#colonel carrillo imagine

[tropes-and-tales]

Ten Months as Yours

Colonel Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader

CW:  Angst (reader is CIA and has feelings about it; failed first marriages; talk of Catholicism); smut (oral, m! and f! receiving; PiV, unprotected); 18+ only.

Word Count:  10,951

AN:  This was from an "Arranged Marriage" prompt list. An anon asked for it, and it was supposed to incorporate dates where the couple gets to know each other. I, an idiot, didn't remember that until nearly the end, but if you kind of squint, you can see it.

AN2: Not edited. Not even a little bit.

AN3: Sigh. I dunno, folks. It's whatever.

Horacio Carrillo’s first marriage was standard Catholic fare:  the reading of the banns beforehand, then the long wedding Mass.  Heavy on the incense, crowded church, a red-faced priest droning through the Gospel.  Juliana, his blushing bride in a heavy lace veil, clutching a bouquet of lilies already wilted and brown at the edges in the Colombian heat.

Then, years later, the dissolution of that marriage.  Papers signed separately in the presence of lawyers after an ice age formed between the couple.  Then more years of Horacio being single again, but the time slipped by like water.  He was so busy with work, he hardly registered the empty house he returned to every evening.

Horacio Carrillo’s second marriage is something else entirely.

It’s not, strictly or spiritually speaking, a real marriage.  It’s a bit of maneuvering on the  part of the U.S. government, logistical choreography as part of a larger plan.  To the world at large, Horacio Carrillo is dead:  murdered by Escobar’s men in a trap.  Only a handful of people know the truth—the doctor and nurses at the American hospital who healed him under a temporary alias.  And this man, Johnson, a U.S. Marshal and handler for the U.S. Witness Protection program

Johnson is the sole witness to this so-called marriage, if one could even call it that.  It happens on the cargo plane from Bogota to Atlanta.  Johnson sits in the jump seat across from his two charges:  Horacio…and you.

Horacio doesn’t even learn your real name.  There’s no exchange of vow and certainly no incense or bouquet of lilies.  Instead of a blushing bride, there’s a silent one.  Your mouth is set in a thin, straight line as you listen to Johnson’s rundown of your new life, and every time Horacio chances a look at you, he only sees the tension in you.  Grim-set mouth, clenched jaw…and the white edge of a bandage on your temple, mostly hidden under the sweep of your hair.

Horacio wonders if you’re dead to the world too.  You aren’t DEA or CIA, at least not in the Colombian theater, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t nearby.  The U.S. agencies have their sticky fingers all over South America.

The broad strokes of the situation:  you and Horacio are newlyweds.  You met in Spain and are returning to the U.S.  Horacio is dead, but he’s been replaced by Davide, and Johnson hands over a thick packet of official documents—Spanish birth certificate, Spanish passport, U.S. green card. 

You are also dead, but you’ve been replaced by Gwen.  Another thick packet of documents detailing your fake life as an ex-pat American in Spain.

Each packet also contains a simple gold band for each of you.  Horacio turns it over and over in his hand, contemplates the little twist he gets in his gut to put a ring back on his finger after years of being divorced.

You slide yours on too, but you fuss with it the rest of the flight, twisting it around and around your finger.

“You’re going to Vermont, of all places,” Johnson tells you.  “There’s a mid-sized college there with a lot of international folk coming and going, so you’ll blend in.  The house is handled, and you’ll get a stipend every month, but we expect you to find jobs as quickly as you can.”

Johnson doesn’t even attempt to say how long it will be.  Horacio knows he has to wait out Escobar before he can return to Colombia.  You?  Who can say?

The rest of the flight is silent except for the low roar of the engines and the creak of the netting holding the cargo in place.  Once you land, you stand and follow Johnson and Horacio off of the plane to transfer to a smaller passenger plane that will take you to Vermont.

The final leg of the journey is silent too.

When you deplane in the small regional airport in Vermont, you stumble on the step down from the fuselage.  Horacio catches your arm, keeps you upright.

“Watch your step,” he says softly.

“Thank you,” you reply.

It’s the first words you exchange, and his hand on your clothed arm—that’s the first time he touches you.

-----

Horacio has never been to the United States before, but when he thinks of it, he thinks of what he’s seen in the movies:  New York City, perhaps, with the traffic and skyscrapers and Statue of Liberty.  Or Miami with its white beaches and turquoise water and neon-tinged nightlife.

Vermont is something else.

It’s green.  Everything is so green.  The rounded mountains in the distance, the old trees with huge, spreading branches.  The grass of the lawns in this college town.  Even though it is near twilight, even the shadows are green-tinged as the sun sets.

“At least we arrived in the spring,” you say.  You glance at him, explain that New England winters can be brutal.

The house is small, trim.  It’s a simple ranch but well-built.  There’s a fair amount of land, and the nearest neighbors are far enough away that there’s privacy.

Of course it’s awkward.  You don’t know each other at all, and you’re both in hiding.  Horacio is out of habit with living with another person, and he has to guess you are too.

That first night, the first moment of awkwardness:  when you arrive at the house, there’s two bedrooms, and you both hesitate in the hallway that leads to both.  You’re married on paper (kinda) but who would expect you to share a bed?  But you’re also both exhausted, and Horacio takes in the dark circles under your eyes.  The larger room has a full-sized bed, but the guest only has an uncomfortable-looking daybed.

“Take the master bedroom,” he says.  “I’ll take the guest room.”

“You sure?”  Your words, Horacio notices, are slightly accented, like you’ve been around people like him who speak English as a second language.  He wonders about your past and what landed you here with him.

“Of course.  Take the room.  We’ll talk in the morning.”

You nod, and he glances down at where you twist that gold band over and over around your slim finger.  It’s here, he’ll realize later, that he starts to feel something for you, but at the moment, it’s only sympathy.  You’re trapped in the same miserable situation as him, so sympathy is an easy emotion to access.

“I appreciate it…Davide,” you reply, and you give him a nod, then turn in for the night.  He hears the quiet click of the bedroom door as you shut it, and he turns in too.  The daybed is cramped, and he can’t stretch out completely, but he’s so bone-tired that he’s asleep the minute his head hits the pillow.

-----

The first month, April. 

It’s awkward.  It’s more awkward for Horacio; everything in the U.S. is familiar, but just different enough to make it seem like he’s dreaming.  You’re already an American, and life in an idyllic New England college town is easier for you to settle into.

Living with another person is strange.  Horacio finds that the two of you engage in a civil, stilted dance each day that first month.  You each tiptoe around the other, defer to each other in a painfully polite way.  When Horacio catches you singing along softly to the radio one night, you snap the music off and go quiet.  When you walk in on him in the bathroom once—he was only brushing his teeth, so it is hardly salacious—you apologize and refuse to meet his eyes for the rest of the week.

The two of you don’t really talk, not that first month.  You aren’t supposed to share details about your real lives with each other, so neither of you know how to converse in the weird liminal space you find yourselves.  Your conversations are limited to menial topics.  The weather, the house and yard, what you each want for dinner that night.  You trade off chores, you drift around each other, and it’s like living in purgatory with another ghost.

Sometimes, Horacio swears he can hear you crying softly through the wall that separates your room from his, but you never offer any insight into your feelings and he doesn’t ask.

-----

The second month, May.

Johnson told each of you to find work, and you land a job first:  you get a position at the college.  You ask him, a bit shy, if you can take a certain portion of the monthly stipend to buy some new clothes for your office job, and Horacio’s gut does that twist again.  Of course you need new clothes.  You left wherever with nothing, the same way he left Colombia with nothing.

“Of course,” he says.  “You don’t even need to ask.”

That makes you smile a little, and you make a weak joke about not wanting to be the sort of wife to spend frivolously.  It makes Horacio chuckle.  It breaks the uneasy tension in the house a bit, and he ends up going to the mall with you that weekend as you shop.

There’s nothing like a mall to encapsulate American culture, and Horacio tries to play it cool at the conspicuous consumption on display.  The giant building, the icy air conditioning, the cacophony of sound echoing around the marble floors and walls.  There’s so many people and only a handful of security guards.  When Horacio studies them closer, he sees that they don’t even carry guns—they only have walkie-talkies as they saunter around at a lazy pace.

His life now is a far cry from his life as the leader of the Search Bloc.  And when he glances over at the woman walking beside him, he realizes how far this second marriage is from his first.

But the thought leads to him ruminating about his first marriage and all the little ways he failed Juliana.  This situation with you isn’t a marriage, of course, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to be better.

So once you are done shopping, he pulls you into the Sam Goody and insists that you buy an album to celebrate.  He catches you singing all the time in the house, listening to the radio, humming or singing along.  When he imagines your mysterious life before now, he imagines an apartment filled with a big stereo and shelves of albums.

“Seriously?”  It makes you smile again, and Horacio thinks you have a nice smile, though he wonders how often people ever get to see it.

“Well, it’s our stipend,” he clarifies.  “It’s not like I’m treating you, really.  I guess it’s not really a gift if it’s ours.”

Another smile, and he stands back and watches as you rifle through the stacks of vinyl records and CD’s, as you pull one out and read the list of songs, then replace it.  You finally settle on one, and the two of you check out, and Horacio pulls out his wallet and pays.

And even if it’s your shared stipend, you thank him and smile again, and it feels like something that he can’t quite name.

-----

The third month, June.

You leave the house every weekday for work.  Horacio finally has some firsthand knowledge of what Juliana must have felt when he left each day.  He had always prided himself that he was able to provide for both of them, that she never had to work. 

He had never considered how bored she must have been.

He wakes up early out of habit, but you do too.  In the soft pre-dawn light, you go out for a run every day.  Part of him remains Search Bloc; he stands at the living room window and watches for you until you return, panting, your t-shirt ringed with sweat.  He finds he can breathe easier once you’re in sight. 

While you shower and dress, Horacio makes you coffee.  The two of you sip at your coffee in companionable silence, and then you’re off.

It leaves him with a full day with little to do.

He cleans the house, but that takes no time at all because both of you are fastidious and neat anyway.  He maintains the lawn, trims back the unruly rhododendrons.  He bought a weight bench and a set of free weights from a yard sale a few weeks after you moved, and he spends some time lifting in the garage.

That takes him to noon, if he’s lucky.

His afternoons are when he thinks of Juliana the most.  Is this what her life with him was like?  Back then, he used to scoff at the claim that women needed a life outside of the home.  His mother had seemed happy to be a housewife and mother, and he had always assumed that Juliana was the same.  Except the children never came, and Juliana had a degree in fashion design from the university—yet when she broached the idea of a job or even an internship, Horacio had dissuaded her.

He had thought he was being a good husband.  Now, as he sits and drowses to “Days of Our Lives,” he wonders how he had missed the obvious.

But if he’s Juliana in this situation, you are no Horacio.  For one thing, you return home in the late afternoon—he’s never left to eat dinner alone in a too-quiet house.  For another, you immediately kick off your shoes and pad over to where he’s cooking dinner, and you fall into an easy rhythm of helping him finish it off.

Halfway through June, you get comfortable enough to start calling out, “honey, I’m home!” each time you return.

Which makes him smile, every time.

And he’s only a passable cook, but you praise every meal he puts in front of you.  You joke once, say “I should have gotten a husband a long time ago,” and that makes him smile even wider, and it is easy to fall into the fantasy that this easy domesticity is real.  The fantasy only falls apart at night, when you each retire to your separate rooms, as you do every night.

-----

The fourth month, July.

The easy domesticity cedes to something deeper and darker right at the start of the month.

Horacio has never been to the U.S. before, so he hasn’t experienced the usual Independence Day celebrations.  When he asks, you grin and tell him that a good old-fashioned U.S.-style barbecue might be nice, and that’s what the two of you plan.  You and Horacio as Davide and Gwen:  patriotic Americans.

The day starts off great.  The weather is hot and humid enough to feel like Colombia, and Horacio will admit that you look nice in your cut-off shorts and cotton tank top.  He will admit that if you were really his wife, he might never even make it to lunchtime before taking advantage of a quiet house set apart from its neighbors.

The barbecue is nice.  It’s all-American fare:  hot dogs and hamburgers, corn on the cob steamed over hot coals.  You buy an apple pie from a nearby farm stand, and you also make some trifle type dessert, and the two of you wash it all down with ice-cold beer.  By the time dusk rolls around and lightning bugs start to flicker across the lawn, Horacio is pleasantly buzzed.

The town puts on a fireworks display, and as the sky turns a velvety black, the light show starts.  Your house is in the perfect place to see it, slightly set on a ridge, and blossoms of red and white and blue sparks explode across the sky.  Horacio, tipsy, watches the first few minutes, completely mesmerized…but when he turns to say something to you, he finds you missing.

He finds you in the house.  More specifically, he finds you in the bathtub, hugging your knees to your chest, forehead pressed to knees.

“Gwen?” he says, and he feels stupid saying the obviously fake name, but he doesn’t know your real one.

You don’t answer anyway, and he steps into the bathroom.  Studies you closer.  Sees that you are shaking, and between the muffled booms of the fireworks, he can hear your panting breath.

He moves without any real thought.  He knows—or can guess, at least—at what is happening to you.  Horacio has led enough men through enough battles to recognize a panic attack when he sees one, but you aren’t one of his men and this is no battle, so he puts a gentle hand on your shoulder to alert you that he’s there.  Then he climbs into the bathtub with you.

“Scoot forward a little,” he orders softly, and you do.  He maneuvers himself behind you, then pulls you closer to him.  Your back pressed against his chest, and his arms wrapped around you, he holds you close despite the heat and humidity of the day. 

“Just breathe with me.”  He takes a deep, slow breath, feels his chest push against you.  He does it again and again, and after a long while, you start to mimic him. 

The fireworks end, and eventually you stop trembling.  Tucked this close to him, Horacio can see the edge of a thick scar disappearing under your hair, and he remembers the bandage on the plane from Bogota.

He wonders if the moment that caused that scar is linked to this moment now. 

After you calm, and after you sheepishly untangle yourself from him, he urges you to do whatever you need to.  To take a cool shower or go to bed.  That he’ll clean up.  You gaze back at him a long moment, like you’re trying to decide something, and then you nod.  You leave the bathroom and disappear into your bedroom, and he hears that quiet click of the door closing.

The rest of the month is uneasy.  The panic attack seems to have dredged up the muck in your past, the trauma of a life that has resulted in you being in Witness Protection, injured enough at some point to have a thick scar on your head.

Something about this feels like an echo from his first marriage.  Juliana went silent on him too, but for different reasons.  Your silence is driven by an inner turmoil that he can only guess at, and he feels powerless to help.

So he only does what he can.  He makes you coffee each morning before work.  He makes you dinner each night.  He asks gentle, tame questions about your work day, and when you don’t have much to say in that quarter, he tells you that day’s drama on “Days of Our Lives.”

“Stefano DiMera is back,” he tells you one night.  “And Marlena is possessed by el Diablo.”

That’s the sole smile he is able to coax from you all month.  You pick at the dinner he made, pushing it around with the tines of your fork, and repeat, “the Devil?”

Horacio nods.

“Like, Lucifer the Devil?”

“Yes.”

You smile.  “That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”

He nods again, smiles back at you.  “It really is.”

-----

The fifth month, August.

Horacio finds a job with a state nursery, and when he applies, he nearly despairs at the cliché of it:  a South American immigrant becoming a landscaper. 

But it’s not landscaping at all.  It’s a quiet, peaceful job.  The summer interns have already left for the year, so Horacio is hired on to help the old-timer, Lawrence.  Lawrence has a thick Yankee accent, says little, but Horacio finds the job a revelation.  He walks the rolling grounds and checks on the saplings that will one day be planted across the state.  They’ll go into parks and line city streets, and it knocks something loose in him.  A job where he’s nurturing life that will potentially live on long after him.  The oak sapling he waters and feeds today could live hundreds of years when he’ll be long forgotten. 

With him working now, you and Horacio switch off on meals.  You teach him how to use the most American of small appliances, the slow cooker.  You make him the most American of working class meals, the one-pot dish.  He makes you the comfort food from his childhood, and together you find an egalitarian balance.

But something about July and your low mental health…it makes Horacio want to do better.  Who knows how long the two of you will end up living like this?  He wants to understand you better, and he wants you to know him, because the two of you exist as the sole inhabitants of this weird, unlikely life as Davide and Gwen.

“Let’s each say one true thing about ourselves,” he proposes over dinner one night.  He’s bone-tired from work—he spent the day mulching rows and rows of tender little Eastern Hemlocks (and he knows the difference now between them and a balsam fir and a spruce).  You look tired too, but at his suggestion, your eyes light up.  Maybe you’ve been wanting some familiarity with him too and just were waiting on him to suggest it first.

