Haunted by my memories of you

Mateo's husband got shot during an undercover mission, which is why he's sitting in the waiting room of a hospital, haunted by all the memories of him.

He's absolutely restless and wishes there was more that he could do for Henry.

Mateo may have gone undercover as a surgeon at one point but, he is in fact not a doctor. So there isn't anything else he can do for his husband other than lose his mind in this waiting room and make sure he's there to hold his hand when he wakes up.

If he wakes up.

Nope.

No.

He is not going to do this to himself.

He's not going to envision the worst-case scenario, that isn't going to be helpful for either of them.

So instead he tries to think of some nice memories he has of him and his husband that they made together, some from before they took the jobs that changed their lives and some from after.

That way he's not constantly thinking about holding his bloodied husband in his arms as they waited for the ambulance (even though he's sure the image will forever haunt him).

Because the other option is running into the operating room and holding the poor surgeon at gunpoint until he promises to Mateo that Henry is going to be fine.

And given that this is a very illegal, not to mention terrible, thing to do, he settles for distraction.

He thinks back to 16-year-old Mateo who walked in on his best friend kissing a guy and got so upset that he had a panic attack about the possibility that he may have been homophobic, something he really didn't want to be.

It wasn't until his older brother took him to a gay bar that he realized that he wasn't homophobic, quite the opposite actually.

He was just in love with his best friend.

And the kiss had made him feel weird because he'd been jealous out of his mind.

This resulted in him running to Henry's house, in the rain, at 3 a.m., to confess to him that he'd been afraid he may be homophobic because he felt weird and uncomfortable when he watched him kiss a guy. And that he'd ultimately figured out that he'd only felt uncomfortable with Henry kissing someone who wasn't him.

Which ended in Henry laughing his ass off at the mare thought of Mateo thinking he was homophobic after the two of them had watched multiple queer movies together, Mateo had beta-read every gay fanfiction Henry had written and he had punched not one but two people that had been homophobic to Henry after he came out.

And then after Henry got done laughing he'd kissed him in the rain.

That had been the very beginning of a 15-year-long happy and healthy relationship.

He also thinks back to 21-year-old detectives Mateo and Henry who were sent on their first undercover mission together and had to postpone celebrating their 5th anniversary because it fell in the week that they went undercover as mortal enemies.

He vividly remembers almost blowing up the whole operation, and to this day he claims this wasn't his fault.

Their boss disagrees, but Henry agrees with Mateo, which is all he really cares about anyway. 

Everything had been going according to plan.

They had been faking a fight, on the day of their 5th anniversary for crying out loud, to create a distraction, so that a co-worker of theirs had the opportunity to steal a flash drive that had important blueprints on it.

When the co-worker almost got caught Mateo knew they had to up their game, so he decided to get into Henry's space and remove his sunglasses from his face.

He figured the action would come across as threatening and degrading to others without actually having to make Henry uncomfortable, or worse having to hurt him, to pull it off.

The whole thing went south because Mateo hadn't been prepared to be faced with a nasty black eye after he removed Henry's sunglasses.

It had thrown him so off guard that he'd been unable to proceed with their fake fight.

Luckily he's nothing if not a quick thinker, so when their lack of a distraction resulted in their co-worker almost getting caught with the flash drive, Mateo quickly came up with a new distraction and still ended up saving the day.

Then, after completing their mission, he stopped halfway through driving them home to demand Henry tell him how he got the black eye.

He's aware that he'd let his personal feelings almost ruin an important operation, but in his defense, he's not the only one of them who has once almost fucked up a mission because he was too concerned about his husband.

Which reminds him of something else entirely:

During a mission, a couple of years later, Henry's alias was supposed to catch Mateo's alias cheating in a bar (now that he thinks about it their boss really loves to give him the asshole covers and somehow always makes Henry the golden boy, he should look into that someday).

