his shirt off his shoulders, running your hands over the firm rounds of his muscles.

“Not the handsomest, though?” he smiled, leaning forward to nip at your collarbone.

“Nope, sorry. That’s always gonna be your pops,” you said with a shrug.

“Pendeja,” Javi muttered. “Can we stop talking about my dad right now, please?” He fumbled at your dress clumsily. “This needs to go.” You guided his hands to the buttons that ran down the back and chuckled against his ear as his fingers flew over the closures and he yanked the thin cotton up over your head and discarding it to the side.

“Fuck, querida. These tits…” Javier lunged toward your chest, starved, pulling one brown nipple into his mouth and moaning around it while he palmed the weight of your other breast in his hand, lifting and squeezing. You tipped your head back as he swirled his hot tongue around and over, coaxing you to a peak, then pulled off with a slurping pop. “Gorgeous. Even better than I remember,” he groaned, wiping spit from the corner of his mouth with his thumb.

You wriggled your naked body back on Javi’s legs, eliciting a whine of protest before he realized your hands were deftly unfastening his belt. He reached down to assist and you swatted him away with a laugh. “Let me have my fun, huh?” you chided, slipping your finger through a belt loop and giving his jeans a firm tug before undoing the button at his waist. You smirked at the thatch of hair peeking out from the fly. “No chones? Hussy!”

Javi’s dimple deepened, his lip curling. “Always prepared, baby.”

You shook your head. “You’re still a menace, Peña. Pero, speaking of prepared, I’m on the pill, but…”

Javier cut you off. “Tranquila. Wallet.” You reached into his bulging front pocket and slid out the weathered leather, opening it and fishing through until you felt the telltale foil square.

“Thank god. I’m sure we have some stashed up here still but I don’t know I’d trust them to hold up,” you huffed with a smile, and sat back on your heels in front of him. With practiced ease, you tore open the packet, wiggling it at the man in front of you. “Now you can take your pants off.”

Javi didn’t break his gaze, just lifted his hips and slid his tight jeans down his thighs. You pulled his boots off for him, one at a time, then yanked his pants the rest of the way down his calves and over his feet, socks coming with them. You hurled them into the corner and let your eyes rest on Javier’s nude form. He brought one fist to his base and gave himself a few slow tugs, watching you watching him.

You crawled your way up over his body and relished the way his thick cock bobbed in anticipation, the way Javi’s stomach muscles quivered under your hungry stare. Glancing down at the blushing tip of him, you couldn’t resist when you saw the gleam of precome beading at his slit, and you dipped down to taste him, his distinct salt and musk making you dizzy with want. Javi’s hips bucked wildly at the unexpected touch of your tongue. You flicked your tongue over his frenulum, licked down his shaft to the seam of his balls, and back up along a delicious pulsing vein before taking his fat head into your mouth, giving a firm, but brief, suck.

Javi gasped, biting back a moan and sucking air in through his nose with a shiver. “Can’t… do… that…” he managed, his voice graveled and tight. He grabbed your chin between his thumb and forefinger to and pulled your head up level with his. “Need you too bad. Need to be inside you, cariño. Now.”

You pulled the condom from the foil and pinched the tip, then unrolled it down Javier’s throbbing length til the ring was snug around his base. His eyes didn’t leave your hands until you finished, and you reached up to his shoulders and eased yourself to straddle across his strong thighs, his latex-covered cock wedged between your stomachs. He was breathing heavily, sweat starting to pool at the dip of his throat. He brought both hands to the sides of your face, hooking his thumbs under your jaw, and looked into you with his big dark glassy eyes. They reminded you of the night sky that shone through that hole in the roof, the way if you let your vision unfocus it felt like you could see the deep blacks and browns reveal themselves to be layers and layers and layers of stars. You felt like you could see on forever, see the whole universe.

Javi brought your forehead to his, his nose pressed next to yours, and gently rolled his hips into you, the slight friction reawakening your still-sensitive clit and releasing a fresh stream of slick. You lifted up and brought your hips forward, bringing one hand from his shoulder to grasp him firmly and slide him through your folds before angling him at your entrance. Faces still flush together, breathing each other's air, you let yourself sink down onto him, both exhaling soft whimpers of pleasure as you stretched around his girth until you were fully seated in his lap, your channel squeezing around him greedily.

“Oh, fuck,” you whined. “Oh Jav, oh fuck. I missed this. I missed you.” You let your face drop to his neck, dangled yourself from his broad shoulders, and ground your hips in slow circles against his belly. Javi dropped his hands from your face and grabbed onto your sides, guiding your movements and digging his fingers into your skin, like he needed to be sure you were really there, needed to mash into your flesh and bone to know you weren’t an apparition, not some whiskey-conjured ghost in his empty apartment in Bogotá.

He let his head fall back, giving you space to lick and kiss at his neck while you rode him lazily. “You feel so good, baby. Christ,” he rumbled, words crawling out from deep in his throat. You pressed your open mouth to his collarbone, dragging your warm wet lips over the slice of it, sighed deeply. Javi could feel your legs shaking as they bracketed his own, fatigued from your earlier pleasure, and he slowed you to a stop before lifting you from his cock.

“Acuéstate,” he whispered, grabbing his forgotten flannel with one hand and fluttering it over the floor before turning you in his arms, nudging you onto all fours facing away from him and encouraging your cheek and forearms to rest on the brushed cotton.

“Mm,” you hummed sweetly, closing your eyes and wiggling your hips invitingly. Javi had to squeeze himself tight at the root, tried not to lose his mind when you presented your glistening pussy, swollen and stretched and desperate for him. “Need you, Javi.”

He sat up on his knees and pushed into your fluttering hole with a single thrust, crushing into the ring of your cervix and forcing a sob from your throat.

“¿Estás bien?” he panted, quaking with restraint as he held himself flush to your ass, letting you catch your breath.

“Oh fuck, yes. Cojeme duro, Javi,” you rasped beneath him.

He wasted no time. Javi withdrew quickly and slammed back into you, a deep wail spilling from your open mouth. He set a breathless pace, one hand clenched around your hip and the other spread possessively over the base of your spine. The brutal snap of his hips would’ve driven you forward across the floor if he hadn’t been holding you in place with such bruising force. His heavy balls swung and slapped against your bare skin with every thrust, and you could feel his sweat puddling at the sway of your lower back as it ran from his face and chest. The air was thick with the lewd squelching sounds of your bodies smashing together and the chorus of your breathy, rattling prayers and curses and cries.

Javi’s hips began to stutter, and he tensed his thighs and ass to try to control his thrusts. “Not gonna last. Need you to come, querida. Give me another, come on my fucking cock. Please, baby,” he rambled, an edge of desperation tinting his words. He slid a hand between your legs, bringing the rough pad of his finger to your clit to press and swirl frantically as he pounded into you. He could feel when you clenched around him, so strong he could hardly stay upright. When Javi hunched over you and pressed a hot, panting kiss between your shoulder blades, you broke apart with a hoarse scream. A burning climax crashed through you, your body going rigid with electricity, the overwhelming squeeze of your cunt ripping a howl from Javi as he came so hard his vision went white. He spurted with staggering jolts, thrusting weakly until your body went limp in his hold.

As the last of his seed dribbled out, Javier lowered you both gently to the floor, curling around your body as he pinched at the bottom of the condom and slipped his spent, softening cock from your clutch. He tied it off, set it aside, and laid back down to wrap around you again. You wriggled back into him and he tucked his arm into the plush fold of your waist, hand splayed over your panza and fingers tickling softly, no sounds but the breeze of your breaths and the thrum of your heartbeats in your ears. Eventually, you rolled over to face him, wincing as you turned.

“Won’t even have to wait until tomorrow to be sore,” you griped, rubbing at your neck. Javi reached out and covered your hand with his, dwarfing it, and massaged the knot that had started to form there with a firm thumb. You melted under his touch. “No regrets though,” you added with a reassuring snicker.

“Good,” he smirked, brushing his knuckles over your cheek. “Probably should put some clothes on before I get a splinter in my dick, though.” You snorted and nodded, sitting up to let him extricate himself and re-dress. Javi pulled his jeans up, not bothering to button them, and shoved his arms back into his shirt, leaving it hanging open. You scooped up your dress and pulled it over your head, your underwear nowhere to be seen. Javi sat back down against the wall and stretched one long leg out in front of him, bending the other at the knee. “Come here,” he said, his words lazy and syrupy.

You walked on your knees to the vee of his legs and turned to sit between them, letting your back rest against Javi’s warm, wide chest. He hooked his chin over your shoulder and nuzzled at the base of your ear with the tip of his nose, looped his arms around your ribs and squeezed you tight to him.

“My dad said to tell you he owes you a dance,” he muttered, dragging his teeth lightly over your trapezius muscle, his mustache ticklish against your overstimulated body.

“Ha! I knew it,” you said with a clap.

“Knew what?” Javi sucked at the thin skin at the base of your throat, just enough to make a small bruise begin to blossom there.

“We had a bet about you.”

He stopped peppering your neck with affections to look at you curiously. “A bet? What kind of bet?”

You cackled. “When I told him to tell you to meet me here, Chucho said you’d come running after me right away. I said you’d try to play it cool, sulk for a while, then when you got too desperate you’d tell him you needed to take a leak and disappear. If he was right, I’d buy him a six-pack. If I was right, he had to take me dancing.”

“Shit,” Javier chuckled under his breath. “That’s… yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what I did,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“You’re predictable, cabrón, what can I say?”

“I did talk, a little bit.”

“To Lorraine?”

“Damn,” he laughed. “How’d you know?”

You grinned and turned your face to rub your cheek against his skin, closing your eyes. “Like I said, predictable. Did you brawl?”

Javi hummed thoughtfully. “I apologized. So did she. It was… fine. It’s okay between us, I think.”

“That’s good,” you murmured, not moving from where you were snuggled into him.

He took a few deep breaths, and you waited patiently for him to say whatever it was he needed to work up to. He pressed his face to your shoulder again and kissed it softly. “I owe you an apology, too,” he exhaled against your skin.

You turned to look at him, to cup his face in your hand. “You don’t, Jav. You don’t need to apologize to me.”

His mouth began to move in protest. “I should’ve—“

“Basta.” You pressed a finger to his lips to still them, shaking it at him admonishingly when he tried to nip at it. “No should’ves, none of that. Everything brought us back here, right?”

Javier ticked his jaw, licked at his lip thoughtfully, before conceding with a half nod. “Nuestro lugar secreto survives,” he said with a soft smile.

“It does,” you agreed, running your thumb soothingly along the lines of his face, over the two creases permanently etched between his eyebrows. “You were gone, but you were still here, you know?”

“I thought about you. All the time.” His voice was quiet, somber.

“I know,” you grinned.

Javi huffed and snorted. “Oh, you already knew that, huh? How so?” he teased, pinching at the underside of your arm.

You squirmed away from his fingers, giggling. “You’re too predictable, ¿recuerdas?”

He sighed dramatically, quickly gave up his game in favor of hugging you close again. “I think you just knew me too well. Still do.”

“I know because I thought about you all the time, too,” you admitted, sitting back against him and tilting your head to look out the roof and up at the night. Javier did the same. “Eres mi vida también,” you said towards the sky.

“I fucked up tonight, though,” he rasped against the shell of your ear.

You stilled, raising an eyebrow in question. “¿De qué manera?”

Javi pressed a palm to your cheek and turned your face to his once more. “I didn’t kiss you yet.” You threaded your hands through the curls at the nape of his neck and pulled him to you, your mouths melding as easily as your bodies had. The kiss wasn’t heated or frantic; there were no clashing teeth and wanton cries. It was slow, soft, familiar. Two parts of a whole, slid back together where they were meant to be.

“So…” Javi breathed into your mouth between slips of tongues. “Pop is cooking a big breakfast. Want to come by the ranch?” He drew back enough for his eyes to focus on your face.

“Mm, a famous Chucho breakfast sounds great. What time should I come over?”

Javi grinned devilishly. “Right now.”

You rolled your eyes, shoving at his chest before kissing him deeply once more. “I don’t know what I was expecting,” you snarked. You both stood, joints creaking, both hunching over to avoid smacking into what remained of the ceiling. Your eyes scanned the treehouse for your missing thong while Javier pulled on his socks and boots, then fastened his clothes and tucked his wallet back in his front pocket.

“Missing something?”

You turned to answer him, seeing your underwear hanging from the tip of his index finger. He spun them around and smirked. “I’ll trade you for one of those cigarettes.”

“Keep ‘em,” you said with a wink. “We quit. We’re gonna try the gum thing.”

Javier beamed at you, sliding your panties into his back pocket. “Don’t have to tell me twice. You ready?” He lifted up the hatch.

“Mhm. But take that condom with you - there’s a trash can by the fence.” When he’d grabbed it, you flicked off the lantern, plunging the treehouse into darkness, moonlight just catching on the rough fibers of the rope below.

“Let me go down first,” Javi said, lowering himself through the hole, his boots finding a sturdy knot a few feet down, descending a short way before hopping to the dirt.

You grinned down at him from the treehouse. “You want to help me down? Tan caballeroso.” You dropped a pair of sandals to the ground and started to clamber down the rope barefoot.

“Of course, mi vida,” Javi said warmly, looking up at you with a wide, crooked smile. You’d made your way down a few knots when he added, “I’m also appreciating the view.” You shook your head and let go of the rope, jumping into Javi’s waiting arms and falling into another languid kiss before your feet found solid ground. When you bent down to grab your sandals from the dust, your skirt suddenly flew up, a hand cracking sharply over the bare flesh of your ass cheek, and you squealed, flying upright and glaring back over your shoulder.

“Shameless,” you tsked.

“Claro,” Javi shrugged, unapologetic. “But you love me.”

“Yeah,” you mused, slipping your sandals on and closing the short distance between your bodies to ruffle his hair. “I sure do. Always have.”

Javi leaned into your hand and purred, content for the first time in a very, very long time. “As long as I’ve loved you,” he said, quiet and firm. He nosed a kiss to your cheek and laced his fingers through yours. “Ready to go, mi vida?”

“Been ready for a lifetime, Peña. Take me home.” You walked hand-in-hand down the winding dirt road that led to the ranch, your path together lit, as it always had been, by a sky full of stars.

—————————————————————————

Some random taggies:

@timelordfreya @mothandpidgeon @hellfire-state-of-mind @maggiemayhemnj @beefrobeefcal @yourcoolauntie @jolapeno @whocaresstillthelouvre @schnarfer @jennaispunk @wordywarriorwrites @ameerawrites @survivingandenduring @freelancearsonist @artsy-girl-76 @goodwithcheese @javierpena-inatacvest @bluestar22x @carusolikey @beldroxramscal @tonysopranosrobe @toxicanonymity @for-a-longlongtime @luxurychristmaspudding @magpiepills @gasolinerainbowpuddles @oliveksmoked @sp00kymulderr @rebel-held

[woso-dreamzzz]

World Cup VI

Hardersson x Daughter!Reader

Natalia Guijarro (OC) x Hardersson!Reader

Part of The Big Adeventures Universe

Summary: It's heartbreaking

It's the worst kind of pain imaginable.

The kind of pain that lodges in a chest, in a throat, in a mind. The kind of pain that radiates throughout a body, weighing on someone, eating away at them until there's nothing left.

Eaten from the inside out.

Until there's nothing left but an empty husk of a person.

To be so close to a dream that will never be reached.

Not now.

Not ever.

It chokes someone from the inside, suffocating them until they can do nothing but accept their fate.

There's not much else to say about it.

The kind of pain that is only really experienced once in a lifetime.

The kind of pain only experienced in extra time of a football match as one last substitute is made.

The board goes up.

"On for number fourteen, number one for Sweden, Harder-Eriksson."

The final of a World Cup.

Sweden, two.

Spain, two.

And the worst person to take penalties against is subbed on.

"No," Talia says as she watches you run on," No, please. Please."

You'd taken a knock in the semifinals against Colombia, a bad one that had you sitting out most of the final.

Selfishly, Talia was glad for it.

The two goals she had scored wouldn't have gone in had you been standing between the sticks.

Had you been on in the beginning, there would have been no extra time.

You are the greatest goalkeeper in the world and you're never out of control in finals.

You thrive under the pressure, under the pressure of the whole world watching your every mood, under the pressure of Magda and Pernille's legacy.

You rise to the occasion every time.

You show why you are so sought after.

Extra time leaks away and the tears already fall as penalties are announced.

Your Sweden team isn't known for their penalty-taking abilities but it hardly matters. All it takes is one penalty to win.

One ball in the back of the net.

You can delay that for as long as you need to.

One goal to win a match.

One goal for a childhood dream to shatter.

One missed save to return to Spain as a World Champion.

But you have never let a penalty passed in your entire career.

Not at Linköping. Not at Arsenal. Not at Barcelona.

Not for Denmark. Not for Sweden.

No penalty has ever escaped you.

The shots are taken in quick succession.

You don't let any pass but neither does Spain's keeper.

The anticipation swells. The tension builds. The camera flashes to fans in the crowd.

To Patri, sitting in the stands with her hands clasped in front of her and a nervous look on her face. Talia has never seen her cousin so shaken before.

She cuts a striking picture against the complete calmness of Magda and Pernille when the camera switches again. They don't look worried in the slightest.

They've always been your biggest supporters, the biggest believers in your ability to do anything you set your mind to. They've seen the talent in you for years.

There is no reason for them to be worried.

Talia takes the ball, the last penalty for Spain.

She steps forward.

You come out of your goal, walking forward towards her until you're face to face.

The conflict is clear on your face.

To anyone else, you look deadly calm. Magda's feature on your face matches your mother's expression in the crowd but Talia can see through it.

The slight furrow of your brow, the downturn of the corner of your mouth. The way that you can't quite meet her eyes.

"I'm sorry," You say as she places the ball on the penalty spot.

"I know," Talia replies.

"I am really sorry, my love. I...I didn't want it to end like this."

"Don't be. Go do what you do best."

Talia's dreams of a World Cup slip through her fingers in an instant. She usually shoots right, in the top corner. This time though, she'll shoot left to the bottom.

Pernille sits up in the stands as you back away from Talia, returning to your line.

The stadium holds its breath.

A home World Cup win would mean the world to Sweden. To defeat the hosts would mean the world to Spain.

But you stand in their way.

A formidable force between the sticks with more experience than most your age and an unshakeable spirit that intimidates by just your mere presence on the pitch.

"She's got this," Magda whispers to her, clasping Pernille's hand tight," Even if it is Talia."

The stadium ripples with anticipation, shouts escaping throats as Talia lets the ball fly...

Your familiar red jersey moves, your black gloves reaching out.

Your body crashes to the ground.

A millisecond too late and the ball would have gone in.

Your fingertips manage to brush it away though, forcing it away from your line.

The knock to Spain's confidence is big.

It can be felt all around the stadium and just a box away, Pernille sees Patri bury her head in her hands.

Sweden's last penalty is taken quickly.

Scored even quicker by your captain.

A title defended on home soil. The triumph of Sweden over Spain.

The crowd is electric and Magda pumps her fist into the air, screaming like she'd just won this herself and Pernille hauls herself out of her seat to head down to the barriers with her wife to greet you.

The crowd is nothing compared to the roaring in Talia's ears as that pain settles into her bones and gnaws away at her muscles.

She falls to the floor, breathing in a ragged breath as a childhood dream slips away from her.

"I'm sorry," She can hear over her sobs," My love, I'm so sorry."

Familiar arms wrap around her. A familiar smell filling her senses and she grabs onto a familiar red jersey, pulling at it and forcing herself even closer.

"Go," She says," And celebrate."

"No," You reply, sitting down next to her and guiding her head to your shoulder where she could cry without cameras watching her," I'm staying right here."

"Your mothers-"

"Can wait," You insist," I want to be here. With you."

You've singlehandedly ruined Natalia's dreams. You had dangled a World Cup in her face and snatched it away again.

It was so close.

She was so close to being the first person to ever score a penalty against you.

Mere inches sat between her and the World Cup.

But you'd ruined it. You anticipated her change. You pushed away her penalty.

Last time, you'd scored Sweden's only goal. This year, you'd saved all of Spain's penalties.

You are Sweden's hero. Sweden's golden girl. Sweden's vice-captain and the greatest goalkeeper they've ever produced.

There is no hope of competing against you.

A World Cup won and a World Cup lost.

Magda and Pernille wait by the barrier. Talia can see them, ready to celebrate with you.

But you don't go anywhere.

You just hold her as she cries.

[jolapeno]

meet me in the city where we won't sleep

javier peña x f!reader | main masterlist

summary: home: a place where we feel most comfortable, loved, and protected — where we most feel at home. except javi, who has returned from colombia and feels his home is living miles away.

childhood besties!javi x f!reader

wordcount: 9k (i'm so sorry)

warnings: childhood best friend!javi. flirting. 18+ - although just a little smutty with fingers. brief mention of drunkenness years ago. emotions (ugh) and feelings (yuk) and idiots who just don't wanna confess things but really should. javi calls you flor and you call him a pineapple. alternating times.

an: originally started for april showers, it's taken me an age to get this done because i wanted it to be perfect. i really hope it is. the biggest thank you to @thetriumphantpanda who read all of this and gave me a gold star. it would have stayed in my drafts if not for you. thank you to @rhoorl for checking my spanish.

It would have been cliche to say he fell for you in a field of bluebonnets—your dress white, face glum, hands ripping up blooms from the soil that you clutched in your hand.

Lost, aimless, both in the blue of the petals and in your thoughts as you continued to yank stems up and bring bunches to your nose, unaware of him watching from the tree. His legs swung, and a smile slid into one cheek as the leaves rustled above in the warm breeze.

It took a while before you noticed him, practically half a field’s worth in your hands, hands wound around them as your dress swished at your ankles.

“What do you want, Piña?”

He supposed, for kids, that was an insult.

“What you doing in my field, Flor?”

Javi didn’t know your name then. Now he struggled to go a minute without thinking it.

Sitting still hadn’t seemed a possibility in the days since he’d been back.

And then, that’s all he’d done for the last eight hours before he was greeted by rain.

It’s relentless, an onslaught that blurs the world into a watery haze. The kind that soaks through every layer of clothing like a challenge; the type that drips from everything, making pools in the streets and turning them into dark mirrors, reflecting the grey and full clouds from above.

Not that Javi cares.

If anything, he likes it. Finds it cleansing, like the world is being washed clean, even if he knows how untrue that actually is as his eyes follow a bead rushes across the glass of the cab.

The driver has been mumbling about the weather for the entire journey—a thing he’s barely listened to since he’d recommended waiting for a break in the weather. It was likely they just didn’t wish to drop him where he’d described, rather hoping Javi would opt for someplace warmer, most likely smokier, so that he could call it a day too.

Javi doesn't do that now—smoking, that is.

Hasn’t done since he left that apartment that never felt like his, in a city that he’d spent years in that never felt like home. Threw them in the trashcan before his Pop had picked him up, craved and wanted all the way through dinner. He’d done it once, he’d do it again.

When the cab screeches to a halt, he pays, steps out (bag in hand) and spots the phone booth all in one fluid motion. It’s barely lit, front weathered by time and neglect. Smirk curling into his cheek as he remembers you telling him about it—that on cloudless days you can see it, likes to make stories about it as you enjoy a meal-for-one or crunches down cereal.

It hadn’t been a thing he’d thought much about.

Then, it was all he had thought about.

Standing there, making a story that could become real. A gesture, kind and deserving of someone who had put up with his shit since they were children. You’d always liked those big moments in the movies—his eyes glancing over at you, finding yours big, wide and shimmering with tears that wish to glide down your cheek.