So August is this:  getting to know each other.  Dumb stuff, usually.  Favorite colors, favorite songs, favorite foods.  Most embarrassing memory.  Best memory.  Age of first kiss. 

-----

The sixth month, September.

The weather starts to turn.  The nights grow cold, and the leaves transform from all that green to a riot of reds and yellows and oranges.  Work at the nursery slows way down, and Horacio spends long hours following Lawrence’s lead, which means an hour or two of paperwork, then lunch, then quietly reading a book at his desk.

You’re busy with the new academic year, but the weekends are spent doing day trips.  You’re six months into this, and you’re both braver, more willing to travel afield.  You go into the mountains to look at the leaves from a different angle than what you see from your house.  You go to pick apples, and you spend a weekend cooking them into pies, cobblers, and apple sauce.

The dinner-time “one true thing” game ends, and it turns into natural conversation.  It’s so comfortable now.  You chat and laugh and joke, and sometimes he teases you, and it makes you duck your head to hide your pleased smile.  You like being teased, Horacio finds.  You like being the butt of gentle jokes, so he obliges you as often as he dares. 

It’s a revelation to find that he has a sense of humor after all.

Over one dinner, he mentions his first marriage, his first wife.  You ask him questions, and he answers them honestly, and then he asks if you’ve ever been married.

“No.”  You shake your head to emphasize the point. 

“Ever engaged?”

You hesitate, then nod.  “Yes.  A long time ago.”

“What happened?”

You shrug, lifting one shoulder up before dropping it back down.  “Life.  Expectations.  It’s hard to say.”  You take a sip of your water, then settle your gaze somewhere past Horacio, like you’re looking at the specter of your failed engagement.

“I was young and very career-driven,” you add.  “And not many men want that in a wife.”

“I’m sorry.”  He is, of course, and he’s doubly-sorry because he was arguably one of those men.  He kept Juliana at home, stifled her own career aspirations.  A flush of shame courses through him at the memory of his own failings.

Another shrug.  “It was for the best.”

“And now here you are, married to me,” he teases, and yes—you duck your head, but he catches the shy little grin, the curve of your cheek as you smile at the joke.

-----

The seventh month, October.

It’s the first time you’ve actually ordered him to do anything, so Horacio finds himself busy each weekend, decorating the house for Halloween.  There’s ghosts strung in the trees in the front yard.  Fake gravestones jut from the lawn like rotting teeth.  Purple and orange lights are strung around the windows and banisters of the porch, and the two of you set to carving more pumpkins than Horacio thought possible.

But it’s worth it, because your town goes all out for the holiday.  You bought him a costume weeks ago, and when he dresses after dinner, he’s surprised to find you openly checking him out.  Your gaze sweeps from the hair on the top of his head—longer than Search Bloc reg, curling at the nape of his neck—to his shoes, and you take in his vampire costume.

“You look handsome,” you tell him, and he tries not to ogle you in turn and utterly fails, because you’re dressed up like a witch but the black dress hugs your curves, and the ridiculous hat, complete with a floppy brim, does nothing to detract from how sexy you look.

Horacio finds himself sitting on the front porch with you, handing out candy to the children that come by.  And it charms him, how much you get into it, how you guess at what each child is supposed to be.  You read the kids perfectly—you’re sweet with the scared little ones, but you play up the witchiness with the older ones, crooking your fingers and cacking at them.

When there’s a lull in the crowd at one point, he catches you as you shiver, so he pulls you close to him and wraps his cloak around your shoulder.  He never touches you much, but this is blatant, and the moment feels heavy with intent.

You lean into him.  A moment later, he feels your arm wend its way around his waist, under his cloak, so he holds you closer.

The evening continues like that.  The two of you play it up more and more, comfortable with pretending.  Not you and Horacio, and not Davide and Gwen, but a vampire and a witch, and the more you cackle and scare the children, the more Horacio flashes his fake teeth and hisses at them. 

Who ever knew handing out candy in a cheap drugstore costume could be so fun?

When another lull happens, he pulls you back to him, and the motion takes you off balance a little.  You hold him back but lean away from him, searching for your equilibrium, and it bares the smooth column of your neck to him.

Horacio forgets himself.  Davide forgets himself.  The vampire he’s pretending to be dips his head, and he presses the plastic points of his fake teeth into your pulse point, and you give a squeal of surprise, but when Horacio lifts his head to study you, he sees you staring back at him, your eyes wide and dark with obvious desire.

“That’s a good way to get a hex on you,” you warn, but there’s a smile on your red lips, and you don’t release your own hold on him.  You don’t shove him away.

“I enjoy a good hex,” he replies. 

The stream of children eventually dies off.  The bowl of candy has been replenished multiple times, but you fill it one last time and set it on the porch for any stragglers. 

Inside the house, you go from room to room and check the locks on the doors, turn off the lights.  Horacio lingers near the hallway, and when you turn to make your way to your room, he stills you.  He puts his hand on your waist, lightly, and he doesn’t say anything.  The moment hangs suspended as you both stand there, silent.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to take you to bed? 

He has always tried to be a good Catholic (the killing of narcos aside).  He’s never been with anyone other than Juliana, and he feels a tinge of doubt.  Guilt, too.  He’s always prided himself on his fidelity, and post-divorce, he took a perverse pride in the fact that he never took a lover.  That he still honored his vows despite the legal fact that he was no longer married.

He doesn’t mourn Juliana anymore, and he knows that something is growing between the two of you now, but what does it mean?  Would it be right to sleep with you, knowing that this is just circumstantial?  That it may end at any moment?  That if you both weren’t in WitSec, you’d have never met, and might have never liked each other if you had?

Is this thing growing between the two of you only the result of being flung together by circumstances out of your control?

All of those questions rapid-fire through his head, and you seem to see the doubt in his eyes because the moment deflates.  The energy and anticipation sour, and he sees it on your face.  Your soft smile falls, and then you nod to yourself, as if you knew it would happen like this.

Then you smile again, thank him softly for his help handing out candy.  You stretch towards him and brush the lightest of kisses against his cheek, and you step around him to go to your room.

When Horacio goes to bed, it takes him a long time to fall asleep, and he swears you must be awake too, separated only by the wall between you.

-----

The eighth month, November.

Your department at the university puts on a wine and cheese social, and spouses are encouraged to attend.

“We never really practiced our cover story,” he says as he bends over to tie his dress shoes.  “Do you remember all of it?”

“I have a eidetic memory.”

“Yeah?”  He glances up at you.  “You’re full of surprises.”

“Don’t sweat it.  It’s a bunch of tenured professors.  They love to talk about themselves and nothing else.  They are all narcissists of the worse variety.”

But you aren’t entirely correct.  The party is at the house of the department chair, and Horacio finds himself cornered by a pair of fellow lecturers.  They are older women, charming and gregarious, and they sing your praises…and his own.

“I can see why she’s kept you hidden away,” says the taller of the two.  “She said you were handsome but—”

“You make a gorgeous couple,” the shorter one cut in.  “And she’s brilliant, you know, she planned out this—”

On and on they go, cutting each other off, redirecting each other, not letting Horacio get a word in edgewise.  It’s not far off base from how you explained it would go, and when he catches your eye from across the room, you smile but mouth, “you okay?”

He nods, smiles back at you. 

The evening is halfway over when he realizes with a start that he hasn’t cased the room once. 

He hasn’t counted the exits and windows, hasn’t studied the egresses and any obstacles to them.  He hasn’t scowled at each face to try and determine what dirty secret they held, if Escobar or one of his men had compromised them or their family.  He hasn’t studied the lines of their clothing to see who might be hiding a piece.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to lose his edge? 

It’s another question he ponders at night, since the minor disaster of Halloween.  He knows he hurt you by hesitating in that moment in the hallway, but it’s a subtle hurt.  He can see it in your eyes each morning, the way they study his face as if you could perhaps read his thoughts if you watch him closely enough. 

More and more, these questions plague him because there’s no easy answers.  Horacio is used to solving problems, but he’d be the first to admit that many of his solutions were just brute force.  Displays of power.  The Search Bloc has a problem?  Send in men, armed men, men with guns and night-sticks, men with flint in their souls, men with hearts cased in granite.  Send in Colonel Carrillo himself to a clandestine meeting place where a suspect is strung up.  What’s a little light torture and murder when the fate of a country hangs in the balance?

That man is dead now.  Horacio Carrillo received a state funeral, and his empty coffin lies in the mausoleum.  Davide, his replacement, spent the week wrapping tender saplings in burlap in anticipation for the coming snows—all the while considering his place in the greater world and what his legacy may be.

At the end of the evening, Horacio finds you, brings you your coat, holds it out while you shrug your way into it.  When the two of you leave, you pass the pair of lecturers who had cornered him, and their exchange is like a Greek chorus that follows him home.

“He is handsome, isn’t he?” says one.  “She’s a lucky woman.”

The other one scoffs lightly.  “He’s the lucky one.”

You must not hear them because you don’t react.  You only let him lead you to the car, and when he brushes away the light dusting of snow with the snow brush, his eyes find yours through the windshield—and you smile at him.

-----

The ninth month, December.

The university shuts down for most of the month, and Horacio is on an abbreviated schedule a the nursery. 

The two of you have so much time together.

Horacio has seen snow before, but never like this.  Vermont, so green when he arrived, is swaddled in thick layers of white like cotton batting.  It absorbs and reflects sounds in weird ways, and a hush falls over your little home.

Being Colombian, he should hate it.  He should curse the cold and the snow and the quiet, but it does something to his soul.  It soothes him in a way he never would have guessed.  True, the cold is difficult at first, but you take him to the mall one weekend and load him up with sweaters and thick woolen socks, and he’s better after that.

Everything is so calm.  Peaceful.  Horacio has never slept so well in his life, bundled under layers of blankets, even on the uncomfortable daybed.  He sleeps, he doesn’t dream, and he wakes up naturally, in slow measure, to a soft light creeping across his bedroom floor.

Being on break, you still wake up early.  Earlier than him, some days, and when Horacio wakes to the scent of brewing coffee and something delicious baking in the oven, he wishes sometimes that this was the afterlife.  He wants to freeze the moment in time and never let it slip past him.  He wants nothing more, in this moment.

He’s always half-asleep those mornings, but the smell of food draws him out.  One morning, he pads out to the kitchen in his thick socks and startles you when he grumbles “good morning.”  You shriek, then swear, then lightly try to swat him with the spatula in your hands, but he’s still half-asleep, still incredulous that this is his life at the moment, and he takes the spatula from you and pulls you into a big bear hug.

“What’s this for?” you ask.  Your words are muffled against his chest, but after a beat, you wrap your arms around his midsection and hug him back.

“Just because,” he replies.

You spend your days doing puzzles, reading, listening to music.  You watch “Days of Our Lives” with him and you both laugh at the bad cosmetics and even worse acting on the demonic possession storyline.

Your evenings are spent cooking dinner together.  You make the trip into town every few days, and you rent movies and watch them too.  You watch everything together—old Hollywood classics, campy horror, meandering romances.  The two of you sit on the couch side by side, and it takes all of a day before you’re tucked in against his side, his arm firm around your shoulders.

Sometimes he glances down at you and sees your face in profile lit by the flickering light of the television.  Sometimes he can make out the edge of your scar, but he doesn’t linger there.  Instead he takes in the whole of your face—the curve of your cheek, the sweep of your lashes as you blink.  When something funny happens on the screen, you smile, and it makes Horacio’s heart stutter in his chest to see it.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to fall in love?

Another question to ponder.  Another riddle to solve.  He’s losing sight of the man he was.  Maybe that man is completely lost already.  The thought doesn’t unnerve him; he thinks he likes the man he is here.  He likes the man he is with you, the job that coaxes life into being instead of snuffing it out.  He likes wearing cable-knit sweaters and thick socks and eating the banana bread you bake on mornings you don’t have to work. 

He likes sitting on the couch with you and watching a rental VHS of “Beetlejuice.”  He likes the feel of your body pressed against his, and he likes looking down to see you smile.

That’s the night he dares ask for more.

After the movie, you do your usual pre-bedtime sweep of the house—locks, lights—then brush your teeth and go to your room.  The usual quiet click of your door closing.  Horacio, as usual, goes to his room, peels back the layers of blankets, prepares to tuck himself into the cramped bed….then doesn’t.

Instead, he returns to the hallway.  He taps a finger on your door, a soft staccato, and he hears you call out, “Davide?”

“Yes.”

You tell him to come in, and you’re sitting up in bed.  Your eyebrows are furrowed together. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

He shakes his head.  How can he begin to explain it?  He’s fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and his Italian is passable, yet not a single language he knows can capture the maelstrom of emotions roiling through him.  He loves you, he wants you.  He’s afraid you don’t feel the same for him.  He’s afraid you do feel the same for him.  Is this just situational or are you truly the woman he was meant for all along?  Has he gone mad?  Is this some tame mental breakdown, the result of coming close to death and then finding himself, improbably, in Vermont with a woman who also was near death? 

From your “one true thing” game, he knows you’re a polyglot too—English and Spanish and Russian—but that shake of his head to your question seems to transcend the need for language.  You seem to read it exactly, the turmoil in him, and you climb out of bed slowly, make your way over to where he stands by the door.

You reach down and take his hands in yours, and the touch bolsters him.  Reassures him.  He’s Horacio and Davide both, and you’re both Gwen and yourself, and he doesn’t need to parse the two.  He can be both with you.  You’re both complicated people with complicated pasts, but none of it matters right now because the world is swathed in layers of snow, and the two of you are the only two who exist in it.

Neither of you say much else for the rest of the night.  When you turn your head to peer up at him, Horacio tilts his head to kiss you, and it’s like a bolt of lightning when he does.  Maybe he fell in love with you by small moments, but this is the moment that seals it forever:  this first kiss, his mouth on yours, writes your name—your real name, even if he doesn’t know it—on his heart like a line of fire.

You each lead the other back to bed; you tug him, he pushes you, and you fall gracelessly back on the rumpled covers, but each kiss, each searching touch peels back another layer of reserve.  Horacio slides his hand under your shirt and cups the softness of your breasts, pinches lightly at your hardened buds.  You slip your hand under the waistband of his flannel pajamas and grasp his growing erection, stroke it into full hardness as he groans into your mouth.

There’s no art to it.  No seduction.  You’re both starving for each other, ravenous, and you both kiss the other as you each strip out of your layers.  He kisses down your neck, nips at your pulse point like he did on Halloween.  He licks against the hollow at the base of your throat, draws the sweetest goddamned moans out of you, then returns to kiss you, to lick against the inside of your mouth so he can feel the sounds you’re making too.

If he’d known how vocal you were in bed, he would have summoned his courage months ago.

Your mouth is on him too.  It’s another line of fire, each press of your lips on his bare skin.  He finds himself on his back and you astride him.  He reaches up to touch your bared breasts, but you don’t even notice because you lean down, focused only on him.  Your mouth on his neck, along his stubbled jaw.  You kiss his collarbones, his chest.  You bite lightly against his nipples, your teeth making him huff at the sensation, and then your warm tongue laving him.  Further down, a trail of kisses across his belly, which is less firm than it was in his Search Bloc days but you make a pleased noise as your mouth places wet, lingering kisses there.

Then even lower, and this is uncharted territory.  Love-making with Juliana was only ever for the purpose of making children, and while Horacio had convinced her a time or two to go down on her in the interest of foreplay, he never has received head in his life.  Juliana had called it dirty, and he had left it at that.

He doesn’t even register it until he feels your hand grasp him at the root of his cock, then feels the smallest, most kittenish little lick of your tongue against his leaking tip.

“Dios,” he groans out, and then he feels the rest:  your tongue tracing a pattern along the length of him, then a teasing rhythm where you work him into your mouth.  First just the tip.  You lavish him with attention there, suckling against the most sensitive part of him, lapping up the pre-cum that leaks from him.  Then more and more and more; you work him into your warm, wet mouth, and he feels your breath tickling against his groin, feels you breathing carefully through your nose as you take him as far as you can, and then you swallow against him, you hum against him, and it’s nothing like he’s ever felt before.  You press your tongue against the underside of him and you hollow your cheeks, and when your warm palm reaches up to lightly fondle his balls, Horacio’s orgasm breaks around him like a tidal wave.  His hips judder once, twice, and he thinks he warns you, but you don’t move.  You only hold yourself there, and when he comes, you swallow every drop of him, and he wishes he could explain this feeling to Juliana:  that it doesn’t feel dirty at all.  It feels like a sacrament.  That it feels like love.

It's only fair that he shows you his love for you in turn.

Once he recovers, he flips you onto your back and repays you in kind.  He kisses his way down your naked body, makes a note of all the spots that you moan at.  Make a note too of all the scars that speak to a life a lot like his was in Colombia.  He kisses your scars, presses his lips to each raised ridge as if he can take away any lingering pain.

