I think it should be that Ulixes is pining for Steban and trying to hide his Yearning for his Comrade while Steban has just sort of been assuming they're boyfriends for the last 3 months, which Ulixes has no idea about because he doesn't know what "cariño" means
Alternatively i think what should happen is Steban is completely oblivious to both Uli's feelings and his own until something DRASTIC happens, like, idk, Ulixes takes a bullet for him in le retour
Like yes i want them to join the Effort in le retour and i want it to go very very badly
i want Ulixes to be like “Hell yeah time to slaughter the bourgeoisie” and Steban to be all “Haha okay Uli, we’ll just do whatever is needed to Advance The Cause, maybe we won’t even have to do any violence :)” only for Ulixes to take a bullet very early on (whilst defending Steban) that takes him out of the action immediately, and for Steban to have a war is hell character arc and lose all his boyish innocence to the horrors
they resolved the boyfriend question at that point, but it doesn’t really matter that much in the grand scheme of things bc of the civil war they’re in
You get it! You get it. I mean,
it’s a little over one year past March ‘51, and the may bells are in bloom again. The union boys have made a crutch for Ulixes which is crude but serviceable, and he uses it to hobble about at the back of the redoubt where it’s currently safe and scour the ground for the last untouched flowers, which he plucks up and puts into Steban’s pocket whenever Steban goes to the front lines to defend them. A year ago, when he thought he was bleeding out and had only minutes left, he told Steban to keep fighting for the both of them. He has found ample time since to regret that choice of words.