Although, that had been well over a decade ago—the two of you had remained in touch, close, or as much as he could allow. Your visit to Colombia had still felt like the sunniest day, a bright spot in a sea of dark; a day that coloured his world in shades he hadn’t known existed, that dulled the moment he’d had to bid farewell at the airport.

It hadn’t been safe for you to do another, pleading in fact to not risk it. A thing, he suspects, is not a thing he’s been easily forgiven for.

He supposes it’s why he hasn’t told you he was coming. The flight had been booked, bag packed—fingers tapping, soul hoping you wouldn’t turn him away once he’d gotten here. To the phone box over the bridge from your place—the one obscured from view by the downpour that seemed never-ending.

Because, as soon as two weeks had racked up at him being home, he found himself itching to move, to be somewhere other than surrounded by fields and the watchful stare of his Pop. Parental worry a hard thing to hide from in a home washed in memories.

Sliding open the door, cramming himself into the booth, Javi had no concern about remembering your number. It was burned into him, etched into him with a blunt tool—almost studied, committed to memory while he ticked over godfathers and the weight of right and wrong.

He remembers when you’d changed it, when your voice informed him of the move, the chance—all excited tone, a pitch closer to a squeak than your voice: no more roommates, just me, myself and I.

He also remembers the ember inside of him pleased that Tom joined the underserving list, slid under Mia and Rich as you informed him you were single again.

Sliding quarters in, finger punching the numbers—he hopes you’re home. A niggling feeling threatens to unwind inside of him as the tone drills into his skull—attempts to drown out the rain rapping against the glass booth he’s standing in.

“Hello?”

“Flor?”

It kisses his ear, your snort. Light. Sweet. “Javier Piña, what do you want?”

You sound like you did in Colombia. Having half-expected the crackle meeting his ear to be down to the distance, rather than your shoddy home phone.

Pressing the receiver to his head, a smile there—desperate to flow out across his lips and exhausted face, he moves it back. “Tal vez te extrañé.”

“Mierda. I don’t believe you.”

Even amidst the noise of passing cars and the relentless drumming of raindrops, he catches the melody of your laughter—a symphony of joy that unravels a part of his soul. It releases it, unlocks it, beckons it to be free—metaphorically makes him release his shoulders, and take a breath. The part of him hidden away, floods back through him—no longer fearful of being taken, clawed or wormed from him as he handed other parts of himself to the job, the task, the goal.

Not you, though. Javi would never surrender you.

A pocket of sunshine he’d kept close to him like your chicken-scratch letters and your tipsy phone calls when he’d caught you coming in after a night with friends.

“Where are you, Piña?”

Wiping his mouth with his thumb, he pauses. Traces his index along the hair growing above his lip, glancing out through the rain-smeared glass, the one cracked in places. Not sure if any of the lights on the other side are hers, but lingering on each just in case.

“In a phone booth on a bridge…”

He hears you swallow, loud, almost difficult.

“…right across from your place.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Smirking, teeth nibbling at his bottom lip. “Are you lying to me?”

Smirking, he stares out again. “No.”

Because he couldn’t, not if he tried. Not just because you see through it, but because it wounds him to do so. Picks at him, and makes him bleed in ways that don’t ruin him in scarlet.

“Give me five minutes.”

The call ends before he can get in a bye.

The receiver placed back, bag straps cutting into his palms again as he exits, the heavens lashing against him as he slowly walks. Taking his time. Nervousness bubbling like a broth inside of him with each step, coming up to the top curve of the bridge, trying to look up, spot you—

Then he does.

Running, coat billowing behind—flapping in the wind as it breaks out over your face: that smile. The one that lit fires inside of him, the one first doing so at the time his bedroom at home had its last lick of paint, it now peeling, cracked.

Dropping his bag, Javi isn’t sure whether to brace or not—taking three more steps forward before you collide with him. Arms around him, chest to chest, your wet cheek sliding past his as your soaked clothes marry to his.

It would be odd to say it felt like home hugging you, but it does. It feels right, safe—a piece completing him as he digs his chin into your head.

“You smell the same,” you muffle into his chest.

Javi smiles, knowing the bottle on his dresser is the one from his younger years. Sun-ruined and likely faded, yet managing to linger on his skin enough to cause recollection.

Pushing past lilies, excusing himself through swarms of bodies adorned in black fabric, Javi found you sitting cross-legged between two tall stands of flowers.

Your eyes were puffy—red, swollen—and your dress was as black as his suit; your fingers were balled around a single lily and a scrunched-up tissue, the skirt of your dress skated over your bent knees.

“What d-do you want, Piña?”

But it didn’t land with the tone he had come to know.

Instead, he extended a hand you thankfully took, pulling you up from the ground before he opened his arms—letting you move in, slot yourself between them as they enveloped you close.

Letting his best friend fall apart at the back of the church, your sobs vibrated against his bones and his chin rested on your head as he whispered he had you, over and over again.

A thing you repaid when his mother passed a few years later.

Talking had always been a skill—unless he had to discuss feelings.

It wasn’t that it was easy to lie, or that he found the idea of feeling difficult—if anything, it was as though he felt too much. Guilt. Affection. Righteousness. Protection. Each one a little harder to carry, to wear.

More so around you. The walls had to be tighter, or they’d crumble into ruin, the dust spilling all his secrets before he’d confess whatever wasn’t already written over his face. But, you don’t needle him—instead, you make him a plate from leftovers, tell him about some gossip your mom had informed you of, until you offer him your shower, your sofa and bid him goodnight.

“You’ll be here in the morning?”

“Not going anywhere.”

Lingering in the doorway to your bedroom, fingers playing the piano on the wood. “You’ve said that before.”

He knows he has.

It rises up in him like a storm, whipping around his organs, making his chest tighten as he lies down in comfort but stares up at the unfamiliar. He can hear the rain, how it pitters and patters—how it likely streams down the windows behind your curtains.

He should find it odd that he'd rather fall asleep here, than in his bed back where he grew up. A strange solace in the unknown here, a quiet surrender to the whispers he usually has to hear when the night comes.

But, they're not here.

At some stage, he must sleep, before he wakes to the scent of coffee and soft sunshine. His ears catch the sound of you calling in sick—a cough, a put-on voice, one all removed when you throw a throw cushion at him and ask him what he wants for breakfast.

That’s how he finds his knee kissing yours under the small table as your spoon scoops cereal before letting it drop back into the bowl. Just like when you were kids. Just like when you were all excitable, too in a rush to sit for a moment, stomach likely fluttering with agitation.

“You keep staring.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Flor.”

The thing is, you’re not wrong.

Each time he has a second, he lingers—gazes. Metaphorically pinching himself as he forgoes digging a nail into his skin under the cuff of his shirt, just to make sure he isn’t dreaming. A thing he finds he’s doing now, after a night of laughing until you couldn’t keep your eyes open and a full day of exploring, you walk a little ahead before spinning on your heel to smile at him.

“I have to show you my favourite place—before you go.”

He hates that there’s an end date on this. Bought himself a few days of normal, before returning to something that feels anything but.

Scratching his jaw, brows raised and eyes wide. “You’ve replaced our spot?”

Rolling your eyes, you take his hand—fingers slotting, palm pressing against his. For a moment, a reflex, he thinks of pulling away. Thinking of what else sat as perfectly in his palm as you—a thing that took, but never gave. A thing that he held more than he had ever held a woman.

“My favourite place here.”

He expects a lot of things, maybe flowers, maybe a bar, but he finds himself inside a bookshop. One with floor-to-ceiling shelves, dark wood, the large window letting in light that barely reaches the back. He supposes it’s good they have a chandelier, one that sparkles, shines—like it’s as well maintained as the shelves.

“Books?”

“Books.”

Your finger prodding into him, facing him, body fully twisted. That smile there, the one which slides into one of your cheeks and makes his eyes flick from it to your eyes and then back.

It’s there when you turn on your heel down an aisle, it remaining when he follows—when he hovers close, so easily able to pin you, cage you in between his palms.

“Which do you recommend?”

Shooting him a look, you trail your finger over spines, over the shelf they sit on. “Didn't know you could read?”

“Funny.”

Grinning, you pull on one, handing it to him. His eyes take it in, the cover, the name, the author.

“I think you’ll like the characters,” you explain, eyes lighting up as you lean. “They're flawed but resilient.”

Chewing his cheek, he swallows. Listening, hearing you read the blurb after you lift the book in his hands so you can read it, word for word as he focuses on you. Noticing the way your eyes shine when talking about something you love, the way one of your hands begins to move as you describe the plot, and the characters. Realising, that he could listen to you talk about anything all day.

“You should read it,” you suggest, as he flips through the pages. Having never been much of a reader, time being a factor, his job has been the reason.

“Alright,” he nods, tucking the book under his arm. “I'll read it.”

Your smile brightens even more if that's possible.

“Chucho is gonna be so shocked when I tell him you bought a book.”

Frowning, he follows you, leading him down another aisle. “You talk to my pop?”

Shrugging, like it’s nothing. Like the words that are about to tumble out of your mouth don’t matter like they won’t stitch themselves to him and make him feel like pulling you to his chest.

“I check in—make sure he’s okay. Done it weekly since you left the first time.”

His face falls, descends slowly. He feels it—watches you take it in as yours slowly mirrors him. And, even if he’s been thinking it, it bubbling at the back of his throat, he finds himself unable to stuff it back down—to shove it between other regrets and unsaid words.

“I’ve really missed you.”

Each word lands, your eyes widening as your nose does a little twitch as they do, before you whisper, resting against the edge of a bookcase, “I’ve missed you too.”

Sat on the rock, the sound of a car door slamming disturbed the peace. Not needing to look, knowing that gait, that little kick of the ground as you stopped in front of him.

Hand shielding your eyes from the sun, flower tucked behind your ear.

“Hello, Flor.”

“Piña. Heard you were cursing Laredo.”

Smirking, you sat next to him, nudging him over. The two perched on a rock overlooking part of the city—as his head turned but his eyes stared at you from the corner of them.

“I give it a month and someone else will do something bad enough that people cross the street.”

Swallowing, he exhaled. “Thanks.”

“Did you love her?”

Turning his head, staring at you—eyes flicking from yours to a place on your face he shouldn’t look. “Not enough to marry her.”

“Then you did the right thing.”

A thing he only believed when your hand slid over his, hooking your little finger over his.

“It’s because you’re in love with me, isn’t it?”

Snorting, head shaking, your words washed back over him and he broke into a laugh. “Shut up, Flor.”

Nudging him, taking the flower from your hair and handing it to him. “It’s okay if you do, I know I’m a catch.”

He's embarrassed that it isn't until the second day that Javi finds the chance to really admire your place.

How it’s exactly what he imagined. So very you, all cosy, muted, with spots of colour. Plants and throw cushions, blankets and wicker baskets stuffed with things he suspects you have no recollection of.

What catches his eyes are the photographs, the memories frozen in time around your walls and on shelves. His eyes sweep over them, in a trance still from the scent of your perfume mixing with vanilla from a lit candle.

Each time he sweeps his sight over, he spots new things, remembering brief conversations, smirking to himself until his eyes land on a frame that makes his mouth part and his heart clench.

Him and you; you and him. Sunglasses far too big for your face, staring up at him as he beams at the camera. The backdrop of his ranch, his home, the one he so often left behind like it hadn’t mattered.

Done it weekly since you left the first time.

The words roll around his head now. All metal and round, bouncing against other thoughts, trying to dig his heels into the present and not wonder about what kind of calls you make—whether they’d be about him, whether you’d confess things you’d never admit to him.

Your clanging around is what pulls him to the present. The bangs of cupboards and pans clattering as he stares at it—as he notices how different his build is, how many years have passed. The occasional cursing from you is a rather nice anchor that keeps him in the present.

“Flor?” He waits until he hears you hum. “Order in again, I’ll pay.”

It’s here within the hour.

A favourite, you had told him. A quick apology that you’ll be messier than last night, that you’re dying of hunger. He reminds you he doesn’t care. Not as you slide the triangle slice out, the tip kissing your chin before it’s absorbed by your mouth, sauce lingering on your lips—dust from the crust resting on your nose.

He’s not sure what’s better, the taste of the pizza or the sight of watching you. Having the chance to watch you.

“So I have to ask.”

Grumbling, he pulls at the topping on his slice. “Here we fucking go.”

“Did you like the tie I sent you?”

Half-scowling, swallowing the mouthful of pizza—recalling the box on his desk, atop files and paperwork with a note attached: One down, three to go. Written in that same handwriting he could spot in a lineup—the one he had wished there and then would be etched into him, a mark left, a thing he could brush his thumb over when his heart ached and he felt lost.

“I was disappointed not to see you photographed in it.”

“You knew damn well I wasn’t going to wear a fucking pineapple tie to a press conference.”

Pouting, you smirk. Picking at another slice, staring up at him from the floor, all cross-legged. “Thought you might have for me.”

It’s there, ebbing—words that feel far more intimate than they should—crystallising, burning upon his tongue.

I’d do anything for you.

It’s there, unwritten, pulsating and breathing in the space between you and him, existing, never diminished. Memories where it’s been all but similar rising like lava, singeing him, threatening to burn away the walls he throws up for the sake of friendship.

Because he knows what people think. Saw it hung in his pop’s eyes at his Tia’s wedding when you came as a guest, an uninvited plus one that was welcomed like you were already part of the family. Heard it, in the wind between the grass before he’d left the first time, a farewell outdoor thing, your parents crestfallen, as though they’d assumed—like he imagined a lot of them—the two of you would have figured it out by now.

Watching you stand, hand outstretched for his plate, you take it with a smile. A shout of two options for drinks, an unsurprising one chosen by him—it bubbling in the glass when you hand it to him, settling in beside him.

“Not sure I told you, but you have a nice couch.”

“Most expensive thing in this place—probably better than my own bed,” you smirk, sipping your drink. Head rolling towards him, brows raised, eyes that bit wider. “So, are you okay?”

You’re the only one who could ask and get a reply, he supposes. Those same words were said to him a handful of times, down the phone from Murphy, over the table from Pop, even on aisles of the supermarket when he’d been staring between brands he hadn’t heard of.

“I gave you a day to tell me, and since you won’t, I’m gonna ask. Are you okay, Javier Peña?” you continue, body shifting, thigh pressing against his—heat radiating from between yours to his. “Because you’re methodical. You’re not… get on a plane and fly to a different city just because.”

“You not happy I’m here?”

Grinning, all teeth—it reaching and hanging in your eyes. “Los más felices. But, are you?”

Yes. It’s all he thinks.

Chewing his tongue, his eyes drop to his soda because he’s unsure how to say that. Not as he watches the bubbles float up and burst—the song that had been playing coming to a stop, allowing the rain to play an interval against your windows.

It doesn’t make sense, in some ways: how he’s kept you—been able to keep you close. Somehow not ruined you, twisted this thing between the two of you, made it rot, sullied it with disappointment and selfishness.

“I am now,” he replies.

Good, you breathe. Letting it sit, simmer. Paper over any cracks as your eyes sparkle and remain fixed on him, tracing him as though not completely sure he’s real.

That is, until you grab the remote, excitedly telling him about the night of television they have ahead of them. A blanket, at some stage, finds itself over him, you nestling into his side—like when they were teens before the world became a problem and narcos were all he hunted.

For a while, you catch him up, explain plots and characters. Then, you fall silent, brows crinkled in concentration. His eyes slide to the side to watch, to spot the little things you do as she settles in closer, brings your legs up, and rests almost all of yourself against him.

Between one show and another, he feels the rhythm of your breathing change, your body relaxing further against him. He glances down and finds your eyes closed, features soft and serene in sleep. Realisation dawns on him—you’ve fallen asleep. His heart does a slow tumble in his chest, a wave of warmth spreading through him. All of a sudden aware of the gentle weight of you against his side, the way your hand is loosely holding onto him. He watches, just for a moment, taking in the sight of you, so peaceful and trusting in your sleep. This moment is so intimate, so precious, he wants to freeze it in time.

What else is a guy like you gonna do…

This, he thinks. Looking at you, asleep, peaceful—curled into his side, fingers around his forearm.

Smiling, he takes the remote from your fingers, turning the volume down as he gets more comfortable—pressing a soft kiss to your hairline.

He carried a single red rose down the side of your house—nudging open the window the rest of the way, climbing in like he had done years ago.

He didn’t need eyes, didn’t fancy having to explain to his parents how he could do that to that nice girl and her family. Javi had faced enough judgement, enough stares.

The only eyes he wanted were staring at him, remaining so as he stepped close and handed you the flower with the thorns picked free. “Come with me.”

Sighing, eyes averting, you swallowed loudly in the thick quietness. “You don’t want that. Your best friend following you.”

Eyes flicking up to meet his, you took another deep breath. Fingers flexed at your side, weight shifting from one foot to the other before you exhaled—louder than before.

“I don’t want to follow you, best friend.”

Then don’t be just that, he thought, thumb swiping over the tips of his fingers as he hovered, waited. Then he took a step closer, and another. The gap closed, becoming shorter and shorter—

“What are you doing, Piña?”

“Kissing you.”

Lips pursing, trying not to smirk, you took the rose and put it on your dresser. “Don’t feel your lips on mine, Javier.”

And then he kissed you, his fingers clutching at your jaw—body pressed against yours, tasting your whine, your moan.

He felt your fingers clutch at his shirt as he told you to be quiet.

Laid you on your bed of flowers, knees digging into stitched roses and sunflowers, as you arched off the bed when his fingers slid between your thighs—like he wished he’d done a handful of times before now.

He’s not sure of the time when he wakes, but it’s dark.

A contentedness in his bones that doesn’t fade as he begins to blink, as he takes in his surroundings and remembers where he is. Feeling you, warm, pressed as close against him as humanly possible. Able to see the outline of you, before his eyes manage to paint the rest, how his knee has slotted between your legs—bodies a mess of limbs that takes him back to years ago.

Javi notices how the television is switched off as you try to move, to wiggle and escape. His shirt discarded, the cool air misting over him, pebbling his skin as he slides his arm around you, pinning you tighter to him.

Brain all addled with dreams and sleep, as his awakening state tries to remind him what he’s doing.

What door he’s trying to open all over again.

“Javi…”

Not Piña, Peña or Javier. Javi, all soft and whispery, like honey dripping into his ear as he turns his head to find your stare in the dark. Somehow finding it shimmering, fixed, more than awake.

Then you whisper his name again, and it’s heavenly, a piece of it anyway. A sound he realises he’s missed more than he cares to find words to describe as he hears you push out a breath—fingers finding his arm, stroking, sliding their warmth up and down the muscle of his arm as he swallows.

It’s slow, hand cupping your cheek as he shifts his body, and finds yours moves with him. The beginning of a partner dance, one it feels you’ve both practised in small spaces but never actually have as he slides his lips over yours. Moulds them to yours. Tasting faint mint on your tongue when you deepen it—when you pay attention, listen, taking each cue you give him from the movement of your mouth to the way your hands grasp at him to come closer.

A whimper tries to break through, to escape through messy kisses and tangled bodies, but it vibrates through him. Makes him shudder with how much he wants you, moving your knee, hooking it over his hip as he slots his waist between your thighs and you gasp at the feel of him flush against you.

Practically whine.

Nose brushing your cheek, palm flat, fingers spreading out over your hip as he feels you roll your body into him, he smiles—breathy, teeth nipping at his bottom lip. “Forgot how soft you are.”

You hum, head-turning, mouth latching itself back to his.

“Forgot how good of a kisser you are.”

Snorting, he lightly bites your lower lip. “Best remind you then.”

“Best do,” you whisper, pulling him by his hair back to your mouth.

You write a poem against his lips, signing it with your tongue against his as his fingers snake under the band of your sleep shorts, tasting your moan, your hiss and whimper when he touches you like he’s wanted to since he landed back in the States.

When two fingers slide slowly inside of you, curling, the sound of his name is like a fucking sin he wants to be draped in, wrapped in, even dressed in. Him seeking, searching, finding that spot that has your legs opening for him, nails scraping against his scalp.

“More, Javi. Please—”

“You’re so tight, Flor,” he croons, burying the words in your neck, the tip of his tongue swiping over your collarbone as you grab a handful of his hair. “Feel so good around my fingers.”

Your hips writhe, roll them against his hand, gasping. Making a mess, dripping, practically gushing over his hand, as he fights pulling his hand free and getting a taste.

“Be better—dios mio—around your cock—”

Smirking, teeth nipping at your neck, “I remember.”

Head lifting, thankful the night sky is clear, that the moon is draping you in a slither of milky light so he’s able to see your eyes flutter shut. Able to witness what his fingers do to you, the effects of their teasing and the languid movements as he finds that angle, the one which makes you grind against his palm, and has your chest heaving.

He moans your name against your tongue, drinking down a blend of pleases falling from your swollen lips as he plunges deeper, walls squeezing him.

There he thinks, lips pressing kisses to your shoulder, as you dig your nails further into his scalp, tensing, bearing down on him to the point he hopes you’ll leave a mark, leave a cut, a signature of this moment he can run his fingers over.

“Kiss me,” you gasp, all wrapped in desperation as you pull at his shoulder.

His mouth only just pressing to yours when your cry buries against his tongue, when you flutter and arch as he continues to work you through it. His name breaks through messy kisses, it escaping effortlessly like it doesn’t wish to be buried anymore.

You don’t let him pull away, hooking one leg around him. Watching, not able to take your eyes from him as he retracts his hand—as he licks your pleasure from his fingers and you stare with a twinkle in your eye.

“You best fuck me now.”

Smirking, a low laugh escaping. “Yeah? Want me that bad, Flor?”

Lifting onto your elbows, he waits for a taunt, a tease—something that’ll bring him down a peg or two. What he finds, instead, is your fingers slowly crawling up his bare chest, around his neck, your chin tilted up.

“I need you, Javi. Need you to fuck me.”

“Yeah?”

“And then I wanna get on top,” you whisper, dragging each syllable out, “and fuck you until the sun comes up.”

“Murphy is a nice guy.”

Eyes narrowing, he shot you a glare—watching as you shimmied your jacket from your shoulders. Bare arms, bare legs—except for the thin tank and shorts adorning your body—that had him thinking un-best friend things.

“You jealous, Piña?”

“Of a married guy? Fuck no.”

Grinning, you moved closer—boxing him in. Staring into his eyes, in a way that made him feel like he was being seen, read, and admired all at once. “Is that because you left a bite mark on my hip?”

Tracing his fingers along your neck, he felt himself smile. That flutter in his chest again, the one which had appeared one day when the two of you were teens and hadn’t gone away since.

“Ask me to stay,” you whispered, hands on either side of him—all boxed in. “Ask me, Javi.”

Running his tongue over the front of his teeth, he raised a hand, knuckles brushing over your cheek. Wanting nothing more. A week gone too quickly. Already feeling the pressure slip back over his muscles, seeping into his bones. But he knew. He pictured it, the things he had nightmares over—even when you were far away, never mind when you were asleep in the room next to his.

“Too dangerous.”

“That it? I can learn—”

“No.”

“No?”

He stared. Thought of the things he had done. The people he had already let down. The things he had let happen to people who deserved far better. It layering, and layering, and layering and—

Nodding, disappointment spread, before it was washed over in acceptance. “What’re we eating?”

When he wakes, he expects to find you dressed in corporate and apologising in a voice that’s accompanied by a pout at the foot of your bed. The place the two of you found yourself on at 4 am.

Instead, you fake another performance. Earn an Oscar over the phone before switching to the excitable one you present to him when you sit at the foot of the bed.

There’s something there. It hangs in your eyes. A secret, a thing shifted and dislodged now your mask has slipped from the few hours of sleep and the ruining of your sheets.

