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drabbles-mc · 14 days ago

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Get a Grip

Steve Murphy & OC Maristela Fernandez

Written for my beloved @garbinge for the 2024 Trick or Treat Exchange!

Warnings: 18+, language, alcohol, light angst, emotional hurt/comfort

Word Count: 3.3k

A/N: obsessed with these two actually. i've written a fic where they're exes. this is a fic that happens before they date. their real relationship exists only in my mind palace lmao

Part of Mari wondered if Steve had always been a night owl, or if that was something that was born out of necessity after getting placed in Colombia. It was hard to imagine him as anything else considering so much of their time together was spent when the rest of their apartment buildings were fast asleep. Even before they reached that level of comfort, intimacy even, with each other, they were sat at their respective desks on the base with no one else but them in the building.

Sometimes it was all three of them—her, Steve, and Javi. But there were some nights, most nights if she was being unforgiving, that Javi was whisking someone away for the night to keep himself busy and leaving Steve and Mari to their own devices. And usually all that meant was the two of them agonized over things that couldn’t get solved in a night, but at least they were agonizing over them together. The old adage about misery and company certainly seemed to ring true for the two of them.

She was one of the only CNP officers who even pretended to have any use for Steve and Javi. They were all outcasts in different ways but each in their own rite. She didn’t have to carry the brand of being an American in Colombia, so she at least had that going for her where Steve and Javi didn’t—but she was still a woman, and that was something that the two American DEA agents didn’t need to worry about when they walked into a room. It hadn’t been a smooth start for the three of them together, and some days it still didn’t feel all that smooth, but they had each other’s backs at least. That was something, even if some days they were still snipping at each other, Mari and Javi ping-ponging back and forth between Spanish and English and Steve just trying his best to keep up with all of it.

It was one of the rare nights when they’d each gone home somewhat early that the phone in Steve’s apartment started to ring. There was a very short list of people who would be calling his Colombia apartment at all, let alone outside standard business hours. Drink in hand, he got himself up off the couch to go and answer the call.

He was leaning against the wall as he brought the receiver to his ear, coiled cord swaying slightly as he spoke. “Murphy.”

“Hey.”

Steve’s brows pulled together. “Mari?”

“You free for a drink?”

Steve blinked slowly, trying to fit the words together like jigsaw pieces in his head. Sure, the two of them sometimes dipped into the bottle that Steve kept in his desk when they were working late, but it was never a formal invitation. It was always about work in some regard. This didn’t feel like that.

“Uh, yeah,” he finally got himself to speak. “Got someplace in mind?”

“Your place,” she answered, faster than she meant to, “or mine. Doesn’t matter.”

He was shaking his head like she could see him. “The hell’s goin’ on with you? You alright?”

She huffed. “I don’t fucking know, Murphy. That’s—that’s why I’m calling.”

He frowned in thought, trying to figure out which of the options she presented him with was a better one. Looking around his apartment, he quickly decided that however her place looked, it was still probably in better shape.

“I’ll come over.”

Even though she had been the one who told him to come over, Mari still found herself flinching when she heard the knocks at her door. Standing up from the tiny table in her kitchen, she quickly and quietly padded over to the door. There was one more knock and even though there was very little likelihood of it being anyone else, she still looked through the peephole to make sure that it was really Steve on the other side.

She flipped the deadbolt and undid the chain lock on her door before pulling it open. Steve looked the same way he always did, except with maybe more confusion in his features given the circumstances, although she also had to admit that confused wasn’t exactly a new look on him either. Even with that being the case, she was certain that she’d never been so relieved to see him.

“Hey, thanks for—” She stopped herself short when the door of the apartment down the hall slowly started to creak open. Mari would’ve known who it was even if she couldn’t see the woman’s face in the sliver of space in the door. “No te preocupes, Señora Sanchez,” she called out, loud enough to make a point but not so loud that it would disturb their other neighbors. Grabbing Steve’s arm, she angled his body so that he was facing the doorway of her neighbor. “Es mi colega.”