Then he settles between your legs.  There’s no shyness he can detect; you spread your thighs eagerly for him.  You allow him to put a pillow under your hips to tilt your pelvis into a more agreeable angle.

He’s not especially skilled at this.  The handful of times with Juliana had been a race against the clock—a sprint to coax her to orgasm before she gripped his hair and made him stop.  There’s no clock now, so he takes his time.  He settles your legs on his shoulders and he bends his head to your gorgeous pussy, and he takes his time.

He licks against your folds, then reaches down to part them with his fingers.  Licks a slow, tortuous route from the firm bud of your clit to your entrance.  Over and over and over until you squirm underneath him—then he slides a finger into your clenching heat, then another, then a third, and he feels how your pussy twitches against the intrusion, how you grab against his fingers like you’re trying to pull him deeper into you. 

He fingers you in a lazy rhythm, and he circles his tongue against your clit.  That does something for you; you whine out a curse, and a moment later your hand is on his head, your fingers tugging against his hair, so he purses his lips, suckles against your clit, and that turns your whine into a wail.

He wishes he could tell Juliana this too, that this isn’t dirty either.  When you come, he feels a flush of pride at drawing pleasure from your body—your thighs tight against his head, your pussy clamped down on his fingers, and the slick cum that pulses from you, that coats his tongue and lips in the taste of you.

He’s hard again, but he wouldn’t press his luck.  This is more than he ever dared hope for.  He’d be happy to curl up with you now, to fall asleep beside you, but when he lifts his head from where he’s perched between your thighs, he sees you gazing back at him.

“Please,” is all you say, and he knows what you’re asking for because he wants it too.

If there’s an argument about this being two people pushed together because of circumstances beyond their control, there’s also an argument about the two of you fitting together so well.  Because you do.  Your body seems like it was made for his; you fit together like two jagged puzzles pieces.  Horacio settles over you, lowers his body onto yours, and it’s like magic:  his cock bumps against your inner thigh, but he moves half an inch and he finds your wet heat, and then he’s pushing into you, feeling your feverish flesh part and mold to the shape of him, and then your legs are around his waist, holding him to you as he bottoms out inside you.

He stills for a long moment.  He’s unable to move.  It’s not because he’s afraid he’ll come too soon but because he’s afraid he might cry.  Horacio Carrillo is not a man who cries (maybe Davide is), but gazing down at your face, seeing the stunned love written in your expression, he nearly cries at how lucky he feels.  How blessed.  That shootout in the Medellín alley should have killed him, yet here he is.

Eventually, you give him the faintest of nods, and he starts to move.  He’s gentle at first.  He warms you up to the feel of him, and him to you.  You lay one hand on the side of his face, cupping his cheek as he thrusts into you, but the other hand settles over his heart.

He could love you like this forever.  He coaxes a second, then a third orgasm from you, and he watches your face during each one—the way your eyes go wide, then close tight, the way your mouth takes a hitching breath then goes slack as you breathe through it.  The look on your face as it ebbs away, your eyes shiny with tears, and happy little smile curving your lips.

“I want you to come,” you whisper to him.  You must feel the tension in him, and you bear down on his pistoning cock to urge him along.

“Where?” he pants out. 

“Inside me.  Please.  Come inside me.”

He knows you’re safe.  He’s lived with you for nine months now, and he’s run enough errands with you to know that you have that little plastic compact you pick up from the pharmacy once a month.  He sees you swallow the same pill each morning with your vitamin.  But still—he’s a man with his history, so he doesn’t register your contraceptive use in this moment.  The thought comes to him that if he comes inside you, he may make you pregnant, and Horacio is surprised by how quickly the thought urges his orgasm forward.

“You sure?”  At your words, he’s amped up his thrusting, driving forward in deep, strong strokes until he swears he can feel the crown of his cock nudging against the end of you, and the thought takes hold:  you round with his child, the two of you in this bedroom with a child in the guest room converted into a nursery.  At this moment, it’s the tamest of breeding kinks, but in the morning, he’ll realize it’s just more of this perfect life extrapolated.  You not as his pretend-wife but as his real wife.  A child as tangible proof that this isn’t just an incongruous moment in time.

“Yes.  Please.”  You lick your lips, blink up at him.  “I-I want to feel you coming inside me.”

It’s only fair that he obliges you.  You ask so nicely, so he does:  he thrusts three, four times more, then feels his pleasure snap and spark up his spine as he fills you.

Then he collapses on top of you, and a moment later, he feels your fingers combing through his hair, lightly running over his back.

“You can sleep here, if you want.”  You say it shyly, like you think this might just be a physical release for him, so he lifts his head to kiss you and reply that he wants that very much.

Horacio never sleeps in that cramped daybed again.

-----

The tenth month, January.

What does it mean to Horacio Carrillo for the lines between real and pretend to blur?

It means that through Christmas and into the new year, you live as husband and wife.  You live as newlyweds.  You make love in every room in the house, and you spent lazy days tangled up together.  It means you draw straws to see who has to drive into town for provisions, and it’s all a joke anyway because you always go together.  It means your world collapses down into the most basic of human needs:  feeding and fucking. 

It means that between love-making, the two of you share more about your real lives.  Horacio learns about your family life.  He learns that you’re CIA, and you’ve been stationed in Panama post-Noriega.  He learns that it was an explosion, a car bomb outside of your headquarters, that left you with that scar on your head.

You learn about the Search Bloc and Escobar.  You learn about his childhood as the son of a great military leader, and how that legacy shaped his own life and career.

But what does it mean when that line blurs?

It means that when Johnson returns to your lives, everything ends abruptly. 

“Everything is all clear,” he tells you when he turns up one Saturday in the middle of January.  He sips at the cup of coffee you made him, and if he notices the stunned silence of both of you, he doesn’t remark on it. 

“Escobar was gunned down early today.  It hasn’t hit the wire yet.”  Johnson glances at you.  “And the group that bombed your HQ has been cleared out too.  You’ve been safe for a few months, but we didn’t want to upset the situation here.”

“So now what?” you ask, and Horacio feels sick to his stomach as Johnson explains that your old lives are waiting for you and that it’s time to go.

-----

The end comes that day, but not the way Horacio thought it would.

You gesture to Johnson after he gives the rundown on the logistics, and the two of you go outside.  Horacio watches from the kitchen window as you cross your arms against the cold.  You talk, Johnson listens.  Then Johnson talks, you listen.  Back and forth, and by the end Johnson shakes his head, shakes your hand, and returns inside.

“Okay, so change of plans,” he says, and he rubs his hands together briskly to bring the warmth back to them.  “It’s just you and me now.  Go pack and say your goodbyes, and I’ll be back in an hour.”

He leaves, and Horacio watches him pull out of the driveway, and when he turns back to the interior of the house, he sees you standing there.  Crying openly, tears cutting tracks down your face.

“I can’t go back,” you explain, your voice thick with tears.  “I won’t.”

Then you break down into sobs, and it’s second nature to stride over to you, to pull you into his arms.  He tries to soothe you—rubs your back, holds you to him—as you choke out the words.  That you have had a crisis of conscience.  That you wonder if your work in the CIA did more harm than good.  That you think it’s the former, and how you want to spend the balance of your life not doing more harm than good.  That you want to live in a quiet town that is green in the summer and swaddled in white in the winter.  You want to teach, you want to come home to a house with….and you catch yourself at the last minute.  You don’t say it, but Horacio can guess it.

You want to come home to a house with him in it.  You want to come home to him.

“I love my life here,” you amend hastily, but you push away from him, aware he’s leaving and that your life won’t be exactly the same either way.  You mumble something about not wanting to say goodbye, about wishing him the best, and then you disappear down the hallway.  He hears the click of the door and your crying, and it doesn’t abate while he packs. 

When Johnson returns, Horacio taps on the bedroom door, but you don’t answer and he doesn’t push it.  He’s sleepwalking through the moment, numb, so he leaves.  He doesn’t say goodbye.  He only climbs into Johnson’s rental car, and each mile that Johnson puts between you and Horacio only makes the numbness grow.

“Women, huh?” Johnson says as they near the airport.  “That’s why I said they should never take field work.  They don’t have the stomach for it, in the end.”

Horacio grunts a non-reply, but he thinks Johnson is off the mark.  It’s not that you don’t have the stomach for it.  It’s that you don’t have the heart.

-----

February.

He goes from Vermont to Miami, this time around.

Horacio is given a hotel room, and he’s given the orders to just chill for a bit.  Johnson has extricated him from his fake life as Davide, but his old life as Colonel Horacio Carrillo isn’t quite ready for him yet.

There are mountains of paperwork to bring a man back from the dead.  There’s talk of giving him a cushy role in Madrid.  There’s talk of commendations, medals, a comfortable pension to retire on.  He’s done a lot for his country of Colombia, and Colombia wants to reward him.

He sleepwalks through this liminal space.  The not-Davide, not-Horacio time.  He wanders the streets around the hotel and picks at the food he orders in restaurants, and each time he hears a woman speak, he looks up expecting to see you. 

I don’t even know her real name, he thinks. 

Gwen, his one-time pretend-wife.  Gwen, who had a panic attack on her country’s birthday.  Gwen, who questioned the harm she may have caused to another country, another people.  Gwen, who only wants the chance to do a little good now, or at least to do no more bad.  It wasn’t Gwen at all, but he has no other name to use, so he runs through all the lovely little moments he had with Gwen.

Watching for you to return from your daily jogs.  Walking through the falling leaves of autumn with you.  Making you coffee, pressing the steaming mug into your hands each morning.  Handing out candy to the children at Halloween, tucking you under his cloak at the autumn chill.  Watching movies with you as the snow fell outside, then curling up in bed with you, slotting his body against yours, giving you pleasure and taking pleasure from you in equal measure.  Threading his fingers through yours as he arched over you, his eyes falling on the glinting light in the gold band in your ring finger, it’s twin on his own.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to finally make a choice?

Of course he’s made choices before.  Every day, he made a million choices, large and small.  But the big stuff, the giant stuff, the life-shaping stuff—did he have much choice?  His father’s military career pretty much guaranteed his own career in the Search Bloc.  His family’s status pretty much guaranteed he’d marry a Catholic girl from a family of similar standing.  And when Juliana chose to leave him, he really had no choice then, either.

Same with his pretend life of ten months.  He had no choice in being paired with you, no choice in ending up in New England, little choice in working as a man who tended trees.

He imagines you in your shared home, alone.  Johnson explained on the plane that you’d be able to buy the place, that WitSec only rents homes across the U.S.  He explained that this has happened more than once, and that it’s actually not too difficult to let a witness slide into their pretend-life permanently.

The choice comes down to the most mundane thought.  Horacio stands in his hotel room in Miami and wonders, who will make her coffee in the morning if I’m not there?

*****

Winter always loses its charm by the time February rolls around.  The fleecy white snow turns into grey slush, and everything is cold and soggy and depressing.

Davide leaving doesn’t help at all.

You knew it would end eventually.  You didn’t have much insight into his situation, but you knew that the cartel targeting you would be easy enough to neutralize.  They were only there because of the power vacuum left behind by Noriega, and they were poorly organized.

You just thought when it ended, you’d have more time.  Which is one of your fatal flaws, always thinking you’ll have more time.  Your father died from a heart attack when you were in high school, and your mother died from a car crash when you were in college.  You, more than anyone, should realize that time was never a guarantee, yet you always think you have a surfeit of it.

It's not your proudest moment, those final minutes with Davide.  Not falling apart in a wash of tears, and not fleeing to your room.  You should have committed to one extreme or the other.  You should have either calmly explained your decision and bade him farewell…or you should have given in to the emotion of the moment and spilled everything.

Why do you never learn your lesson?  You never had a chance to tell your parents that you loved them before they died.  Why didn’t you tell Davide you loved him before he left to return to whoever he was before?

You know you could find him.  You’d caught his lightly accented English and guessed at South America.  Colombia, if he was hiding from Escobar.  He told you about the Search Bloc.  You knew some people in that theater.  You could find him and tell him that you loved him, but would it do more harm than good?  Doesn’t he have the right to return to his previous life without any baggage from this one?

February, then:  grey, cold.  You go to work.  You teach your classes and hold office hours.  Political science can create real monsters, so you gently try to steer your students towards the path of diplomacy and not war.  Maybe this is how you make amends, if such a thing is even possible.

You go home each evening and pull together a sandwich for dinner.  Sometimes you get take-out, and you eat over the sink.  Sometimes you watch T.V. and sometimes you read, but you always sleep alone with Davide’s pillow clutched to your chest, the lingering scent of him fading away within days.

-----

Then March.  The snow starts to melt a bit, and under some of the trees in your backyard you start to see the little purple and white jewels of budding crocuses.

You resume your runs in the mornings.  The campus shakes off its doldrums too and the students seem livelier.

You made the right choice to stay.  You go to the bank with your real name and get a mortgage.  You buy the house under your real name, and you go to the university human resources and hand over the paperwork Johnston gave you, and it’s weird at first, explaining why you’re not really Gwen, but it shocks you how quickly people adapt to using your real name.

-----

March is still fresh when there’s a knock at your door one Saturday morning.

Your first guess is that it’s a delivery.  Johnson promised to ship all of your stuff from your apartment in Panama City.  Not that you have anything valuable, but it would be nice to have your record collection back.  You don’t want to have to rebuild that from scratch.

You’re already out of practice from your prior life.  You don’t bother to check who it is, don’t look out the window before you open the door, and so it’s a shock to see Davide standing there, his fist lifted like he’s about to knock again.

He drops his hand and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.  You are speechless too, but you don’t need words to because as he drops and unfurls his hand by his side, you see the way the gold ring on his finger catches the morning light. 

He’s still wearing his wedding ring, you think, and your body moves towards his, you leap into his arms and he’s there to catch you.  You breathe out his name, but he chuckles, pushes you gently away from him.

“No, cariño,” he replies, shakes his head.  “Not Davide.”

“Well, no.  I mean—”

“I’m Horacio,” he interrupts.  You reply with your own name, and he repeats it, almost to himself.

“Everything else was me,” he adds.  “Everything but the name.  What we had…”  He trails off, fixes you with that dark-eyed stare of his. 

“Everything else was me too.”  All of the bare facts of your fake life as Gwen hold little weight to that nebulous everything else:  every joke and shared laugh, your Fourth of July panic attack.  The feel of his hand on your waist when you went apple picking.  The way his hair curled after a shower, and how you loved to run your fingers through it when he fell asleep beside you.  All of it.  Every stupid little moment that most other people would have already forgotten. 

Horacio holds up his hand to show you the ring you’ve already noticed.  “I never took it off.  It didn’t even occur to me to.”

You hold up your own hand.  “Me neither.”

He looks away, squints his eyes as he looks off into the distance, but you swear you can see tears there.  He clears his throat, but his voice comes out rougher than usual.

“I’d like to see if I’m as good a man as Davide was,” he says.  “I’d like that chance, but only if you…”  Another cough as he clears he throat, then continues.  “Only if you’ll have me.”

You reach out and take his hand in yours.  You touch the warm metal on his finger, then the thought comes to you.  You slide the ring off, and you feel Horacio watching you.  On the plane, you each put your rings on yourselves, but that wasn’t how it was supposed to go, was it?

Now, nearly a year later, you take his wedding ring off.  For a long beat, you study it—it’s a simple thing, nothing elaborate.  WitSec wasn’t going to waste money on an expensive ring for a fake marriage, and it already has a shallow scratch in it, likely from his job at the nursery.

Then you lift your head and gaze at him, and without breaking eye contact, you slide the ring back on his finger.  The smile that spreads across his face when you do is enough of a promise as any vows recited in a church, and he repeats the motion with your own ring—takes it off, then slides it back on with intention.

And then, because there’s no priest there to give the order, Horacio bends down and kisses you for the first time as himself, and the first time as yourself, and perhaps you learn your lesson about time after all because the moment you part, you whisper, “I love you” to him.

And perhaps he needed to learn the same lesson because he sighs, pulls you closer to him, and whispers “I love you too.”

[bullet-prooflove]

Marry Me: Horacio Carrillo x Reader (NSFW)

Tagging: @kmc1989 @mysun-n-stars @@littleone65 @mydarkestsecretlol @evee87 @georgeparisole @legally-a-bastard @justreblogginfics @multilin21 @witches-unruly-heart @thequeenoftheisleofavalon @spooky-pomegranate

“Marry me.” Horacio whispers into the darkness.

You’re tangled up in his sheets, your limbs entwined with his as you listen to the sounds of Medellín drifting in through the open window. His lips brush over your hairline as he awaits your answer. You prop your head up on his chest, his fingertips pushing a strand of hair back behind your ear.