But he doesn’t ask, because if he does, he fears he’d tell you things in return. Alter the way you see him. Change it, taint it. Practically ruin the man you think he went to be and the one he's returned as.

It'll hurt him if you look at him with disgust. You’ve burnt him after all, left him winded, air knocked from his lungs each time he’s laughed. All but imprinted into his mind, a thing never filed but rather pinned up and forever there, like artwork on a fridge.

“Wanna get a coffee?”

Hands pulling on a pair of jeans, buttoning them as he sees the peaks of your nipples through your white tee. And he knows your face is bare and you're dressed in clothes you just pulled out without thought—yet, you are, as always, the prettiest damn thing he’s ever seen.

A thing he thinks when he showers.

When he smiles as he scrubs the shampoo into his hair, feels the soreness at parts from where your nails had dug in. He doesn't stop beaming when he smears his palm across the glass, takes in his appearance as you open the door, a towel hung low on his hips, eyes dropping down.

“Now who's staring, hermosa.”

“Don’t be a work of art to be admired then.”

He dresses in record time, your hand swinging beside his, so within reach, so easy to grab. But he doesn’t.

None of last night mentioned, even if he knows he’s left bruises on your inner thighs from keeping them apart; even if you've left scratch marks on his shoulders from when you sunk down on him, head thrown back, jaw elongated as he rolled your nipples between his fingers.

Javi doesn't even mention it when he hears you gasp at the taste of your coffee, a noise similar to when he'd licked a stripe up your pussy, when he tasted both you and him.

It was just like in Colombia.

A thing buried, hidden underneath other topics the two of you don’t discuss. Dead parents and a town you both ran from. A thing he almost wants to change, correct, but then you stop outside a flower shop.

The sign battered, peeling. Hidden between two nicer shops, yet the scent made his nose twitch.

“You should buy me flowers.”

“Should I?”

Smirking, teeth biting your lip. “Por lo de anoche.”

Head shaking, he finds himself following anyway. Unable to stop his eyes from falling to the back pocket you shove your phone in, hand reaching, palm pressing to the globe of your ass as he hears the muffled sound of a giggle—

“Piña.”

“Flor,” he whispers, practically breathes it against your neck.

The bubble expands, knowing at some point it’ll pop. Too happy, he thinks. Too settled for a man who has a solo flight back. It’s why he drops his hand, lets you move further in, watching as you scan over already-made bouquets for one he knows you won’t find.

Because they don’t know you. Not like him. There’s not years between you and this shop—this place.

His fingers lightly roll over a stem, staring at the flower, before he has pulled it free from the bucket, and then another, and then another. Not at all a florist—or someone artistic enough to make a bunch—but a person who at least knows you. Knows that in each of the pre-made bundles there’s a flower you dislike, one that’ll remind you of something, someone.

“Here.”

You blink, eyes widening as they move from the bunch in his hand to his face. “Javi…”

“There your—”

“Favourites,” you finish, eye narrowing, lips still parted. “You remembered all my favourites?”

Shrugging, aware of how close he is to real—to something that could shatter, break. A thing he’ll do, just give it time. Feeling it wrap its tendrils around his chest, around his heart, squeezing and squeezing until your hand slips in his. Palm to palm, fingers finding their way between his slowly, cautiously, your eyes not leaving his face as you do.

“Didn’t know my pussy was good enough for flowers, Piña,” you comment, voice low, a smirk there.

“You deserve more than flowers.”

“I’m that good?”

Shaking his head, hand still in yours, he presses a kiss to your forehead, swallowing. “Siempre has sido.”

“Hello?”

He heard the hiccup, the slur of his name as he smirked against the phone—finger and thumb massaging his forehead as he heard you hiccup again. “Flor?”

“Piña, did you know that I miss you?”

Adjusting the tie around his neck, staring down at the pineapples—the box open, atop a bunch of files, in the office he should have been thankful for. “You sound like you’ve had a good night.”

You howled, the laugh all high-pitched. “Maybe I have—maybe I haven’t. What I do know is that I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“No. I love you.”

Smirking, thumb tracing an outline of one of the pineapples. “You’re drunk.”

“Still love you.”

Swallowing, he let out a heavy exhale.

“You doing okay, mi Piña?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer, how to respond. Head tilting back in his office chair, the ice melted in his whiskey and the hour so late he wondered why you were still up as you extended his nickname out into as many syllables as you could.

“I am now—okay, I mean.”

It needs to be left alone.

He knows it. Reminds himself of it when it rears its head at every second he doesn't. Because, it doesn't need to be needled, or picked at until it bled.

But, Javi picks at it all the same when you avoid his question again.

His hand slides over his face, index finger tracing a line down his nose as he waits until your laugh fades. Your fork twists the spaghetti round and round, and when it falls, it simply lands on the table between the two of you—the air tinged with the scent of dinner and the flowers from the shop.

“When were you going to tell me you hate your job?”

Your smile shrinks, like the sunlight being muted by the night. Spine straightening, chin lifting. The walls coming down both literally and figuratively, seeing you prepare for war when he’s army-less and unafraid.

“Si significo algo para ti, no lo hagas.”

He snorts, resting on his arm, letting the sheets fall to his waist. Because of course, he cares, and of course, he wants to do this. Balling up the hand beside his hip, seeing the murkiness in your eyes, the joy snuffed out and hidden, as though the hatchets were coming down to protect against his storm.

Javi says your name, softly, honeyed—delicately drip-feeding the air each letter until it’s out there existing.

One by one, it happens. Your eyes avert, chin dipping down; your tongue drags across the front of your teeth and then your arms fold. “I hate my job. Happy? I wanted it so bad—and now I have it, I hate it. I hate going in, I hate doing it. I can’t tell anyone that because it’s all I wanted.”

“It’s okay.”

Snorting, fake smile sketching across your face as your eyes harden to the point they’re brittle. “It isn’t. I left. I turned my back and got as far out of there as I could, and now I’m stuck.”

It breaks him a little.

Seeing it then, the many shards inside of you that you’re trying to keep whole. The pieces that are so worn and tired from doing their best to fit, but struggling to do so.

It’s why he protests that you’re not. He tries to rationalise and says the same words he knows you’d say to him if he called—if he had told you the truth about everything when he was over there. He tries to add kindness to his words as you continue to stare at him like you wish your bed would swallow him whole.

“—You’re saying this like I didn’t say the same thing to you, and you went and did another five years.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?” you spit, standing now, finger pointing and nose flared. “Because your job means more?—”

“No, because I’m a fucking idiot, Flor. You’re not.”

You mutter under your breath, curse him—a blend of poisonous Spanglish that has the heel of his palm pressing against his forehead.

Because it’s like last time.

The words surge up inside of him—except you’re both older now, both carrying more pain and hurt from a world that continues to pile on when bones are already struggling. Walls threw up, keeping him out in all the same ways—except now his mess is also between your thighs, and you aren’t half as good at hiding how his words hurt you.

“Come home with me.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

Folding your arms, your head shaking. “I can stick it out—work my way up, it’ll get better—”

“You know it won’t. Know how well that went for me.”

Then you scoff. It blended with razors and sharpened to injure. “No, I don’t. Because you don’t talk about what happened.”

“You read about it.”

“But that’s not your story, Javi. That’s theirs.”

For a moment, he sees it. How hollow you look, how weak, sad and broken. So he repeats it, the request, the offer. Come home with me. But the door shuts, locks, a bolt thrown over.

And everything, all of it, splinters; it doing so before your mouth even opens and he sees what his request has done.

“I’m not coming home just because you’ve decided you want to play happy fucking families, Peña. The world doesn’t stop turning just because you’ve decided to run away, and it doesn’t begin turning again because you’ve come home and decided what you want.”

“That isn’t—”

“You left. You left me.”

“—Flor—”

“—and I asked you to let me stay—when I knew you were hurting. I asked and you said no—”

He whispers your name, broken—like it shatters the moment it greets the air.

“—I wasn’t good enough then. So why am I now?”

Shaking his head, legs flung from under your sheets, he stands—aware he’s half-naked, aware this isn’t the time as you step back.

You shake your head, tears dangling, resistant to fall. “I bet you’re not even staying.”

“I am—”

Head tilting, a crystal tear falling down your cheek, you scoff. Loud. Brutal. “Have you even unpacked? Or did you just get on a plane here?”

Swallowing, Javi rolls his jaw. Fingers flexing at his side, staring, urging himself to find words as his tongue thickens in his mouth. Because he’s staying, he’s staying, he’s staying—

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Flor—”

“Save it.”

The door of your bedroom slamming behind you is the final sound that echoes out between you both.

It was different.

Hearing you cry down the phone—than when the two of you were younger.

When your first love broke your heart and he lay beside you on sheets covered in stitched flowers. Your head turned to him, the bedroom door open, as you teased your lip between your teeth. The tears had dried, but the rest had still been there, written in markers across your face as you sighed, staring, waiting for him to answer. “What do you want, Piña?” you’d asked, and he’d swallowed that he wanted to punch them.

Now, though, there were miles between the two of you. Distance far more than there had ever been—cities, a whole country.

“I’ll be home soon—can visit you.”

He heard you laugh, it hanging, echoing. “Yeah, yeah.”

“I mean it.”

“You mean a lot of things, Javi.”

“Flor—”

“I wish you'd never kissed me.”

It's a whisper, the way he said your name. It cracked, snapping as it left his tongue.

“I should go shower, early morning and all that.”

He asked you to stay and he heard you sigh.

“What do you want, Piña?”

Swallowing, Javi tapped his fist on the desk—tiredness having crept over him, the last ditch at doing right in Colombia suspended over him. Tell me I’m doing good, that it's worth losing you, Flor. “Have a good day, Flor.”

It’s weeks.

Eight weeks and four days to be exact.

At some point, it becomes less of a want to get in touch and more of a need not to. Your number is always there on his fingers, but his digits never dialling it when his Pop nips out to go to the store, and he’s left alone with his thoughts and memories in a house stuffed full of them.

Javi doesn’t expect anything else.

Having woke that next morning to find a note attached to the book he had bought: Had to go to work. Have a safe flight. Speak soon—a thing he both hoped and prayed for, even as he nursed a drink on the short flight and chain-smoked at the airport before he did the drive home.

Home.

A thing it felt even less of when he arrived this final time. Pulling his truck into its place, dust swirled and kicked up around him. Staring at the house that hasn’t changed much, just the paint thinning, the sun-dyeing it.

Each day that ticks by, he thinks of you. Each week that’s collected, he fights with himself when he’s sat alone at the dining table about flying back out and apologising.

Because he knows what he did.

Did the same thing back then—assumed and foolishly acted as though your wants never mattered. But they do matter. A thing he rehearses in his head when he’s feeding the animals; a thing he runs over when he’s repairing a door here or a fence there.

One week adds up, then another, and another.

If his Pop thinks things, he doesn’t share them. Just shakes his head occasionally, not asking what is wrong, likely knowing. Suspecting he wears it like the rest of his shame, brightly coloured and decorated in bright lights.

A fool’s outfit, he thinks. A thing he is, a thing he knows. It carved into him at this point. Scratched into the skin and muscle, yet everyone else sees the word hero.

It’s eight weeks and four days when the door of the party opens, the sun streaming in—illuminating the back of a person in a dress adorned with flowers. It takes a second, the condensation on his beer dripping down his wrist as he stares, trying to place the shape and the style of the hair. Not wanting to imagine, not wanting to jump ahead of himself until he hears your mom say your name, all excitable—practically a shriek.

He’s not prepared.

Yet, it’s out of habit he moves.

Like the two of you are magnets, that realised they were supposed to be a pair. The music doesn’t quiet, and the room doesn’t hold its breath, but Javi does—and he suspects you do too.

Just as time comes to a slow stop—the hand in his watch takes an age to flick to the next second as his heart hammers into his ribs. Staring, fingers itching to reach out and ensure you’re not something he’s fabricated, not a mirage from wanting so badly and convincing himself he’d never have it.

“Hi.”

“Hello, Piña.”

It weighs heavy then—clots on his tongue. Almost shapes itself into bile and rests horridly against his tongue as he follows you around, hand close to reaching out to place on your lower back, but stops when he remembers where he is.

Home.

A thing it all of a sudden feels like when you turn your head, lift your chin and stare at him—eyes full of forgiveness, and understanding. “We should talk, right?”

Right, he thinks. Trying to stop the twist in his chest from tightening, trying to stop the dread from filling him and drowning from within. Conversations never go well. A thing he thinks over, and over as his hand strokes over his face, following, one foot after the other, until the warm sun kisses his skin and he finds himself leaning against the side of the building.

“I didn’t come for you.”

He says nothing, not sure if there are any to say.

“I quit. Moved back a week and a bit ago—” your hand comes up to halt him, half-pleading with a tilt and a raise of your eyes. “—and I needed to find things for me, first.”

Folding his arms, he stretches his legs, lets himself elongate, and tries to fill his lungs with air.

“Because I’d have resented you for being right.” Your chin dips, eyes following. “A thing I would do, because you, Javier Peña, know me. And sometimes I really hate that.”

Exhaling, he finds you do the same. Head tilting, lips rolling as you take him in, trace him with your eyes as though you can't quite believe he's real.

“Did you know that every person I’ve been with, it gets to a point where I think ‘Fuck, Javi wouldn’t do this to me’?” Meeting his gaze, you exhale. “And then, no matter how much I felt for them, it goes.”

“Flor…”

Swallowing, you offer the smallest smile. “It’s never gone for you, though. Not when you left. Not when you came back, and left again. Not eight weeks ago when I should have asked you to stay.”

Tongue sticking, flat against the roof his mouth, he grabs your hand—holds it. Runs his thumb over the knuckles as you avert your eyes.

“I live in Laredo now, further north. Did you know I’m so good at what I do, people seek me out?” you say, beaming, letting him pull you closer. “Think they’d have cloned me you if I’d asked for it.”

Dragging his knuckles down your cheek, he’s unable to stop the way it flares up in him—that joy, that ember of happiness—when you smile.

“Because I don’t think I find the idea of being yours that terrible—”

“That so?”

Shaking your head, fingers playing with the buttons on his shirt, he watches your smile falter—just for a moment. “Don’t do this, if you’re going to up and leave again, Javi. Because I’d have died happily not telling you what I feel for you.”

“Not doing it again to you.”

“Okay. Then,” you sigh, sliding your arms around his neck, his hands finding a home on your waist. “Well, I guess I should tell you that I really like your moustache.”

“Just really like?” he teases, swaying you as you purse your lips together.

“Fine. I love it.”

Smiling, walking you back until your back meets the wooden railings. “I love that you love it.”

Rolling your eyes, forehead meeting his chest, he feels the laugh roll through you. Rumbling.

“You owe me flowers.”

Snorting, he rests his chin on your head. “I’ll buy you a field, Flor.”

“That’s a good start.”

Thought so, he thinks. Wrapping his arms around you, keeping your head against him, rocking you, like he's wished to do so many times before now.

Home now feeling right.

[desperate-gay]

Pent Up Energy

Alex Morgan x fem!reader

a/n: 100% based off the game last night

SMUT 18+

Beads of sweat roll down the side of your head from the exhaustion. Colombia has decided not to play cleanly, instead wanting to be as physical as possible and you were bearing the brunt of it. Only 20 minutes into the game you have gotten tackled at least 3 times, each moment being more brutal than the last.

Luckily, there hasn’t been too much conflict between anybody, but that’s until your thoughts are interrupted by a bunch of shouting. Looking over to the left, you see your girlfriend stepping in the face of a Colombian player as the rest of the visiting team tries to meddle in. You quickly rush over to stop Alex, noticing she’s getting more heated every moment.

Slipping your way through the multiple bodies, you place your hand on the forward’s chest, gently pushing her back. You try your best to defuse the situation, but she just ignores you and continues to yell at the player, earning her a yellow card from the ref.

When she notices your hand on her chest, she wipes it off while scoffing before walking away. Trinity notices and quirks an eyebrow towards you, but in response, all you do is take a deep breath and shrug.

After the halftime whistle blew, Alex stayed clear of you. Usually, you both pep each other up for the next half but instead, she stayed quiet and to herself until everyone was sent back onto the pitch. Horan pats you on the back, giving you a sympathetic smile before running over to her position.

The game never dims down with players all showing their fiery side, specifically Alex and Trinity. That ends up playing a part when they both end up getting subbed out at the seventy-second minute.

“You played well.” You whisper, brushing your hand against Alex’s passing body. She spares you a quick look before walking off and onto the bench. Sighing, you lean down to fix your socks and peek your head over to your girlfriend only to see her staring into space with a stoic look.

The rest of the game is grueling but rewarding as you have beaten Colombia and are advancing to the semifinals. After an hour or so you’re boarding onto the bus, taking an open seat and hoping for your girlfriend to join you. Sadly, when she gets on, she doesn’t even glance toward you and decides to sit several seats behind you.

Slightly frustrated with the brunette, you huff and drop your head back against the cushion of the headrest before being interrupted by a giddy smile. You can’t help but smile back at the sweet girl.

“Hi, Naomi.”

“Hey, what are you doing once we get back to the hotel?” She asks while readjusting herself and setting her bag down by her feet.

“Well, I was planning to see if I could room with Alex, but it doesn’t seem like she wants anything to do with me at the moment.” You send Naomi a weak smile which she returns with a sympathetic one.

“Nonsense, we all know Alex gets moody at times but never directly at you. I’m assigned to be her roommate so why don’t we switch? I heard you got Soph anyway.” The defender digs in her bag, pulling out a keycard and holding it out to you.

You wearily accept the card with a small thank you and give her yours in exchange. For the remainder of the ride, Naomi helps you cheer up with a few stories and jokes about her little hangouts with some of the team.

“Time to cheer up the monster.” You groan in which Naomi just laughs and offers you a hand to stand up.

“I believe in you. Go save your knight in shining armor.”

“More like my beast.” You grumble, receiving chuckles from some of the girls who have overheard, none of them being Alex, thankfully, as she is still getting off the bus.

Walking into the hotel, you make your way to your room and are met with your girlfriend soon after. You shyly glance at her and see her confused gaze.

“I thought I was roomed with Girma?” Alex frowns while you give her a look of slight discomfort.

“Umm, Naomi wanted to trade so she could room with Soph and I thought rooming with you would be nice. I could go switch it back if you want.” You whisper, slightly scared she doesn’t want you near her and your voice might betray you.

“No, just stay with me.” The girl mumbles, opening the door with her key and rushing in with her baggage.

Your eyes follow her movements like a lost puppy while you stand by the door. Alex takes in the silence and looks up at you, stopping her scavenging in her back.

“What?” She asks, looking at you with an annoyed expression. You swallow back your nerves before making your way over to the bed and getting everything that you need out of your bag and ready for the night.

The thick silence lasts for around twenty minutes before you begin to feel irritated. Alex is in the little kitchen, leaning against the counter and looking at her phone.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” You finally ask gently, trying your best to keep your growing frustration with the striker at bay.

“Nothing.” Her tone remains empty, clearly not wanting to open up.

“It has to be something. You’ve been avoiding me all day, along with being quiet.” You explain, walking over to her but still keeping a little bit of space between the two of you.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“Alex, you did amazing out there today, we won 3-0 and we’re advancing. If it’s about the card-“

“It’s not about the fucking card!” Alex finally snaps, dropping her phone on the counter and looking at you with a fiery gaze, but it doesn’t tear you down.

“Then tell me what it’s about, please. I can’t have you concealing all this anger. It’s not fair to you or me.” You try, voice becoming more and more desperate.

“Just shut up,” Alex warns, clenching her jaw as her hands tighten on the counter while shifting her eyes away from you.

“I’m just trying to help-”

Your sentence is cut off when your girlfriend storms over to you and she reaches out, gripping your jaw while pinning you against the wall. You look up at her with wide eyes, taking in her appearance. Wet hair, red cheeks, a zip-up training kit covering her body, and blown pupils.

“I said to shut up.” She grits, her hand never leaving your face. Her eyes look down at your lips for a split second and you luckily notice.

Without warning, she smashes her lips onto yours in a harsh kiss. Nothing about it is sweet or romantic. Both your tongues and teeth clash together like you’re trying to see who can last longer to this roughness. The hand on your jaw leaves and finds a new place around your neck, controlling every movement of your head.

“God you’re so hot. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to have you all to myself again.” The taller girl rasps against your lips before moving down to nip at your neck.

While she attacks your neck, you finally put two and two together. You realize Alex may have been aggravated by this game but all of her pent-up anger mainly resulted from a little sexual frustration. With the NWSL preseason starting and the Gold Cup, you both have been busy at training camp and too exhausted to even think about starting anything.

But with Alex, she needs an outlet after she’s played, which is mainly sex. She can finally have total control of something and that something being you. You’re at her total submission, allowing her to do whatever she wants to you and making you do whatever she wants to her.

Her lips disconnecting from your neck pulls you out of your thoughts. You look up at her with your doe eyes and watch as her tongue licks her lips while she eyes you up and down.

Soon her hands grip your waist and tug you over to the bed. She sits at the end of the mattress and leans back with her hands holding her up while you remain standing in front of her.

“Strip,” Alex demands, watching as you slowly grip the bottom of your shirt and cautiously pull it over your head. When she takes sight of what seems to be a new bra, she sits back up and grips your naked hips.

“If you need to use me, use me, Alex.” You say boldly, returning her lustful gaze. Her jaw almost drops before she quickly starts unbuttoning your jeans and yanking them down so you’re only in your bra and panties.

“Get on the bed.” When you don’t immediately do as she says, she pulls you down herself making you squeal in the process. “When I say to do something, you listen, got it?” You nod your head, earning you a satisfied grin.

Alex’s body hovers over you with her wet hair curtaining any view other than her face. You blindly reach down and tug on the zipper of her hoodie, asking if you can take it off. She swiftly sits up and removes all of her clothes, leaving her bare.

“I guess I should take these off you now, shouldn’t I?” She taunts, hooking her finger on the waistband of your panties and letting go of them with a sharp snap against your skin.

“Please, Alex. I need you.” You whine, bucking your hips closer to her hand. She chuckles before leaning down and kissing on your chest. Her hand reaches around your back and unclips your bra, letting it slide down a little before taking it off altogether.

Instead of moving down, her lips move up your neck and to your ear. “So beautiful, I can’t wait to have you trembling underneath my touch and screaming for me to let you cum.” Her breath fans against your ear while her breasts are smushed against yours. She tugs on your earlobe with her teeth before sitting back up, admiring your body.

“I bet you’re already wet for me even though I have barely touched you. You probably like me roughhousing you around to my pleasure. So obedient for me.” You moan as she carelessly speaks of you while trailing her finger down the center of your stomach.

“Alex, baby, I need you. I need you to touch me, please.” Your body squirms while she continues to trace her finger down to your core.

She finally dips her hand in and spreads your arousal around, completely lost in her head on how wet you are. Her finger teasingly dips into you but only for a split second, causing you to whine out.

“God, I’ve missed this pretty pussy so much.” Your girlfriend groans before angling her arm in an awkward manner and plunging two fingers into you.

Her body leans down so her lips can latch onto your breasts, leaving hickeys anywhere she pleases. Moans spew their way out of your mouth at the long-needed pleasure, but her thrusts are nowhere near fast enough to get you off, mainly because of the way her arm is angled, so you reach down with a huff and kick off your panties, leaving no restraint for Alex.

“Faster.” You pant, rolling your hips with each thrust of the forward’s hand. She chuckles and moves her arm lower so she can pump in and out of you at an ungodly pace.