Steve felt a little strange being put on display like that in the middle of Maristela’s hallway, for her neighbor who looked as though she must’ve been nearing seventy years old at least. However, Steve didn’t let the woman’s long grey hair and short stature fool him when he could easily see the hefty wooden broom in her hand. He did his best to give as disarming of a wave as possible as he said, “Buenas noches,” with the thickest American drawl both Mari and Señora Sanchez had ever heard.

It must’ve been satisfactory to some degree, because the woman gave a tight nod before pushing her door shut again. In the eerie silence of the hallway, both Steve and Mari could hear the clicking of all the woman’s locks sliding back into place.

“Neighborhood watch?” Steve asked with a half-hearted chuckle, gesturing back over his shoulder with his thumb as he crossed the threshold into Mari’s apartment.

Mari smiled briefly and nodded. “Señora Sanchez is the nosiest woman I’ve met in my life besides my own mother.” She shook her head and walked towards the kitchen. “She’s earned it, though.”

It was the first time that Steve had been really inside her apartment. First time he was doing more than just dropping her off after a bad day. Usually he didn’t make it past the doorway, just made sure that he stood there long enough to hear the locks click and then he was on his way. Everything about this felt different. Almost intimate, almost comfortable. Steve wondered if, now that he was standing there with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, Mari was feeling the awkwardness about it too. At least it was her apartment—home field advantage and all that.

“Drink?” she offered, already making her way towards the kitchen because she knew the answer.

Steve nodded, then noticed the mildly chaotic pile of shoes beside her apartment door. He got around to giving a real answer as he crouched down to start undoing the laces on his shoes. “Uh, yeah. Whatever you’re having’s fine.”

She chuckled, a dry and tired sound. “Good, because that’s all I’ve got.”

Steve’s shoes looked out of place amongst hers for a couple reasons, but the most noticeable of them all was the fact that they were placed very nicely next to each other while all of hers were more or less piled on top of each other.

He didn’t feel right going to her living room and sitting down on her couch, so instead he made his way over to the kitchen. She was just putting the cork back into the whiskey bottle when he stopped next to the counter. She slid the glass bottle against the smooth countertop with an amount of force that had Steve wondering if it was going to crack against the backsplash. It didn’t, and the way that Mari didn’t even give it so much as a cautionary glance had Steve thinking that it was far from the first time she had taken her frustrations out with alcohol in more ways than one.

“Hm?” She offered him the glass, eyebrows lifted expectantly.

He took it, murmuring out a quick, “Thanks,” before taking a long sip. When she mirrored his actions and didn’t make any move to head towards the living room, or start any kind of conversation about why they were in the situation they were in, Steve started it for her. “Something happen?”

“Qué?”

He sent his glass back down on the counter, making a point to do it gently. “C’mon, Mari. You’re not gonna stand there and tell me that you called me over here because you just wanted to spend some quality time.”

It got a smile out of her, even if it was a weak one. “Wouldn’t buy that, Agent Murphy?”

“Might be more believable if you weren’t still callin’ me Agent Murphy.”

Her smile softened a little more even if it didn’t take the exhaustion out of her eyes. “Steve.”

He nodded, picking his glass back up off the counter and lightly clinking it against hers before taking another sip. “Mari.” He paused a beat before asking again. “So? What happened?” He cracked a tiny grin like he knew he was being ridiculous but wasn’t going to be stopping himself regardless. “Qué pasó?”

She couldn’t help but laugh, what little Spanish he did know still coming out so stilted and laden with his drawl. “Don’t hurt yourself—I understand English just fine.”

She let out a deep sigh, staring down into her glass for a moment as she tried to figure out how she should explain to Steve why she called him and asked him to come over. She wasn’t really even fully sure of the reason herself. But she knew that she had to be careful, she knew how easily it could start to sound like something that she didn’t mean at all.

