There was a time Joe believed love could fix anything.
He was fifteen when he first learned the difference between being wanted and being needed. His mother needed him — for grocery runs, for blame, for something to yell at when the liquor bottle hit empty. But she never wanted him. Not really.
Not the way he wanted Steve.
And maybe that was the pattern he never outgrew — falling for people who were too damaged to care, too lost to see how much he gave without asking for anything back.
Steve was different. Not because he was gentle — he wasn't. But because Steve didn't lie. His pain was raw and loud, carved into the way he never made promises, never stayed too long, never gave too much of himself. Steve was a storm — and Joe? Joe just wanted to be the one tree that didn't fall when he passed through.
But that loyalty… it cost Joe pieces of himself.
Scene: A Quiet Apartment (Joe, age 21)
The apartment was still, except for the drip of the leaky kitchen faucet and the soft crackle of vinyl playing something low and lonely. Joe sat at the window, staring out into the night, phone in his hand, screen empty.
He'd texted Steve three hours ago.
No reply.
Again.
A familiar ache curled in his stomach — a mix of dread, jealousy, and that old ache called hope.
"Don't do this to yourself,"
his friend Manny had told him once.
"Steve's never gonna love you the way you love him."
And Joe had laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it hurt in a way that needed to be released.
Internal Monologue (Joe):
You don't fall in love with a fire and expect not to get burned. But what they don't tell you is how beautiful the heat feels before the flames take you.
He remembered their shared cigarettes behind rundown buildings. The way Steve's voice would soften after 3 a.m., when sleep clung to his lashes and his guard slipped just enough for Joe to see the boy beneath the rage.
Those moments were cruel gifts — breadcrumbs of intimacy that never led to more. Joe convinced himself they meant something. That Steve knew. That he cared. That maybe — just maybe — someday, he'd choose him.
But then came Christian.
The FBI agent with eyes like winter and a smile Steve didn't flinch from.
And everything Joe had built in silence began to collapse.
Flashback: A Night in the Rain (Age 22)
JOE: (under his breath) "You like him."
STEVE: (lighting a cigarette) "You jealous?"
JOE: "You think it's funny?"
STEVE: (exhales smoke, avoiding eye contact) "I didn't ask for your heart, Joe."
JOE: (voice cracks) "You didn't have to. I gave it anyway."
That night, Joe cried in the rain for the first time since he was a child. Not because Steve didn't love him. But because he knew — deep down — that Steve never would.
And yet… Joe stayed. Even when it hurt. Even when it broke him.
Because loving Steve was the only thing that made him feel real.