“Is this what you want? Want to get fucked so hard you won’t be able to think properly, huh?” She questions without her fingers even stuttering. The loud wet noises of her thrusts echo throughout the hotel room along with your whimpers and moans.

Her finger reaches a point inside of you that has your head spinning. The build-up in your lower stomach becomes more apparent as your core tightens around your girlfriend’s digits.

“I’m gonna cum, baby.” You moan, digging your nails into her bicep, leaving dark crescent indents in her skin which she loves.

Suddenly, the pressure in your stomach subsides due to Alex pulling her fingers out, making you whine at the sudden emptiness.

“You’re not gonna cum that easily, sweets. I still have so much I want to do to you.” She says in an uncharacteristically sweet tone while placing a kiss on your cheek.

Both of her hands rub up and down your sides as she kisses from your sternum down to your thigh. She bites at the inside of your skin before soothing the sting with her tongue. Alex looks over and sees your hands clenching and unclenching the sheets below you while your breathing picks up in impatience.

“So beautiful.” She whispers against your thigh before pushing it open with her large hand and latching her mouth onto your core. She lets out a low groan at the taste of you while dipping her tongue into you.

Your hips twitch into her as her tongue laps around your clit, sucking and licking the swollen surface. Your girlfriend’s hands lay flat on your stomach as she pushes her head further into your wet heat. Subconsciously, your legs begin to close in on Alex’s head as the familiar knot in your stomach returns.

Just as your hips begin to rise to your release, the brunette once again detaches herself from you, making your orgasm fade away. Tears start to build up in your eyes in frustration from the denial, but Alex wipes them away with her thumb.

“It’s okay, baby. You’re doing so good for me.” She coos, placing a few pecks on your lips in reassurance. “Do you think you’ve been a good girl?” She asks, pulling you to sit up so you’re both facing each other.

“Yes, yes, I’ve been a good girl.” You nod, nuzzling your face into her neck for some sort of comfort.

“I think so too.” Alex brushes your hair behind your ear once you pull back to look at her. She grabs the back of your neck and brings you into an intoxicating kiss, roaming her tongue inside the roof of your mouth

Alex pulls you onto her lap without breaking the kiss, placing you onto her slanted thighs due to her sitting on her legs. You grind slowly against her, attempting to get some kind of friction as your chest presses up against hers. Your girlfriend smirks into the kiss, feeling your arousal smear across her skin.

She slips two digits back inside of you, curling them into your g-spot. A loud moan escapes your lips as your legs tighten around her waist, causing the heels of your feet to push into her back. Your hands also find their way to her shoulder blades, leaving dark red scratches as she pumps her fingers into you.

“Right there.” You gasp as Alex thrusts her fingers into the perfect spot. The bed frame pounds against the wall from your girlfriend’s digits bouncing in and out of you.

“You’re close, aren’t you?” She whispers into your ear, pressing a sweet kiss under it to your jaw. You quickly nod your head as your eyes squeeze shut with a loud moan, enticing the girl below you to thrust faster.

“I’m gonna, oh god, ‘m gonna cum, baby.”

“Cum for me.”

Your walls clamp around Alex’s fingers as a flow of juices runs down her hand while you moan in ecstasy, grinding down to push you through your orgasm.

Once your hips stop, she pulls her fingers out of you and places them in front of your mouth. You obediently open and suck, licking off all your arousal while swirling your tongue around them. She watches you with blown-out pupils and a slacked jaw.

“If you think we’re done after you just did that, you’re sorely mistaken.” Her arms wrap around her waist and slam you back onto the bed, making you giggle at her riled-up nature.

The next morning you make your way into the breakfast lobby with Alex’s arm around your waist. Right as everyone catches eye on the both of you, a bunch of whistling and whooping sounds through the room.

“Get it, Morgan. Didn’t know you could do all that.” Trinity cheers while smacking on her gum with a smirk.

Everyone gets their little comments in while your girlfriend just smiles smugly and continues to kiss your temple with her arm remaining on your shoulders. In your flustered state, all you do is hide your face into her neck and try to avoid all of the attention.

[unlimitedlust]

Blue Jeans (Javier Peña x Reader)

“I’m leaving, Javi”

It was all you said when he picked up the phone. You didn’t give him the chance to say anything, you hung up and felt two warm tears roll down your cheeks as you admired the city view for the last time from the bedroom’s balcony.

Drying your tears, you finished packing your suitcase, not bothering with how crumpled your clothes would look like when you unpacked, just wanting to get everything over with before you lost your strength to leave him once and for all.

You still remember the night you met him, how your whole body shivered when your eyes connected to his while he smoked one of his cigarettes, checking you out shamelessly as you looked terribly hot for a night out with your friends.

And from that day on, you just couldn’t keep your hands off each other. You just got terribly addicted to how his lips kissed yours, how he pulled your hair making you look at your sexed faces in his bathroom’s mirror while he drove you to oblivion, how his hips moved to meet yours when you were riding him, how he filled you completely giving you the best orgasms you could ever dream of, how his big, rough fingers sank on the sensitive flesh on your hips.

But that’s the only aspect of your relationship that actually worked.

When you were together, if you were not devouring each other, you were fighting each other. Heated fights and arguments, insulting each other with words that couldn’t be taken back, breaking your heart and his.

It was no mystery to you, Javier, and the people around you, that you were a disaster as a couple, the definition of toxic, and yet, you just couldn’t give an end to it. You couldn’t leave him and he couldn’t leave you. Despite everything, you loved each other deeply, intensely, and it wasn't just because of the amazing sex.

For some reason you didn’t work. Maybe in another life you could meet each other again and make it work in a healthy way, but you were just so deep in all the shit you’ve been through you just couldn’t fix it anymore, it was eating you alive.

And after another night of heated fights you decided to finally grab your stuff from his house and leave him, leave the city, leave Colombia. Everything there reminded you of him, and you knew you couldn’t bear to live without him having to be reminded 24/7 by everything around you how happy (and miserable) you were with him.

The beautiful sunsets you watched together, the bars and clubs you used to go on wild nights out with him, the dark alleys he used to take you to after one of those nights because he wanted you so bad he couldn’t wait a few blocks walk to his place.

You felt a lump forming on your throat as you zipped your suitcase with trembling fingers, tears falling heavily now with the realization that it was really the end of the road for the two of you.

“Don’t do this to me, nena”

Your whole body froze as you heard his low voice behind you. You turned to look at him, only to meet a pair of defeated and tired brown eyes, hands on his hips, eyes darting from you to your suitcase and back.

He couldn’t let you go. Not when you were the only moments of happiness among all the traumatizing events he had to live everyday on his job. You were his love, his favorite, his warm safe place, his motivation to survive and go home at one piece everyday. Yes, he was well aware about the train wreck you two were, but he would rather live a daily train wreck than live with no train at all in his life.

“Bonita, please” He closed the space between you, cupping your cheeks with his big hands, his fingers drying the tears away as his desperate eyes connected with yours.

“We can’t do this anymore, Javi” You tried in vain to swallow the lump in your throat “We’re too intense and too toxic to work”

The mixture of longing, hurt and despair in his brown eyes felt like you’d been stabbed on the stomach. It hurt you to see how much you were hurting him.

“Do you love me?” His question came out softly in a whisper.

“I love you so much it hurts… The moment I laid my eyes on you I knew you were the love of my life, Javier”

“You’re the love of my life too, mi amor” He brought your lips to meet his in a soft kiss “Don’t do this to us, don’t leave me, please” He pleaded softly, whispering against your lips “We’ll fix this, I promise”

“Javi…” You tried to protest, but you knew you couldn’t leave him, you couldn’t live anywhere else if you left your heart in Colombia with the most charming and handsome agent who had stolen your heart and rocked your world from day one.

“Listen to me, you’ll unpack your things, we’re gonna talk about how we’re working on fixing our issues, we’ll probably argue at some point but I don’t care and we’ll finish up our night with the most amazing make up sex we’ve ever dreamed of, you hear me?” The demanding tone on his voice sparkled something you knew all too well in your core. You loved when he was bossy and suddenly you forgot you were just having a moment.

“Yes”

“Good” He took a step back to give you some space to unpack. But you stopped him, keeping him in place by the dark tie he was wearing, making him look incredibly hotter than usual. Fucking irresistable.

“How about we skip to the last part first?” Your fingers strummed up the tie, pulling it a little harder when you reached close to his neck, like you were holding him on a leash, Javier hissing with the unexpected move.

“Thirsty already?” He teased, his index finger traced your jaw until it reached under your chin, where he pushed up slightly, shortening the distance between your lips, but never connecting them.

“For you? Siempre”

Without breaking eye contact with him, you started to unbutton his shirt in a slowly tantalizing way, your fingers brushing ever so lightly on his chest and abdomen, watching the hunger and the urgency grow in his brown orbs.

Once you were done with the buttons, you kept the tie on his neck as you slid the white shirt off his broad shoulders and down his arms, reveling in the sight in front of you, his muscles well defined under that perfectly soft and sun kissed skin.

Javier kept perfectly still, watching you as he let you explore and cherish his body at your own will, shivering under your fingertips as they traced their way down his belt, while your tongue now licked its way up his neck from his collarbone, sucking the skin right under his earlobe.

Your hands slipped past his leather belt and palmed the thick, hard erection strained by his dark blue pants, making him jerk in your hands searching for more stimulation.

“Shhh… I’ll decide when to touch it, okay?” You whispered against his neck, but he chuckled devilishly in response.

“You know that in just a few I’ll make you regret the teasing, don’t you?”

“So the more I tease the more you’ll punish me?” You asked, looking him in the eye as you squeezed his length in defiance.

“You’re walking on thin ice here, bonita…” He snarled as you unbuckled his belt and trailed wet kisses down his chest and abs, your teeth scraping on the sensitive skin below his navel, your fingers hooking on the hemline of his pants and underwear as you got on your knees and looked him deeply in the eye.

You pulled down his underwear along with his pants, his dick springing free in its full glory in front you, your mouth watering at the sight.

You held his manhood with your dominant hand lifting it slightly upwards as you licked a straight line, tong flattened, from the base of his shaft to the tip, swirling lazily your tongue around it, the tip of your tongue playing in the sensitive spot right below the tip, making him hiss and thrust his hips, the tantalizing stimulation driving him insane.

Taking him in your mouth, you bobbed your head still agonizingly slowly, taking him deeper at each bob, sucking him, the friction caused by the suction of your cheeks causing him to grit his teeth and throw his head back in a failed attempt to keep the beautiful sound of a moan to come out of his mouth, only to turn it into a grunt that encouraged you to keep on doing your own teasing.

Straining against your gag reflex you took him deeper into your throat, your nose now touching his pubic area as he now watched you again, eyes dark with lust as you managed to fit all his length.

“You look so pretty with your lips around my dick” He ran his fingers between your hair, until he came to a stop in your nape, where he tangled his fingers in the hair in the back of your head and kept you in place, making you choke on his manhood, the sound of your choking throat sending strong electric waves through his body.

Javier pulled your head back slowly, watching his dick slide out of your mouth, all slick and wet, two thin strings of saliva still connecting your lips to his head as he was now completely out of you.

“So. Fucking. Beautiful” He admired your face as his thumb traced your swollen lips also slick with saliva. You were still kneeled before him, like a slave before their master, your eyes glimmering at the sight of him, his hard manhood, his perfectly chiseled body, damp strands sticking on the sweat on his forehead.

“Now get up and take your clothes off” He commanded, his voice leaving no room for sassiness.

He stepped out of his underwear and pants and loosened his tie as you turned your back to him and let the straps of your dress slide down your arms, then proceeded to bend forwards as you shimmied in a seductive way to take off the rest of the dress along with your underwear.

You looked back at him over your shoulders, taking a last step closer to the bed while he walked towards you slowly, a devilish grin on his lips as he toyed with the tie in his hands.

You turned back and kept your head straight ahead as you positioned your hands behind your back thinking he was about to tie you.

However, Javier had other plans.

Ignoring the hands you’d offered him with a low chuckle, Javier passed his arms over your head and put the tie over your lips.

“Open your mouth”

You did as he instructed and he proceeded to gag you with the tie, tying it in the back of your head. The saliva that came through your inner cheeks and tongue instantly wetting the fabric between your teeth.

“Turn” He commanded once again, you obeyed immediately, meeting the smirk on his face, satisfied with the work he’d done gagging you “Good girl… Now get on the bed”

You heard the clinking sound of his belt’s buckle as you climbed and layed on the bed, your back resting on the pile of white pillows by the wooden headboard, your eyes trained on him, curious to see what he would do with the belt on his hands.

Javier took both your wrists and brought them towards the headboard, fastening them together with one of the wooden poles on the headboard with the belt, its leather lightly biting on the thin skin of your wrists.

Gagged and tied up. The realization got you even more aroused than you were before, making you squeeze your thighs against each other in a vain attempt to feel the slightest relief on your needy core.

“No no” He held you by one of your calves, stopping your useless movements “You’ll be given pleasure only when I decide to, you understand?”

Since you couldn’t speak, all you did was nod in agreement as he got on the bed hovering over you. Javier caressed your cheeks lovingly as your eyes connected once again, making you feel hypnotized by the intensity in his dark orbs.

His lips met the sensitive skin of your neck with love bites and tickles from his mustache, leaving light bruises from under your earlobe to your clavicles, while his hands ran up and down your body, splitting your legs open but never touching where you wanted him the most, now fully positioning his body over yours.

He grind his hips against yours, creating a delicious friction on your core while he coated his cock in your arousal, making sure he’d tease you with each grind, the head of his shaft smearing your clit and our entrance, but never giving you what you craved for, which was his dick deep inside of you.

You thrust your hip, trying to angle it in a position in which he’d finally penetrate you, but well aware of your intent Javier bit your collarbone and held your hips down with just one of his hands.

“What did I just say, bonita?”

Your complaint sounded like a muffled whine with the tie between your teeth. You wanted him so badly.

He soothed the angry bite mark on your collarbone with his tongue, then trailed his kisses down the valley of your breasts. He scraped his teeth on one of your nipples earning a yelp of pleasure out of your gagged mouth, the sound encouraging him to revel in your breasts, nipping, licking, sucking, squeezing them in his hands.

You writhed under his work on your boobs, trying in vain to get free from his makeshift shackles, the sound of the buckle against the wooden pole shrieking loud, the skin of your wrists getting angrier due to the friction against the leather, and yet you didn’t care, every detail got you even more riled up as you arched your back, offering more of your already very exposed and explored chest.

Javier loved to see you like that, whining in pleasure, writhing under him, eyes closed shut as he watched you try uselessly to get more of him, to get the release you wanted so desperately.

His right hand traveled down your body, feeling every inch of soft skin from your waist to your calves, making sure to sink his digits into your thighs and ass in the process as he now nipped his way down your torso towards your heated center, his hands spreading your legs further apart, exposing the wet mess you’ve become, the slick already dripping on the white blanket underneath you.

“So wet you’re gonna make me drown, babe”

He spoke, his lips just inches away from your pussy, his hot breath against your core causing you to stir once again.

“I have one last thing to say before I start…” Javier brushed his index and middle fingers on your slit, collecting your juices around them “You won’t cum until I say so, si?”

He drew circles on your clit with his fingers, white hot pleasure running through your veins at the stimulation, your eyes rolled back as the knot on your lower stomach threatened to snap already.

“Won’t answer me?” He added pressure on his movements, forcing a reaction from you.

All you could do was let out a strangled moan since you couldn’t speak, but you both knew very well how hard it would be for you to follow that specific order. Javier loved to put you on edge, he was a master at doing so, and was already doing that.

“Good”

He withdrew his fingers and blew against your pussy, the hot air sending goosebumps through your body, and before you could recover from that, he ran his flat tongue over your intimacy, from your opening to your clit, swirling it with the tip of his tongue and then sucking it between his lips.

You struggled with the belt around your wrists, desperate to get free and to hold onto something, especially his soft hair as he reveled in your pussy, eating you out as a starved animal.

Javier put both your legs over his shoulders, pressing your hips down on the mattress to hold you in place and keep you from struggling.

“Tranquila, tranquila” He purred, his left hand now resting on your lower belly as his right one held your thigh.

He intensified his work on your pussy, his mustache tickling your clit as he tongue-fucked you, making the knot on your stomach barely impossible to keep from bursting.

Your toes curled and a loud whine left your lips as you bit the tie, trying to hold back your orgasm from snapping for as long as you could, but the final flick of his tongue on your clit made you melt on his mouth, your legs quivering over his shoulder as you felt those white hot electric waves of pleasure blind you.

And despite the order not to cum before he allowed you to, he kept drinking and eating out your high.

“Fuck baby, what did I tell you?” His voice was husky with lust as he licked your cum from his mustache.

Javier put his middle finger inside you, his digit immediately finding the squishy spot of pleasure that almost got you seeing stars again.

He added a second finger and started to thrust them in a “come here” motion, never neglecting the spongy spot, all while his thumb drew small circles on your clit.

You were still sensitive from your high and now, with the extra and new stimulation in such a short time, you were sure you’d die.

You were so numb and drunk on his work on you, you didn’t realize that he’d hovered over you again, one of his hands working on untying and taking the gag from your mouth while the other still worked on your pussy, and you could feel the knot on your stomach growing fast again.

“Javi!”

Was the first thing you screamed when he took the tie from your lips, the sound earning a low grunt from him as he now kissed your lips passionately.

You tasted yourself as your tongues swirled in an erotic dance, one of your hands tangled in his hair as the other slid down his body to palm his rock hard cock, spreading the precum leaking on his head over his length, making him moan against your lips and thrust into your hand.

The hand that was on your pussy held your wrist, keeping you from pumping him and put it over your head on the pillow as he positioned his body between your legs, the tip of his manhood now lining with your opening.

“Te amo tanto, no me dejes jamás…” He caressed your cheeks looking deep into your eyes, his lips brushing lightly over yours.

“También te amo…” Your confession was cut by the deep moan that came from your lips as he sunk his cock in you slowly, but deeply, filling you and stretching your walls completely as you rolled your eyes and sank your painted nails on his broad shoulders “Javi!”

Javier’s thrusts were hard and deep and rough, your nails clawed their way down his back as you became a moaning mess underneath him and one of his hands held you by the side of your neck to keep the eye contact between the two of you.

The knot on your lower stomach threatened to explode again and he didn’t miss the signs of your body, your back arching, the way you held onto him like your life depended on it, and mainly: the way your walls were squeezing around him, making it hard for himself to hold back. But he didn’t want it to be over just yet, he wanted more, more of you.

So he pulled himself out of you and manhandled you putting you on fours, giving you no time to adjust to the new position as he penetrated you again, sinking his fingers on your ass cheeks holding you in place as he pounded in and out of you, the position allowing him to go impossibly deeper at each thrust.

He slowed the rhythm of his thrusts as he leaned over you, trailing kisses from your back to your shoulders, his right hand sliding from your ass, then across your back towards your nape, to then tangle and lock his fingers in your hair, pulling you back harshly, getting you on your knees just like him, your back pressed against his chest and abs.

Javier increased the intensity of is thrusts again, holding you in place with one hand on your breasts and the other on your neck, forcing you to turn your face to the side so he could kiss you while he fucked you.

“Javi-” You called him, your voice coming out sluttier than you intended as you were terribly close to cumming once again, earning you a bite on your shoulder “Javi I’m…”

“No, not yet!” He pulled out of you again, leaving you on the edge of the abyss of your climax, torturing you, making you whine in frustration “I wanna see it”

He sat on the bed and brought you to his lap, kissing your lips lovingly as you straddled him and rocked your hips back and forth over his shaft teasing both of you like you weren’t to the point of collapsing already.

You snaked your arms around his neck as he held you by your hips and sank you on his cock, strangled moans coming from both of you as you rolled your hips against his, his dick rubbing against all the perfect spots inside you, making you clench around him as you sped up your pace since you were about to explode for a long while now and also that he was holding himself back for long enough.

Feeling your thighs start to tremble, Javier snaked an arm around your back and helped you keep your rhythm, also thrusting his hips upwards to meet yours, gathering all of his self control to wait for you to cum first, he wanted to watch you melt in his arms again and revel in every millisecond of it.

“Come on baby, cum for me…” His plea was more than enough to make the knot on your stomach snap, blinding you in one of the strongest climaxes you’d ever had, your body instantly feeling like jelly under his firm grip, keeping you from collapsing on the bed.

Watching you unravel like that on his dick, the way his name came out of your mouth over and over as your pussy clenched hard around him made him cum hard inside you as you still rode your high, the feeling of his on orgasm just seconds after making yours last longer as you felt him twitching and spilling inside you.

Javier took care of laying your weary body on the bed softly as he pulled himself out of you and laid by your side, cuddling you in his arms as both of you tried to catch your breaths.

“Fuck, Javi…”

“What?” He asked curiously at your amused face, grabbing a cigarette and a lighter from the nightstand next to him. You stared at him, drinking in his beautiful features and all the details you loved about him as he lit up his cigar.

“Nothing, just love you”

[almostfoxglove]

I'LL CARRY IT

written for my angst challenge

Rating: Explicit (18+)

Pairing: Javier x f!Reader

Word Count: 5.9k

you can read on ao3 too, if you like!

SUMMARY: Your childhood best friend returns to Laredo a celebrated hero. When he shows up at your bar shackled by grief, you drag him home for the night. CW: Heavy alcohol consumption and brief reference to the death of a parent. A fair bit of yearning.

Takes place somewhere in S3E1 after the wedding but before Javier returns to Colombia.

part II | series masterlist | masterlist

12:00 A.M.

At first you mistake it for a good thing. Last shift before your weekend, two hours to go, and the long-gone local hero back in his hometown smoking a cigarette at your bar. Your break over, you slink from the backroom into the riotous din of The Last Man Standing—one of Laredo’s many dives—to reclaim your post behind the bar. Place is a hellhole as often as it is crowded and tonight’s no different, and yet you’re halfway to a smirk. Pleased to see an old friend.

He hasn’t looked up, hasn’t seen you yet, so you busy yourself with the guy who flags you down to order the second he spots you. Fine by you, the guy tips well the later it gets and it’s already after midnight, and regardless, you don’t mind having an excuse to observe The Javier Peña, DEA agent extraordinaire, at a distance. Top button undone, cigarette vanishing in his hand, eyes glued to the ring-stained bartop as smoke shivers out between his lips. Quite the celebrity now. Been home three weeks if the rumors are true but you’ve yet to see him. You figured he’d call, but he didn’t—not that you’re surprised. 

Eight years feels like nothing now. Maybe he’s a hero to everyone else, but to you Javier looks exactly the same as he has his whole life—all that’s changed is the depth of his misery. How he doesn’t look up for anything or anyone, except to shrug off the occasional shoulder clap from some drunk stranger. 

When you’ve served the guy his drink and collected your tip—30%, thank you sir—you shake the nerves loose from your shoulders and slide up, glass in hand. 

“Well shit,” you say when you’re in front of him, and Javier slowly lifts his eyes. You smile, all rogue. No shake to your voice at all as you pour a whiskey blind. “This the part when I ask for an autograph?”

Javier’s dark brow dips in the middle and you might as well be twenty-eight again. Twenty-one. Eighteen. Eleven. All the ages you’ve been with him in all the years you’ve known him. Because this, right here—that little furrow that looks like a frown if you’re not looking close enough—is exactly how he’s always been. How he’s always looked at you after time spent away. 

Sure, there’s never been this much away . This much radio silence. The kind of parting that comes with getting older, getting further—something you once would’ve sworn only happens to everyone else. You’ve made your peace with it. Wished him well from the wrong side of the hemisphere. You’ve had lives of your own. 

Seems he can still cut a tiny hole in your chest when he withholds a smile. 