“I was on the phone with my mother earlier,” she finally started. “And she never,” she shook her head, “never asks about work. She doesn’t want to know.”

“Would you wanna tell her if she did?” Steve asked before he could stop himself. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he was probably just supposed to be listening, but this was officially the most he’d learned about Mari in a non-work capacity and he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t want to know more.

She laughed. “Fuck no. But it just feels, I don’t know,” she swirled around the whiskey in her glass, “it feels a little like she pretends that it isn’t real. My father, he doesn’t like talking about it either, but I know that he understands what’s going on, how real this all is. Pero, mí mama…it’s like she’s ignoring it all.”

Steve felt like he should be saying something but this was well outside his wheelhouse. If his parents had it their way, he’d be spilling government secrets out over the phonelines all the way to West Virginia. They didn’t ignore anything. He did his best to venture a guess. “Freaks you out?”

She nodded. “Yeah, yeah it fucking does. Acting like none of this is going on when we can barely get enough of a grip on this motherfucker to try and say that he won’t show up knocking on her fucking door?”

“He’s not—”

“That’s not the point,” she cut him off. “You know what I mean.”

He sighed, nodding. “I know.”

“All those late nights and listening in and, and for what? I feel like we don’t even have anything to show for it.”

Steve couldn’t stand there and pretend that he hadn’t been feeling some of those same things over the last couple of weeks. It’d been feeling like they were running a marathon but the finish line just kept getting moved farther and farther away. He hadn’t stopped to think about how that felt for Maristela though, someone who had her entire family in Colombia, living in the thick of it all. Every shoot-out and bombing, in the back of her mind she was always waiting for it to be happening on her parents’ street.

“We’re gonna catch a break soon.”

She let out a hum that was adjacent to amused. “You really believe that or are you just bullshitting me?”

He laughed. “I don’t know. Just don’t think I’ve ever seen you sweatin’ any of this before. It’s freaking me out a little.”

There was something simultaneously annoying yet the slightest bit endearing about the admission. “Well get a grip—we can’t all be losing it.”

He nodded as he brought the glass back up to his lips again. “Yes ma’am.”

It wasn’t supposed to turn into a late night of working. When Maristela had dialed Steve’s number, it was just because she wasn’t quite sure where else to turn, and the only person she knew for a fact would be up late and willing to talk was Steve. Part of her hadn’t even really expected him to agree to show up the way that he had.

But once he was there, and once they got talking about work, it was a quick and slippery slope into really getting back into work. Despite knowing that bringing things home with her wasn’t going to do her any good, Mari still had a habit of stuffing things in her bag whenever she’d leave for the day just in case an idea struck her at an odd hour, if dots decided to connect in the small hours of the morning.

So that was how they ended up sitting on Maristela’s sofa, her legs stretched out on the couch while Steve’s were propped up on the coffee table. She had a headset on, playing back one of the tapes that she’d brought home with her to see if she could try and glean anything from it. Meanwhile, Steve was sifting through photographs that he’d taken, ones that other officers had taken as well. Both of their empty whiskey glasses were on the coffee table, the warm light of the lamps in her living room giving them just enough light for them to see what they were doing without it feeling too bright or too harsh.

Steve didn’t remember either of them falling asleep. However, when he woke up it was to daylight streaming in through Maristela’s apartment windows. His legs, still propped up on the coffee table, were stiffer than boards as he tried to pull them back towards himself. He still had photographs piled in his lap, some of them drifting to the floor as he tried to grease the gears in all his joints again.

Turning to look at Mari, he smiled involuntarily. She was still fast asleep, head nestled in the crook where the arm of her sofa met the back of it. The headset she’d been wearing was cockeyed now, only one side still resting over her ear. It was no longer playing anything yet managed to act as a bit of a headband, keeping her thick dark waves of hair back out of her face. Still, though, she was clutching the tape player tightly to her stomach even in her sleep. She almost looked relaxed—it was the most relaxed Steve had ever seen her, at least.

