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It isn’t like Rodolfo enjoys arguing with Alejandro; there’s no trophies lined up on the shelf beneath the cracked mirror in his room and no ribbons decorating the wall of his mother’s home next to the prizes his sister won at their schools. There’s a bitter taste pooling over his tongue, stale like three day old coffee left to stew in the pot, and Rodolfo chews the inside of his cheek, his gaze never fully settling on one thing.
He won’t watch Alejandro sitting next to him in the truck, his legs thrown wide enough that his knee knocks against Rodolfo’s with every bump in the road, every corner needing to be navigated at a slow crawl. Alejandro’s laces had broken sometime between last afternoon and this morning, the argument conducted with threadbare socks and feet hastily shoved into boots, the tongues folded and bunched beneath, and the strands are darker, fresher than the material knotted around it. The words burn, locked just behind Rodolfo’s teeth, a plea he thinks he has been making for his entire life.
Well, not now.
“So,” Alejandro begins, leaning forward, leaning past Rodolfo to address the men lined up behind him. His seatbelt is tucked beneath his arm, extended to the limit with the motion, and he wraps his hand around it, pulling to loosen it slightly. “Our target today is a warehouse in the red section of the city. Had some intel the past few weeks about shipments being directed here.”
He’s looking at Rodolfo as he speaks, little throwaway glances out of the corner of his eye that never fully land, waiting for him to step in as he always does. It is how they operate best — Alejandro watching the big picture unfurling before him, Rodolfo a step behind to pick out the intricate details — but Rodolfo keeps quiet, his teeth working over his flesh until he tastes iron.
Childish, sure, but he’s tired of being the better person. If Alejandro’s intent on brawling in the mud, then Rodolfo will join him, blow for blow.
“The shipment manifests haven’t raised any red flags by themselves,” Alejandro continues, leaning against the restraint of his seatbelt as the truck rounds a corner. He sways with the motion, knocks against Rodolfo once more, and presses his palm flat against Rodolfo’s knee in a silent apology. “But I doubt they’d be announcing whatever they’re smuggling like that.”
There’s scattered laughter, well-worn and rote, and Alejandro matches it with a grin. “So, it’ll be business as usual, men. It’s more residential than previous targets so assess before you shoot and be mindful of stray shots. Lord knows, our enemies won’t be.”
He sinks back next to Rodolfo, the tension in the truck broken due to his intervention. The men had been able to tell something was up with them, they’ve lived in the same cramped compound for the past several years and there’s a tension in the air like an oncoming storm. He doesn’t think that their argument had been overheard as Alejandro’s room is offset from the others, a benefit of command, and the reason why it had been Rodolfo’s chosen battleground.
He can’t remember the injury that triggered everything. It hadn’t been anything big as Alejandro had been allowed out of medical for this mission the day after, a stray shot skidding over his forearm or impacting the wall next to his head, all noise and dust to disorientate him for a handful of moments, but it had been the sort of injury that could happen a thousand times and not be remembered.
Rodolfo remembers them.
He remembers every single time that he could have lost Alejandro.
Rodolfo had filed that medical report like any other piece of paperwork — check the date, the overview, the signatures — and moved onto the next, then the next. His thoughts had snarled around it as he returned to his room, bowed his head beneath the shower and watched the lingering dirt and blood swirl around the drain. His hands are clean as he hadn’t needed his blade during the mission, but he can still feel the tacky warmth of Alejandro’s blood across his hands, seeping into the cracks in his palms. He didn’t have a plan when he had gotten dressed and shoved his feet back into his boots for the walk over to Alejandro’s room, just the uneven thud of his heart in his chest, the lingering certainty that everything could have changed today and yet, it hadn’t.
Alejandro had answered when he’d knocked, nearly before the sting had faded from Rodolfo’s knuckles, and he had let Rodolfo nudge him to one side as he entered. “ Hermano ? Is everything okay?”
There’s a ringing void in Rodolfo’s mind where memories should be, a crater blown into existence by a bomb he can try to piece together from the aftermath.
He had shouted at Alejandro, must have, his voice a dull crack in the morning, and Alejandro had shouted back. As children, he’d always been the louder out of them both, a firecracker like the aunties used to coo at him as they ruffled his hair, but Rodolfo wouldn’t have been dissuaded. Alejandro takes too many risks, always does, and how could he not understand what that does to Rodolfo each and every time and—
“Why do you care so much about what I do?” Alejandro’s face flickers in Rodolfo’s memory, too full of rage to stay still, blurring at the edges like a photograph exposed for too long. “You worry too much.”
