The Agent in Colombia - A queer enemies to lovers romance

I first met Brenton in a morgue. I was nursing a headache from one too many late nights and not enough sleep, leaning against a metal table that had seen too many bodies and not enough bleach. The hum of the fluorescent lights above made everything feel clinical, but not clean. Like the room had soaked in too much grief to ever be sterile again. He walked in like he owned the place. Tall, broad-shouldered, and with a quiet confidence that made everyone else feel a little smaller. I’d seen his file. FBI liaison to the DEA here in Colombia. Quick promotions. Commendations. And one disciplinary I couldn’t quite get to the bottom of. He nodded at the coroner, then looked straight at me. “You Agent Cooper?” I didn’t answer right away. Just studied him, let the silence stretch. He had that look, like he’d been a golden boy once, until something cracked and all the light bled out. “Depends who’s asking,” I said eventually. He smirked like he was used to people trying to get a read on him. “Brenton Moore. I’ve been assigned to your case.” “Which one?” “The dead girl in the river.” I clicked my tongue, pushing off the table. “That’s not a case. That’s a cover-up in the making.” Brenton didn’t flinch. “All the more reason to start digging.” He was either naive or stupidly brave. The coroner lifted the sheet, and we both turned our attention to the body. Young. Pale. Bruises blooming across skin like spilled ink. She’d been pretty once. Now she was just another piece of evidence. Brenton leaned in, eyes scanning the damage with a surgeon’s focus. I watched him more than I watched her. Noticed how his jaw clenched at the ligature marks. How his fingers curled into fists when the coroner mentioned she'd likely been alive when she was dumped. “This place chews people up” I raised an eyebrow. “You sound surprised.” He straightened and looked at me again. There was something almost soft in his expression. Not weakness. Just weariness. Like he already knew this job was going to break him, and he’d made peace with it. “I’m not,” he said. “I just want to know who’s doing the chewing.” There was a moment, fleeting though it was, where I saw something in him. Like two wolves crossing paths in the same dark wood. I walked out of the morgue without saying anything else. If he wanted to follow, he would. And he did. He caught up to me on the street outside like it was nothing. Not many people can match pace when it's spurred on by anger, but Brenton had a military efficiency—long strides, silent footsteps; a man trained to chase ghosts. “Are you always this charming to your new partners?” he asked. I didn’t answer. Just lit a cigarette and kept moving. He didn’t strike me as the smoking type, but he didn’t comment, either. Just matched me stride for stride as the city pulsed around us — sirens in the distance, a drunk yelling at a streetlamp, steam rising from vents like the whole place was exhaling its sins. “I read your file,” he said finally. Casual. As if we were just swapping stories over a beer and not digging through the wreckage of our reputations. “You don’t play well with others.” “And yet here I am.” “Lucky me.” I stopped outside a café bar that made a passable cup of coffee. The kind of place that felt like neutral ground. He held the door open without a word. We slid into a booth. I ordered black coffee. He got the same. The waitress didn’t bother with a smile, she knew better. This wasn’t the kind of place that pretended life was nice. “So what’s your angle, Moore?” I asked once we were alone. “You get bored solving rich-people crimes and thought you’d try your hand at something grittier?” He shook his head and drummed his fingers on the table. “I’m not here for a promotion, if that's what you're asking." I’m here because that girl had marks that match three cases in the US in the last eight months. Drugs are one thing, but there's something bigger going on here.” I blinked. Okay. Not naive, then. Not just a pretty face with a shiny badge. This one had done his homework. He leaned in slightly. “I think whoever is moving these drugs is killing women, and the trail leads here.” I looked at him—really looked. That dead girl, her face still etched into my brain. There were more I’d tried to keep open and watched get quietly buried. Brenton might’ve been late to the party, but at least he’d brought a shovel. I slid my phone across the table, unlocked. It was a mess of notes, photos, and files I wasn’t supposed to have. Evidence that didn’t fit the narrative my bosses wanted to tell. He picked it up without hesitation. Scrolled. Scanned. Didn’t speak. When he finally looked up, there was something in his eyes I hadn’t seen before: respect. “I’ll need copies of all of this,” he said.