Javier spears smoke from the corner of his mouth as you slip his empty glass behind the bar and replace it with the fresh pour, watching as he nods in a tired, humorless way. “Not signing shit for you,” he gruffs, and snubs his filter into the crystal ashtray beside his glass. 

One-two-three-four-five others sit beside it, ashed in their grave. 

So he feels about as bad as he looks.

“Awful snappy for a man hoggin’ a barstool,” you reply.

The corner of his mouth flinches but doesn’t pull. He picks up his glass, eyes sagging away from you. “Nice to see you too,” Javier concedes.

1:00 A.M.

Friday means it’s crazy, means the rest of your shift slingshots by, and most of the night someone else is working Javier’s side of the bar so you lose track of his drinks. The windows of the bar have fogged, giving the world beyond a kind of eerie glow. 

You do your best to watch him, holding in your stomach a knot of newborn worry, but there’s always someone shouting for another drink. Now and then you catch some guy in a cap lumbering up to him to boast loudly of his pride, and though it’s microscopic—invisible maybe to everyone else—you see the way Javier shrinks in on himself. Folds.

The smoking, too, goes on. You sweep past him on your way to a booth in the corner, tray of shots balanced in hand, and accidentally inhale a sour cloud as he blows it out. You try to stifle your cough as you reach the table, doling out the silver glasses slick with tequila. On your way back to the bar, Javier catches your eye and snuffs the spent cigarette with an apologetic look. Pendant lights sway in his eyes like fireflies. You shake your head like he’s being silly, squeeze his shoulder briefly as you pass, and the roar of his body beneath your palm blazes like a campfire. The kind of heat that blackens everything to char. 

You think he’s had four drinks, maybe five, but not for sure.

2:00 A.M.

Only the drunks remain to kick out into the bog of late-summer, all that humidity that ruins your hair. You like most of ‘em. Most swagger out with a slurred night, sweetheart as you usher them safely into their cabs. Then all that’s left is your childhood sweetheart slumped over at the bar. Dated for two weeks in sixth grade—broke up over god knows what, probably him stealing your favorite gel pens—and were inseparable ever after. The second that kid sloped into your classroom, all gangly limbs attached loose as rubber bands and dark curls drifting vagrantly into his eyes, you just knew. Didn’t know how, didn’t know why—but you knew that boy would be home, and he was for years. 

Look at him now. Passed out drunk, lips parted, cheek squished flat beside his empty glass. His cigarette flares from his limp hand beside his face. You shoo off your coworker with a friendly gnight before slipping the cigarette from Javier’s fingers to crush in the crystal tray with its brothers. 

You go about cleaning up around him. He doesn’t wake for anything—not even when you have to count all the coins in the till for the night—which also, is new. Javier’s always slept like shit, even when you were kids and there wasn’t much to sweat over. Woke up if someone in the other room dared to breathe too deeply. 

Guess a bathtub’s worth of whiskey will take anybody out. 

When it’s time to go, you slip your hand up his spine to rest between his shoulder blades. “Alright, cariño,” you say softly. “Time to go home.”

Javier stirs, but only barely. A grunt, a shallow breath, a flutter in his lashes. You pat his back firmly, not harshly, but enough that he sniffs and grunts again, awake. 

“Blue’s still up there,” he mumbles with his eyes closed. 

Grinning, you lift your face to the ceiling fan overhead—one of two dozen in this place, none of which run and all of which droop with a rainbow of bras tossed into the rafters. Above you now sways the strap of a pale blue bra mildewed with dust. Would’ve been your twenty-first when you shot that up there, and it’s never fallen. 

“I’m a decent shot,” you say. 

Now he grins, just half his lips, but a real one all the same. “I remember.”

“Course you do, I was better than you.”

At your teasing, the grin snaps clean off his face and his real frown replaces it. “No’anymorre,” he slurs.

Your heart plummets. You can see, now, the bruised darkness beneath his closed eyes as you rub a small circle in the middle of his back. If you were already home you’d pull him into your arms, but he can’t rot on this stool all night. In your silence, Javier cracks one eye at you. “Can’t drive,” he groans.

“No shit,” you say, forcing a soft grin, and he mumbles some gibberish that sounds like it’s supposed to be Spanish. “Come on, work with me here.”

His eye shuts again as he grimaces, face still smushed against the bartop. His hair’s a mess so you comb it back, but the fucker still won’t budge. Rolling your eyes, you lift his arm and drape it over your shoulders to help him off the stool, his body warm and pliant. More solid than you remember him being before. Layers of slender muscle built up like the rings of a tree.

When he rises, gravity lurches and you stagger under his weight, catching yourself against the bar. 

“Careful now,” you warn him playfully. 

Javier turns his face towards yours, close enough in this awkward position that his nose presses against your cheek. He reeks of smoke and shitty whiskey. A little of sweat. You’d mock him for it if he were anywhere within a hundred miles of sober, but he’s a lost cause for now. Your arm fits snug around his waist. To his credit, he makes an effort to stay on his feet. Turns his head down to watch his boots as you walk him outside like he’s focusing intently on putting one foot in front of the other. You pinch his side and he hmphs at you. 

“Could’a just called, you know,” you say as you walk him to your car. The street is all empty parking spots and shuddered windows and packs of thirsty mosquitos, cicada song chirping densely in the air. Your car sleeps down the block alone, black as the sky and in need of a wash, green-strung beads hanging in a loop from the rearview mirror inside.

“Wanted t’ seeyou,” Javier says. 

You nudge your head against his cheek gently. “I missed you too,” you say.

As you drive, streetlamps stripe past the windows. Brick buildings sit squat and lightless, bodegas shackled for the night, and a wilful trash bag balloons with a passing breeze, blowing across the road with a quiet, swimming grace. In the passenger seat, Javier slumps against the door, temple pressed to the half-open window. You think he’s asleep until he licks his bottom lip. 

“Saw Lorraine,” he mumbles, those dark eyes closed away, like he can hardly keep himself awake.

You turn back to watch the empty road. Stop at the stop signs just for show. No one’s out here but you at this hour—Laredo is a ghost town.

“Heard Danny was gettin’ married,” you reply.

Javier exhales profoundly: slow, labored, loud. He’s always been a pouty drunk, but this is something else. “You weren’t there,” he says.

“Had to work.”

“Liar.”

You roll your eyes even though he isn’t looking at you to see. He’ll feel it. Always does. Drumming your fingertips against the steering wheel, you fight back a smirk. “Fucked one of the groomsmen last year,” you admit. “Didn’t feel like havin’ a reunion.”

When you glance at him again, Javier has opened his eyes a sliver to smirk at you, the corner of his mouth pulled into his dimpled cheek. “Julien?”

You frown at the road. “Mateo.”

“Shit,” mumbles Javier, still smirking.

“Somethin’ like that,” you agree.

At the next red light his eyes are closed again and despite the fact that he’s, what, thirty six now? Javier looks like a child to you. Spine hunched, torso sunken. Shoulders broader than ever but curled in on themselves, like if he only had the room he’d be small as a seed. Fetal and miserable. A thousand years older on the inside than anyone should ever have to be. 

“Starin’ a’me,” he scolds, his words slumping into each other.

You huff quietly, caught. “Shut up,” you say. “Just remindin’ myself what you look like. Think you got uglier.”

He growls darkly, unamused.

As you turn at the next light, the green-beaded rosary sways from the rearview mirror. If he had his eyes open Javier would recognize it. His mother’s—passed to you before she died. You aren’t one for praying but you’ll die with it in your hands, you think. That’s the kind of person she was to you. Eternal.

Beside you, Javier mutters something unintelligible, his breath fogging the window. 

“Hm?”

“Seein’ anyone yet?” he repeats, and shifts to loll his head back against the seatrest. 

You gasp softly, feigning offense. “Yet? Ouch, baby,” you tease.

“Didn’t mean it like that,” he grumbles.

“I know,” you say, as you turn into the suburbs. Quiet starter homes lurk in the dark, kids’ bicycles lying like skeletons in their yellowing lawns. “I’m being mean.” 

“I like y’mean,” Javier replies, and finally opens his eyes as if he can sense you’re getting close to home, even though he’s never seen this place. He stares through the windshield glazed and distant, and you try not to stare like you’re concerned. He looks destroyed, you think. Obliterated. Sure, you’ve kept up with the news. Devoured everything you could about the quest to tackle Escobar, terrified Javier’s name would appear in the black ink that stained your fingers, reporting he was dead. That he’d be another casualty, and you’d not have said goodbye.

You know you’ve got no clue what really happened down there. That you never will. But you can see it choking him, hanging from his neck like a noose that’s just biding its time before it pulls.

“Nah, it’s just me,” you say, dragging your eyes off him again. “Think the two weeks we dated was about the closest I ever came to love.”

You’re joking, all foxish grin, but Javier doesn’t laugh. He just stares into the middle distance looking like a ghost. “Sixteen,” he mumbles.

“What?” you say.

He sighs. “Was sixteen days,” he annunciates, and your heart sputters.

Then his face folds in on itself suddenly; he pales, then greens. “Gonna b’sick,” he says.

3:00 A.M.

“Christ, you got heavy,” you groan, hobbling slanted up your porch steps. Though more alert, Javier is no less useless in walking, and though he mumbles shame-riddled sorrys he can’t much help you here. You hold him tightly to you, fingers pinching into his hip as he leans, hot as a furnace against your side in the worst of summer. You don’t care.

It doesn’t matter that it’s been eight years. It could be forty, and if Javier showed up on your doorstep ready to fall, your response would only ever be give it to me. I’ll carry it.

He grunts as you prop him against the side of your house to fish out your keys. “All muscle,” he teases, voice deep and coarse.

“Glad you haven’t shed your ego,” you snark.

You give the door a shove as the lock turns. Javier tips his face up to look at the sliver of moon left out to wink from the sky as if he’s saying a prayer. He reeks of sick—his shirt stained in one spot on his chest where he failed to aim away from himself—and while he stares up at the dark rash of night you work open the buttons of his shirt to take it off. Despite puking in your car, he’s still too lost to the world to notice your hands until you’re halfway down. Maybe in another life you’d be staring at his chest as you uncover it. The broad slopes of muscle, his stomach, the dark path of hair trailing towards his jeans. But in this life, you aren’t that to each other. You don’t get to be. 

“Cariño,” Javier says, and one of his hands covers yours as you pinch the last button. Looking down at you now, concerned through hazy eyes. Summer hangs wetly in the air; his curls lay damp against his skin, licking his temples, the nape of his neck.

You shrug his hand off yours, offering a small grin. “Gotta get this in the wash, Javi,” you tell him. “Not allowed to get in my bed smelling like puke.”

Cicadas sing from their trees. Your house, small as it may be, is a welcoming place. All red bricks and white shutters. The swing on the porch sways behind Javier, giving the occasional squeak. You shuck his button-up off his shoulders and ball it in your hands before catching his eye. “Can I trust you to stay upright while I put this in the wash?” you ask, one eyebrow arched.

He scowls, all pouty bottom lip—trying to make you laugh, even now. You huff as if exhausted, sarcastic and a little pleased. He’s in there, the person you’ve loved. Somewhere buried.

When the laundry is running you find him on your porch swing, horizontal. One bare arm dangling off the seat, his eyes closed again. Skin that’s usually golden washed silver by moonlight. In this heat there’s no reason for you to cover him but still you feel the nagging urge. Even with you here with him, you hate the thought of anyone coming out onto their porches or lawns to see him like this—out of control. You rouse him just enough to lift his head so you can sit at the end of the swing, then lay his head in your lap. He hums. A low, gravelly sound of pleasure. Glad to feel you beneath him in this small way. 

“M’sorry, baby,” Javier murmurs groggily, nuzzling his cheek against your leg as you stroke the hair away from his face again. He’s flushed, damp and sweaty, and even with the shirt gone could use a shower but you’d never say so. At this point, you’ve seen him in every state—sunny and terrible and everything in between—and don’t fear any of them. Don’t hate any of them. Never could, because all of them are him, so how could you.

“Cleaned up your puke before,” you reply. “Nothin’ I haven’t seen.”

He sighs, and with no small effort rolls himself onto his back with a grunt—the swing sways with the movement, rocking you both. Then once more, this time to his other side to face you. You chuckle softly as he settles, one of his arms reaching behind you to wrap around your hips, and for a while you drift back and forth with the porch light off and the moon’s claw cutting through the dark.

It’d be something close to heaven if it weren’t for his pain.

“Wanted to call you,” Javier sighs, after a long while of cricketing quiet. “After—”

Nothing.

You wait.

The rest of whatever he was going to say dissolves, never follows. Never becomes something for you to hold, to know, to carry. He keeps all the weight.

“Could’ve,” you say, hand in his hair again, how he always used to like. Even when you were kids he always wanted to be touched. His head in your lap, your hand in his hair to scare off his bad dreams. You could never tell a soul without destroying him—and you never wanted to. The way you were for each other was just that: for each other. Everyone knew you were close, inseparable at school. But the depth of that bond was a secret no one had to know. How his body needed to be close to yours to settle, to breathe, sometimes to sleep.

Javier’s nose scrunches as he fights off some stabbing thought. You stroke your thumb across his temple, trying to get him to look at you, but he won’t. 

“Tell me,” you whisper. 

Two words you never say. A question you never ask. He’s so far past drunk he’s practically a child—maybe it’s wrong to ask him like this—but you’d do anything to relieve even one ounce of this suffering.

Eventually, he exhales deeply, breath warm against your hip. Behind you, you feel his hand stroke your back, slipping beneath the hem of your shirt. “Thought you’d hate me,” he mumbles.

Your heart splinters. Every cell in your body wants to pull him against you, pull him into you, swallow the ache. “Should know better than that by now,” you say. 

The shoulder he isn’t laying on bobs with what must be a shrug. “Been a while.”

“Been a long time,” you agree. Not angry, not bitter, not blaming—it’s been a long time. It’s nothing to you now but a fact. Seeing him again has erased the nag of your neglected longing.

With a gruff, Javier’s arm tightens around your back and he pulls himself closer, his forehead nuzzling your hip bone. “Feels like a’undred years,” he says, his voice hoarse and broken.

There isn’t anything you can do but card your fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp with featherlight nails. You let your head fall back against the brick of your house. Exhausted, but you won’t sleep. You’ll stay awake with him all night if he needs it, if he asks you. Even if he doesn’t. 

4:00 A.M.

“No more water,” he begs. “Please.”

In your kitchen, just the stove light on, he’s sobering. Not sober —but he can stand up on his own. Leaning back against your counter, both hands outstretched to rest upon the laminate. Cool light splits his face in half—one bright and weary, one lost to shadow. You roll your eyes and hold one hand out to accept his water glass which he passes you with a grateful sigh.

You listen to the harsh rush of water draining into the kitchen sink—a stark disruption to the eerie quiet of the middle of the night in which it feels like you and Javier are the only people left on earth. 

Behind you, Javier groans, watching the glass fill again.

“It’s for the nightstand, baby,” you assure him as you pass it back. 

He pouts at it, arms drooping at his sides. Trying again. Digging for your laugh. With expectant eyes you pick up his hand and cup it around the glass, and when you let go and he doesn’t drop it you let a smile creep slowly across your face. Satisfied, he straightens a little, swaying slightly, and nods. He looks down at the floor, his bare feet, and his face blues. Darkens like he’s remembering.

You lay the palm of your hand over the center of his chest and beneath it Javier’s heart throbs steadily. His lungs expand. His blood moves. Alive—whether he feels it or not—and a comfort to you. 

Though you’ve lived in this house only three years and Javier’s never once seen or stepped foot in it, he trails through the narrow halls to your bedroom like he knows it well. Sloppy footsteps, yes, and always with you behind him braced to catch any sudden fall, but he makes it in the end. Water sloshes over the lip of his glass as he sets it down. Then—still in his jeans, which hug his thighs so tightly you’re surprised he doesn’t try to peel them off—he crawls into your bed, on top of the duvet. In the doorway you pause to watch him and get a vision of another life in which he does this every night, at ease in your home because it’s his home too.

It is a terrible thought, weak and troubling. It’ll burrow if you let it, so you kick it away. While you strip free of your work clothes, you watch him in the small mirror above your dresser; his head flops into your pillows, cheek smushed, eyes sliding closed. Those dark lashes, those parted lips. Always exactly the same. He doesn’t even glance in your direction—he doesn’t need to peek at your body. He’s seen you before. You him.

“Was Mateo worse than me,” he asks from the bed, like he’s read your mind. No surprise. For years, you would’ve sworn he could.

You blush, though he’s not looking. “Javi,” you say softly.

“Sorry,” he sighs.

In a t-shirt, you pad around the other side of the bed to crawl over the covers and curl onto your side to face him, one hand beneath your cheek. “Sex in college is supposed to be bad,” you tell him, grinning.

His brows pinch together, bracketing his forehead. “Shouldn’t've been with you,” he mumbles.

Yes, he’s how you remember. Ever chasing some rabbit hole to plummet down to avoid the cavern to which he’ll give no name. He’s got one hand buried under his pillow—how easy it is to think of your things as his—and the other lies between you, limp. You take it in your own, pull it to your lips, and press them to his knuckles. “We were kids,” you say, sure to smile against the back of his hand so he’ll feel it.

He huffs. “Drunk.”

“That too.”

“Better now, I swear.”

You laugh. Can’t help it. Silver light from the moon puddles over you, illuminating half his face, the curve of his shoulder, the slope of his arm. Even miserable, probably in a blackout, one foot hanging sadly off the edge of the mattress, Javier is someone who draws laughter out of you with ease, same as when you were kids. You kiss the back of his hand again, still grinning, and watch the frown dissolve from his face. He’s always been beautiful in a way that never seemed fair, but you think it might be getting worse with age. No one should look so good in this state, but there he is.

“Sure hope so, baby,” you tease.

Now he cracks one dark eye to squint at you, the corner of his mouth loosening, curling into his cheek. Then there’s that dimple. Your heart patters. You’ve missed him. “Could show you,” Javier smirks.

You roll your eyes. “You aren’t showin’ me shit right now.”

His bottom pink pops again, pouting as he broods, yanking another chuckle from you while he murmurs something you miss. Something that ends with good though.

“Hm?” you say.

“You smell good though,” Javier murmurs, and though soft you hear it this time. That almost whine.

“Well, when you put it that way,” you tease, and like magic, he laughs. Smile lines crinkle beside his eyes, nose scrunching. Beautiful. It is, you think, the best of him—how he looks when he actually laughs. It takes over his face. 

As you both settle, he scooches closer on the bed, squeaking the mattress. You feel the warm plume of his breath whisper over your face as he sighs. He has, it seems, only a match of levity at a time. It sparkles, flares, and smokes out too quickly. 

It isn’t a frown that replaces it, but despair. “Gonna feel like shit tomorrow,” he mutters, no louder than a whisper. No need to speak any louder when you’re lying this close. Your lips press to his knuckles again and this time he squeezes your hand, the muscles in his forearm briefly tensing. Freckles dot his bicep like stars.

“You feel like shit right now,” you whisper in reply.

Javier nods, face folding like he wants to cry. But he almost never does, not even in front of you.

5:00 A.M. 

You drift into brief tides of sleep with the warmth of him around you, his face in the crook of your neck. For most of your life, you’ve chalked up the ease with which you touch each other to an echo of your childhoods—a time in which touch is given often and without judgment. There has never been hesitation between you, not in this way. Even now, eight years since the last time you saw him, Javier slots against you in a way that just feels right—new, broader shoulders and all. 

His slow, deep breaths warm your neck, your collarbone. You couldn’t wiggle out of his arms if you tried, and though it’s warm even with the window open, even with both of you on top of the covers, you don’t want to. Eight years is a long time to go without this.

When he stirs with a tortured groan, you nudge your lips against his forehead. “S’okay,” you mumble, and the whine that snakes out of him rattles your chest and slices clean through your heart. Wrapping a hand around the back of his head, fingers threading through curls, you pull him closer, and his arms tighten around your waist.

Maybe it should feel wrong when Javier nuzzles into your neck to kiss you softly beneath the jaw, but it doesn’t. 

“Baby—” he croaks, and you hush him, petting his hair.

You don’t want him to say it. You never say it. If he says it now, it’ll ruin you.

“I know, Javi,” you whisper, squeezing your eyes closed so tight you see a rain of stars. “I know.”

“Y’ never let me say it,” he mumbles against your throat, his breath fogging your skin.

“You don’t need to,” you say.

“Wanted to, you know,” he replies, his voice so gentle you feel it pass from his chest to yours in a shallow tremor.

You chuckle softly from the darkness behind your eyes, like opening them will break the spell. “Oh yeah? When?”

He shrugs, his body loose and boneless. The heat of him is making you sweat. 

“The whole time,” Javier mumbles, and you wish suddenly that he weren’t so close because he must hear the sudden racing of your heart. “Pensé que me casaría contigo.”

If he didn’t hear its racing, you think, there’s no way he misses when it stops. Your Spanish is mediocre at best but you catch fragments, piece it together. I thought I’d marry you.

Your forehead wrinkles as a sudden urge to cry slams into you, shattering your bones. At least you manage to pat his back teasingly, feigning coolness, steadiness. Pretending he hasn’t toppled you. 

“Think you’re confusing me and Lorraine, cariño,” you tease quietly, hopeful that the wetness in your eyes doesn’t taint your voice.

Silence stretches like an elastic threatening a snap, a sting, a burn. But Javier exhales in a way that feels like he’s asleep again, like all of this is just nonsense cooked up in some drunken dream. Soon sleep is dragging at you sweetly, loosening your limbs again. You grow heavy, face slack, your limbs indistinguishable from his. When he whispers again you hardly hear it and the words don’t stick. You’ll forget them when you next wake for real. But he says them all the same.

“Not confusin’ you with anybody.”

Then you’re gone, sucked away. Asleep.

6:00 A.M.

The yellow morning leaks through your bedroom. You wake to a glint in your eyes: sunlight reflecting off a picture frame on your dresser. You and Javier twenty years ago dressed for junior prom, hidden now by the blinding. Squinting, you groan a soft mph sound as you wake, desperate to bury yourself in sleep again. 

In your brief slumber the two of you have remained braided—two strands of clinging ivy. Against you, Javier groans, humming tiredly against your throat, and you feel his hand slip up the hem of your shirt again, his palm flat over your spine. 

Half asleep, you let him. 

Half asleep, you let yourself remember.

You’re twenty five again. Just a few years out of college, both of you home for the summer. Out in the long grass in Chucho’s yard, you stretch yourselves out to sunbathe in the Texas summer, watching bumblebees laze drowsily between blooming thistles. Beside you, Javier lies on his back with both hands cradled beneath his head while you read, those yellow aviators over his eyes.

“Could get a place together,” he says. So casual, so simply.

Looking up from your book, you see the pink collar of sunburn around his neck and grin to yourself. “We’d get sick of each other,” you lie.

Javier only shrugs, unaware, you think, that you spent all of college in love with him. In freshman year, you’d stumbled home together after a party and he’d kissed you against your front door, waking you from what you realized then had been a lifetime of slumber. You’d never considered kissing him before, but all of a sudden it was obvious. You thought this is what your lips should have been doing all this time.

But it never happened again. The sex was awkward, clumsy—you’d only done it once before—and you told yourself that’s why he never tried again. You never tried either. Now it’s a joke you tell each other, trying to make the other person blush. 

The thought of sharing an apartment with him sends a river of panic through your veins. It would kill you to watch him bring girls home. To watch him date someone else. It was bad enough watching Lorraine, and he left her.

“If you say so,” he says, looking not one bit disappointed.

