waterfall inquiry: chapter four {javier peña x reader}
pairing: javier peña x young f!analyst reader
summary: a quiet conversation of gentle revelations
warnings: kissing, cuddling, soft!javi
gif credit: astrid my beloved @javier-pena
a/n: it’s here! thank you all so very much for bearing with me and for sending in such wonderful hc/drabble/general asks to keep the spark alive. this one is short but! i started writing chapter five today and i have a clear idea of how i want the rest of the story to go so everything should come a bit more easily. :)
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It is not said aloud, but the two of you think it — the two of you think words blazingly brave through the entirety of their goodness.
I want it to always be like this, you think as you lean against Javier’s chest, surrendering the shared cigarette to his capable grasp.
I never want to live any other way is what Javier realizes when he inhales, placing his lips around the spot where your own mouth had lingered just seconds before.
Before, after, now. The present: you and him on his couch, your back to his chest while he permits himself to be drawn ever-deeper into the leather — into the swaying tendrils of your warmth (his own presence).
Javier prides himself on consciousness. You can tell his about him in the way he tracks your hands while you button his shirts. In how he never drops a pen, but smiles affectionately when you do. and you notice it when his eyes are always moving but still remain fixed, hopelessly wandering in prisms of possibility in every conversation, in every subliminal space between you and him.
Somehow it always comes back to you and him. This has not been an inevitable thing but one that has been chosen through painstaking moments of interspersed affection.
(The two of you know this. But somewhere, deep down, down in that place where hope goes to hide, there is a type of hope that holds a letter. The letter, you know, if you ever read it, will inscribe such indelible grandness into your soul with promises of inevitability that will make you reach for that which is beyond your station. because what is inevitability if not a guarantee of some kind of future?)
This is the future you would choose, though. Or something like it. The future has always been hazy to you, even before the fabrications Columbia has wrought and welded into your mind. Was it like that for him, too, you wonder? Was Javier always dreaming of some far-off future that was quantifiable only in touch and feeling, and never in deed?
The two of you alone for once, alone and with quiet minds. That is what you crave for you, and for him, above anything else. At the end of the every day — every hour — every decade. A quiet mind for his drizzling heart, making Pollock canvases over the bodies of each person he meets.
Letting your head drop onto his shoulder, your eyes drift shut, taking in the unmistakable realness of Javier. The scent of smoke a blanket for your entangled limbs, it’s something you can furrow into — so you do, turning your cheek flat against his the plane of his chest. It’s nestled alongside his heart and your lips curl into a soft smile at its thumping entreaty against all that wearies his soul.
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
You suck in a breath. Maybe you shouldn’t ask him. You know — just let it go. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Just forgive and forget. That’s what your mother had always told you. You’re too stubborn, darling, she had sighed the last time you had visited home sans a ring on your finger (and the hope for one in the future as untouchable as the horizon in the distance).
Javier is different, though. Isn’t he? And he’s older. He’s probably done this before, you ruse. The comfort provided by the thought is temporary, though, morphing into a sinister storm of unchecked conclusions. If he has done this before, maybe he wouldn’t want you. Maybe he would find you too young, too emotional. The phrase circles back, coating the sinister analysis with the taste of lingering bitterness. Too stubborn.
The man now holding your mind close to his heart has noticed the shift in your demeanor. How could he not, when he is so close to you? And so Javier lets his fingers paint up your bare arm and bump over the bulk of your tank top strap and ever-north until he can let them move across your jaw and under your chin. A simple, gentle redirection that is so at odds with the way you have heard about him chasing sicarios through the streets, gun in hand. He chases you with intimate purity; his bullets are lips that tear you apart and put you back together in swirling instances of hope.
What is it. Three words. Three syllables. Stark, plain, direct.
What you need to tell him is none of those things.
Javier brushes his lips against yours. Tell me, baby, he murmurs. You’re doing that thing again — I can feel you thinking.
It would be so much easier to kiss him. To tug on his collar and pull his lips down to yours and devour him with an open mouth. To forget thinking beyond conscious reassurances of his touch. If he touches me like this he must want me, you think as his hand squeezes your breast.
But neither you nor him are in the business of easy.
“Why did you —“ his eyes are too much. You turn away and let your voice drop to a whisper; everything is bright and loud over the rush of blood in your ears. “Why did you turn away? At the office, I mean. A few days ago.”
The moments after your hesitant confession are silent and despair covers you, turbulent saltwater waves engulfing you in a dark velvet embrace. It feels so real you can taste the salt on your lips; did he leave it there for you to find just moments earlier in an act of foresight borne from the years that separate the two of you?
“Oh, cariño,” Javier sighs. Those phantom lips find your forehead and press at the faint lines forming there: filling in the gaps between you and him. “Have you been thinking about this ever since?”
He sighs again when you nod and somehow it gives you the strength to look up and meet his gaze.
Yes. So many connotations; so many eddies of whirling memories of ways you’ve said that word with him (and he to you) that evoke the place of heart to speak the truth. Yes. Yes, Javi.
Yes said three times, for the route of perfection.
Javier’s nose glides along the sloping planes of face — across your cheekbone, your jaw, that animated mind of his moving in time with his gestures. Gestures for the sentiments; words for the passions. Is that not how it has always been?
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. When was the last time he said that? He can’t remember, but faces flash in his mind all the same. Steve. Connie. Baby Olivia. Trujillo. Carrillo. His father. Colombia itself.
He means it this time; he means it in a way he hasn't before.
Javi sights and settles deeper into the couch (the question follows him). The grip around your waist cinches at the movement. “I — I don’t know, cielito,” he admits, haltering words emphasizing the hoarse quality of his voice.