Rodolfo had left then, his anger burnt out in place of a fury so fathomless that he could barely breathe for the sake of it. He’s survived so long on whatever pittance friendship could get him, having long since accepted that Alejandro would never love him in the same way Rodolfo loves him, and Alejandro isn’t dead, he’s still here, sitting next to Rodolfo and watching him expectantly, but it feels like he could be.
“You didn’t stop by for breakfast this morning,” Alejandro murmurs, ducking his head toward Rodolfo in time with the sway of the truck. Another corner, slower this time, a hand knocking against the side in solidarity or offence, and Alejandro remains a line of heat at Rodolfo’s side, pressed together from thigh to hip, waist to shoulder.
Rodolfo keeps his face blank, his knuckles white where his hand rests on the far side of his body. “I ate in my room, Colonel.”
Alejandro flinches. Good . There had been too much bile and bitterness for him to taste anything he had eaten that morning, Alejandro’s words from the night before echoing through his mind.
“I missed seeing you,” Alejandro offers, quiet, gentle in the way that only he could be. His thumb rubs against the curve of his knee — the bad one, an old injury having shattered the cap and left Alejandro in a cast for weeks, physio for months following. It still aches when it rains, making Alejandro limp slightly when he walks. “Thought you may have made good on your threat to leave.”
Had he said that? Rodolfo frowns slightly, turning his gaze towards the men further down the truck from them both, instead of looking at Alejandro, searching in the darkness for a lighthouse. “When you die,” Rodolfo says, returning his gaze to the empty seat opposite him, “and it is a when, not an if with how reckless you are, Colonel, I will make sure our men are taken care of, but I won’t stay to maintain your headstone.”
“Reckless? Rudy, I just—“
“Enough.” Rodolfo breathes out slowly, forcing his hand to relax. There are imprints of his nails on his palm, not quite broken skin but deep enough to be felt, a row of uneven half-moons. “You made your thoughts clear and I won’t keep having this argument with you.”
It’s a lie, barely believed even as he says it. Rodolfo has been accused of many things, but leaving an argument half-finished is not one of them. He’ll tear open that scar tissue later, mellow the sting with something heady and expensive from the locker Alejandro keeps beneath his bed, and shout at Alejandro somemore.
Alejandro snorts, tipping his head back to stare up at the truck’s ceiling. One of the men — a young boy, Rodriguez, with a shock of tight curls and too damn tall for his own good — had tried to do a trick with a lit cigarette and wound up searing a circle into the upholstery. “I know you better than I know myself, Rudy. You’ll argue with my corpse to get the last word in.”
Fuck the enemy shooting Alejandro, Rodolfo’s going to do it himself. Won’t even bother making it look like an accident, smug bastard.
Rodolfo doesn’t answer him, chews his cheek until he thinks he’s going to tear through his own flesh. Outside, over the rumble of the engine, he hears the sounds of a market, the high calls of the store owners clear even through steel and his own furious worry, the outcry as someone tweaks their prices in the wrong direction and the flurry of curses that follow. There will be kids in the crowd, pulled along in their mother’s shadows and staring at the truck as they pass by. Might feature in their games for the afternoon, a ball cooling at their heels while they imagine some kind of valiant future, some kind of future that mattered.
The last whisper of normalcy vanishes as the truck slows to a creaking stop. Brakes are a delicate thing, fixed a thousand times only for the truck to start rolling down any slight incline it can find. They stand, exiting the truck in pairs, their gear slung over their shoulders as they survey their target.
It’s a decent sized space, a haphazard fence dragged into place around the perimeter and striped with spray paint and rust. The gate hangs open, the chain long since cut free to allow the crates beyond to be pillaged. One sits open, knocked onto the ground near the entrance, the inside empty, hollow. The hair at the nape of Rudy’s neck prickles, a chill twisting down his spine, and he swallows as he swings his gun into position, falling into place at Alejandro’s side. (Of course.)
“See you on the other side,” Alejandro says, brash once more, the self-same grin plastered over his features. He’s infuriatingly beautiful like this, clipped straight from a recruitment ad so Rodolfo can carry him around with him, and they begin to make their way around the warehouse fence, heading for the far side. The warehouse is barely manned when it isn’t receiving a shipment; the day and time chosen carefully because of that, weeks of surveillance work and enough reports to crush a man beneath condensed into here and now.