Half asleep, you let yourself dream you said yes.

7:00 A.M.

You don’t know who leans in—if you tilt your head down or if Javier tilts his up, if it starts in your sleep—only that when you next stir the morning is darkening to gold and orange. Panels of windowed sunlight crawl slowly across your legs, and you are kissing.

Javier’s lips melt against yours. It’s nothing like when you were kids. Eighteen and nervous wrecks, your teeth always getting in the way.

It’s different now. You know how to kiss each other like you’ve had the practice, like it hasn’t been almost two decades since last you tried. Pliant and sleepy, his tongue licking gently into your mouth. His mustache scratches sweetly against your skin. When a breathy sound whimpers from you, he cups your jaw, his other arm locking snug around your waist. There’s no rush to it, no progression. You don’t strip down and fuck—both of you content with only this: the soft murmurs you breathe into each other. The lifetime of wanting in every kiss. 

Because you have wanted him, you realize. Not just in college, but before then and every day since. Maybe from the first day he walked into your sixth grade class and felt like home. Even these last eight years when you’d accepted that he was gone from your life for good, your friendship having reached the end of its life, you wanted him.

He grunts when you nibble gently at his bottom lip, and you smile. Then he moans. And it’s perfect, somehow, like he’s dug around in the cabinets of your mind to know exactly how you want to be kissed. Deeply, patiently. All tongue and breath and yielding lips, your hands in his hair, the fire of him enveloping you.

You say nothing; you talk with your touch.

He stripes his tongue along your bottom lip: I’m sorry.

You tug at his curls: I’m sorry.

He kisses the corners of your mouth: I’m sorry.

You lick the hinge of his jaw: I’m sorry.

His thumb strokes the apple of your cheek: I’m sorry. I’m falling asleep.

You tilt your head to better taste him: I don’t want to fall asleep.

But you do. The tide drags you out, your body molten, exhausted, hypnotized. Your lips still touching as you fall into a dream.

8:00 A.M.

When next you open your eyes, you’ve rolled towards the window and the weight and warmth of his arms is gone. You don’t bother turning over. Don’t bother reaching for him. 

You know the bed will be empty on his side, cold. 

[miss-oranje-disco-dancer]

good guys, bad deeds

pairing: javi p x f!reader

cws/tags: ONLY ONE BED, javi is reader's dad's best friend, minimal physical description (reader has pussy and boobs and wears a tank top and panties), p in v (unprotected bc ... i'm sorry), oral f! receiving, accidentally cumming inside, author does not speak spanish but wishes she did and researched spanish dirty talk but still knows v little, periodic pov switch

summary: reader comes to visit javi in colombia and he only has one bed, so they decide to sleep in it together and shenanigans ensue. it's wrong but it feels so right...

a/n: for the roll a trope challenge! @burntheedges

wc: 3.9k

taglist:

@gothcsz @onlyasimp4-2dbitches @harriedandharassed @withonly-sweetheart

join my taglist

Half the time Javi smokes inside out of stubbornness – he can still hear the voices of ex-girlfriends back in Texas telling him off for it. He has what he intends to be his last cigarette of the day outside because his apartment has begun to make him stir-crazy. With Escobar "behind bars", there's a brief lull in the DEA office. He's become so used to chaos that he thrives off it now.

A taxi pulls up and a young woman steps out - for better or worse, Javi knows a lot of the women who spend their nights on the streets of Bogota and Medellin. This woman is unfamiliar, though the look in her eyes suggests she knows him. He sifts through strings of drunken memories, but can't place her.

Until he hears her voice. "Uncle Javi!" she says, flying into his arms which are not yet open to catch her. He's a DEA agent, a young woman should not be strong enough to knock the wind out of him but you get pretty damn close.

He'd completely forgotten you were coming – but, even if he'd remembered, he wouldn't have recognized you. God, how long has he been away?

You look older. That's what he tells you later, trying to put it as matter-of-factly as possible, trying to sound neutral and indifferent to the fact that a beautiful woman is standing at his doorstep like a baby in a basket, helpless in a foreign world, brought by cab rather than stork.

Javi carts your luggage up the stairs and little does he know that you're practically salivating over the sight of his broad shoulders, his strong arms that could just pick you up and throw you onto the bed–

"Are you planning to stand there all night?" Javi's voice snaps you out of your daydreams.

"Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm so tired, I'm practically falling asleep standing up."

Jet lag can do a number on anyone, but it doesn't help that the flight attendants were happy to provide you with alcohol. You try to act sober, but Javi's a cop, he's trained to call your bluff.

You stumble through the doorstep and you hear him stifle a laugh. "Are you okay? You look drunk."

"I'm not drunk. I had a few drinks on the plane, but I sobered up at the airport while I was waiting for you to come get me."

You watch guilt wash over him, and you almost take back your statement, but you don't. It's a rare opportunity to see Javi flustered, and even if it's not for the ideal reason (in your dirty mind), you'll take it as consolation for his forgetfulness.

"I'm so sorry. I've been so wrapped up in everything here that I completely forgot you were coming."

You shrug it off, not committing to accepting his apology but not wanting to prolong his suffering either. God forbid a man has to take accountability for his actions.

He follows your gaze which travels across the living room, through the kitchen, as far as your eye can see from the entrance where you stand. "I would've tidied up if I'd known I was having a guest."

"I honestly expected worse."

"You think I'm a slob?"

"No, you're a man – a single man – and the apartment of a bachelor is never a clean one."

"Who says I'm single?"

"Your ring finger."

"Maybe I have a fiancée."

"If you did, I don't think you'd be so defensive."

"I like being single."

"I like being single too."

He moves swiftly away from the relationship status conversation. "Unfortunately, I don't have a guest room, so you'll have to sleep on the couch if that's okay…"

"You're making your guest sleep on the couch?"

"Oh, I assumed you'd be more mature."

"I am mature. That's why I'm asking politely and not throwing a tantrum."

"Fine, mija. I give up. We're both too tired to argue."

"We can take turns, so you can have your bed tomorrow."

Taking turns means Javi shares the bed with you.

He strips himself of his shirt and you struggle to keep your composure. You have a better view of his broad chest and big arms with him shirtless and you can see the trail of hair from his belly button leading down to the waistband of his sweatpants, and god, how you want to find the end of it. A happy trail, they call it, but what it makes you feel is something different than happiness, something impure.

"What?" He catches you staring. "It's hot as fuck in here, and it's my room. I sleep shirtless. Take it or leave it."

Take it. You want him to say it to you in a different context.

"Whatever. You better not try anything funny."

"What is that supposed to mean? Do you really think I'm that type of guy?" He seems genuinely offended that you think of him that way.

And, in truth, you doubt he's like that, which is why your fantasies about him 'trying something funny' are a bit unrealistic, but you let them run wild regardless.

"Chill," you say, "I'm kidding."

The truth is that you'd be perfectly fine with any funny business Javi would be willing to offer you. But it's late and it's your first night as a guest in his apartment, so you decide not to try to provoke him.

You fall asleep soon after you tuck yourself in beside him.

It's been quite some time since Javi has been forced to share a bed with someone. Outside of women who stay over - and women rarely stay after the act is finished — he sleeps alone. You don't snore or drool on him which was a positive as he's been with women who did both of those things. He's known sleep talkers and sleep walkers — Lorraine was the former. It isn't until the middle of the night when he's awoken by your stirring that he realizes how cumbersome it will be to sleep next to you. It's a queen-sized bed, which should fit two, especially when one of those two is a young woman. So, why are you practically on top of him? You've managed to roll over, sprawl out, and curl back up to restart the process. You always end up further on Javi's side, so he continues to inch away until he is forced to be up against you lest he fall off the bed and onto the floor.

He tries to sleep as best he can, and prays for the sun — something he's never done before. Javi is hardly a morning person. But, he wakes up again before his alarm sounds. There is one glaring issue, he finds.

It's not his fault that your ass is up against his crotch and that every movement you make inadvertently teases him. It's so unfair that you make him this hard when he can't jerk off. He can't because you're here. Doubly unfair since you did this to him. It's not your fault that you're pretty — too pretty for your own good, whether Javi ends up giving into the primal needs inside him or you end up with another man. Thinking about that gets him harder - not because he likes to think about you with another man, in fact, he hates it, but jealous fuels the fire inside him. If he let his possessive feelings towards you overcome his rationale, he could fuck you the way you deserve, and he's sure you'd enjoy it. You need it, whether you know it or not.

Or, maybe it's just projection, maybe hope. Pretty women make him weak. God forbid you find out and use it against him. Javi's the type to risk it all - money, career, even his life. Not just for pussy - because it's not about that anyway, it never has been. Pussy is easy to come by - in fact, if he gathers enough saliva in his palm and closes his eyes he can almost replicate the feeling by himself. But being with a woman, all soft skin, strangled moans of his name, nails piercing his skin, needy kisses, teeth, tongue, and heartbeat - he hasn't been able to fully satiate that need ever, and he doesn't remember a time before he was a tenderhearted soul in a soldier's body.

Javi could get himself off, it wouldn't take long, but the shower is in the en-suite so he'd wake you up if he turned on the water. Plus, it'd feel wrong having you in the next room while he did such a thing even if he tried not to think about you while he did it, even if you slept in blissful ignorance, pure and untainted by the knowledge of Javi's teeth digging into his fist to muffle a moan as he shudders through his orgasm.

He wasn't thinking about you until your body was pressed up against his own. He doesn't think of you like that, or at last, he didn't. Not before you came to Bogota, appeared in front of him so grown up that he hadn't recognized you at first. You were a girl the last time you stood in front of him, he remembers having to kneel to hug you when he said goodbye. Time has passed and you're fresh out of college now. A woman, not a girl.

He's somewhere between thinking and dreaming when you spring up in bed with a gasp, and on instinct, his hand flies to the bedside table to search blindly for his gun. Until he realizes it's just you. A harmless girl.

Maybe not completely harmless.

He places his hand to his bare chest as he breathes slowly, trying to calm down.

You look like you're on the verge of tears and it pains him. "I'm so sorry, Uncle Javi."

"Mija, don't worry," he says, rubbing your back to calm you, "You just startled me."

"I just had a bad dream," you tell him.

You used to have those when you were younger, he thinks, now I have them too.

"It was just a dream, you're safe." He lies down and nods for you to lie back down too. "I'll keep you safe," he says quieter.

You move closer, facing him, and he lets you because he knows you need comfort more than anything. Javi resists the urge to hold you, worrying you might feel his hard—on through his sweatpants.

He stares - no, gazes - at you for a moment, unsure of what to say. You meet his eyes with a similar look - inquisitive, though you're more curious than he is. Javi feels dread in the face of what he fears is unfolding. You see an opportunity where he sees a warning. Do not go any further, it says. But he hasn't done anything.

Except for lie down next to you rather than taking the couch, and sleep shirtless rather than sweat through a t-shirt. He's more angry at himself for his reluctance to admit that this is a self-indulgent choice no matter how he flips it. Either he's a bad host or he's a bad man.

The answer becomes clearer when you lean in and he closes his eyes instead of pulling back like he should. He doesn't want to embarrass you, he decides. Better not reject you, at least not like this, he should let you down easy. Which he'll certainly do after kissing you.

It's so unfair, Javi thinks. He'd forgotten what it feels like to kiss someone who wants him. Women want his money, at best, his body. Often, both. But Javi is the type of man who wakes up at sunrise so he can slip out before he has to man up and have an awkward conversation over coffee.

Cupping your cheek gently is certainly wrong but so is kissing you, and he's already doing that. He should kiss you sweetly, make this a little more dignified, salvage what's left.

Your lips are soft and it's not your first kiss unless this is an incredible stroke of beginner's luck. Hungry, yet teasing, forcing him to reveal his own desire when you draw back a bit and he has to be the one to reach for you.

He notices you drifting closer to him and before he can make things much, much worse, he snaps out of it and pulls back entirely.

"Querida, we shouldn't… It's not right," he says because he can't say he doesn't want you.

"Why? What's wrong with it? We're both adults, we're sober, we're single…"

"You're much younger than me, and your father is my friend."

"Age is just a number, and what my dad doesn't know, can't hurt him."

He scoffs and rolls his eyes, playing the whole thing off like he isn't grappling with conflicting feelings inside.

"You said you'd never lie to me, right?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Tell me the truth, then, do you want me too?"

"You can't ask questions like that, mija."

"Why, Uncle Javi?"

"That's why. I cannot sleep with someone who calls me 'Uncle Javi'."

"It's not like we're actually related."

"I know that. This wouldn't even be up for discussion if that were the case."

"So it's up for discussion?"

"No. No, it's not. We're not doing it."

He stands up abruptly, does a terrible job of adjusting himself in his sweatpants, and walks towards the bathroom.

"Where are you going?"

"Taking a shower."

"It's past midnight."

"Can a man not take a shower at night?"

"At least be honest and say you're going to jerk off."

"Jesus Christ," he mutters, putting his head in his hands. Then, he turns to you, "I'm going to jerk off. Happy?"

"Can I come with?"

"No. If I wanted you to be with me, I'd just do it in bed."

You pout, disappointed, and he thinks that's your last resort. He nearly lets his guard down as his hand reaches the bathroom door, reaches safety.

But, in a voice that's so familiar yet so foreign coming from your mouth, you ask, "You usually do it right here?"

He stares at you, his body slumps a bit like he's melting as he watches you play with the straps of your top, like you might take it off.

"Javier," you say, seductively.

"Don't do that to me…" he pouts, pleads. He doesn't want to give in.

"I just think we could have a really good time. I mean, I bought these panties for you, but I guess if you don't want to see them, maybe I can find another DEA agent who wants to…"

"I'm not letting you go and whore yourself out to my coworkers."

"Why not? You don't want me."

"I didn't say that. I said 'it's wrong', and it is."

"I guess I can see how it might be wrong from some angles, but I really like you, and I just want to know that you like me back — I just want to be wanted, to know someone thinks I'm good enough."

It's so unfair. Javi has to assume you're acting, but you're doing a great job because your teary eyes are filled with emotion — maybe it is real, he thinks. And that's what lands him back in bed with you.

"I like you," he whispers, "and you know that. I think a lot of guys like you… they don't deserve you, but trust me when I say you're more than wanted."

"I don't want any of them. I only want you." You look up at him with those pleading eyes that have always worked.

"I'm not a good man." he sighs.

"I want you anyway."

"I'm not a good man because I can't help myself."

You look at him with hope shining through you.

"Before we do anything I need you to know that I love you to death but this is sex, not marriage, not a relationship - I want to make you feel good tonight, but tomorrow we go back to normal, got it?"

"You act like you're taking my virginity. I'm not that innocent little girl anymore. I'm not expecting you to fall in love with me, I just want you to fuck me."

He has the knee-jerk instinct to tell you not to swear. but the scowl of disapproval quickly turns to a smile. You're not that innocent, are you?

You grab his face and whisper, "If I'm going to have casual sex anyway, isn't it better if I do it with you?"

"Oh, so now this is all 'casual sex', and I'm just doing damage control by fucking you?"

"My dad asked you to keep me safe, right? If I'm bed with you, I can't get in bed with any other potentially dangerous men."

"I'm always gonna take care of you." he says, dipping down to kiss your neck.

"Javier." It's a drawn-out plea for something, anything. It's the simultaneous gratitude brought about by the relief that washes over you when he agrees to this but the carnal frustration at the anticipation of him, heightened when you feel his erection pressing against your thigh.

You can tell he's big - though, the tightness of his pants leaves little to the imagination regardless. Nervousness strikes you because he's Javi. He thinks you don't know how much of a womanizer he is. As if you've ever been stupid enough to believe the marks on his neck were just razor burn or that he had no idea where the pair of panties in his glove compartment came from.

You don't dare ask how many women he's slept with, you don't need to know the number to know you have a laundry list of competition. You won't be his best - that much you know - still, you can't be his worst.

All your worries move to the background when you remember that Javier is kissing you, tugging down the straps of your top, kissing your neck, your collarbone, your chest. Your heart swells at his gentle devotion, but your core aches for him as your much dirtier fantasies flit around your mind.

You would never have guessed Javier would be into this type of sweet and slow sex. Most men you've been with want you in a way that feels more perverse, more distant.

Javi lets his hands wander along your skin, he teases you and marvels at your reaction. He doesn't just grip you, he holds you.

You shouldn't be as surprised as you are when he grabs your ankles and pulls you to the edge of the bed before kneeling with his head positioned between your thighs.

"You said you wore these for me?" he asks, fingers toying with the waistband of your underwear.

"Yeah. I remember finding a similar pair in your car once, and so I thought you might like these."

"You'd look good in anything, but you did a good job picking these out. Definitely my taste."

"You can keep them."

His eyes flicker with something, something you've been dying to see. "What are you going to wear?"

"I have more, like, ever color."

"They're all for me or just these ones?"

"All for you." The statement holds greater weight than the thin lace fabric, and surely he knows that.

There is desire in his eyes when he flicks his tongue along your folds for the first time.

Javi decides that if he's going to indulge, he shouldn't indulge half-heartedly. He should not be doing this, but you deserve to feel good. Someone else should do this for you, but no one else is here. It's Javi's responsibility to take care of you. He's just helping you sleep, that's what he tells himself when he gets a taste of you and knows he's so incredibly and utterly fucked. He groans into you, and you return a prettier sound.

He's too old to be this hard, this hungry for a woman. The most unfair part of it all is that Javi doesn't need sex, he doesn't need the touch of a woman. He needs you. Forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest.

Your voice shakes when you say his name, warning him of your impending orgasm. He massages your hipbones as if to say, "you're going to be okay, just let go". You look embarrassed when you come down from your high so he makes a point of staying between your legs, locking eyes while his tongue gathers every drop you give him, and smiling when he wipes his lips with his thumb.

The predicament lies between his own legs. The question still stands stiff and painfully hard. Should he allow himself the pleasure of fucking up? Of fucking.

You notice his hesitation. "Javier, I want it too, you know?"

"It's still a mistake."

"Everyone makes mistakes… maybe you could just allow yourself to make one - for me."

Making one mistake surely isn't enough to make you a bad person.

"Don't you ever get tired of being the good guy?"

He smirks at you. "Yes. Yes, I do."

Patience is a virtue, and not one you have.

"I'll do it for you," you say, tugging down his sweatpants, watching his cock spring out.

"Puta madre," he says, as you stroke his length, running your finger over the tip, kissing it with the pad of your thumb, "if you keep touching me like that I'm not gonna last."

Javi stifles his curses in English, ultimately ending up settling for Spanish at the rare moments he can find words at all. Clearly he forgets that you speak enough Spanish to understand what he's saying, but you let him think you don't because the things he says are even sexier than what he says in your daydreams.

He drags the head of his cock along your folds, coating himself with your wetness.

"Que cosa tan linda," he says under his breath, marveling at your body, fully naked in front of him.

"Please," you whine, and he nods, silent but committed.

"Mira como me toma," he says as he eases inside you finally.

He keeps the rhythm of his thrusts slow until you beg for him to go faster. Harder, deeper, more, more, more.

"¿Te gusta eso eh?" His voice is thick with lust, he's not even talking to you, not really, just running his mouth unable to help it.

Soon, it's nothing but curses through gritted teeth accompanied by the slick sounds of your arousal.

"Quiero que me hagas tuyo" you finally give up the game when he's about to cum.

It's not the fact that you want to be his that takes him over the edge unexpectedly, it's the way you say his name and he knows you already are. You hold onto him for dear life, locking your legs around his hips and forcing him deeper, your inner walls flutter around him, and he is helpless against the tidal wave of ecstasy that crashes over him.

He's dizzy after you suck the life out of him, but his rational mind returns when he pulls out and watches cum drip out of you.

Javi panics, momentarily considers every horrible possibility and every solution - will he have to fake his own death and leave the country? But your soothing touch as you gently pull him closer, your relaxing voice accompanying it, calms him.

He buys you the morning after pill and feeds it to you along with the best breakfast he can conjure up as an apology.

You thank him, but just before he thinks he's in the clear, you say, "if you really wanted to make it up to me, you could eat your breakfast in bed…"

He's about to say 'no', but you wink, and instead, he says, "Fine. But just this once."

spanish translations:

Que cosa tan linda = what a pretty thing

Mira como me toma = look at how well it takes me

¿Te gusta eso eh? = you like that eh?

Quiero que me hagas tuyo = i want you to make me yours

this post helped me lots!!

[beep-beep-imma-sheep]

"The entire country without electricity, hospitals collapsing, and they're like this. We're not to be demoralized nor weakened, 25 years are already enough".

This is El Cuartel de la Montaña. There's where Chávez rests are. During the entire blackout, that, for me, was 19 hours long, that place had electricity.

El Helicoide, the largest torture centre in LATAM also had electricity.

"A patient in the Noriega Trigo hospital in San Francisco just died. She was intubated and glued to a respirator.

The hospital doesn't have a power plant, nor UPS for the devices. They tried to resurrect her with CPR and nothing".

friend since 4 in the morning without electricity. The light came on about an hour ago with a lot of force and burned down a small refrigerator that we have with my mom and sister's insulin. This is a disaster. We went out to buy ice as best we could and the neighbor lent us some Colman coolers to store them in because the heat here is very intense. God willing, we'll get away from these people. Thank you. Anonymous. Please.

In Lecheria, girl.

Maria Corina is very badass, she flew with her rocket and left us all without electricity EXCEPT Chavez, Helicoide and Miraflores... it's incredible that they are even incoherent when it comes to lying.

— Without showing evidence, Freddy Ñáñez blamed María Corina Machado and Edmundo González for the national blackout: "People like that cannot be considered Venezuelans" "FREDDY ÑÁÑEZ BLAMES MARIA CORINA AND EDMUNDO FOR THE NATIONAL BLACKOUT"

Do you still believe that everything that has happened in Venezuela (electrical failures, shortages) in these last 25 years is the fault of others? No, gentlemen, it is a system of psychological conditioning to exhaust every Venezuelan.

— Hospitals, nursing homes, schools, homes... WITHOUT LIGHT The Helicoid TORTURE WITH ELECTRICITY What is this called? STATE TERRORISM

And this happened already.

Additionally:

Two former Colombian soldiers, Alexander Ante and José Aron Medina Aranda, were detained in Venezuela during a stopover while returning from fighting in Ukraine. Following their arrest in Caracas, both were extradited to Russia, where they now face charges of having fought against Russian forces as mercenaries. A Moscow court has ordered their provisional detention, which could lead to a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. The family, who had been waiting for their return in Colombia, were devastated to discover that they had been sent to Russia without warning.

@lasttarrasque

@tren-trenvilu

@punishedsaints

@fuckyeahmarxismleninism

@prensabolivariana

@thegreenbisamurai

This is what y'all supporting 🫵

—.

Everyone else, feel free to tag any other chavista/ tankie/ communist / leftie who is speaking about Venezuela when they know nothing about us or out history.

Disclaimer: those terms do not apply to any Usamerican / foreigner who is actually being respectful, I'm only refering to the ones that defend a dictatorship who lets people die while they keep the power to themselves.

[lilghostiequinni]

Difference Between

Main Masterlist Landoscar Masterlist

Pairing: Canadian!female reader (nn: Sugar/Sweets) x Lando Norris x Oscar Piastri

Warnings: Fluffy, Polymory, Established relationship, Death

Summary: There's no place like home, and well, you have many, but none are more important to you than the two drivers of McLaren.

Requested: NO / yes

They pursued you first. You didn't want to be with them because it would cause too much attention, and you were scared of what people would say, of what kind of hate you would possibly receive.

Eventually, they convinced you to go on a date, and within days, you were dating both of them.