Leaning forward, Steve propped his elbows on his knees so he could run his fingers back through his hair, pushing it back out of his face. Letting out a deep sigh, he tried to figure out what exactly he was going to do next. He didn’t think that Mari would really care all that much if he just took off—it wasn’t like he was supposed to be staying over anyway. Something about it still felt wrong though.

Slowly getting up off the couch, trying not to think about the popping in his knees as he did so, Steve did his best to straighten up the mild mess the two of them had created the night before. He neatly stacked all the photos he’d been looking at, tucking them back into their respective folders before setting them back on her coffee table. He took the glasses they’d been drinking of and slowly brought them back to the kitchen.

It wasn’t until he sat back down on the couch to put his shoes on that Mari woke up. Her awakening was slow and ungraceful, and Steve didn’t even try to pretend that he wasn’t watching her with complete and utter amusement.

“Fuck,” she grumbled out as she blindly peeled the headset off and rubbed at her eyes. She was still slouched over the arm of the couch.

Steve chuckled. “Well aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.”

Getting herself to sit upright, she finally opened her eyes all the way. She studied Steve’s face for a moment, like she was trying to figure out what exactly she wanted to say to him. He didn’t seem fazed by their situation, and she wasn’t quite awake enough to feel any type of way about it one way or the other.

“Coffee?”

He looked up from lacing his shoes. “Offering or asking me to make it?”

She smiled tiredly. “Offering, but if you’re offering…”

Steve let a long pause settle between them before cracking a grin. “I’m not.” He stood up, laughing as she rolled her eyes at him. “Nice try though.”

She tossed her headset onto the coffee table before getting up off the couch herself. Walking by Steve, she brushed her shoulder against his own with a purposeful shove. “Malparido.”

“I know that one,” he joked.

She tried to hide her amusement as she retied her hair, getting the sleepy frizz of it all as under control as she could. “Nice to see that all your months in Colombia are finally paying off.”

Steve followed her lead as she started towards her apartment door. There was no discussion needed really about what was happening next. Steve still had to go home, shower, and change before heading back to Carlos Holguín. Mari had to do the same. And neither of them wanted the other to be around for any of that.

Still, before she started undoing the locks on her door, Steve asked, “You good?”

She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Besides the knot in my neck from sleeping on the couch?” She shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“I just—”

She waved him off as she pulled the door open. “I’m okay. Promise.” She leaned against the doorframe and the smile on her face had a genuine air to it that Steve didn’t think he’d ever seen from her before. “Thank you.”

He wanted to say something else, but he wasn’t sure what. He managed a nod. “Yeah. No problem.” Clearing his throat, he found himself shoving his hands back into his pockets once more as he stepped out into the hallway. “I’ll see you at the base?”

She nodded. “Yeah.” She let him get a stride and a half away before saying, “And bring me a coffee.”

He laughed and shook his head, but didn’t turn around to look at her as he continued making his way out. Maristela watched him go, an upward curl to her lips as she did. He was hardly out of her eyeline when the door down the hall opened up to reveal Señora Sanchez. She looked extremely ready for the day, like she’d already experienced an entire morning as opposed to Mari who was barely this side of conscious.

Mari raised her eyebrows, waiting for her neighbor to say something. She shook her head at Mari, sarcasm in her tone, almost borderline mockery as she said, “Tu colega.”

Mari sighed, slouching against her doorframe. “Señora, es demasiado temprano para esto.”

The veil of judgment faded from the woman’s face, an odd brand of amusement in its place. The kind that women who had seen enough to know what’s coming tended to have. She smiled at Mari, gave a small nod as she went to slip back into her apartment again, leaving her with, “Buen día y buena suerte.”

She laughed, and even though the woman’s door was closed, Mari still said, “Gracias,” before heading back into her own apartment to get ready for the day.

(divider by @silkholland 💞)

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