“You don’t want me as a wife.” You tell him as you shift so that you’re straddling his hips. His hands come to rest on your waist, his cock already hardening. “I don’t want that life Horacio, I won’t settle down and pop out babies, I won’t follow you around the world.”

“I’m not asking for babies and I’m asking not you to settle.” He whispers as his hand clasps the nape of your neck drawing your face close to his.

“That’s exactly what you’re asking.” You murmur as you sink down onto him and any response he has is stifled by the moan that leaves his mouth.

“Marry me.” He asks you again as he wraps a daisy around your ring finger. The two of you are sitting on a picnic blanket on the hill where he had made love to you for the first time.

“You know I can’t.” You had whispered against his lips and he had kissed you anyway, hoping to chase away all those doubts.

“Marry me.” The words ring in your head now as you press your fingertips to your lips before touching them to his shiny black coffin. You stand beside Pena and Murphy as it’s loaded onto a plane bound for Madrid, because Horacio, he’s going back to his widow, the woman he married instead of you.

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[goodnitedrdead]

god only knows

Horacio Carrillo x reader

Summary: who would've thought his ex-wife would ask God to send Horacio an angel? To fill the space she couldn't fill, and to do what Horacio wouldn't even do for himself.

Word Count: 1.1k

Warnings: Divorce. Horacio being head over heels for reader. Fluff. Love. All that fun stuff.

Author's Note: quick little something I wrote before bed because I rly miss my favorite soldier and because I needed a break from school. Might make sense, might not. I did state that one of my new years resolutions was to write at least one piece of writing for each month so I am doing this before the month ends. Mistakes and errors are all my own, I didn't have time to check it. Let me know what you think :3

Composed. Collected. Calm. That’s what made Horacio an excellent soldier and an even better Colonel. Ever since his training days at the academy, he was an exemplary student. A promising star who was meant to be a leader. 

And a leader he became.

He’d set the tempo, and everyone else would follow the rhythm of his steps. His family talked wonders of the honorable man he became, to anyone who would listen. It was no surprise that the women were fawning over him, and much to his family’s constant pestering of finding the perfect wife, he found Juliana. 

Together, they found a mutual and tranquil love. Maybe the kind that develops over time, but certainly not one to last forever. 

If Horacio were to match Juliana to an animal, he’d say she was a doe. Skittish, gentle, docile. She was a good wife to him and always fulfilled her duties. She’d have three meals a day ready for the family. She’d stay home and focus on the children. She’d be devoted to her husband forever. 

Just as tradition states.

Horacio was to fulfill his duties as a husband too. He’d go to work, dedicate most of his time to it not only because he wanted the best for his country, but he wanted a safe place for his children to grow. He’d come back home and sometimes have dinner with his family. He’d be devoted to his wife forever.

Just as tradition states.

Tradition didn’t talk about divorce. Tradition didn’t talk about intruders and third parties shaking the very core of an honorable man’s beliefs.

Tradition never changes.

Tradition was broken when Julianna eventually got tired of Horacio’s lifestyle. It was broken when fear crept into their home, and found a host to latch on to. Fear was deeply rooted in Julianna’s heart from one minute to the next; fearing that every day that passed would be their last with Escobar on the run.

She went against her duties and beliefs and did what she saw fit. Bags packed, a new home far from Medellin, and divorce papers were her top three priorities for a few weeks. Eventually, she did the first two, but she couldn’t bring herself to give the papers to Horacio herself. She prayed, day and night, for guidance on what she should do but at the end of the day, her and her children’s safety were her number one priority. Horacio would be able to fend for himself. 

That never stopped her from reciting a quick prayer for him every night before bed. As she found herself far away from Medellin and Horacio, she’d pray for the safety of her ex-husband. After all, she still had a fondness for him and he was the father of her children. She shared many years and a home with him, it was someone she couldn’t just forget about overnight. 

She prayed to God to send Archangel Michael and his soldiers to watch over and protect Horacio from harm. Whether it may be from self-harm or others, she prayed for his safety. Send him your fiercest angel, the most courageous and brave one to keep him from harm’s way.

Horacio never knew this, for if he had he would’ve thanked Juliana for her wishes and prayers. Because if it wouldn’t have been for her, he wouldn’t have found you. 

You came into his life like a goddamn lightning bolt. He’d feel you in the air, the startling feeling jolting him as soon as you’d walk into the room. Unapologetically yourself and nothing else. You’d make a friend of anyone that crossed your path, but he’d also seen the rage within you. If there was someone he’d fear, it would be you. 

You were quick on your feet, and somehow quicker with your gun. He wasn’t sure why the DEA didn’t make you a sniper, but you were awfully good at your job. And yet, you were unapologetically gentle. You wouldn’t think twice about taking a bullet for him, and it made him laugh at times. A woman of your stature stepping in front of him, to protect him from harm’s way. A woman who was breaking tradition day by day and night by night. You weren’t quite like anything he’s ever seen before, and he loved that about you.

He loved how, despite igniting fear into even his soldiers’ minds and hearts, you wouldn’t budge. He could yell and scream and bark orders at you and you’d remain with the most serene energy he’s ever seen. Your eyes fixed on him, the storm brewing within you. Horacio wasn’t scared of many things, but he was scared of you.

How is it that you, someone so tender yet menacing, could have that balance within? He was scared of the way you would keep your innocence despite the amount of deaths and blood you’ve seen this city shed at the hands of Pablo Escobar. The way a smile would come so easy to you. The way a laugh was so easy to coax out of you. He was absolutely enamored by your very being.

Something he had never truly quite felt.

The time came when he lost everything he ever thought he was. Horacio started to lose his composure. He’d start to notice the way his heart would threaten to jump out at the sight of you. The way his pulse would quicken by just being by your side. The way his mind would seem to forget about every word to ever exist when you were speaking to him.

He started to notice how clumsy he would unwillingly become. How he’d stumble over his words when you were in the room. How his hands would betray him and drop the items they were carrying, because it would somehow elicit a giggle out of you. How he’d blush whenever you focused on him, as if he was the only person in the world that mattered.

Tradition was never supposed to change, right?

Yet you continued to prove that you didn’t care what tradition said. You approached Horacio first. You asked him out first. You kissed him first. You weren’t worried about what anyone else would think. You didn’t even care about what Horacio would think. 

It’s not like he never wanted to start anything, he was just too busy being consumed by your presence. You had a light within you that was blinding, but all Horacio wanted to do was look at you even if that meant he’d lose his senses for the rest of his life. 

It was only when you became a couple that he realized you were the protector. No matter how much he tried, you were always one step ahead of him. Ready to attack at the slightest moment anyone got too close to him. Ready to give your life up for him. 

Ready to fill his life with the most pure and sincere love he’d ever felt. 

It was as if God himself picked you to be placed on his path. 

[goodnitedrdead]

Y’all know how it goes, honey bears. Leave a prompt and a character (in the tags (any Maurice Compte character or Pedro Pascal character are welcome)), and I’ll write a quick little drabble, one shot, or might even have a mini series inspired by a prompt.

I’m going on a spontaneous road trip from TX->CA and I have some time to kill. I promise I have a Carrillo story lined up but I’ve been so busy thirsting over Joel Miller. I’m trying to finish the game before the show comes out but damn, daddy pixels got game🙈

ANYWAYS MWAH TO YOU ALL<3

~ GETTING BACK TOGETHER ~ DIALOGUE PROMPTS

requested by: anonymous

request: dialogues about "getting back together after some time apart"

Feel free to use and reblog!

"I thought about you."

"I wasn't sure how you felt. God, I didn't know how I felt."

"What do you mean you want to try again?"

"I don't know why I trust you."

"Wait, you're really serious?"

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"You know, this can go horribly wrong."

"But I need you."

"The feelings for you just wouldn't leave me alone."

"This just feels right."

"No matter what, I'm always coming back to you."

"Can you just hold me for a moment?"

"Oh my God, we're really doing this!"

"But I thought we were done, you and I."

"It just isn't the same without you."

"We must be mad."

"And why should I want to go back?"

"What has changed for you?"

"It was a big mistake."

"I regret letting you go."

"I regret leaving you."

"I will wait for you."

"You have a chokehold on me."

"Who are we kidding?"

"I don't care about anything else."

"Stop doubting!"

"You know exactly what you're doing. And I hate that it's working."

"But how do I know that you really mean it?"

*sighs* "You're right."

"Don't ever go again."

[flightlessangelwings]

Ktober 2023 Day 31- Free choice

Fee use orgy with the Narcos boys

Horacio Carrillo x Javier Peña x Steve Murphy x fem!reader

Word count- 2.9k

Warnings- s.mut (18+ ONLY!), restraints, blindfold, free use, group sex, piv, anal, oral, pussy slapping, overstim, multiple orgasms, fingering, praise, no use of y/n (there's a lot in this one so please let me know if I forgot anything!)

About this reader- stated to be involved with both Carrillos but I left it vague so it's open to interpretation, also mentioned she used to be involved with Javi but again it's open to interpretation, hinted to be bisexual but can be left up to you how you read it, no physical descriptions other than body parts

Notes- Going out with a bang here literally lol! Oh I had so much fun with this one so I hope y'all have just as much fun reading it! And by far this is the longest fic of the month. Prompt list made by me! Enjoy!

@flightlessangelwings-updates is myupdate blog so please follow that too and turn on post notifs to stay up to date on my new fics!

~

“Peña. Murphy. My office,” Colonel Carrillo ordered the two men. It was late in the day, and only a skeleton crew still lingered behind. 

The two agents looked at each other with a serious expression before they silently stood and followed the Colonel. He seemed stiff, and his expression was unreadable. Neither Steve nor Javi knew what to make of him at that moment. 

Carrillo glanced around the empty office as half the lights shut off on their own, leaving the three men in shadows. He inhaled deeply, puffing out his chest as he did so.

Once Javier and Steve reached the doorway of Carrillo’s office, he paused and turned to them, “It has come to my attention that the two of you have been working too hard lately.”

“And?” Steve huffed as he crossed his arms. Javier mirrored the action.

Carrillo flashed a smirk before he opened his office door, “This way.”

Javier and Steve exchanged one last glance before they followed into the dark office. Carrillo was right behind them, and they noticed that he closed and locked the door before he flicked the lights on. And when the two men laid eyes on what surprise the colonel had in store for them, their mouths dropped open in shock.

“Hello boys,” you purred from where you were laid out on the desk.

“Wait a second,” Steve sounded flustered as he tripped over his words.

Javier just grinned, “I didn’t think you had it in you,” he turned to address you by name, “How did you get roped into this?”

“This is some shit Javi would think up. Not you,” Steve interjected.

Carrillo raised his hands in surrender as his eyes dropped to the floor, “This was her idea actually,” he sounded uncharacteristically sheepish at the confession.

The grin never left your face, entertained by the expression of shock and confusion on Steve and Javier’s faces. Finding you naked and tied to Carrillo’s desk was the last thing they expected. But, you had a feeling this was just the perfect remedy they needed.

“Horacio has been under a lot of pressure lately,” you explained, “Juliana and I can tell when he’s off. And… We came up with this arrangement,” you shimmied your shoulders as much as you could while bound by Carrillo’s tight binds, letting the rest explain itself.

Steve and Javier looked at Carrillo. Then, Steve turned to Javier, “How do you know her then?”

“We have a history,” Javier left it at that. His eyes never left the Colonel, though, surprised to find you of all people involved with him. 

“Wait, wait,” Steve protested, “I have a wife, you know.”

“You could have brought her too,” you smirked, giving Steve a wink when his eyes locked with yours.

That made Steve blush. Javier covered his face to hide the proud smirk at the fact that you accomplished that. But, his own gaze wandered back to your tied, naked figure spread out of Carrillo’s desk. He clenched his fist as he thought about everything he would easily do to you while you were like that. He couldn’t help the thoughts that popped into his head.

Feeling his gaze on you, you looked up to meet his eyes and your breath caught in your chest for a moment. It wasn’t until you saw Carrillo move from around him and saunter over to you that you remembered to breathe again.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Carrillo’s commanding voice broke the tension in the room, “She is here for us to use. Get whatever shit you’re holding onto out. And tomorrow, we start fresh.” 

Carrillo looked you over, admiring his handiwork. He reached out and gently caressed your body with the back of his hand, causing you to gasp. Your eyes fluttered shut as you savored the light, teasing touch of him, and goosebumps erupted on your skin wherever his hand grazed. Knowing exactly what spots drove you wild, Carrillo gave you light pinches and squeezes, murmuring your name with praise.

“You know your signal if you need to stop,” he spoke softly in your ear as he pulled something out of his pocket.

“I do,” you whispered back as you opened your eyes and were met with his handsome face just inches from yours.

“Good,” Carrillo leaned in and kissed you deeply as he yanked the bandana in his hand taut. Vaguely, you both heard groaning from the other end of the room, and you knew the others were enjoying the little display. He broke away from the kiss, placing one last light one between your eyes before he tied the bandana securely around them, blocking your vision and leaving you even more helpless.

You couldn’t stop the moan as a rush of excitement ran through your veins. It had been a secret fantasy for this to happen, and when the opportunity presented itself, you jumped on it. You arched your back as you felt a hand, Carrillo’s, ran across your chest and stomach, tracing a random pattern until it grabbed your breast firmly. You cried out as he pinched your nipple and rolled it between his calloused fingers.

Javier and Steve watched with sharp eyes as Carrillo caressed your body. They felt the heat all the way on the other side of the office, and they felt just as captivated as you were. Javier had no qualms about what Carrillo proposed from the start, and he unbuttoned his shirt and belt without another word. Even Steve, who was hesitant at first, felt drawn to you, and he too loosened his shirt.

“She’s beautiful isn’t she?” Carrillo smirked with pride as he squeezed your breasts again, making you moan. 

The way Carrillo had you tied left you on full display for the men in the room. Your legs were tied to each corner of the desk, spreading them wide and leaving your dripping pussy fully exposed. Your arms were tied together above your head at the other end of the desk, pushing your breasts up. The binds were so tight that you could barely even wriggle from side to side, but you assured Carrillo before he went to get the other two that you were comfortable like this. 

You were going to be here for a while after all. 

“She is,” Javier murmured as his eyes landed on your cunt. His cock involuntarily twitched in his pants, but all he could think about was devouring your pussy.

Faintly, Steve hummed in agreement as he unzipped his pants.

Javier dropped down to his knees, careful not to touch you so that it would come as a surprise when he finally did. It took a great deal of restraint, but once he was settled between your bound parted legs, he reeled forward and covered your pussy with his mouth, immediately sucking at you hard. You let out a loud scream and arched your back at the sensation.

“That’s it,” Carrillo cooed as he watched Javier lick at your folds. 

Without your sight, every move was a surprise, and it only turned you on more. Feeling the tongue against your clit drove you wild, and your moans quickly grew louder and louder. Suddenly, you felt another pair of hands on your breasts, and you cried out when your mind caught up to you and you realized all three men were touching you now. 

Not knowing who was where added to the thrill for you. Yet, you had a feeling that it was Javier who was currently between your legs, licking and sucking at you with abandon. The two pairs of hands that caressed your breasts kneaded you harder, and one hand trailed up your body to push two fingers into your mouth. You wrapped your lips around the digits, running your tongue up and down and sucking at the tip without hesitation. The groan the hand’s owner let out went right to your core.

Javier groaned into you, feeling the pulse of need. He grabbed your thighs and picked up his pace with his tongue, rolling it up and down your folds before pushing it into your entrance a few times. His cock ached with need as he tasted you, but he wanted to make you fall apart first. And soon, once his tongue hit your clit again, Javier got what he wanted.

You came without warning, your legs shaking on either side of Javier’s face as you screamed loudly around the finger in your mouth. In the darkness of your blindfold, you saw stars as Javier didn’t relent, working you through your orgasm until a second one hit before you even came down from the first.

Javier broke away with a loud breath, taking in fresh air for the first time. He sat back and admired his handiwork as your pussy glistened before him. He murmured your name as his hand caressed your cunt, running his fingers up and down a few times before he pushed two inside of you.

“That’s it,” he purred as he pumped his fingers in and out of you, making you moan again.

But, just as he was about to pick up his pace, Carrillo grabbed his wrist and forced him out of you, causing both you and Javier to let out sounds of protest. Carrillo looked at Javier with a sharp expression as he shook his head. The message was loud and clear without the words needed: don’t hog her.

Carrillo chose not to speak on purpose, he wanted to keep you guessing who was where, and he wanted every action to surprise you. Without your sight or ability to move, he accomplished just that. 

You whimpered when you felt one pair of hands break off of your breast, but immediately screamed when you felt a hand slap your pussy. You jolted in your restraints as the hand slapped your pussy again and you cried out in pleasure.