For a few months, your relationship didn't go public. You stayed in the bliss that was there with this new relationship.

It was new and amazing and great.

But eventually, you were spotted, and your relationship went from private to everyone, everywhere knew, and there was so much you were getting you could barely leave your apartment because of it.

You didn't even have to leave the apartment to get the hate. It's online. You blocked everyone and turned to private accounts, but there were still the pages of your boyfriends and of the McLaren team.

Lily, Oscar's ex-girlfriend and current best friend, helped you through your struggles, and when the boys were gone, she was at the apartment helping you through the mental breakdowns.

Your boyfriends knew of your breakdowns and even helped you through many of them. They addressed the hate many times on social media.

It didn't help much, but when a video exposed the dynamic of your relationship to the world, many in the public realized that you made the boys happier, and the hate didn't just make you sad. It made them mad about the people they thought would do this to their loved ones.

People realized that you weren't the enemy or a gold digger but a person of great kindness.

You made the papaya boys try their hardest to win when you were there.

People gave you bracelets to give to Lando, and you brought the merch between the fans and the boys to sign when they were preoccupied with other fans.

People began to respect you.

The fans loved it even more when they learned that Lando called you Sweets and Oscar called you Sugar.

It was a fan tribute that got to Lando and Oscar that made them want to use a race to pay tribute to you after your death after you were killed in an accident in your home country of British Colombia.

An accident that could've been stopped if they just listened to you when you visited your parents.

So, on the anniversary of your death, they were able to get F1 to agree to do a race on the Vancouver circuit.

A real race in remembrance of you, but even then, it was different.

Everything was different without you or the twins you were carrying at the time of your death.

The difference was one that could never be made up with you or them.

It was the difference between then and now.

A/N: From this poll. This was much harder to write than I thought.

Tags: @poppyflower-22 @samantha-chicago @barcelonaloverf1life @tallrock35 @hellothere9597

If you want to be removed from a tag list, let me know so I don't keep tagging you. If you are striked through, I don't know if you want to be tagged, but just let me know if you want me to continue or stop

[reasonsforhope]

In 2016, when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement with the Colombian government, scientists realized that the rainforests, mountains, and savannahs, out of which the FARC waged a 50-year guerrilla war, and which were counted among the most biodiverse and least-explored places on earth, were suddenly safe to explore.

In Colombia, a few biologists who longed to journey to the heart of these places also saw them as the perfect way to bring 14,000 former guerrillas back into society in a meaningful way that would benefit not only them, but the country’s stunning biodiversity.

Colombia is often referred to as the world’s most biodiverse country. Although this is a hard thing to designate since many species around the world of all kinds remain undiscovered, she does lay claim to the most bird species anywhere on earth – both endemic and migratory.

Who better to help protect Colombia’s wild spaces than those who know them best, thought Jaime Góngora, a wildlife geneticist at the University of Sydney but who is originally from Colombia.

Góngora now leads a group of researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia, and 10 different Colombian scientific institutions in a program to train ex‑guerrillas to study Colombia’s native plants and animals, which to date has uncovered nearly 100 previously-unknown species.

Peace with Nature

Peace with Nature is the result of these scientists working together with guerillas to help protect Colombia’s biodiversity and aid in the post-conflict situation for thousands of people, 84% of whom, according to Góngora, are interested in pursuing, of all things, river habitat restoration as their post-conflict career path.

Góngora and his colleagues are only too happy to help, and Peace with Nature began hosting citizen scientist workshops to help train eager folks how to find, identify, catalogue, and study wild plants, insects, birds, amphibians, and more.

The preparation work was long and hard – between 15 and 18 months according to Góngora...

“In some of the workshops, we have the presence of the police and military forces along with the ex-combatants,” explains Góngora. “I think what has surprised me most is the opportunity that biodiversity offers for reconciliation and healing after an armed conflict. These workshops have been spaces for a respectful dialogue about biodiversity and nature.”"

-via World at Large, 7/13/20

Note: Video is half in English, half in Spanish. Spanish subtitles for English parts only.

[chrisevansonly]

𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞

✯charles leclerc x latin!female reader

✯when charles wants to learn some more spanish, he knows he has the best teacher around

✯no warnings v fluffy:)

✯this was requested!! it’s a little short but i hope i did it justice! i cannot speak much spanish, i only really speak english, italian and french so this will probably mostly be written using a translator😅🫶🏻

You looked at Charles, almost wanting to giggle at how sweet he looked, mere moments before this he’d come over asking you if you’d help him with with Spanish. You’d moved to Monaco from Colombia almost 6 years ago, your father expanding his business to the rich and wealthy of Monte Carlo. Of course being a motor sports fan you attended the grand prix in the city a few times, which is where you met Charles almost 2 years ago now.

“You want me to teach you spanish mi alma?”

Charles simply nodded

“What, Carlos can’t teach you?”

“I mean he does, but I’d rather learn from you…”

You couldn’t lie hearing him admit that made your cheeks flush, after thinking about it you nodded, patting the spot on the sofa beside you

“Well you know some at this point, I’m not sure what you want me to teach you”

Charles thought about what exactly he wanted to learn before smiling

“Maybe something about racing, about the cars and you know..”

Now that made you laugh but you obliged

“okay so, el coche se sintió bien hoy, that means that the car felt good”

Charles nodded

“El coche de sintió bien hoy”

You smiled

“You can use that in an interview if you want, something else you can say is estoy orgulloso de correr para Ferrari”

“So something something Ferrari?”

Laughing you hit him gently, knowing he didn’t let you translate first

“It means I am proud to race for Ferrari”

Charles smiled before repeating that back to you once again, his eyes watching yours carefully and meticulously so he wouldn’t miss any tricky words. In reality part of the reason he asked you to help him touch up on his Spanish was because he loved listening to you in your native tongue. He found the language intoxication when you spoke, yet he still struggled if you and Carlos got into heavy conversation: conversation he wished he could be apart of.

“Te amo mi corazón” (i love you my heart)

Smiling you leaned forward to gently hold Charles’s face, pressing your lips to his

“Te amo mucho mi amor, para siempre” (i love you so much my love, forever)

Pressing a kiss to your lips again Charles couldn’t help but smile, you were truly his everything, even if he couldn’t keep up with your language all the time, he made damn sure to make the best effort and get lessons from you.

“You know I might start charging you for Spanish lessons baby…you never know”

Charles laughed, his eyes squinting like they usually did when he smiled or laughed, one of your favourite things about him.

“What my love for you is not payment enough?”

You paused pretending to think about it as Charles placed a hand on his heart

“Chérie tu ma blessé!” (darling, you hurt me) F

If there was one thing you loved about Char it was how dramatic that boy could be, but it didn’t stop you from placing kisses across his face, getting him to smile once again, even if it was his plan all along

“Oh my poor Charlie, how will you ever survive”

“Un beso per favor…?” (a kiss please?)

Smiling you cupped his cheek gently, his eyes watching you intently

“Cómo podría decirte que no.” (how could i ever say no to you)

Happy when your lips met his, Charles knew right then and there you’d be the only person to ever teach him Spanish again.

Especially if he got to request a little extra loving from his favourite girl in the world.

[violentdelightsandviolentends]

Welcome to my Masterlist 💌

hi, i'm murphy. my requests are always open - feel free to send any ideas or thoughts you have - i'll always read them all.

note - all of my fics are reader insert. no use of y/n. i don't write for real people, only characters <3

Last Updated - August 24th

❁ - over 1k notes

✯ - a series

Characters I Write For.

500 Follower Celebration Masterlist. 3k Celebration Masterlist. Valentines Masterlist. 5k Celebration Masterlist.

Moodboard Masterlist. My Ao3.

 ⊹ 　 ✫ 　　 · 　　 ✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵  　.　 ✦ * 　 ⋆ 　　 .  ✵ 　　　

Top Gun: Maverick

Jake 'Hangman' Seresin

The Orange. ❁

You and Jake share an orange. He's in love with you.

For Eternity. (Part 2 of The Orange.)

You and Jake share an orange. He's never loved you more.

North Star. ❁

It's New Year's Eve. Jake is tired of waiting.

I Know Places.

Jake always joked that he'd kill for you. One fateful day, he does just that.

Jake 'Hangman' Seresin & Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw

Why Choose?

A drunken game of spin the bottle gets a little heated. Why choose, when you can have both?

Mickey 'Fanboy' Garcia

Dr Cupid.

Mickey Garcia passes out in hospitals. Luckily, this time there's a pretty nurse there to catch him.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Marvel

Bucky Barnes

Lessons in Love. ❁

Bucky didn't believe in love at first sight. Then he met you.

Honey Girl. ✯❁

The Universe shows you your soulmate when it feels like you need them most. When you least expect it, you're given yours - Bucky Barnes. Your dad's best friend. You can try to refuse it all you like; but the universe wants what it wants. There's no denying fate.

Trick or Treat.

You love Halloween. Bucky loves you.

Rest Had Seemed The Sweetest Thing.

Bucky's slowly learning that love isn't a finite resource. aka, Bucky's first Christmas.

Stucky

Letters to the Moon.

Steve is gone. The love you and Bucky have for him isn't.

Wishbone.

You meet Bucky and Steve while on the run. The three of you quickly learn that nothing is more violent than love.

Frank Castle

There's Always Tomorrow.

Frank knows you better than you know yourself. It's a blessing and a curse.

Multi Talented. ❁

Frank shows you exactly what you deserve.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Criminal Minds

Luke Alvez

Wherever You Are. That's Where Home Is.

Luke might be a mind reader. Only with you, though.

Vice. ❁

Everyone on the team has their vices. It just so happens that yours is sat across the table looking at you.

Spencer Reid

Web of Lies. ✯

Spencer Reid has always been good at keeping secrets. You just never thought he'd keep one from you.

Cowboy!Spencer ✯

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Narcos

Javier Peña

Self Control. ❁

Javi keeps refusing himself what he wants. One night puts everything into perspective.

Yes, Mr President.

There's an endless amount of things you shouldn't do as the President of the United States. Defiling the Oval Office is definitely one of them.

Western Nights. ✯

You don't expect to bump into your dad's best friend Javier in a church basement on the outskirts of town. You also didn't expect to fall in love with him. Life seems to be full of surprises - and Javier was the biggest surprise of all.

Jealousy, Jealousy. ❁

Javier Peña doesn't share.

Two Murphy's and a Peña.

Javier knows Steve's sister is off limits. He's never been one to follow the rules.

After Hours.

You and Javier are stuck in the office in the middle of a heatwave. You're hot in more ways than one.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Triple Frontier

Time. ❁

You get shot in Colombia. Frankie, Benny, Santiago and Will each have their own ways of helping you heal.

Tethered. ❁

The lines of friendship blur when you’re this close. Also known as - each of the times you’ve kissed Benny, Frankie, Santiago and Will.

Tranquility.

You're not good at keeping secrets from the boys. Turns out, Will isn't either.

Home Is Where The Heart Is.

They say home is where the heart is. Your heart belongs to the four boys you call your best friends. Also known as - four important times the guys told you they loved you.

Will Miller

Champagne Fuelled Confessions.

You come home drunk, and have something burning you need to tell Will.

Best Friend's Brother.

You've known Benny for years. You've had a crush on his brother Will for years, too.

Frankie Morales

Find You.

A bad date brings Frankie Morales to your door at the perfect time.

Rain Soaked Romantic.

Frankie will run across town in the rain if it means finally telling you how he feels.

Santiago Garcia

This Is The Way It Always Goes.

Santiago always comes crawling back. You convince yourself this is the last time - but you both know that's not true.

Precious Girl.

A chance meeting with your Dad's best friend at 2am.

Benny Miller

Adrenaline.

Ben needs a way to work off his post match energy. You.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

The Last of Us

Joel Miller

Pretty When You Cry. ❁

Joel realises his morals are fucked. You realise you like it.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Succession

Stewy Hosseini

Clandestine. ✯

You and Stewy know it's wrong. So why, pray tell, does it feel so right?

Fully Clothed.

Being Stewy's assistant has its perks.

Consequence.

Stewy's actions have unexpected consequences.

Needy.

You've been waiting all day for Stewy to get home. He loves it.

Play Pretend.

The classic fake dating trope, with a twist.

The Place Where It All Began.

You reunite with Stewy at your high school reunion. Turns out, he's been waiting for you, all this time.

Risky.

The thrill of being caught makes it all the more exciting.

Kendall Roy

Me and You.

You quit as Kendall's assistant. He's been waiting for this day.

Illicit Affair.

You're Matssons wife. You're also in love with Kendall Roy.

Forced Proximity.

The classic only one bed trope, this time with your emotionally unavailable boss.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

The Bear

Carmen Berzatto

The Roommate Collection. ✯❁

A collection of fics based on being roommates with Carmen.

Vienna.✯

Everything is the same. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. Nothing is the same.

Carmen. ❁

Carmen. Your Carmen.

Denial. ❁

Carmy can’t keep pretending.

Mechanic!Carmen.

Inspired by that picture of JAW in a crop top.

Perfectionist. ❁

Your boyfriend being a professional chef has its perks. Especially when it comes to gingerbread houses.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

9-1-1

Evan Buckley

Lightning Strike. ❁

The two of you deal with the aftermath of Bucks trauma.

Fire Hazard. ❁

The story of your firehouse nickname - and Buck unable to handle you in a sundress.

Evan Buckley & Eddie Diaz

The Look of Love. ❁

You, Buck and Eddie are absolutely, undeniably, head over heels in love with each other. It seems like everyone can see it except for the three of you.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Sons of Anarchy

Jax Teller

Heatwave. ❁

You cut Jax's hair. He can't keep his hands to himself.

Sundress Season. ❁

It’s sundress season. Jax can’t keep his hands to himself (again).

Filip 'Chibs' Telford

Teach Me How to Ride. ❁

Chibs is teaching you how to ride (in more ways than one).

Handled.

You and Chibs have been walking the line for a little too long.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Challengers

Two Can Play That Game.

You’re cheating on Patrick. You’re not proud of it, but it just… happened. Patrick’s cheating on you, too. He never meant for it to happen, but it just… did. Imagine the surprise from both of you when you find out that Art Donaldson is caught up right in the middle.

✵  ✵    ·　 ✵ 　　 *  · ✵

Miscellaneous

Steve Harrington

Cherry. ✯❁

The lines of friendship get a little blurry, one unassuming Friday night in December.

Someone Borrowed, Someone Blue.

An engagement party, your childhood best friend, one too many glasses of champagne. What could go wrong?

[jake-g-lockley]

Wherever You Stray, I Follow (Javier Peña x reader)

Masterlist | Spotify Playlist

gif by @bruhlpng

Warnings: Angst, canon-usual violence.

Word count: 3.7k

A/N: I wanted to write soft!Javi first, idk everything he does just seems so pure to me and eee I love him. Most of this was inspired by Taylor Swift’s Willow heh so enjoy <3

Tagging: @brekkers-desigirl @in-between-the-cafes @senassn

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Javier Peña was knee-deep in shit. It might not have been literal shit but it might as well should have because he would have preferred that over anything that was happening to him. 

It all started a few months ago, when everything in his life decided to take a confusing turn. It was a gloomy Monday and after a failed late night stakeout with Steve made sure that Javi overslept, stumbling around finding his clothes and trying his best to look put together. His sleep for the past few weeks had been restless, his mind flooded with thoughts that he wanted to forget. He was admittedly tired but had slipped on the hardened mask that he always wore whenever he was out and about chasing cartel members and wiping scum off the streets of Colombia. 

He had a gut feeling that that Monday was going to be a long one, with the way nothing went right for him. Still, he collected himself and went through every single page of paperwork that was left on his desk, eventually letting himself get lost in the momentum that he had created. He was, unfortunately, rudely pulled out of his deep concentration by a loud bark followed by a shrill whistle. He instantly stood up from his desk, as if he had been hit by a Pavlovian response, only to be hit by darkness as he felt his body hit the floor below him. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

On your first day at the DEA office in Bogota, Colombia, all your walls were up high. You’d decided that arrogance triumphed over whatever pleasantries you had in you because you were only here to do your job. Your six inch red bottoms clacked intensely against the cold marble floor as you strut into the office holding your chin high as Artemis cleared the way for you. People around you scrambled, gasping as their eyes landed on the unleashed rottweiler before you. You scanned the lobby, looking for any sign of a man that fit the descriptions of Steve Murphy. You finally found him leaning against the reception counter smoking a cigarette. You whistled for Artemis and she led the way again before stopping in front of a bewildered Steve.

“Nice doggie, please don’t bite.” he murmured under his breath, a little softly but you caught it nevertheless and it elicited a laugh from you.

“She’s very well trained, you have nothing to worry about Agent Murphy.” you assured, placing your hand atop Arte’s head, giving him your most elegant smile. 

“You’re the new recruit?” Steve asked, clearly floored by your appearance.

“You sound surprised?” you questioned back, your gaze hard and unfaltering. 

“You were supposed to be a man.” Steve chuckled before extending his hand for some formal introductions.

He cautiously led you around the place, warily stepping around the dog, before finally taking you to the room where everything goes down. 

“Your office will be here, Agent. Once again, welcome to the team.” Steve said, beaming.

Suddenly, you heard a loud bark. You whistled loudly for Arte to stop whatever she was up to but it was too late, she had pinned down a man onto the floor. You rush to get to Arte, worried that she had found someone who had been a threat to you and was about to kill a man right here in your new office. But instead, to your absolute confusion, you found her tail was wagging happily as she licked the man’s face. 

You whistled once more and Arte jumped off the man, revealing who it was she had pounced upon. Your jaw dropped and all the air left your lungs as you stared down at the person before you, the unmistakable unconscious face of Javier Peña bringing back a flood of memories to you. For a split second, you felt the insecure child that you had left behind years ago attach itself back onto your new frame, but you pushed it away instantly as you teared your gaze away from Javier. 

You looked around you to see guns drawn and looks of fury on the officers faces. All of them were mad, except Steve. Steve was howling with laughter, clutching his chest as he struggled to keep himself upright at the sight of the unconscious Javier. The officers lowered their guns at the sound of Steve’s laughter, looking at him as if he had turned up to work in a clown outfit. 

“Knocked out by a dog!” Steve heaved as you knelt down to slap Javier across the face to wake him up. 

You knew that wasn’t really the best thing to do to someone you hadn’t seen in the last six years but it sure felt good to watch him stir under you as the singe of the slap burned a satisfying tingle on your palm. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Maybe god, whoever god was, had taken Javi back to heaven for all the things he had done right. A sharp sting followed by a bright light greeted him as he awoke. The one thing that had him concluding that he was dead was that he was looking at you. You, his first love, standing above him looking like a real goddess, in a full black suit that made you look like a badass, your hair flowing and your eyes sharp as you glared down at him. He smiled up at you, a big goofy smile that made him feel dizzy. 

And then he heard it.

The cackling laughter.

“Oops, nevermind, I might just be in hell.” Javi thought as the laughter just got louder and louder as the ringing in his ears cleared. 

Then something clicked and Javi recognised the voice. It was Steve.

“Shit, Steve, you’re in hell too?” Javi called out but his voice sounded wobbly. 

Suddenly, something big and wet dragged across Javi’s face. He sat up abruptly only to be faced with a rottweiler. Hell hounds are not this happy are they? Javi took a while to right himself, looking around from the rottweiler to you and to the people around him. He had the itching realization that he was in fact still on Earth, in Colombia, in his office. But that couldn’t be, then why were you here? His heart raced and he panicked for the first time in years, his feelings jumbling up his thoughts. 

“Agent, meet my partner, Special Agent Javier Peña.” he heard Steve say. 

Javi looked at Steve, still trying to process what was going on. He realized he was on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him and he jumped up and stood properly in front of you, stretching his hand out for you to take. You shook it and dropped his hand quickly as he sat back down at his desk rubbing his forehead. You felt real, so Javi might not have been dreaming. 

“Apologies Agent Murphy, Artemis never really does this.” You said to Steve watching as Artemis stares up happily at Javi.

Of course she was excited to see him. Arte’ mother, Leto was Javi’s dog and she clearly remembered him, or at least remembered his scent. You watch as Artemis turns back into a puppy, licking Javi’s hand as he pats her snout. The sight of Javi had short circuited your own brain and you couldn’t help but stare at him, not believing that you were actually looking at him. You had to physically get a hold of yourself when you caught the dimple that pulled on his cheek as he smiled at your dog. Your hand found your throat, fingertips tracing the same lines it did six years ago when you screamed your throat hoarse trying to get Javi to stay home. 

Why are you leaving me?

You and him had engaged in competitive battles with everything, from school to sports to even hobbies. It lasted for years and shaped you into the person that you were today. You had to be better than him and he had to be better than you. Weirdly enough it brought the two of you closer. Javier was someone you can hold onto, someone you had trusted to be with you forever. He was your everything and you had no relationship purer than the one you had with him. 

Until that one harrowing day, where everything turned upside down for you. He had turned up to your home on your 21st birthday with a bouquet of flowers and Artemis who was sitting in a basket with a red ribbon tied around her neck. The both of you talked for hours over rum centered chocolates and little pretzels with little Artemis curled up in the little space that your folded legs made. He pulled you onto your feet after a while, holding onto you and spinning the both of you around to a song on the radio. 

The both of you danced till you were dizzy and that was when he stopped and held you close, his nose grazing yours as your breaths mingled with his. It was then when he told you his real plans. His plans of leaving the states. He didn’t tell you where he was going or what he was going to do no matter how much you begged. The giddy few hours that the both of you had spent together dissolved into chaos as you screamed at him, throwing the closest pillow at him.

“Please, please Javi, don't leave me here. I have no one, please.” you sobbed, clutching at his button down shirt as he pressed his forehead to yours.

Tears were streaming down his face but he reached out to wipe yours away. He held your face in his hands as he shook his head at you, willing for you to understand. The second he let go of you, you sank onto your knees and watched through teary eyes as he walked out your front door, never turning back. He was gone, it was as if you had lost him to the winds and you hadn’t heard from him since that day, not even a single phone call. Now here he was, dimple and all, as if fate had just decided to lead you back to him. 

He was looking at you now and he looked lost for words with the way his mouth was hanging open a little. Before he could say anything, you subtly shook your head at him, indicating that you didn’t want to cause a scene now. He gave you one sharp nod and turned to Steve, and started to chastise him for laughing at Arte knocking him unconscious. 

Frantically, the both of you pushed your emotions aside and layered on the masks thick, not willing for anything to slip out. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

That was two months ago, but till the present day, Javier and you had been skirting around each other, not acknowledging the fact that the both of you were old friends and that he probably knew more about you than he let on and vice versa. Now, you and him were crouched behind a wall, guns drawn, silence shrouding the both of you. Javier had some information about the location of one of Escobar’s sacarios and the both of you were waiting to gun him down. 

“Where did you get this information anyway?” you found yourself speaking to him directly for the first time in six years.

It must have surprised him because he looked at you as if you were speaking gibberish.

“I have my sources, muñeca.” he murmured, wincing slightly at the nickname that left his mouth. 

You rolled your eyes, knowing what the possible answer could be. You heard rumors but you were smarter than that, your eyes frequently caught the dark tinges on Javier’s neck, turning your stomach and coating it in poisonous jealousy. 

“When are we going to talk about it?” Javier said before he could stop himself.

Silence weaved in between his question, lacing the both of you in an awkward position. 

“There’s nothing to talk about.” you declared, your eyes sweeping for any sign of movement. 

Javier sighed your name and the sound rang in your head like a sweet melody. You turned to glare at him but your hardness faltered when all you saw was sadness etched onto his handsome face. 

“I’ve moved on and I have nothing to say to you, Peña.” you insisted, refusing to cave. 