The fight that this would result in was supposed to be dramatic enough that the whole bar would be more engaged in their fight than in the trade that was going on in the back.

Unfortunately, the whole thing went south when a random guy in the bar, who wasn't even one of the bad guys they were after, made a racist comment towards Mateo and Henry got so angry that he broke the guy's nose. 

The whole thing still ended up working out in their favor, because even though they acted out a different distraction than they had initially planned on, they still managed to turn all the attention on them.

The fierce protectiveness that Henry had shown that night was nothing new, Mateo has a few more memories like that.

He also has them and vice versa, even though Mateo is sure that those memories will forever stay with him, he tries to avoid thinking about them right now.

Because focusing on Henry getting hurt isn't exactly a distraction from the fact that he's currently fighting for his life in an OR.

So instead of focusing on his own protectiveness, he thinks about more memories he has of his husband in that position.

His favorite memory of protective Henry has got to be when he went on a solo undercover mission.

His solo mission had gone south when one of the enemies, a girl named Barbara, pushed him off his horse. Which resulted in him breaking multiple ribs.

He somehow managed to keep his cover intact, something he's to this day incredibly proud of.

But his favorite part of the memory is what Henry did after he was told that Mateo was lying in a hospital, across the country, with multiple fractured ribs.

He immediately left their home and drove 11 hours, without sleep, to get to Mateo as soon as possible.

The broken ribs hurt like a b*tch, so Mateo had been glad that Henry had dropped everything he was doing to drive toward him, even if he ended up having to threaten his husband into taking a nap.

The bastard really drove 11 hours without stopping (bathroom breaks not included), while pulling an all-nighter and had somehow still been caught off guard when Mateo suggested he took a nap in the chair next to his bedside.

He had initially offered Henry half of his hospital bed, but he'd refused because he was too afraid he'd hurt him.

That day was the very day Mateo decided he was going to propose to Henry.

He didn't propose that same night, because he wanted to pop the question somewhere special, but he did order the ring that night online, while Henry slept in the chair next to his bedside.

Thinking back to that day is bittersweet.

He had landed in the hospital with an injury that could very well be life-threatening (he could have punctured a lung) and no one had even made an attempt on his life, sure it sucked that he'd been thrown off his horse and the injury he sustained had been very painful, but what happened hadn't been an assassination attempt.

This doesn't mean he and his husband had never been the target of an assassination attempt though, these attempts just never ended in hospitalization, not until today at least.

The two of them had always been able to avoid that outcome

Regardless of that, they had still been the targets of two other failed assassination attempts before today, these weren't necessarily fun memories to think back to, but at least they hadn't been successful, there was something comforting about that.

The first attempt anyone had ever made on one of their lives, had been Mateo very nearly getting stabbed in the chest.

The only reason he'd survived that night had been because Henry completely lost his shit. And knocked the 6'5 man, who had tried to stab Mateo, unconscious with a barstool.

Which was kind of heroic given Henry wasn't even supposed to be Mateo's backup,

That was the job of Another one of their colleagues; a guy named Keith.

Henry was supposed to monitor the hidden mics and camera footage, but he completely abandoned protocol when someone threatened his husband with a knife.

Mateo hadn't even used his safeword yet, therefore Keith hadn't come into action.

Mateo likes to think he had the situation under control and therefore didn't need Henry's protection.

But he's not going to deny that the vision of Henry knocking a giant man unconscious with a wooden barstool, is one of his favorite memories.

The second time someone made an attempt on one of their lives, it happened to Henry, although he wasn't planning on thinking back on this memory tonight, It's a good story. And he can comfortably look back on it because Henry didn't get hurt that night.

Thanks to him.

He can still feel anger boil in him though, when he thinks back to the assassination attempt, so maybe comfortable isn't the right word to use.

But it's a killer story regardless.

Everything had admittable gone very well.

Henry was doing an amazing job and he was very close to selling the deal his alias was supposed to make.