“What does cielito mean?” you ask quietly, nearly regretting your bringing up the topic in the first place.
Behind you, his eyes narrow. “You speak near-fluent Spanish,” he counters.
“I know. I just —“ you once again meld yourself against his stability both real and projected — “I wanna hear you say it.”
An inhale (to carry you scent in the words he next speaks). “It means sweetheart. Darling. Baby.” With the last example he nudges you in recognition of the moniker he likes to call you in English — the one that usually comes more naturally to him — and a smile drags the corner of your mouth upward. A small act for a little joy, one that corresponds to the slow revelation of his utter lack of anger, for his willingness to heed your own vulnerability for reassurance.
He’s silent a few moments longer. The jut of Javier’s chin rests awkwardly on your shoulder; it must be uncomfortable but yet he still hovers near your ear. If he can speak directly to you, maybe it will ease your understanding. Maybe the closer he is to your being when he speaks, there is less of an opportunity for the words to get distorted before they cross the sacred threshold of your skin.
(You do not think these things but you feel them all the same).
“I think I was scared of showing too much.” When he finally speaks, his voice is the same it’s always been, just as safe and secure and infuriatingly attractive. You want to hate him for it but you can’t; instead, you latch onto the familiarity as you float in tangerine uncertainty.
Javier plucks you from that sea and you listen, soaking yourself in his words and his exquisite, ramshackle valor. “I was worried other people will see,” he confesses. “Not that I’m ashamed of you, but for your own protection.”
Hesitance, the second of the night, pauses him here. With the pause comes another inhale, this one more serious and weighty than the last. “Baby, there are people who don’t get along with me,” he finally admits. “At the office, I mean. I wouldn’t want you to suffer because of that.”
I want to protect your youth, your career, your innocence goes verbally unspoken, but there are other ways to speak. Isn’t that what you specialize in, after all? How to communicate without saying what you really mean?
Javier is so unlike you in this respect. He has broad shoulders and a swift gait and steady hands and all with a mind to match, both logical and considerate. Here and now he has permitted you a glimpse of the shadow self. That is the self that he converts to when you are not around, sometimes; the one that creeps up behind his shoulder when he visits Laredo.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, urgency lacing the softness. Javier needs to you to know, to understand that his act of rejection was borne from concern. Too late, he realizes now, that such an act is still rejection all the same.
For your part, you hum quietly, considering just as he did before answering your question. Words are more tremulous for you; to be strong and defiant at work is one thing, but with him? Here? In his home, in his embrace, while the teal fabric of his shirt covers your torso? This is different. You have not been trained for this — there is no manual, no field exercise, no translation worksheet. You cannot be angry with him, not really. It was never so much anger but a deep hurt, a need to be seen, and seen by him in particular. To be wanted boldly by the man you —
“I’ve heard that there’s been some…disputes,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper. “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble either, Javi.” I’m not worth it is what you leave out, but he knows. Javier was not the most reliable agent of human intelligence the embassy had seen for no reason. “Besides,” you barrel on, “it was mostly because I was already overtired, I think.”
A kiss meets your clothed shoulder. “You did sleep nearly all of Saturday,” he muses quietly.
“Yeah.” you nod, thinking over his words. “I was pretty knocked out, wasn’t I?”
His mustache tickles the back of your neck and you squirm in response, a hushed giggle escaping despite the mood that seems to have settled over the two of you without either of you truly noticing. “I’ve never seen anyone sleep so much,” Javi says with a laugh to match you own, thumbs coming to weave patterns against your skin through the mediary of his shirt.
Another kiss, this one behind your ear. Hot and heavy and open-mouthed, it makes you gasp. “You look pretty when you sleep,” Javier murmurs, his lips swaying over your sensitive skin in circular patterns of fringed hope.
Is that so, you ask, turning your head to brush your lips to his jaw all the while.
I’m not a liar, Javier answers, and there’s force enough backing up the rasp to shock your system into silence. It’s an innocuous, routine phrase in most other contexts; for a fleeting second, you wonder what other couples talk about.
I’m not a liar. That’s what happens in the romcoms. The man implores the woman that he’s an honest man; that he didn’t mean to hurt her; that it’s all some comedic Shakespearean misunderstanding. It’s easy enough to believe: what do shiny men in diamond-dappled romcoms have to lie about? Upon what does their trust tremble?
Nothing so grand as national secrets. As national scandals. As personal failures that caused the deaths of dozens, in the meager counting of things. As being sold as a hero when you believe you’re anything but.
Do you believe him, when he says he’s not a liar?
You suppose you do, in the same way he believes you. Half-truths, omissions: to your line of work, these are not lies. They cannot be.
Not when you have chosen to do this. To have two selves.
Your life, his life: it cannot be a Shakespearean comedy. The thought catches you in a unsteady riptide and you’re caught in its unforgiving thrall. It is Hamlet all over again, the current whispers against your skin, painting your skin with eddies of fear.
Perhaps. But maybe not. Maybe there is a life beyond his government-paid apartment. You’re not sure.
But you can dream, so you tell him yes Javi, you’re not a liar and let him kiss all the skin he can reach before unbuttoning that shirt to give him more than he even asked for.
(That is all you want to do for him. It always has been. To give him everything for which he strives to attain and is just beyond his grasp. To give him something solid for all of his dust-woven victories and to erode obsidian statues of gleaming sins from the place of honor they hold in Javier’s soul — to tear the pillars apart, to be a Samson to his Delilah).
Yes, yes, yes, Javier, I believe you.
Your answer to him is always yes.