They’re paired up together, the default state for them both.
“Hey.” Alejandro’s hand slides into Rodolfo’s, his fingers caught between the rough calluses on his palm and the gun barrel. “I’m glad you’re still with me.”
Forgiveness is easy when it comes to Alejandro. Try as he might, Rodolfo had never been able to hold onto the depths of his anger when it came to the other man. Rodolfo sighs, lengthening his stride so they’re in time once more. He doesn’t need to look at Alejandro to picture the grin he wears, as bright and glorious as the sun overhead, but he tightens his grip so the pressure could be felt. A flicker of movement down one of the alleyways catches his eye, assessed as not a threat in nearly the movement as he turns to look. Two children stand at the far entrance, too distant to be categorised in any other way than just children, their shadows stretching out behind them. One behind the other, nearly indistinguishable from each other before they move, hurrying away down the street.
The warehouse looms large in front of them, the side door that will function as their entrance and escape route shut. A heavy latch dominates one side of it, a thick layer of paint keeping it shut as much as the newer chain wound around it. Rodolfo kneels, drawing the thick bolt cutters from his belt as he does so. It takes a moment, sweat beading along his hairline and the rough texture of the grip cutting into his palms as he braces his shoulder against the wall as he cuts through the lock. Alejandro should already be inside, scouting out the entrance, old bitterness welling up in the back of his throat as he begins to stand.
“Here.” Alejandro’s hand blocks his field of view for a moment, and Rodolfo takes it, hauled back to his feet in an instant. “After you, Rudy.”
“Really, Ale?” Rodolfo asks, bumping his shoulder to Alejandro’s as he steps past him, moving closer to the door. “Such a gentleman.”
Alejandro laughs, falls in step behind Rodolfo. “Only the best for you. You told me to be careful so, for you, I will.”
Rodolfo pushes the door open, his gun raised and ready. The air is still, the distant tang of chemicals clinging to the dust that swirls in the beams of light carving through the boarded up windows. He takes another step, turns to check his blind spot and—
“Rudy!”
⁂
(The man sits on a bed in an empty hospital room. There’s still blood beneath his nails, a sticky mix of dirt and sand, and he should let them clean it away but he doesn’t.
He has precious little else.
There had been the twisted remains of a gun when they had brought him in, some clothes that had been cut away and destroyed before he had been able to protest, and the blood beneath his nails.
“Well, now! Sleeping beauty has awoken.” He knows the man that strides into his room the same way he knows anyone else by distant sight only, a single snapshot of bright blue eyes staring down at him from behind lowered sunglasses, a slowly-forming wide grin. “You know, you are a tricky man to find any information on.”
The man coughs, returns the grin with a grimace of his own. “I’ll try to retain some of my memories the next time I have head trauma, sir.”
It’s reflexive, the habit of a man who might as well have died in rubble and smoke, choking on the burning debris of the warehouse he was pulled from. He doesn’t know the man in front of him, but he doesn’t know himself. Makes them equal.
“It’s all good. Think you’re going to be worth the effort.” The man sits on the edge of his bed, one hand on the side while the man rests the other on his knee beneath the blankets, drumming his fingers over the wrinkles as he speaks. “Got to say, if you were one of my men, I wouldn’t have left you behind like that. Not someone like you, Rudy.”
# Alejandro wakes screaming. He screams Rudy’s name.
(Rudy. His name is Rudy.
“I’m Phillip Graves,” the man says, grinning wide, hungry. “Now, rest up. I’ll take care of you.”
# Maybe, this night, the next night, he’ll wake and Rudy will be there like he always has been. His Rudy, his friend, his everything. There’d been a bomb rigged behind the door, something Alejandro had been told later, repeatedly as he cursed at everyone around him.
He couldn’t remember it.
There’s a bruise on his chest. It would fade with time and he wishes it wouldn’t. It’s already faint by the time he was able to peel back the bandages to stare down at it, the dark outline of four fingers and a thumb, a palm, made when Rudy pushed him backwards with the only reaction he had.
Alejandro is alive because Rudy isn’t. He’s here and Rudy is not.
And Alejandro will continue living because Rudy would want him to. He has to. For him.