Steve watched as Carrillo slapped your pussy again, and he couldn’t ignore his down needs. So, he pulled his fingers out of your mouth and pushed his pants down to his ankles, freeing his cock. He stroked it a few times before he gently slapped your cheek with it in a silent order for you to open your mouth. You complied, parting your lips for whoever was next to you, and Steve couldn’t help but praise you.

“Good girl,” he groaned as he slipped his cock past your lips and into your mouth. He let out a low growl as your warmth engulfed him, and you played with his cock with your tongue. Fuck, you were good at this, he thought. 

While your mouth was busy with Steve, Carrillo and Javier turned their attention to between your legs. Both men ran their fingers along your already spent cunt, causing you to gasp around Steve’s cock. But, their next action took you even more off guard.

You felt two fingers enter your pussy, easily since you were already so turned on and wet from cumming twice. You moaned around Steve’s cock as you felt the thick fingers fill you up, and your mouth dropped open when they crooked and hit that sweet spot inside you. As those fingers continued to massage the inside of you, you felt another finger poke at your other hole, making you gasp.

Slowly, carefully, the finger entered you, and you cried out in a mix of pain and pleasure. You felt a hand on your breast, squeezing and caressing your sensitive skin while the other fingers pumping in and out of your pussy. Tears filled your eyes as you felt a second finger enter your backside, stretching you out even more. 

All three men watched with awe as you took two fingers in each hole while Steve’s cock stayed in your mouth. You looked so beautiful like this, completely helpless for whatever the men wanted, and it only made them want you more. Steve couldn’t stop himself, and he grabbed your head and thrust his cock deeper down your throat as his emotions overwhelmed him.

Javier and Carrillo watched with burning gazes as Steve fucked your face, and in that moment neither of them could wait any longer. They glanced at each other and nodded, knowing exactly what the other was thinking. Slowly, they each pulled their fingers out of you, and they knew you let out a whine around Steve’s cock.

The two men quickly stripped themselves, holding their cocks in their hands and reading themselves for you. It took a little maneuvering, but Jaiver and Carrillo found a way to enter you at the same time. Both of them lifted your hips slightly to expose your body more to them and in doing so gave them the perfect angle to fuck you.

One entered you right after the other, filling you to the brim. You gasped around Steve’s cock as you felt both your holes being filled simultaneously. Tears soaked the bandana as the other two cocks filled you, and you had no idea who took you where. Steve froze for a moment, lost in awe as he watched the other two fill you, and he pulled out of you for a moment to let the screams flow freely.

You gasped for a moment, and it took a second for you to realize that your mouth was free. But when the two cocks pushed deeper inside of you, you let out a loud scream that echoed in Carrillo’s office. Pain mixed with pleasure as you had never felt more filed, and you knew you were safe when you felt hands caressed and roamed all over your body, and you heard soft words of encouragement from all three of them, though you weren't sure which direction each voice came from.

“You’re doing so well, querida.”

“That’s it, just a little bit more.”

“Such a good girl. So fuckin’ pretty.”

Just when you thought you couldn’t feel any more full, Steve thrust his cock back into your mouth, pushing it deeper down your throat and almost making you gag. You felt like a ragdoll as the three of them all started to rock their cocks in and out of you, all at different rhythms and speeds. Never in your life had you felt so helpless, and never if your life had you been more turned on.

Moans and groans filled the room as Steve, Javier and Carrillo all fucked you at the same time. It almost turned into a competition on who could cum first, and who could fill you up the most. They all let out growls as they eyed each other before turning their attention back to you. Losing themselves in the moment, all three men fucked you harder and faster, all chasing their own climaxes.

And the way all three growled went a pulse of need through your entire body, making you clench around all of them.

Steve came first, letting out a loud groan that gave him away to you as he filled your mouth. “Fuck!” he grunted as he watched as you swallowed as much as you could. His hips stuttered as he grabbed your head and yanked you against his hips. You made an obscene noise around his cock as you gasped, but you couldn’t do anything to stop him. Not that you wanted to.

When he was spent, Steve pulled out of you, leaving a trail of spit and seed as the only thing to still connect you both. He watched as your mouth dropped open, taking in a deep breath of air, and his cum splattered all across your lips. You looked a mess, but fuck you looked gorgeous. Steve gently cradled your head, “Good job, sweetheart,” he whispered.

Carrillo watched with a grin, but when you clenched around him, he knew he wasn’t going to last long. He picked up his pace and he growled a mix of curses and praises. His hips slapped against your body as he lost control and after just a few more thrusts, he came hard deep inside you. You gasped as you felt him fill you up, and you moaned as a shiver ran up your spine.

Javier rocked into you even harder, determined to make you cum along with him. He felt your inner muscles clench around him, gripping his cock hard. He reached for your clit, rubbing it with just the right amount of pressure when he felt like he wasn’t going to last any longer.

It didn’t take long for Javier to get what he wanted, and you screamed as your third orgasm crashed into you. Javier kept up his pace as his own followed right behind, his groans drowned out by your cries of pleasure. He kept his pace up and long as he could until he buried his cock fully inside you with one final grunt.

All three men stayed still for a moment, catching their breaths. Carrillo and Javier stayed buried inside you, neither wanting to leave you just yet. But, Carrillo could tell you were getting sore at this angle, and he tapped Javier, indicating what you needed. Slowly, reluctantly, they both pulled out of you, causing you to gasp and whimper.

“It’s alright, querida,” Carrillo’s soothing voice comforted you.

“Are you alright?” Javier asked.

“Never fucking better,” you replied with a soft smirk once you caught your breath. You let out another sharp exhale when you felt hands all over your body once more.

“Ok, I’ll admit,” Steve interjected, “That was fucking hot… And just what I needed.”

Javier nodded in agreement as he eyes trailed up and down your figure, “You were amazing, cariño,” he purred. 

“Good,” Carrillo’s tone dropped, “Because we aren’t finished here yet…” 

[ithebookhoarder]

Javier Peña req (and Steve as bestie). Y/n is their partner and is feeling extremely burnt out; running on empty, coffee, cigarettes and not much else. She’s barely sleeping or eating and constantly has a tight chest and racing heart. They both know something is up with her but she just shrugs it off until one day, Javi is out on a raid and she reaches her breaking point. Steve manages to get her home but can’t reach Javi until he gets back to the embassy etc. Also, please could you throw in a little Carrillo cause😍

Burned Out (Javier Peña x F!Reader)

A/N: I’ve missed Narcos and my DEA boys, so thank you for this prompt, whoever sent this in. I really appreciate it. I’ve been in a bit of a slump recently with writing for this blog, so it’s great to have something to focus on and pour myself in to - hope you enjoy it!

Warnings: Swearing, smoking, alcohol, reference to depressive / self destructive behaviour, description of a panic attack, mild smut, canon-typical violence, death, reference to drugs / overdosing. 

Masterlist

You knew exactly when it started. When you began to feel yourself beginning to sink downwards into the quicksand that was your life. 

It was a bad day… well, a worse day, if you were being honest, given that life in general in Bogota was hard and full of bad days that left you feeling numb inside. Whereas you were normally able to banish the darkness by spending time with the friends you had collected since your arrival to the city, not even Javi’s gentle kisses or Steve’s dirty jokes or Connie’s homemade deserts could do the trick. 

The day had been bad for many reasons.

One, you’d lost a contact with direct links to Escobar, that you’d spent weeks working on. 

Two, you had lost them in a drive-by shooting that had killed not only them but countless civilians too. 

Three, some of your asshole colleagues decided to spill coffee all over your files meaning you were forced to work late to re-type them up for a briefing the following morning. Even though you had got it done, you knew you had likely missed some details, the ink far too smudge to even begin to try and understand what had previously been written. 

However, that day had only been the start of it. The start of the downwards spiral you found yourself tumbling into. 

Sure, the others had noticed there was a change about you. Yet, it wasn’t as if they knew what was causing it or how to fix it. 

Javi especially knew what you were like - you were like him after all. Spilling your guts wasn’t your natural reaction to handling things. You kept your emotions bottled up inside of you, cramming more and more in, forcing that lid to remain firmly screwed in place even as the pressure began to build. 

And if the lid did threaten to pop off? Well then, you lost yourself in him. In the love that existed between you, and the intimate knowledge you shared of one another. After all, Javi had said it himself, “who needed therapy when you had sex and good whiskey?” 

A night of passionate fucking was all it took to take the edge off… to let a little pressure escape, delaying your inevitable eruption… But that was just it; you would erupt. It was inevitable. There was no way on earth you could sustain the relentless routine of long hours spent at work, with coffee doing its best to act as a replacement for your bed. 

Hell, you could feel the toll it was taking on you both mentally and physically, from the way your hands shook slightly, to the way your chest felt too tight to breathe sometimes. Then there was the fact your clothes were starting to get baggy, whereas they’d once clung to your frame like they’d been tailored for you. 

“Here,” Javi had smiled one afternoon. You could smell the sandwich in his hand before he even set it down on the desk in front of you, accompanied by a packet of chips and a can of your favourite soda. “Grabbed that for you on our way back. Figured you’d forget lunch - again.” 

A weak smile tugged at the corner of your lips at the kind gesture. “Thanks, Javi.” 

“Anytime, hermosa.” He said it so calmly and easily that you felt your heart skip a beat as you realised how lucky you were to have someone who cared about you so deeply. It was why you made sure to tear a corner off of the sandwich and pop it in your mouth. 

The relieved nod Javi granted you told you it was the reaction he’d been waiting for, as he took a step back to let you finish eating and working in peace. 

You knew he’d be back to check you’d finished it in a matter of minutes. So, you were quick to chuck the rest of his lunch in the waste paper bin behind you, burying it further under a pile of discarded documents you’d already finished looking through. 

It was fine. You’d eat later. Maybe you’d even try and cook dinner for you and Javi… an apology for being so distant lately… 

Somehow, despite lacking the gift of prophecy, you knew deep down that that was unlikely to happen. Just as you knew it was unlikely Javi would even make it home tonight. For the last week straight, both he and Steve had been called out on some last minute, late night errands by Carillo - not that you minded all that much. 

Not having Javi’s arms to fall into meant you felt less guilty about working late yourself. About only making it back to your empty apartment long enough for a quick shower and a power nap each night. 

It was ironic to think of Carillo, though, given that your brief conversations with the Colonel in question had been the closest you’d come to finally releasing some of the hurt and the pain inside of you. 

You didn't know what it was about him, but somehow, the Colonel had an ability to draw you out. To make you open up and share things you would never otherwise dream of. 

Maybe it was his candour? You’d noticed that about him since you'd started working together; he had a blunt demeanour, saying what he thought regardless of the affect it could have on another person. 

Now, it wasn't done with malice, per say, but rather as the result of a man who had the weight of an entire army on his shoulders and an impossible task. He just didn't have the time to bullshit anyone - especially when you both lived in a city full of people all too willing to lie and cheat. 

It also came from a weird sense of respect, of seeing people as equals, deserving of the truth just as he expected the same in return. No matter how painful it may be.

Needless to say, it was one of the reasons you'd grown to respect the man - and dare you even say, like. 

Still, when he decided to loiter on the other side of your desk, late one night, you felt yourself stiffen, as if suddenly all too aware of every little gesture your body made and what it gave away.

The Colonel missed nothing.  

“You look like shit.”

Wow. Don’t beat around the bush. 

“Jeez, your wife married a charmer, Colonel,” you scoffed, dragging on your cigarette, sparing him a fleeting glance. “Speaking of, doesn’t she want you back home? Or do you prefer my company that much that you’d rather stand at my desk at 11 o’clock at night?” 

“She’s out of the city, visiting her parents,” he rebuffed, clearly not taking the bait as he dropped into the empty seat opposite. In fact, he decided to reach across and steal one of the cigarettes from the packet on your desk, lighting it for himself in a gesture that made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere for now.  

“Good for her.”

“Yes, it is. I think time away from this place is good for everyone.” 

You could feel the accusation lacing his words, as well as the heat from his continuous stare. “Then why didn’t you go with her? Not enough vacation days?” 

He scoffed, a bitter smirk twisting his lips upwards. “You’re funny; I can see why Peña likes you so much. Like calls to like, as they say, even if you try and hide it behind that smile of yours.” 

You bit back a laugh. “What can I say? I lucked out in that department and got my Mom’s smile. My sister was not so fortunate. She always had my dad’s features - meaning she looked more often than not like she was sucking on a lemon.” 

“This is the sister that died from an overdose, correct?”

“Yes.” 

“The anniversary is this week, is it not?” 

He asked it so calmly and casually that anyone would have thought he’d asked you what the weather was like outside, or what your favourite record to listen to was. 

At least his concern now made sense. It was the kind of detail he would remember, and you were honestly more surprised by the fact it had taken until now for him to bring it up. 

He’d probably been itching to ask you about it all day, aware of the date even if your two partners were not. Well, they might have been, but neither had said anything which was your preference if you were being honest. Hence your rapidly cooling demeanour towards your colleague. 

“I’m fine, if that’s what you're trying to fish about for, Colonel,” you sighed, staring back down at your desk again in an attempt to dismiss him. “You don't have to worry about me. I’m good. Thanks. So can I get back to work in peace? Or did you have some other question for me?” 

Carillo sighed, simply choosing to smoke his cigarette, letting the tension linger along with the steadily growing haze around you both. 

He didn't need to say the words aloud; his actions did all the talking for him as he reached over and helped himself to a file off of you desk. 

He didn't buy this ‘calm, cool, and collected’ act you were pedalling. Not for a second - something his stare alone gave away, even if he refused to say it. Instead, he chose to read, and work, and smoke along side you so that you would not be alone. 

He had his eyes on you... watching and waiting for the moment that your carefully constructed walls came crashing down... the only question was would they crush you in the process?

It was about a month later that the inevitable happened; that you finally hit rock bottom. 

It had just been a causal remark that did it, of all things. A casual remark that sent you tipping over the edge. 

You had just returned from lunch and hadn’t even sat back down at your desk yet when you noticed that someone was missing.  

“Yo, Steve?” you queried, quickly glancing up at the empty seat next to you. “Where did Javi go?” 

Now, you couldn't be a hundred percent certain what Steve said next but you knew he’d said something about Carillo, a lead, and a raid ... 

“What?”

“I said, Javier went with him,” Steve repeated, staring at you with growing concern. You realised he must have already repeated himself. “What? Why? What is it?” 

“Javi went too? He… he’s there? On that raid?” 

“Yes, y/n, that’s what I just said - hey! Where you going?” 

You didn’t even realise your feet had started moving, not until you heard Steve’s confusion as he yelled after you. 

But you didn't stop.

You couldn’t stop, not until you were outside - not until you were far enough from that place that you could actually stop and fucking breathe. 

When did it become so hard to breathe? 

When had the room become so small? 

Why did your mind suddenly feel the need to go to the darkest place possible? 

It was just a raid... one of hundreds Javi had gone on since arriving here in the country, just as you had also gone on your fair share. So why was your head suddenly picturing him... lying there... injured, or worse... dead. 

The number of bodies you’d stared at, lying in the streets in a macabre tableau that had become all too familiar by now - all part of this fucking job. A job you signed up for, hoping to vanquish the bastards who had taken so much from you and those you loved… yet, every day, it seemed you had failed as more and more innocent people suffered… and to think, that Javi - the man you loved more than anything - who you had neglected terribly to the point you couldn't actually remember the last time you’d woken up next to each other - could be amongst them… 

It brought you to your knees. 

“Whoah, y/n. Easy. What’s wrong?” 

Steve’s voice sounded distant, as if you have been submerged beneath water. Yet, you could tell he was beside you, dropping down onto the kerb before hauling you close. The warmth of his touch was enough to tether you to him, to reality, as everything around you seemed to spin in dizzying circles.

You could feel it as his hands rose, cupping your cheeks, turning your head and trying to get you to look at him. 

When you finally did, he could see immediately that your eyes were glassy, like you weren’t really seeing or hearing him. 

He knew that look. 

“Y/N,” Steve murmured in a soothing voice. “Y/N, look at me. Look at me.” 

He paused, waiting until your eyes trained themselves on his face, some of the cloudiness starting to dissipate. 

“Good, that’s good. Now breathe. Just breathe,” he instructed, taking a few deep breaths himself to show you how.

It took you a moment or two, but you eventually became fully aware of your surroundings and what your friend was telling you to do. 

Following his lead, you took a few shuddering breaths, then a few more. You kept breathing until you could feel the racing of your heart slow and the fear that had felt crippling just moments before begin to ease.

You were exhausted.

Wiping at your face, you tried to banish the tears that had left a salty trail burning down your cheek.

