INTRODUCING . . . JAVIER DE LEÓN
FULL BIO & STATS • CONNECTIONS • PINTEREST • SPOTIFY
❝ Mr. Know-It-All, had his reign and his fall. At least that’s what his brain is telling all.
FULL NAME: Javier De León, but he solely goes by Javi.
AGE: 40. July 22nd, 1982.
OCCUPATION: Unemployed, may or may not be swindling his father.
HOMETOWN: Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York. USA.
PREVIOUSLY LIVED: Manhattan, New York. USA.
NEIGHBORHOOD: Summit Lake, at the Jade Palace. For a few days.
GENDER: Cisgender man.
ORIENTATION: Bisexual.
PRONOUNS: He/Him.
ZODIAC: Cancer Sun, Leo Moon.
FACECLAIM: Oscar Isaac.
FILLING THE CONNECTION FOR: Maya Lee’s ex-fiancé & Nathan Crane’s business rival.
TW: INFIDELITY, VIOLENCE & MENTIONS OF A CONCUSSION.
Javier Miguel De León — otherwise known as Javi, for short — was born on a warm summer night in Manhattan, New York in 1982. From that moment on, all that the little boy was taught was responsibility. He’d need it one day, after all. He came from a long line of men looking to make names for themselves, moving from Guatemala City to the United States just a few generations before him in order to start a small, family-owned liquor business. As the years went on and the liquor business got passed down from Javi’s great-grandfather, down to his grandfather, and then down to his father after that, it turned into more than just a tiny shop in the heart of the city selling their own wine and whiskey. It became LEO Liquor Ltd., they opened up several distilleries across the tristate area, and it was all intended to be passed down again.
At first, Javi took great pride in the fact that his entire life had been shaped with a greater purpose: to be wealthy and successful, and continue on his family’s name for yet another generation someday. He’d done everything that his father, Ricardo, had asked of him. He’d gone to boarding school, with incredible grades to boot, and learned how to put on a charming smile at every single event he’d been dragged to by his parents. At first, things were looking perfect for the De León’s as Javi had proven he’d make an excellent successor to the business in no time.
Until college came, and then suddenly Javi no longer had an eye for success and a carried-on legacy — the only thing on his mind, at that point, was wealth. It was wealth, he learned, that would actually get him somewhere. He figured that what he did with it honestly didn’t matter, as proven by the first year he spent at Columbia University throwing everything he’d been given by his father out the window. His grades plummeted as he partied, drank expensive booze and met even more lavish-looking women. Stupidly, he thought that the business was already well within his grasp regardless of what he’d do. Maybe if he acquired at least a modicum of self-respect, it would have been, but alas, that ship had long since sailed. The summer leading up to his second year, Ricardo threatened to cut him off from the family, and his pockets, entirely. Looking back, Javi realized that his father was all talk — he wouldn’t have, not when he was the only child — but in the moment, it was a borderline devastating threat for him. Thus, he got his act together, but only just enough for Ricardo to feel satisfied. He probably still spent far too much money than he should have, spent far too much time socializing rather than studying, and surrounded himself with far too many warm bodies, but at least he was still there. That had to count for something.
In the first semester of his third year, he met Tabitha. She was a gorgeous woman who transferred from NYU to study Earth Science, with a dream of travelling the world, and Javi was mesmerized since the first time he laid eyes on her. In a whirlwind of emotion and passion, he had one other thing on his mind: her. It didn’t take long for them to start dating, and to eventually talk about settling down together once they graduated — or, to more accurately describe it, live their lives together. They talked of their aspirations, of their hobbies, of travel. They all but booked the ticket to Rome for the first day of summer 2005, with the intent to follow through. However, there was one very obvious problem with that. Ricardo would never allow it. He had plans that exceeded Javi’s personal desires that required him to stay in New York, to prepare him to officially dip his toes in the business after twenty-three long awaited years.
Javi didn’t give two shits about his father’s plans for him then, in all honesty, but his father only got more strict about it the more that time went on. To cut an extremely heavy argument short, Ricardo ended up on the winning side; Javi stayed in New York, while Tabitha went to Rome alone, and the pair ended up breaking up on amicable terms. There were promises to keep in touch, and to see each other again if Tabitha were to ever find herself in New York.
They didn’t wind up staying in touch over the course of the next decade as much as Javi would have liked, but it was at the end of that decade that he met Maya. He spent ten years under his father’s shackles, heading the business operations of several distilleries that he couldn’t care less for, and meeting Maya Lee felt like a breath of fresh air. It was the same feeling he got, laying eyes on her, that he got when he met Tabitha. And like he was a stupid, college boy again instead of a stupid, adult man, he fell in love with her. Two years flew by in a breeze and before he even knew it, he was down on one knee and asking her to marry him; she had plans to stay, after all, and he was head over heels, so why wait any longer? Being around Maya made him forget that he was trapped in a life that he didn’t want to live, and he was willing to forget forever.
Until Tabitha came back, that is. After an engagement that lasted a year, Tabitha waltzed back into Javi’s life as if she’d never left it in the first place. Without even a second doubt in his mind, he let her. Maya had no plans to leave, but she was certainly a lot busier those days than he expected, and he was lonelier than he’d care to admit. One thing led to another, and he took Tabitha back to his bed the first night that they rekindled. If only he could have expected Maya to come home early that evening, then maybe he would have gotten away with it too. Except he didn’t, and before he could even register the fact that the front door of their bedroom was swung wide open, Maya was standing there with a lamp in her hand and bashing it over his head. Tabitha, of course, left as soon as she realized what was happening, disgusted with how Javi led her to believe that he’d been single and waiting for her their entire time apart. Maya left once she was done concussing him, and moved out a few days later to God knows where. Back to her family in Colorado, he could assume.
Just like that, in the blink of an eye, Javi felt as though he was back at square one. His father was growing older, though he still continued to pressure him about taking on more responsibilities as he ‘wouldn’t be around for long’ — his words, not Javi’s — and he had no love, no fiancé, to lean back on. The next nine months, he was simply dragging his feet. Twinges of remorse for what he’d done would hit him in waves, except it felt like a full-on tsunami when Tabitha reappeared to let him know that she had a child that could only be his.
Everything was a mess — his job, his feelings, his life — and yet he had no choice but to try and make things work out somewhere. Maybe his kid could have a better shot, he thought, and thus he threw himself into attempting to be a father while he tried to reignite a spark with Tabitha that would never light. She didn’t want to be a mother, and that was the issue. She realized that an entire year after co-parenting with Javi, and all but dumped their child into his less-than-capable hands while she left to continue her travels. For the next few months, he had to learn how to raise a child on his own, juggle business ownership, and simply exist, until an opportunity landed quite perfectly in his lap that he would have been a fool not to take.
His father, in an effort to expand the business, wanted to move their distilleries into other parts of the country. It was his big idea to further the family name’s legacy, all he had to do was mention that ‘maybe a location in Colorado would be good, I’ve heard the Cranes are there’ and suddenly, Javi was on board. He didn’t know exactly what it was that really motivated him to agree … the fact that he’d have an excuse to flee all of his responsibilities, to go somewhere else other than the suffocating city of New York, or Maya.
Either way, like all things in life, he chose not to think about it too much. His father promised that someone else would look after the home-base while he was away, that he’d pay for everything, and that was all he needed to hear. He packed up all that he could fit in two suitcases — one for himself, and one for his son — and booked a flight to Providence Peak. What he planned to do when he got there? Not expand the business, that’s for damn sure.