“There's no one here, you can just call me Javi, like you used to.” he sighed.

“Never.” you said, keeping your eyes trained into the darkness over the wall.

“I’d kill to hear you say it.” he murmured.

His words were drowned by the sound of bullets flying through the air, one flying right in between the both of you. Javier was faster, launching himself into action and shooting with precision. You watched his six, pressing your back against his, the feeling of him grounding you. Once you found nothing, Javier walked away from you and stood over one of the sacarios, his gun held in front of him. He pulled the trigger and pulled it again and again and again and you stood there rooted watching blood splatter everywhere. 

“Javi, stop!” you yelled and he finally stopped, his shoulders heaving. 

He turned to you, and your eyes widened at the dark look that was painted on his face. The cops swarmed the place and Javier grabbed your hand and pulled you away from the scene. 

“Why are you here?” Javier said, pushing you against a wall. “You come back to me after years and you’re suddenly a DEA Agent too?”

Javier was seething with anger, pent up anger that had pushed far past his breaking point. He had been watching you for months, putting your precious life out on the line right in front of him. 

“ANSWER ME!” he yelled when you didn’t answer. 

Your heart jumped at the sound of his voice and before you could stop yourself, you raised your hand and let your palm collide hard with Javier’s face. 

“The same fucking reason as you, Javier! I’m here to take down fucking narcos and their fucked up empires.” you said, grabbing onto his jacket. “And don’t fucking yell at me!”

“Fuck, you know how dangerous this is, muñeca?” he said desperately, searching your eyes. “A few more centimeters and that fucking bullet would’ve hit you.”

“THAT'S MY RISK TO TAKE!” you yell back. 

“I can’t lose you again, please, not again.” he pleaded, grabbing ahold of your arms and pulling you closer to his chest. 

“I’m not yours to lose anymore, Peña.” you spat, wrenching your arms out of his grip and walking away, leaving him to stare at the wall before him. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

It had been years since you’ve cried this hard. You buried your nose in Arte’s coat and couldn’t stop the tears from flowing out of your eyes. If you had a penny each time Javier Peña made you cry, you’d be so rich that you could take over Escobar’s entire empire. You felt unreasonable, stupid even, crying like a stupid school girl. Arte was probably fed up with your shenanigans, but she sat in front of you quietly as you hiccuped through your sobs. 

A loud knock sounded at your door causing both you and Arte to jump. You pulled out your gun as Arte darted towards the door. 

“It’s me.” 

You scowled at the sound of Javier’s voice but Arte barked happily. You shushed her and leaned against the door, crossing your arms. You refused to see his face, not after how he decided that your choices were now his choices. 

“Look, I can hear you and Arte, cariño.” he sighed. “I know you don’t want to see me but I really just need to talk to you.”

Javier knew he fucked up. It was as if he voluntarily stepped into the world’s biggest pile of shit. He’d rather have Escobar piss on his face than to sleep knowing that he had upset you. 

You stayed silent as you stared into the door, wondering how Javier looked behind it. 

“Can we just go on a ride? Bring Arte too, it’ll help calm you down.” he said softly, pulling out his big guns. 

When you and him were younger, he used to take you on random car rides whenever your parents would fight or when things got too tough. He would drive you around until you fell asleep and you’d always find yourself tucked into your bed the next morning. When he was gone, you’d find yourself doing the same thing, but it didn’t feel the same when you had to drag yourself out of the car and into your house. 

You opened the door a little so that you could see Javier between the cracks. His hair was a mess and he had a cigarette between his lips. His guard was clearly let down as he looked more like your Javi and less like a hardened agent. 

“Only if you get me a hamburger.” you mumbled, watching as a small smile creeped onto Javi’s face. 

Javi carried Arte’s dog bed down the stairs and into his truck as she scampered happily at his heels. You watched on as Javi knelt down and gave Arte a big kiss on her snout and encouraged her to jump into the back seat. Your heart almost seized at this as you remembered the way he used to talk to Leto and bring her out on walks with you everyday. 

You slid into the front seat as Javi held the door open for you. You clicked the seatbelt on and went on to stare at your hands as he got into the car and ignited the engine. You zoned out on his scent, breathing him in, occasionally turning to watch him talk to Arte. Once you were satisfied with your hamburger and fed some to Arte, you settled into the seat and turned your whole body towards Javi, not caring whether you were being subtle or not.

You deserved this, you deserved to absorb as much of Javi that you could after years of being deprived of it. You loved him and it was as if something had been looking down upon you and is letting you have a second chance at everything. You soon found yourself being lulled to sleep as the emotional exhaustion took over your whole body. You awoke to the feeling of being carried. You gasp and hooked your arms around Javi’s neck as he chuckled and lowered the both of you down onto a blanket on … grass?

“Where are we?” you whispered scanning Javi’s face. 

He didn’t say a single thing instead he pushed you down and laid down next to you. The pitch black sky was littered with millions of stars, and your eyes widened as you stared at the void of space above you. When you got the chance to tear your gaze away from the heavens, you found Javi staring at you, the soft look in his eyes turning you into a human puddle. He had lit a cigarette and was running through it quickly, making you roll your eyes at him. You rolled your body on top of his, straddling his abdomen and taking him by surprise as you snatched his cigarette away. 

“You gotta stop smoking these, they’re bad for you.” you say sternly.

“You’re bad for me yet, here we are.” he mumbled, staring at the way your body connected with him.

You placed the cigarette onto your lips and took a long drag, coughing when the smoke hit your lungs. Javi laughed under you, and you scowled at him, stumping the cigarette out on the grass. Javi thought that there was nothing more beautiful in this world other than you. He gathered his last bit of courage and pushed you slightly downwards so that he could sit up and look at you before reaching out to cupped your cheek with his hand. He relished at the way you leaned into his touch and at the way your eyes fluttered close.

“I-i don’t know where to start, so I’m just going to say sorry. I’m the fool who hurt you and I don’t expect you to ever forgive me.” he whispered. “To leave you was to leave my soul behind and I don’t know who to thank or curse for bringing you back to me.”

“Javi…” you started but he placed a finger onto your lips.

“My girl is a DEA Agent.” he said nodding to no one in particular. “My smart, badass girl. Honestly, when I saw you standing over me when I passed out, I thought god was a woman and god was you.” 

You giggled and ducked your head into his chest, letting him pull you impossibly close to him. This was it, this was your place of refuge, right here in Javier Peña’s arms. 

“Javi?”

“Hmm?”

“Does this mean that you’ll finally get a hold of your balls and kiss me?” you said, bringing your face to the same level as his.

You laughed at the way Javi’s face was arranged, as if he didn’t know whether to be shocked or happy. 

“How did you-”

“Because I do too, Javi. I love you and I can’t have you slipping away from me, like you are one of my lost happy memories. The little girl in me knew that you’d come back to me.” you said, before pressing your lips onto his.

A part of you always knew that your soul was tied to Javi and nothing in this world could pull him away from you. Javi let his hands explore you, taking his sweet time to kiss you back, slowly. Once he was sure that your lips were swollen with his touch, he pulled away and pressed his forehead to yours as you caught your breath. He breathed you in and you smelled like home. You made him feel unstoppable and as he hugged you close, he realized that no cartel member could even stand a chance around him now that he had you with him. 

That's my girl.

[jolapeno]

anytime

javier peña x f!reader

summary: “Thank you for coming with me,” you whisper. Nodding, he feels you follow his path—dropping, scorching his face, tracing the place where the hair sits atop his lip. “Anytime, cariño.” “Anytime, really?”

wordcount: 3.1k. warnings: fluff. bestfriends to lovers. banter. reader wears a dress and has a gloss on lips. no physical description. javi calls reader solecito as a nickname only. likely warnings for spelling as i wrote this on my phone. an: huge thanks to @wildemaven for creating this moodboard (pls go show it some love), letting me make a banner from it, and then letting me write this for Javi instead of Frankie. bby, i hope you like this.

Javi had never been good at avoiding challenging situations.

For the longest time, he’s been finding himself in the centre of a whirlwind—whether in Bogotá, Cali or apparently even back home.

You, his friend, best friend—a well-kept secret, tucked away in his chest, not shared with a soul when he was away. You were a thing that he’d clutched close to his chest from the moment the two of you had first gotten close, through his failed engagement and even more so when he left for Colombia. You, in all your understanding, hugging him, telling him he’d be great, amazing, the very best.

Both of you were younger then, less worn down by life, its many obstacles and all the other things.

You best not become best friends with anyone over there, Peña. As if anyone could annoy me as much as you, solecito.

In the brief interim of his return, you hadn’t appeared all that different. You may have had a job, a house—drove a slightly better car than when the two of you were staying out at all hours—but you, at your core remained very much the fucking same.

Still just as understanding, as kind. A person who got him, without really needing to try.

For Javi, the best thing—outside of you being you and the monthly calls you made him promise to keep when he was drowning in murder, drugs and Escobar—is that you never ask him about it. Any of it.

You had always let him pretend, escape, listen to you fill him in on gossip—things such as disagreements over the size of rhubarb and whether someone was having an affair. A thing you did even when he came back. Even more grateful for it then, when he grew tired of the questions, the compliments, the everything.

Its why he didn’t tell you when he would land back in Laredo for good. Just waiting, standing outside your place, leaning against your car as you walk down the street—eyes brushing over him, pausing, before he gets to see that smile. That signature fucking smile.

When he’d left the first time, he remembers how you’d lingered near your car, unwilling to climb into your bright yellow death trap—the entire reason he called you solecito to begin with—wearing the beginnings of that smile even then.

The difference is now he knows that there was something under it. Hidden, held back, kept from him.

It’s why it meant so much to him when he saw it in all its glory, all alight, blooming and somehow healing.

He can’t explain it, but it repairs strands inside of him. Your presence alone continuing to do so when he meets you for lunches, coffees, and late-night drinks. In exchange, he makes you laugh, your head thrown back as he tells you about whatever he did on the ranch—all of it comical, apparently. Because the idea of him, Javier Peña doing ranch work brought tears to your eyes.

“You’re just jealous.”

“Jealous?” you splutter, taking a mouthful of your beer as you narrow your eyes.

Nodding, he leans back into the booth, arm stretched out, picking and picking—the label crumbling from the sweating bottle. “Yeah. Bet you’re upset you don’t get to see me herd cattle and mend fences.”

“Oh, yeah. One-hundred-percent.”

Shrugging, he grins—an easy task with you. A thing that has always been that way, even when he turned up at your door when he couldn’t get married; even when the two of you sat under the stars when he told you about possibly going to Colombia. You still made him grin—even when things weren’t fucking easy at all.

“I’ll add it to my to-do list—visit Peña on the ranch—it’s currently sat under finding a dress, a boyfriend and the will to fucking live.”

Snorting, he traces his bottom lip with his thumb.

Your face scrutinises him, before rolling your eyes. And he just waits—because you always spill eventually.

One. Two. Th—

Fine, you huff, before it unravels from you. How the wedding of your work colleague is close, closer than I thought and you’re tired of attending these things alone, circled like a fucking fish by single sharks.

And he’s listening, taking it in. Trying to not wince at how high-pitched you’ve got as you’ve ranted.

Mainly, Javi finds there’s more questions rising than answers provided.

One singular one rising to the top. A thing he’s wanted to ask for the last few weeks. Not in a rude way, or in the way it burns inside his chest when he talks to you on the phone and he has to bury it. But, it’s there, bubbling, wishing to escape and know. It's even louder when the two of you are like this, crammed in a space, laughing, smiling, sharing, wondering—

Why are you even single? How are you?

You’ve mentioned people—names, here and there when the two of you had been on the phone. Them fluttering out before you can pull them back, but then they’re forgotten. Javi, I get one call a month—let me tell you about the cattle war going off. And, in a way, he didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to know, so he never asked.

Now, it’s all he wants to ask.

Because you’re… you. You’re brilliant, beautiful—funny, clever, witty. And yet—

“—so, now it’s a week out, and I need to find a dress, a date and drive there to watch another person I know get married.”

He knows he should busy his mouth with the bottle—wrap his odd idea in beer. But, that part of him—the one which wants to help, solve issues, and be useful—rises up in him like a phoenix left from the ashes of Colombia.

“I’ll go with you.”

He expects the pause, even braces for the look of shock.

He doesn’t expect the smirk. Doesn’t expect the way it spreads out, to hit your eyes. How under the low-bar light over the table, it makes your eyes glimmer and fucking shimmer.

“You want to go to a wedding with me?”

Shrugging, he picks off the last part of the label—the mess of it all circling around where the glass meets the wood.

Mirroring him, you shrug. “Alright.”

“Alright.”

He should take his eyes off you, but he finds he can’t.

Javi hasn’t been able to since you stepped out of your place, a handful of your dress as you locked up—stepping down your steps to his car, letting it flutter down to your ankles.

You look like a fucking dream.

A thought he knows he shouldn’t have—but has all the same. His heart staggered, half-halting in its hammering as his hands paused in their drumming on the steering wheel; his glasses slid down his nose, his skin suddenly warm all over, even if his jacket was already splayed out across the backseat.

Close your mouth, Peña.

I’m chewing gum, solecito.

Yeah, that’s why your mouth is open.

It hadn’t passed his notice that you were good-looking before today. He’s known you were, had always known it—he had eyes, after all. But, he’d always felt there was a line. A line the two of you never delved too close to step over. The sign above both of your heads already illuminated in bright bulbs and flashing lights:

JUST FRIENDS.

Until this, anyway. This thing that can only be described as the longest one-hour drive he’s ever been on. And he used to do recon with Murphy.

Because you’re teasing, taunting him. All in that usual way that you do. And it’s so easy to flirt back, to let line after line roll, but he has begun to spot you squirming.

Doing so while matching his suit in a deep brown shade—chosen by him, ‘pick a colour suit, Javi’. Adding a tinge to some of your comments—things that if said by someone that wasn’t you, he’d ask them (flirtingly) if they were coming on to him.

But with you, it’s something he can never be sure. Never something that can be completely understood, known, cracked or figured out. In the same way, he can’t understand how your perfume keeps following him. How it embeds itself into the cabin of his truck when he picks you up, sews itself into his clothing when the two of you meet—and right now, is attempting to bury itself in his skin, muscles, and bones.

“You’ve been abnormally quiet.”

Smirking, he snorts. Fingers smoothing out his hair as he swings into a spot—the tyres crunching over the gravel. “Have I? Or have you just not shut up.”

“Rude.”

Laughing, he cuts the engine—hands resting on the top of his thighs, not missing the way your eyes follow his movements before clearing your throat. It shifts something in him, makes a little part of him surge, like the smallest of fireworks suddenly erupting in his chest.

Something he forces himself to shut down the moment you shove open your door, slipping out, as he grabs his jacket.

“Do I need to be worried about you crying today, solecito?”

Rearranging your dress, and slipping the strap of your bag over your shoulder, you squint as you stand tall, hand covering your brow as you meet his gaze.

And fuck, with this backdrop, even squinting, you look beautiful, radiant, stunning all over again. Somehow his brain having forgotten when you were next to him, when you were acting as if this was the most normal fucking thing they’ve ever done.

It isn’t.

Something he’s becoming more aware of as his throat goes dry, and his thoughts slow to nothing—

“No, you’re good. Your mouth is open again.”

You say it with a smirk, all teasing—making heat lick up his spine all over again. And, if you were anyone else, he’d have already pulled you close, tilted your chin up, and likely smothered your mouth with his.

But, you’re his friend—his best friend. The one solid thing he’s had in his life since he became a name, a poster, a hero.

“C’mon,” you say, turning on your heel as you head in the direction of the entrance, him following, jacket slipping on as he mutters mouth isn’t fucking open under his breath.

Even if he knows it was. Even if he’s desperately trying to stop his eyes from descending down to your hips, eyes fixated on the way you walk with ease to the wooden sign which greets all the guests.

He knows, due to his absence from home, there haven’t been many weddings he’s attended. Least of all like this. But even he thinks this is over the top, suddenly understanding why you hadn’t wanted to come alone. Because grand doesn’t quite cover it—not after the last one he’d attended.

This one has flickering candles lit in the day, waiters all set to hand glasses of bubbles and offer little mouthfuls of flavour on silver trays. Then, there’s the backdrop—the enormity of the building, only for you to tell him that it’s an outside wedding.

It’s more of a comfort as to why his hand drops to the small of your back than anything else. A need to be rooted, to feel calmer as he nods at passing people he doesn’t know (and hopes don’t know him), feeling you curl into him subconsciously, your bag swinging between the two of you both—affording a gap, forcing it, in fact.

The ceremony will start soon.

He overhears it, as he assumes you do, because your fingers wrap around his wrist—taking it from your back, before your palm meets his, and then you’re guiding, leading. Dragging him. All willingly to the back of the building where he sees it—the makeshift aisle. A wooden arch, and lots of deep orange-brown chairs all line up on either side of an orange aisle.

“Glad we chose brown now,” he murmurs.

“Does it make you think, y’know—being at a wedding?”

He swallows. Because it’s a loaded question.

One he assumes has been sitting all politely on the tip of your tongue since you sat beside him in his vehicle. It’s why his eyes watch you carefully as you grab the two of them a flute each from a passing waiter. Handing it to him, adding nothing—not rescuing him. Just waiting instead, doing that thing you do, where your eyes widen as you wait, trying to look all innocent even though it’s you who has just dropped a live grenade into the centre of the conversation.

Shaking his head, he snorts. “No. Not really. Knew… I knew deep down it wasn’t right. Her… and me.”

“You got any idea what’s right?”

You take a sip this time when the question lands, it again sparkling in glittered innocence, the softest of smiles pressed against the glass.

You he thinks. But he swallows that away and says ‘Not a fucking clue’ instead.

Throughout the day, he’s been desperate for a reason to stop looking at you.

So far, he’s found none.

Bits and pieces of things Murphy used to say, the words he’d drop into conversation when talking about his wife: how he knew, why she was the one, all coming back to him in drips and drops.

It dawns on him, the same as it had done since before he went to Cali, that you might mean a little more than a friend. A lot of what Murphy used to say, so easily applied to how Javi felt about you.

You make him feel calmer, create a space where he can relax, really unwind. It’s easy, uncomplicated, when he’s with you—from the conversation to the things he thinks. Complex balled thoughts stretch out until they’re in easy-to-decipher lines, able to process, able to understand.

He even told you about the boats.

A secret he’d have been prepared to take to the grave, if not for the fact you pointed out he wasn’t sleeping. Your eyes watching, pleading, don’t lie to me. And fuck, he couldn’t—not even if he wanted to.

That should have been the first sign.

He guesses he should be thankful today has been stuffed with more of them. One after the other. From the way you made sure to make him a plate of only his favourite things, to the way you knew when he needed a bit of space from the thousand questions as to how you both knew one another, and what he does.

Now, Javi is on the sidelines, admiring you in a way that makes his heart double in size.

Your dress skims around your calves as you dance—your arms rising above your head, glee stitched itself from cheek to cheek. On occasion, time halts when your eyes land on his—stealing whatever thought he had, only resuming normality when you close your eyes, belting out the lyrics to the song.

Mainly, the thought he finds which keeps returning is: I wanna do this with you again. any place. any time.

A hollowness scratches out in his chest as he lets himself acknowledge it. A thickness growing in his throat, a sorrowness weighs down on his shoulders as he nurses his glass—hand in his trouser pocket, telling himself he should be content he got to be on your arm, got to have you against him during a slow dance over an hour ago. That he gets to see you smile, hear your laugh—even know you.

“Hey, Peña.”

“Hey solecito.”

You grin—a little breathless, the music having changed, becoming slower, softer—wrenching the glass from his hand as you drain it.

“Fuck me. Y’thirsty?”

“Very. You’d know if you had any rhythm.”

He pinches you, lightly—teasingly. Your grin shifts into a laugh, tucking yourself in against him, arm around his back. And fuck, the way you’re looking up at him, he wants to warn you.

If you look at me like that, I’m going to kiss you.

Javi wonders what you’d do if you did. Whether you’d pull away, hissing the two of you are friends. Or whether you’d kiss him back.

“Want to get some fresh air?” you ask, your words against his ear—lips so close to ghosting his skin.

“Sure.”

It’s cooler when the two of you step out from under the marquee, the music getting quieter when your fingers loop in his, guiding, easing him around plant pots and tall trees, until the two of you are descending marble stairs and past iron fencing, to take him to the perimeter, to the view looking out over the city.

He watches as you step forward, fingers around the iron fencing, leaning, staring out as you let out a heavy sigh. One laced with things he wants to ask for, tug it from you, let you unload whatever is weighing on you—because that’s what you both do for one another.

You make it easy.

Make it all bearable.

But, whether you mean to, or not, you shiver. A light one, barely noticeable by most—but he isn’t most. His fingers are already at the button, undoing it, sliding his jacket down his arms before he places it over your shoulders, watching your head turn, meeting his gaze.

“You look really pretty.”

Flicking your eyes down, you smile. Sweetly. Unreadably. “Well, you’ve always been pretty.”

“Pretty?”

Laughing, your fingers tug his jacket closer, burying yourself in it. “The prettiest, Javier.”

Leaning beside you, he feels the metal from the railings, you’re both resting on, cut into his palms. He wonders if you feel the same, your dress billowing in the gentle breeze as the two of you stare off into the distance, spotting the flickering lights of a city, of homes tucking in for the night.

Then he turns his head, finding you already watching him, studying him in a similar way as you were before.

And, he lets his eyes drop to your mouth. A sign. A signal. It’s not the first time, usually, he does so when you’re not looking, letting himself trace the curve of your lips. Now, he stares at the way your gloss has long since gone, left behind on glasses and straws.

“Thank you for coming with me,” you whisper.

Nodding, he feels you follow his path—dropping, scorching his face, tracing where the hair sits atop his lip.

“Anytime, cariño.”

“Anytime, really?”

Nodding, he swallows. A thousand things he’s thought, and felt, all rushing to the surface—unwilling to bury itself, to descend under the usual guilt and feelings of inadequacies when it comes to you.

“I’d do anything for you.”

Smirking, you tilt your head. “Anything?”

Biting your lip, he feels it—something thrumming in him, being plucked.

“Will you kiss me?”

“I could…”

Your brows rise, a louder cheer coming from inside, but it doesn’t do anything to tear your eyes away from the other.

The whole world could slowly vanish from around the two of you, and all he’d want is just to stare at you.

“But?” you ask, delicately.

Almost so softly, it makes his chest ache.

Dipping his head, he lets his gaze wash over the place again—the rolling land, the trees, the houses in the distance.

“If I kiss you, I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

You slide closer, shoulder to shoulder, eyes scorching his jaw, his neck, the side profile he can feel you tracing with your gaze.

“Then don’t,” you say.

His neck almost cracks with the quickness of his movement, his eyes scanning, reading, a part of him wanting to step back, and protect you. Because he’s not sure about the parts of him you’d find easy to love—

“You don’t know what you’re—“

“Don’t care,” you interrupt, fingers twitching on the lapel of his jacket. “I know you—Javi, not Agent Peña. I know the boy who cloud-watched with me when my parents wouldn’t stop fighting; I know the man who told me to stop sending him postcards from the town shop—but also whispered that he liked them.”

Snorting, he smiles.

“So, if you want to, no pressure—but, I think you should kiss me.”

“Yeah?”

Nodding, you bite your cheek. “Think you’ve wasted a lot of time not kissing me already, honestly.”

Of course you do, he thinks. And then he kisses you, palms on your cheeks, slanting his mouth over yours.

And fuck, it’s the best fucking thing he’s ever done.

an: honestly, this made me so fucking happy to write.