Steve doesn't say anything for a long minute, instead choosing to pull you into his side and light up a cigarette, which he was quick to offer you.

“T... thank you.”

You sat like that for a while... just watching people and cars passing by, smoking like two people on a perfectly ordinary break.

No one bothered to stop and ask you two questions. Hell, no one even shot a glance in your direction, everyone too busy with their own business to stop and give a shit about yours.

So you sat. 

And smoked. 

And said nothing... not until the cigarette was nothing more than a stub.

Steve was quick to take it from you, before it could burn your fingers. Tossing it aside, it had clearly served its purpose. 

He stood and offered you a hand. 

His face left no room for debate as he stated calmly, “Come on, I’m taking you home. Now.” 

“Come on. A couple more steps, Y/N,” Steve urged, guiding you up the stairs to your apartment. 

His hand was warm, firm even, as it pressed against your lower back. 

He’d been like this since the moment you’d left the embassy, steering you and hovering over you like he expected you to simply topple over at the slightest breeze. 

It was touching, yet irritating all at once - a sentiment you were too busy trying to put one foot in front of the other to even attempt to unpack. You were also just too goddamn tired. 

“Here we are.” Steve’s words startled you. “Home sweet home.” 

You didn’t remember giving him the keys, but you must have as he opened the door a second later and herded you inside. 

There was emotion in your throat - threatening to spill from you. You were holding on by a thread and he knew it. Just as Carillo knew it, and possibly Connie too - 

Wait, Connie?

You blinked as you realised that at some point the woman had also entered your home, most likely having been summoned by Steve on the drive home. 

You wanted to feel guilty at the thought of her being dragged into your mess, but you were honestly too tired to feel anything other than grateful as she hurried over to you, offering you a cup of what you assumed was tea, as well as two pills. 

To help take the edge off, she explained, urging you to take them. Doctor’s orders. 

It was impossible to miss the way that they were both staring at each other - sharing anxious glances as you swallowed the tablets and dutifully sipped the tea. 

They were worried about you. Hell, you were worried about you, and Javi, and Steve, and everyone else you loved and cared about - that was what had got you in this mess in the first place. 

Damn it.

You heard them say as much as you marched yourself to your bedroom, claiming you were going to try and get some rest whilst you waited for news. 

If they bought it, you couldn’t tell, but neither protested as you left them. 

They simply let you go, allowing you the space and privacy to crawl into your bedroom, bury yourself in the unmade sheets, and lie down for a while. The medication had clearly started to work as you felt heavy... tired... 

Lying there, you could hear their voices... faint murmurs drifting down the hall. 

You caught only snippets as they tried and failed to keep their voices down, just as your parents had once done when you were just a kid. Still, despite their efforts, you caught enough to know that there was still no word from Javi, or about the raid he went on. 

“-called Javi- no reply.”

“Carillo - try again -”

“-worried about her - stressed.” 

Eventually, the words began to fade away, replaced instead by your body's sudden need to sleep. It was pointless to fight the drugs now in your system, or the comfort of being wrapped in the bed sheets that still smelled of Javi... not even you were strong enough to fight it as you felt yourself drifting off into sweet oblivion.

"Sweetheart?"

You must have still been dreaming - that was the thought that crossed your mind as you swore you heard Javi's voice.

"Javi?" you moaned, fighting against the grogginess that greeted you as you tried to open your eyes.

Despite the fact it was clearly now dark out, you could easily make out the face in front of you, illuminated from behind by the bedside lamp. The sight was almost angelic - as if some divine being had deigned to answer your prayers and return the love of your life back in to your arms.

“It's ok, I'm here, sweetheart,” Javi purred again, brushing your hair back behind your ear and pulling you close. “I’m right here, ok? In one piece - promise. The raid went off without a hitch. Even snagged ourselves a new asset for you to take a crack at.”

Your eyes shimmered with tears as you quickly burrowed into his chest. You didn't really hear what he was saying, too busy focusing on the fact that he was here to say it at all - here - alive - in your arms. 

The reality hit you as you began to let it pour out of you: how relieved you were, how much you loved him. You also grumbled something about fucking telling you when he next decided to run off on a raid without so much as 'goodbye' - else you’d shoot him yourself. 

“I’m sorry, carino. I am.”

And you believed him. 

"I love you, Javi. So much."

"I love you too," he purred, "and I'm so sorry, I knew you were struggling, but when Steve told me-"

He didn't get to finish whatever the hell he'd been about to say. You didn't let him.

Instead, your lips surged hungrily towards his and as only Javi could, he kissed you back, soft and slow... as if desperate to reassure you through actions alone.

You felt him chuckle into your mouth as you grew impatient, grinding your hips against him in a silent plea for him to fill you. To join you. To bury himself, and the day you'd both had, in a moment of bliss.  

It was a special kind of neediness, reserved for just him, and one that was only sated once he had fully joined with you, as one being. Safe. Whole.

Yes, in an ideal world he would have waited until after talking to you to lose himself in such a way. After all, Steve and Connie had filled him in on the troubling turn of events that his absence today had triggered - and he'd be lying if he said the idea didn't scare him shitless, that you had broken down so completely...

He could only thank God that Steve had been there for you - especially when he couldn't be himself.

But he was here now... and you had time to start trying to make sense of this mess. Together. Carillo had assured him of that, informing him in no uncertain terms that you both had the next few days off from work. He didn't want to see either one of you back in the office until you'd begun to sort through the mountain of shit you were buried under.

So, yes. If you wanted to lose yourself for tonight, to use him to forget the world outside for a perfect moment, then he was only too happy to oblige.

He’d wait until the morning to have a proper conversation. 

He’d go down and whip you up some breakfast before trying to get you to open up to him about everything that had happened today… about the worries and concerns you’d been keeping locked away inside of you. 

Then, after you’d fallen in to pieces in his arms, he could try and start to put you back together again. As a team.

[lavendertales]

indecently dishonest—Javier Peña x plus!size f!reader

requested by @ilovepuppies99:

summary: time after time, you keep hearing and seeing Javier with all these women & it breaks your heart knowing he'd never look at you twice. But after a near-fatal situation that rips you away from him, Javier finally mans up.

word count: 1.2k

warnings: mentions of injuries & guns; allusions to smut though nothing explicit. This kind of got a bit sappy, forgive me. Nonetheless,

AGELESS/EMPTY BLOGS & MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED!

Looking at him hurts. Every fugitive glance, every greeting early in the morning whispered in a husky tone, it all hurts. Especially when you know what you know.

Living in the same apartment building with Javier had seemed like a good idea at the time. With you working at the embassy—mostly handling documents and files for agents such as Javier or Steve Murphy—you thought it might be good to have a ride along in the mornings and just generally be close to someone you knew.

Big mistake.

You failed to realize just how much of a ladies’ man Javier was. Of course you noticed he was very attractive and you figured women would line up waiting to be asked out by him. But you quickly found out that Javier was not interested in dating.

No, his needs were simply carnal. A basic transaction of bodily fluids after which both parties were left sated and, ideally, the female party left the apartment with no expectations other than a potential second experience of the sort.

Whenever Javier had his female companions over, you hated living right next door. You hated the thin walls and how you could hear all the pleasure the women were receiving. Their moans, their shaky breaths as they came, the shouting of Javier’s name… you hated all of it. You hated the way your imagination drifted away and led you to a foreign, strange territory where you wondered what position they were in, whether he went down on them or not, what his favorite way of coming was… God, how you hated this.

Especially because you knew Javier wouldn’t look at you twice.

You were no fool; you saw the kind of women who left his apartment either in the middle of the night or right after sex. You saw them being tall and slender, appealing cleavage and long legs, presumably perky ass… and you were quite far from that. You were always on the curvier side, and while you had no problem with it and learned to accept your body the way it was, you weren’t as delusional as to think Javier would be interested in you. You clearly weren’t his type, and that was made obvious not just by the parade of women you have been seeing for the past months.

Javier was just a colleague. He sometimes engaged in small talk with you, but never anything more than that. Just the usual morning ride-along to work, some thank you’s whenever you helped him out with something and “see you tomorrow” when you arrived back home. You often thought he was purposely trying to stay away from you for whatever reason, but that thought caused you even more pain.

And then you got shot.

You were out of work for a couple of weeks, during which Steve and Connie regularly visited you. Even Colonel Carrillo brought you flowers and a get well card from him and his wife Juliana.

But no sign of Javier.

From what Steve told you, he did ask around about you and seemed concerned once he heard what happened, but there was not even a knock on your door from his side. You almost began to think that he was glad you got shot. Which was horrendous to think about, but your mind ran on its own delusional fuel at this point.

You suppose it’s because a part of you was so smitten by Javier that you always hoped he’d somehow feel the same.

But if your injury was proof of anything, was that the truth was far from that. Javier didn’t care. And maybe you shouldn’t, either.

You were all showered up and ready to curl up in bed with a book when you heard the knock on the door. You answered grudgingly, shook to remark the silhouette before you.

“Javier,” you cooed, your throat almost closing up. “What are you doing here?”

“I should’ve come earlier. I’m sorry.”

“For what? Not giving a shit about me when I got hurt? It’s fine.”

He could sense the slight resentment in your voice and he took it gladly. He knew he’d been a piece of shit about the whole situation, but oh, if only you’d knew—

“Murphy said you got shot and… I’ve never been more fucking scared in my life,” Javier muttered.

To which you remained shocked at the revelation.

“I didn’t come over because I couldn’t—seeing you hurt, I couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t need some pity excuse from you, Javier.”

“This is not that.”

“It’s getting late. Aren’t you having one of your girls over? If you are, at least let me know beforehand so I can get some earplugs.”

Javier’s eyes widened, his face dropping in shame. “You can hear that?”

“I can hear everything, Javier. And it’s—it fucking hurts.”

The words shouldn’t have come out at all, much less now, but since they were out in the open, you had no choice but to face the consequences of your words.

“It hurts because… I know I’m just a regular colleague to you, the invisible chick who hands you folders and you barely notice.”

“You’re not invisible.”

“Tell that to your face because the way you don’t look at me is—“

“If I’d look at you for too long, I’d… fall for you even more. That’s fucking terrifying for me.”

You opened your mouth as if to add something, but instead, nothing came out. You only stared at Javier, too shocked to form a coherent response, as his face was riddled with guilt and some form of embarrassment.

“I don’t understand,” you eventually murmured, completely disarmed. “I’m nothing like those women you’ve been with.”

“Think you’ve answered your own question.”

“But—you barely look at me, or even acknowledge my existence.”

Javier huffed, inching slightly closer to you at the exact moment your heart began to thrum fast in your ears.

“I thought the more I’d keep you at bay, the easier it’d be. But then you got shot and I—I felt like I lost my fucking mind. I stood in front of your door for minutes on end, wanting to knock, but I couldn’t. I was a fucking coward.”

“So… what you’re saying is… you—you what, have feelings for me?”

The moment you asked that, you regretted it. You knew Javier wasn’t a talkative person, and certainly not about feelings, so you didn’t expect an answer, really.

And you certainly did not expect to watch him inch even closer to you, cup your cheeks ever so boldly and graze them tenderly as he stared into your eyes.

“Is this okay? Can I—?”

You were too speechless to verbally confirm, so all you could do was nod in a near frantic manner and press your lips on his. They were so soft and tender against yours, you instantly melted. You melted under his touch and in his arms, and it finally felt like things were falling into place. There were plenty of things to talk about and to clarify, but in this moment, all else seemed bleak and irrelevant.

Javier was in love with you. It was all you could ever need as hope and strength to carry on during those times.

[justreblogginfics]

I literally reread the warnings, three times!, and I still wasn’t prepared for this 😭😭😭

Horacio Carrillo is one my favorite characters that you write for and this is just another amazing one to add to the others! I truly cannot get over how angst somehow fits this man, I don’t want it for it, but why does it just go with him? And you write it so good too though!

This part: “Did it mean anything?” The edge in his tone was renewed, a freshly sharpened blade. “Your vows?”

Oh boy how that made me feel for the reader, and then the more I read this I thought about why Horacio could’ve said that, but then thinking about what they mean to him, how he interpreted their vows, his vows, for himself, how confused he must’ve felt too along with the anger (if that makes sense 😅).

I’m going to go try and tape my little broken heart up now 😭 Amazing writing friend!

For Better or Worse

Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader

Warnings: 18+, language, angst, angsty angst

30 Fic Challenge with prompts from This List: pyrrhic- won at too great a cost

Word Count: 2.5k

A/N: it's been forever and a day since i've written for my fave colombian colonel but the second i saw this prompt i knew it was made for him and his heartbreak 😌

Your relief when it was all done and over with was twenty-fold, a million different reasons to breathe easier now and they were all intertwined with one another. You were relieved in te grandiose, altruistic sense: Escobar’s death made the streets of Colombia safer for everyone. There was one less sword hanging over people’s heads, the fear of going to the shops or hailing a taxi would finally start to subside. Children could feel safe going to and from school, playing with their friends along the way. Medellín could try to take a moment to rest and recover.

Then there were the selfish, much more personal reasons that you were relieved. You could finally sleep through the night again, maybe your hands would finally stop trembling every time you heard his name. Your wedding ring wouldn’t have to keep serving as a token of prayer for the safety of your husband. You wouldn’t have to worry about where he was, if he was alive or injured, because now he would get to be home. You’d go to sleep with him there, and when you woke up he’d still be there.

Horacio had gone to war with Escobar and managed to be the one who lived to tell the tale. And you were relieved by that in a way that you couldn’t manage to put into words.

You cried when the news broke. Years of sobs that had been locked inside your chest finally getting able to break free, tears streaming down your cheeks until they fell and splattered against the floorboards. All that time spent drowning in fear that you couldn’t express, your claws digging so deeply into the few strands of hope you still had that it’d be scarred for the rest of time. But it was worth it. Every agonizing moment had been worth it because of the news reel constantly looping on your television.

You waited for the phone to start ringing. There was still work to be done, and you knew that, but you were waiting for that to be taken care of, and for Horacio to call. With every task you completed you made sure that you were still listening intently for the phone. Even on the opposite side of the house, you were waiting to hear it, ready to drop everything you were doing to answer it.

Minutes easily turned into an hour, one hour gave way to three, and the phone was still silently hanging on the wall. The sun continued its arc over the top of your house, the sky slowly changing color the closer and closer it got to the horizon line. The relief that you had been feeling earlier in the day began to fade, the knot in your stomach beginning to retie itself.

The sky was dissolving into a light gray when you heard the sound of a key in the lock of the front door. You were sitting at the dining room table, head snapping in the direction of the sound. Without realizing it, you held your breath as you waited for the door to open and for Horacio to walk through.

It was only the sound of his boots on the floor that let you know it was him. He’d never really been the type to call out for you when he got home. He wasn’t going to change now—ever the man of routine. There were a few moments of quiet, and the next set of footsteps you heard were much quieter than the ones previously, his boots surely left right beside the door now.

When he materialized in the dining room doorway, you were up on your feet before you could stop yourself. You didn’t feel your legs carrying you over to him, but before you knew it your arms were thrown around him, face buried in the crook of his neck. Your fingers threaded themselves into the hair on the back of his head, hair that was growing unruly because getting it cut hadn’t been at the top of the priority list in a long time.

His arms snaked around your waist, and as he pulled you in tighter, you felt he tension begin to bleed out of his shoulders. The breath that had been held captive in your chest made its way out with a shudder as the two of you collapsed into each other.

Time slipped away, and you weren’t sure how long the two of you stood like that in the middle of the house. When you finally pulled back from him, you didn’t go very far. Hands resting on his shoulders, fingers curled over the curve of them, you tried to dig up the right words to say.

You brought one hand to the side of his face, thumb tracing back and forth over the stubble that was beginning to grow in there. When you finally got the words out, they came in a choked whisper, like the hours spent waiting in silence had caused your vocal cords to rust. “You did it. It’s over.”

He placed his hand on top of yours, his fingers filling in the gaps between yours. He clasped your hand in his as he pulled it away from his cheek. You were looking back and forth between his eyes and your intertwined hands, tears of relief prickling the edges of your eyes as he pressed his lips to your knuckles.

You waited with bated breath to hear what he was going to say next. Waited for some confirmation of what you’d said, some expression of his own relief. His eyes shut for a moment, lips still pressed against your hand. You could see it, feel it, the way that he pulled in each deep, slow breath.

Finally, he opened his eyes. He let your hands drop down, fingers still laced together. He nodded, not frowning but certainly not smiling either as he said, “For now.”

It felt like your entire body was trying to fold into itself at that. You hated the way you could feel your bottom lip starting to tremble but you couldn’t stop it from happening. Hand on his chest, you could feel his heartbeat underneath your palm. Steady as it ever was.