There was just one thing that no one, or at least no one but Mateo, had noticed because it happened so quickly.

The man Henry was making the deal with had poisoned his drink.

Thank god Mateo had been Henry's backup for the night and that he had listened to Henry for once and had actually worn his glasses that night.

He wasn't supposed to interrupt Henry's mission, since the deal he was supposed to make had been of high value.

Besides, Mateo didn't even have an alias.

So when he got up from his spot to dump Henry's drink in his lap, he ended up getting yelled at by all of their colleagues.

Mateo is still a bit bitter about the lack of faith everyone apparently had in him.

All his colleagues had assumed that he had dumped Henry's drink in his lap because he'd gotten jealous of the flirting Henry's alias had to do.

The guy that his husband had been forced to flirt with had admittedly been very beautiful, but Mateo was not stupid.

He'd obviously been aware that Henry was just flirting with the guy for the sake of the mission.

If he's completely honest he wasn't even jealous, if anything he found the whole thing hot to watch, right until the moment that the guy poisoned Henry's drink and Mateo watched his entire life flash in front of his eyes.

He'd instantly gotten up, grabbed a half-full beer from an abandoned boot, and pretended to be extremely drunk while going up to Henry.

He had to think and act fast.

He obviously couldn't risk Henry getting poisoned, but he also couldn't risk blowing his cover.

Luckily Henry's alias was attracted to guys, which the enemy obviously knew after getting hit on for a solid hour.

He figured pretending to be drunk and jealous was the easiest way to interrupt the meeting without making the enemy suspicious of Henry's identity.

He just had to make sure he had some kind of backstory.

Obviously, the guy couldn't know Mateo was Henry's husband.

Luckily that was not too hard of a task for him.

Mateo drunkenly walked toward them, grabbed Henry's drink, and threw it in his lap while throwing a fit about how he'd stood him up.

He's honestly proud that he was able to keep a straight face.

The other guy had rolled his eyes and told him, "We're a bit busy here darling, but if you can be a good boy and sit still in the corner over there, I could take you home if you'd like that? I'd just have to finish this conversation if you don't mind."

And just like that Mateo had been able to prevent Henry from getting poisoned without blowing his cover or the operation (although it took a lot of self-control not to gag at the stranger's comment).

The only problem had been that after the negotiation with Henry the enemy actually expected Mateo to go home with him, and Henry, as much as he wanted to, couldn't afford to jeopardize his cover by coming to Mateo's rescue.

Luckily one of their colleagues came to his rescue with a laughable yet effective performance.

Henry and he still laugh about it from time to time.

Henry who been the only person to never question his judgment.

Every single other one of his colleagues involved with the mission had tried to yell at him for his action before Mateo even had a chance to explain himself.

But Henry, as always, had immediately backed him up.

Mateo can still vividly remember how Henry had folded his arms and said; "I'm sure Mateo had a valid reason to risk jeopardizing the mission. I don't appreciate all of you making these nasty accusations about him before he has even had a chance to justify his actions. I for one trust his judgment and am certain he didn't make such a risky decision out of jealousy. By now everyone should know that Mateo is an incredible agent who wouldn't compromise an important mission unless necessary."

When they came back to the hotel afterward, he immediately made Henry take a shower and put his leather pants (that Henry wouldn't normally be caught dead wearing but was forced to wear for the sake of his alias) away for evidence.

Mateo was later told they were able to identify the liquid Henry's pants were soaked in as slow-working lethal poison.

Even though Mateo was glad he had evidence to back up his claim, he was even more thrilled about the fact that Henry immediately believed him without evidence.

He never even considered that Mateo may have done something stupid and petty out of jealousy and he really appreciated that.

He had many more nice memories of Henry being supportive and protective because that is just the kind of guy he is.

And he hopes they'll get to make many more memories together.

But whether Henry survives his surgery or not, one thing is certain, their memories will haunt Mateo for the rest of his life.