“Horacio…” you started and stopped your sentence all in the same breath, unsure of what you really wanted to say to him next.

Pulling you in, he kissed you lightly on the lips before moving and placing another kiss to your temple, lips beside your ear as he gave a soft but earnest, “I love you.”

Your eyes shut, tears clinging to your eyelashes for all that they were worth. “I love you too.”

With more tenderness than the world at large thought he was capable of, he caught and brushed the tears off your face with the pad of his thumb. Whisked them away before they had the opportunity to leave a stain.

“You’re home now?” you asked, hesitation in your voice saying that you already knew the answer.

Confusion flickered across his face. “Of course I am. I’ve always been—”

“No you haven’t,” you stopped him short, a tremor still permeating your voice. “You know you haven’t.”

He frowned, and you could practically see the gears turning in his mind as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to say next. There was no rulebook for this, not that he had ever been a fan of the concept anyway. It was all uncharted territory—always had been. The two of you had been managing so far, or some approximation of that, but for you it was doable because there had always been the end-goal, the finish line. It felt as though it was always getting farther and farther away. But then today happened. And the news played. You’d done it—you’d made it to the end of the agony.

Or at least that’s what you’d thought until those first two words fell from his lips. The relief of victory was being ripped away from you when you’d barely been able to brush it with the tips of your fingers.

He felt you thinking about pulling away. Giving your hand a gentle squeeze, he tried to coax you into staying close. “I know that it hasn’t been easy.”

“It was supposed to be over, Horacio,” your voice cracked and there was nothing you could do to stop it. “He’s dead—that’s what this has all been about, hasn’t it? It’s over.” Your hands, even the one enveloped by his, trembled. “It’s supposed to be over now.” You sniffled to try to keep your tears and the rest of your emotions at bay. “You won.”

“This time,” he conceded with a nod. “But there’s always another—”

“Does it have to be you?”

“What?”

“Can’t it be someone else?”

“I’m—”

“Just this once?” you plead. “You did all of this for them. Why can’t it be someone else’s turn now?”

He shook his head, and you waited for the argument, but it never came. You couldn’t tell by the look on his face whether he was silent because he wasn’t ready to say the answer that he had in mind, or if he was silent because the answer hadn’t come to him yet. It’d be nice if he was just trying to be merciful.

 Another few seconds of silence passed before he pulled you in again. You fought him for a moment before allowing your cheek to rest against his shoulder. When you felt his hands splaying across your back you tried to find the comfort in it, but all you could think about was the fact that you didn’t know when you’d get to have him like this again. He was supposed to be home. That was supposed to be the reward for the both of you, the sliver of benefit for all that this war had cost the two of you.

“I can’t,” you stammered out, “I can’t do this again.”

You felt the way he turned, lips brushing against the side of your head with each word. “What do you mean?”

Not pulling yourself off of him, you shook your head as best you could. “We almost didn’t make it through this one, Horacio. I…I know that we won’t be able to do it again.”

“We’re alright,” he reassured, and he even sounded like he believed it.

Now you pulled away. Not far, just enough so that you could look him in the eye when you spoke to him. “We won’t be if you do this again.” Your voice was level, more certain than it’d been yet.

His eyes narrowed for a moment. For a split second you weren’t his wife, you were just another person that he had to size up to see if he could put stock into the threat. It stung but you couldn’t back down now that you’d said it. All those years of silence and now this.

“What are you saying?” he asked, like he didn’t already know.

You took a steadying breath, making sure to choose your words carefully. If he was going to be The Colonel right now instead of your husband, you were going to act accordingly. “I’m saying that these last few years turned you, turned us into something else entirely. And I took it because I…I know what they asked of you. But they aren’t…they aren’t asking anymore. I almost lost you over this one. I can’t keep us tethered together for another.”

“So you’ll leave?”

“You’ll leave. Again.”

His hands were resting on the outsides of your arms, brows pinned together in confusion. “Again?”

“You haven’t been here in—”

“Yes I—”

“No, you haven’t.” You stood firm, knowing that you were right and he couldn’t take that away from you. “Not really. The shell of you might have come through that door a couple nights a week, but you,” you emphasized your statement by placing your palm flat against his chest, “haven’t made it home in a long time.”

He didn’t say it, wouldn’t cop to it so easily, but you could tell by the look in his eyes that your words had struck a chord with him. His thumb ran back and forth across your arm. “This wasn’t ever going to be easy.”

You shook your head. “But it wasn’t ever supposed to be this hard. Not…not forever, anyway.”

“You say that like this has all cost you something,” bitterness began to creep into his voice. He was teetering on the edge of getting cruel and you could feel him fighting it off.

“It has. And,” your fingers curled, gripping the fabric of his fatigues, “and if I lose you then it’s going to cost me everything.” You could feel the sting of tears in your eyes again. “I feel like it already has.”

He shook his head. “You can’t ask me to do this.”

You scoffed, shaking your head. “But you can keep asking me?”

“Did it mean anything?” The edge in his tone was renewed, a freshly sharpened blade. “Your vows?”

You stepped back, your hand holding the space between the two of you. “You don’t get to throw—”

“What happened to better or worse?”

You threw your arms out, gesturing to the entirety of the world around you. “I lived it!” you snapped. “What do you think this has all been, Horacio?” You angrily wiped at the tears that were spilling down your cheeks. “This was the ‘worse’ of it all. I knew that. I knew that and I stayed because I promised you that I would. But…but if you’re all out of better for me, if all you have left for me is the worst of it, then I don’t…”

The longer that the silence stretched between the two of you, the more foolish you felt for having been relieved in the first place at all. The universe should’ve taught you to know better by now. Or, at the very least, your husband should’ve. The look he was giving you was an unwavering one, one that made you feel like you should be saying something more but it was all in his court now. If he wanted something, had something to say, it was all on him now. You said your piece after keeping it locked inside your chest for so long. Now it was his turn.

His jaw twitched and you felt it, that feeling of your breath stopping halfway down your throat. You waited for the next devastating blow, or even a surprise of him coming back with something that you wanted to hear, something that resembled compromise.

When he opened his mouth to speak, you swore that you could actually feel the way that your heart stopped as you waited for him to speak. Then the furrow in his brow disappeared, his jaw snapped shut, and you felt like collapsing to the floor all over again for a completely different reason. You ran your thumb along the wedding band wrapped around your finger, and Horacio watched silently as you did. A stalemate in the wake of victory wasn’t what either of you had been expecting, but for now it was what you had.

(divider by @silkholland 💞)

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[spooky-pomegranate]

Pablo's Ghost (Part 4)

Colonel Carrillo x F Reader (18+) 🔥 Word Count: 3.5k

Summary: After ten months apart, Carrillo shows you how badly he’s missed you. (Part 1) (Part 2)(Part 3)

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There’s something to be said about expectations. While it’s true they often unceremoniously faded away when life can no longer compete with the vivid nature of dreams, expectations are born from observations. They’re created after listening, watching, and experiencing the world and people around us. They’re a dream of what could be based on what has been.

And your expectations of Carrillo were no different. They were created from your memories, from the years you had spent watching him, listening to him, and yearning for him. You didn’t mean to craft them, but they existed within you just the same.

During your time in Colombia, you’d seen Carrillo use his strength to be rough. His powerful arms pushed, grappled, and tossed his enemies around like they were nothing more than rag-dolls. His large hands clawed, punched, and dug aggressively into the flesh of those who dared to cross him. And his deft fingers jabbed, scratched, and squeezed around the throats of sicarios who tried in their wicked ways to tear his country apart.

But as you lay there beneath him, feeling his weight press down upon you every expectation you had of Carrillo was challenged. Where you had expected him to be rough he was soft. Where you had expected him to be fast he was slow and where you had expected him to be mean he was gentle.

The same arms that threw men to the ground carefully held you against him. The same hands that left bruising marks on his enemies, traced delicate patterns across your ribs. And the same fingers that squeezed the triggers of violent weapons, caressed you with a touch so loving it took your breath away.

When you had crawled onto your bed and spread your legs open for him you had meant it as a challenge. You’d hope he’d snap like a wild animal deprived of food and devour you whole. But he hadn’t. He’d told you he wanted to give you more than that. He told you that you deserved more than that. And it was then you knew that Carrillo wasn’t going to fuck you. He was going to break every expectation you had of him and he was going to make love to you. He was going to leave you satiated in ways you had never imagined.

It had started when propped up on your elbows and spread wide open, you had begged him.

“Horacio, I have never loved anyone the way that I love you. I want you. All of you. So please Carrillo… please, I can’t wait any longer. I want to lose myself in you.”

And then he smiled and answered you with a honeyed question.

“Then how could I ever deny you, mi amor?”

It was then he had moved slowly toward the foot of your bed, reaching for the hem of his polo and carefully lifting it over his head. His broad chest was exposed to you for the very first time and you couldn’t help but trail your eyes over his muscles, his beautiful skin, his patch of tufted dark hair that trailed deliciously from his lower stomach into his trousers.

And then you saw them—the healed marks, the remnants of Pablo’s fury, the bullet wounds. There were half a dozen of them, each small, round, and pinkish. The scars were a reminder of how hard Carrillo must have fought to get back here… to come home to you. They made your heartache and you whispered his name.

“Carrillo.”

At the sound of your voice, he moved.

Underneath you, the bed dipped as he sunk one knee onto the mattress and then the other. His hands tenderly reached for your ankles, his calloused palms touching you with a reverence reserved for the most delicate and holy of creatures. Then his lips followed, giving each joint a fleeting and dulcet kiss.

You wanted to tell him how beautiful he looked revering you, but your words caught in your throat. You were entirely too enraptured with the view before you. He was a vision you never expected. He was something so much sweeter.

Carrillo continued his adoration, touching and kissing every inch of you: your legs, your knees, your thighs, your stomach, your ribs. Nothing was left untouched, nothing was left unworshipped. And every time he reached a new place you managed to find a way to breathlessly thank him for his affection. Your hands stroked his arms, you brushed back his soft hair, and you trailed lingering lines across the taut muscles of his abdomen. All the while you offered him bawdy praises that’d dripped from your mouth like sugary syrup.

“You feel so good.” “You look incredible.” “You’re so strong.” You had said.

And that’s how you found yourself here with Carrillo’s body hovering over you and all of your expectations of him completely and utterly shattered. But it was perfect and you couldn’t get enough.

He brought his lips up to the shell of your ear.

“Let me see all of you,” he whispered and you willingly obeyed.

Wordlessly, with one arm you reached behind your back and unclasped your bra. Your breasts spilled out before him and Carrillo groaned. The vibrations of his moan reached straight to your core, and like adding fuel to a raging bonfire, your desire for him burned hotter.

Carrillo’s lips left the shell of your ear and he kissed down the side of your jaw, to your neck, and then lower until his mouth found your breasts. His tongue swirled slowly around your nipple before he sucked it gently into his mouth.

Still propped up on your elbows you couldn’t help but arch into his touch. You whined as Carrillo slid his hands behind your back to pull you closer. He continued to lick, suck, and kiss you until his mouth moved from to your other breast and again you cried out as he lavished it with the same rapt attention. It was all so much and at the same time not nearly enough.

“Please…” you whimpered.

You reached down and thread your hand through Carrillo’s hair, tugging at him until, with a loud and wet pop, he finally let go of your peaked nipple.

“Si, mi amor?” He asked innocently.

Carrillo's gaze met yours and you nearly melted in a puddle. The combination of love and lust he held behind his chestnut eyes was too perfect. But still, you wanted to see something more. You wanted to see him come undone.

“I want to taste you, Horacio,” you said before pushing forward and kissing him, your tongue swirling inside his mouth.

Carrillo pulled back, before resting his forehead against yours. He took a deep breath.

“Do you mean-” he started.

“Yes.” You didn’t let him finish.

Carrillo buried his head into the crook of your neck.

“Aye dios, dame fuerzas,” he mumbled into your skin before quickly pinning you to his chest and rolling you both over. You yelped in surprise at the abrupt way Carrillo moved you both with such ease. It made him laugh and it made you smile.

Your legs were straddling his still clothed thighs and your hands rested on his bare chest. You could feel his heart beat rapidly underneath your sprawling palms as you pushed yourself upright. His chest rose and fell more rapidly than it had before. You could tell that he liked this, you on top of him, his head resting against your pillow that smelled like your perfume. You wonder if he wanted this from the moment he entered your apartment. You wonder if he’d fantasized about this while you were apart.

Carrillo slid his hands down your back to your hips and his grip tightened ever so slightly as you leaned forward to give him another gentle kiss. At the feeling of his fingers digging into your skin, you unconsciously rocked your hips forward. And then you felt it… Carrillo’s desire for you, rock hard and still trapped underneath the fabric of his khakis.

“Mhmmm,” he groaned.

The bonfire inside you became an inferno. You rocked your hips again. Carrillo’s groan became a growl.

“Cariño,” he said looking up at you, his eyes darker than you’d ever seen them, “are you trying to tease me?”

Your eyes closed and your head fell back as you slide your hands down his chest and over his scars until they brushed the waistband of his pants.

“No. I just…” Your voice faded into silence as your fingers played with the button on his khakis.

“Are you nervous, mi vida?” Carrillo asked his own voice husky and low. You sighed before answering.

“No. I just want you so badly. I’ve wanted this for so long. I… I can’t believe you’re real. I can’t believe you came back to me.”

You leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss over a scar just below his right shoulder. Your lips lingered around the mark before moving to another scar on his chest. His skin, tan and smooth, tasted salty against your lips. Carrillo closed his eyes and stayed silent, letting your lips trace over every healed wound. When you’d kissed the last scar by his waist he reached for your cheek, gently cupping your face in his hands.

“You asked me to fight and I promised you that I would cariño.” You looked up at him, your eyes wide and glossy. “You have to know by now that I would do anything for you. Anything you ask of me, I’ll give it to you.”

“Horacio.” You whispered his name with the same holy reverence he had touched you with and it made his heart skip. He wondered what he’d done to deserve something as sweet and beautiful as you.

You slide further down Carrillo’s legs and as you did your eyes immediately fell to the place where you had ground against him. A wet spot remained, darkening the light fabric. With anyone else you might have been embarrassed but with Carrillo it only made you more aroused.

You made short work of the button and zipper on his khakis before Carrillo lifted his hips and you pushed his pants and boxers off his frame. And then the world stopped. Your breath caught in your throat. Now sprung forth from his underwear, Carrillo again subverted your expectations. He was slightly bigger and so much thicker than you ever could have imagined. The tip of his cock was reddening and a single bead of pre-cum leaked down the side.

You reached out tentatively and took hold of him in your hand. As you ran your thumb over his tip you tried to imagine him inside of you. You immediately felt a thudding pulse in between your thighs.

“God, you’re so big,” you whined as you began to stroke him slowly up and down, your fingers brushing over his bulging veins. Carrillo groaned and his hips shifted forward seeking more of your touch.

“I know cariño. I know. You don’t have to- hughhhh,” Carrillo’s voice cut out as your lips wrapped around his cock and you pushed him deep into your mouth. His head fell back against your pillow as you bobbed up and down, taking him as far as you could without choking. You hummed around him, enjoying his slightly salty and musky taste.

“You look so pretty like this,” Horacio hissed, after propping himself up on his elbows so he could watch you better. And god was he ever enraptured with the view. Your lips were stretching, your cheeks hollowing, your saliva dripping everywhere… god you were making him feel so good.

You pushed your head way down to his base and Carrillo dug his hands into your hair… fuckkk maybe you were making him feel too good.

“Querida…” he said, practically begging. “Easy, mi amor. I don’t want to be done with you so soon.”

Your heart fluttered as you pulled away and looked up. He was panting, his body strung tight with tension. He reached for your hands and as you interlocked your fingers with his he pulled you back towards his lips.

There was more fire behind his kiss this time. It still wasn’t bruising when he slot his mouth over yours and chased after your tongue but it was more intense. It was more possessive. It was more demanding. And it was unquestionably more exhilarating too. Knowing you had this kind of power over the strongest man in Columbia made the inferno growing in your chest spread.

You felt like you were burning. He felt like he was burning. You didn’t know how much longer you both could tease each other like this. You were going to explode. But Carrillo must have sensed your patient was running thin because he moved quickly, rolling you over again so your back was on the mattress and he was pressed on top of you.

You smiled so big that he couldn’t help but smile back at you.

“I like when you do that,” you said, squeezing his hands that were still interlocked with yours, “I like it when you toss around me like I'm nothing.”

Carrillo's eyes turned dark. He realized maybe he didn’t need to hold himself back as much with you. Maybe you wanted things to be a bit rougher, a little bit more aggressive. He could do that. He could be that man for you. He let go of your hands.

And then Carrillo reached in between your thighs and in one quick and powerful move ripped away your underwear, pulling it off your body and tossing it to the floor. You yelped again and his smile inadvertently turned wicked. He liked coaxing these noises out of you. These little whimpers and whines… they were better than anything he had dreamt about over the past ten months.

He slid his hand down your ribs, over your stomach, and then to your thighs. But before he could sink his fingers into your wet cunt, you pulled at his wrist, yanking his hand away.

“I don’t want to wait anymore. Please…” You begged as you pushed your hips toward him, rubbing up against his hard cock.

“Mierda,” he hissed before grabbing your hands again and pinning them above your head on the mattress. Carrillo kept you there with one hand while his other hand grabbed his cock. He lined himself up with you.

“Are you sure, mi vida? Tell me you’re ready.” Carrillo asked, his voice practically a growl as he slowly stroked himself.

“I’m ready,” your voice was ragged and desperate, “I love you.”

He pushed into you and you whined again, loudly. You really hoped Steve and Javier weren’t home right now, because you knew this was just going to be just the beginning of the noises Carrillo was going to draw from you tonight. You squeezed your eyes shut and dug your fingers into his hands, searching for something to ground you to bring you back to earth. The pain and pleasure coursing through your body made your head spin. It was perfect. He was perfect.

Carrillo didn’t know if he could move. He didn’t know if he could breathe. You felt so good wrapped around him that his mind was going totally blank. For a long moment, you both froze. You stayed motionless and joined together with his throbbing cock halfway inside you.

But eventually, Carrillo moved again, finding the strength to set a steady and slow pace. It was intoxicating and you knew he felt it too. Carrillo struggled to stay silent above you. He groaned and mumbled a slew of incoherent Spanish phrases in your ear. There was something about how pretty you looked, how tight you felt, how sweet you sounded.

And with every thrust, every roll of his hips, every single growl he gave you, it pushed you closer to the edge. You felt a knot tighten in your stomach.

“Horacio I’m going to…”

“Come for me, mi amor.”

Then with a particularly vicious snap of his hips, you felt the knot uncoil as the world went white and fuzzy around you. You called his name again and again as your back arched off the mattress and he finally let go of your hands. You wrapped your arms around his neck and his hands found purchase on your back.

“Me estás volviendo loco,” he said as he pulled you upright.

You both were kneeling together on the mattress as he continued to thrust up into you. The new angle sent you hurtling toward another orgasm. He was deeper now, inside you completely to the hilt.

“You’re so good for me, cariño… so good,” he breathed into your ear as one of his hands slid up your back and into your hair. You rested your forehead into the crook of his neck, trying desperately to hold on. But when he spoke next, you couldn’t control yourself. His words were too sweet.

“Te amo más que a nada. Mi corazón es tuyo… tuyo.”

That was it. You let go. You dropped off of a cliff and slipped out of your body as you fell. Carrillo felt your orgasm take claim of you. The pulsing waves of your orgasm were sluggish and each undulation took its time washing over you in long drawn-out swells.

Your body went weak. Your cunt spasmed around his cock, squeezing him, pulling him further inside you. Carrillo couldn’t control himself. He groaned low and deep and with one final thrust, he joined you. The knot you had felt in your stomach had tightened around his cock and you pulled every drop of his warm cum deep inside you. With heavy limbs, you clung to one another.

Carrillo gently laid you both down on the bed. You curled into his massive frame, resting your chin on his shoulder and your leg draped over his hip. He drew small and delicate circles over the skin of your ribs and your side. You both stared into each other’s eyes as you tried to catch your breath. Carrillo smiled at you enjoying the feeling of finally having you, holding you, being with you… but eventually, his smile faded and so did yours.

“I’m sorry cariño…” he whispered breaking the tender silence. His voice was so soft that you weren’t sure you heard him correctly.

“What?” You whispered back in surprise at the sudden shift in his mood. “Why are you sorry?”

“I should have come back to you sooner.” He said buring his head against your neck. Your heart ached. You thread your hand into his hair before kissing the side of his face.

“Why… why didn’t you? Why didn’t you come back sooner?”

Carrillo sighed before pulling back from you to look into your eyes.

“I wanted to be as strong as I was before.” He paused. You could see from the way his jaw was clenching and unclenching that he was trying to consider his next words carefully.

“I wish I could just run away from here with you and leave this all behind but…” his voice faded into the night. His heartbeat felt uneasy in his chest.

How could he be so stupid? Now that he had you he didn’t want to leave you, but surely you would leave him. Surely you wouldn’t want to go through this hell with him again. And he shouldn't ask you to. You’d been through enough pain already. You should just leave him tonight and never look back. That would be best for you.

“You can’t,” you said dropping your hand from his hair.

“No. I can’t. I’m sorry cariño. I know you deserve more, but I can’t let him win. Someone has to stop him.”

You sat up and Carrillo’s heart stopped. Was this it? Was this the moment you told him you couldn’t watch him fight Pablo again? Was this the last happy moment he would have in this god-forsaken country? Was this the last happy moment of his life?

Fuck. He should have said this to you right away. He should have told you the moment he walked in your door that he was still going to go after Pablo despite it all. Despite the odds stacked against him. Despite the fact that he’d nearly been put in the ground twice already. Despite the fact that he loved you.

Carrillo couldn’t look at you. Tears filled his eyes. The room felt cold as silence took hold.

But then your soft hand reached out and cupped his cheek.

“I know who you are Horacio.” He met your eyes and you smiled. “I knew if you came back to me you would still be the man you always were. A fighter. A leader. A warrior…” you paused, breathing deeply.

“You’ve always been what Colombia needs Horacio. It’s always been you.”

Carrillo felt like he’d surfaced from the depths of icy cold water. Oxygen flooded back into his lungs, burning him with a bitter sting. He sat up alongside you.

“I won’t let you do this alone.” You continued, your voice as sweet as honey. “I’ll stand next to you through it all. I love you. Te amo.”

Carrillo pushed forward and kissed you again. You were the most perfect thing he’d ever known. You were his beautiful and perfect cariño. His voice waivered as he whispered against your lips.

“Te amo. I love you.”

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[mariamariquinha]

Versos de Placer (Colonel Carrillo x f!reader) - Thirteen (Part 1)

(I don’t know if I’ve already used this gif... sorry :/)

Summary: Decisions were made.

Word count: 7.6k

Warnings: Bad words, violence, ~ daddy issues ~, mentions of brothels and prostitution, slight mentions of political conditions from the period, trauma, nightmares and people drinking alcohol 🤷‍♀️

Author’s Note: And yeah, I needed to split in two parts. There’s no huge cliffhanger here because I know how slow I can be while writing, so let’s just say that this is a... prelude.

I mentioned that before, but now it’s more than official. This story have 2/3 chapters left, which makes me sad-happy-satisfied-unsure. Let’s see where it goes from then on, huh? Love ya! 

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!

Join my taglist! Don’t forget to reblog, comment and like! As always, I would love to know what you’re all thinking! ❤

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There was this boy with green eyes and good grades at school. He used to like History and Sociology, but everyone knew he had a tendency for something more than teaching. Without a mother, though, no one would be surprised if he turned into one of them.

Since his childhood, ‘them’ became a fear. ‘Them’ became easy money but almost a vow to a cause - the parents used to keep the kids at home after 10pm, turn off the TV when the news were too desperate or visceral. He might’ve even met Virginia Vallejo during his college years, after all the communist mess, and recognized her when Pablo turned into a thing. She was there. Always had been. Sometimes he wondered if her name would be marked on books like those he liked to read in school for choosing a side.

If he was an adult during the communism time, he would be one of them. His abuela talked about this a lot, but never in a depreciative tone. She knew better than to be on the side of the ones who took a lot from her. Because of this, everytime someone asked about Escobar or the gringos around the country, he never had an answer - because Pablo wasn’t a communist, but the other side wasn’t good either.

His abuela passed the year before; cancer. Being a doctor, he felt bad for not being able to help, for not doing enough to give her more time. There was nothing left.

That night, he did an exception to watch the TV. It wasn’t Virginia Vallejo nor any other journalist there. It was him. And he was angry because it was him. Him, with all the pomp and style and the face of someone he could recognize in the mirror, using such big words like ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ as if he knew a thing about honorable feelings or true promises.

At the end of three days in retreat, with resentment bubbling up inside him, he was in the supermarket when he saw her for the first time. Any detail that might have crossed his imagination didn't do this woman justice; he only knew her by a small fraction of guesswork and, in the end, by genetic bliss, she looked nothing like him. But he knew it was her. He fucking knew.

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The decision came in a thoughtful, perhaps even calculated way. On the way, he had attended Comuna 1 and heard someone say that some time before, some American agents had passed by there and one of them almost died. A woman, strong enough to take the brunt, someone who became an exception - with all the lukewarm hope that existed during the days after that meeting in the supermarket, he felt afraid that she would become a target and lose everything again.

There, as he walked out with the lab coat and a suitcase of equipment, he looked up to see the armed kids on the rooftops, wielding weapons longer than their arms and staring blankly. He remembered his mother, when he found her after a long time in a corner of a border bordeaux to the point of overdose, and how he had left her so far away from himself as a way of forgetting that disturbing image.

He saw Escobar's painting on the wall. He saw the children again.

The letter would reach her in less than a day.

--------------------------

“You really are different from your father.”

The comment made you roll your eyes, but for some reason you didn’t engage in her provocation. Rejecting the cup of coffee was more of a personal preference than any judgemental decision - you already had the privilege of being able to talk with Noonan without so much bureaucracy.

Still, she didn’t take offense to the declination. She smiled, sat comfortably on her seat.

“I like to keep it all professional.”

“Doesn't the environment seem professional?”

“The office? Oh no, the office is really fine,” You nod your head, making a show of crossing your legs and faking interest. “I don’t want to elaborate and take more of your time but… The decoration is… neat.”

“Thank you.”

When she openly invited you to come by, you knew why. Perhaps dinner happened. A comment. She was informed about Juan Marcos, in that sarcastic voice your father had. Perhaps Noonan needed to be sure. You weren’t like him, of course, and certain things needed to be contained even if you knew the metrics and weren't childish enough to mourn so much about the systematics. What you could tell, for sure, was that your father always sold you low, so she decided to make her own assumptions.

“... Thinking about the politics of it all-”

“I’m not into it.”

“Diplomacy?”

“Yeah, those… big words you use sometimes. I’m an agent. It’s basically my job to be at least 60% dumb for that stuff.”

Noonan smiled at your sarcastic tone, watching the way you just kept that neutral expression with a voice full of venom. It was risky, but she wouldn’t go too far.

“I just need to be sure we’re on the same page. I’ve seen your last report and it honestly worried me.”

“It wasn’t my intention.”

Perhaps the words ‘sabotage’ and ‘murder’ were the ones way too big for someone like Noonan or the fucking government of United States of America, but you still couldn’t get the need of such inconvenience because of one report from one agent. Everyone knew the operation and you had the obvious perception that the USA agenda didn’t include explaining methods of persuasion during these types of… conflicts.

“What we are doing here, this… job by all means, it’s something delicate. We have a lot in the game, suddenly because there’s this inconvenience and we can’t get rid of it.”

You kept quiet. The lack of reaction made her blink a few times in expectation, then sigh in defeat as if you needed to say something.

“I think you should understand that this isn’t just a question of who should do what. We need to win. And to win, we need a firm team, one that can deal with everything with resilience.”

That was the first time you felt threatened by any of them. Your differences with Carrillo, the target you all had behind your backs, the situation with Juan Marcos… It all could take your job, but it didn’t. That moment, when Noonan got back to her professional stance (the one she liked to use with Peña more often than not), you felt the shiver of having someone stabbing you on the back.

And to know that this person was your father just made you more aware of your tense nerves.

So you did something worse.

You played the game.

With a subtle movement, you caught the cup of coffee between your fingers and took a small sip.

--------------------------

You felt suffocated. Disgusted. You got this bothering itch from the insides, like a weed that wouldn’t leave your skin. Between leaving the building and going back to Medellín, you tried to pull the nicotine patch out of your arm at least five or six times. It didn’t work, though. And you knew you would feel bad if you tried to pull the thing off again, so you decided to stay as still as possible.

Which wasn’t much.

And as the days passed, as the raids went on and things kept happening at full speed, you started to feel harsh, difficult to deal with. You tried to bury that conversation as much as you could, but with every body found, every lead to take one more person down, you couldn’t react anymore.

When your mother called, you told her - she deserved to know because she would understand you. Then she sighed, probably scratched the back of her neck, and said something that made you warm and cold all together.

“Good thing you’re not like him or me. You’re a third thing.” She commented. “God knows that if I was in your place, I would have made his life hell and I wouldn’t regret it.”

Your sleep schedule became worse. Almost every night, you saw Juan Marcos dead, then him coming at you ready to take your life, then that Montoya boy and the expression of fear on his face. Sometimes, it was Pablo. The bodies on that grave. Images of Peña, Steve and… Fuck, and Carrillo… All of them died. You would wake up crying. In the morning, you would sigh in relief to see all of them there, in one piece, alive.

But when it was your father, there wasn’t much to see.

That was something you’d never told her. That if you ever pictured your father being a fatality, you couldn’t have a proper reaction.

You woke up with a gasp, seated on the bed and sweating. The curtains hid nothing of the light coming from the outside, with a freezing breeze coming from it. You noticed, then, that what woke you physically was the sound of festive crackles from the street. There were laughs, kids giggling - it didn't take long for someone to scream at them and the noises ceased.

You still had your jeans on, unbuttoned and gripping your legs. That made you groan, passing your fingers through your hair and rubbing your eyes in frustration. On the clock, four in the fucking morning. You knew you wouldn’t sleep after this.

Defeated, you got up from the bed and made a beeline to the kitchen, where you grabbed a jar of water. Hands shaking, you didn’t dare to have your way with a cup - you drank right from the fucking jar. Then you gulped, gulped, gulped… Until it burned your throat and lungs. Until you coughed because some of the liquid spilled over your nose and chest, almost drowning you.

The floor was wet. From the water or your spit, you couldn’t tell, perhaps both. You didn’t know why you stared at it for so long, but that was it: you in the middle of your kitchen watching the water spot wetting your feet.

Your hands were still shaking.

--------------------------

You felt the ground first - the stiffness of the floor, the dirt from the road, the burning sensation from abrupt contact.

In the end, when they took you to the hospital, there wasn’t much to see. You left with a bruise on your forehead, another on your cheek, then some on the body and the shame of having been hurt by falling from a roof. At least with Juan Marcos you had the thrill of a good hand-to-hand combat story.

How stupid of you, having made a mistake and found the concrete alone, out of pure distraction.

Carrillo sent you small glances during the whole process - always checking, always aware of his surroundings. He didn’t come closer, though. He didn’t even ask. You felt stupid again, because you wanted him to have a reaction, at least one with just enough warmth as the first time you got injured.

“You know-”

“No, I don’t know. And for the sake of my job, I would rather not know.”

You didn’t raise your eyes from the letters and envelopes in your hands to give your father the satisfaction of a glance. He was there, standing in front of your desk, both hands inside his pants pockets and probably a smirk on his face. Again, you didn’t try a chance to look at him more than at his pristine shoes.

A letter from your mother. You could read at home.

“I think you have a dead wish.”

“Got this job, what can I say?”

FBI Report 1 on Cartel Activities in the States. You dropped the others on the desk to open this one, noticing how he started to look around the office nonchalantly. While he was distracted, you did give him a single side eye before going back to the paper.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Back to business.

A call-up from Messina. She could’ve just asked for her secretary to call and…

“Noonan told me you two talked.”

“Mm.”

“Using your privileges?”

“Well, it could be a privilege if I was the president’s daughter. You’re just a friend who might’ve fucked her once.”

Jorge Pérez. You frowned at that one, raising it closer to your face to get a better look on the handwriting. With a high level of importance, it said. Jorge…

“Since you’re good to use that smart mouth of yours,” The sudden proximity made you jump, but before you could react, he took the envelope from your hands, threw it on the desk and grabbed your arm harshly. “We better talk like in the old times.”

And it still hurted, the arm and the whole left side of your body. It hurted because you fucking fell from that fucking roof and he knew that, but since he was on the ‘old times’ side, there wasn’t a single care on his features or an hesitance to do worst with you. He was mad. From the grip he had on your arm, a touch violent.

When your body was pressed against your desk with force (because he pushed you), you hid your hiss of pain for the sake of raising your guard. You couldn’t do that during the old times, which was something he noticed - perhaps. There wasn’t the height difference, you weren’t looking at him from below and he wasn’t staring down at you even if he tried to. Eye to eye, with more than a scary face to stare back at him.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” He asked through gritted teeth, close enough to make himself heard without raising his voice.

“... You need to be more specific.”

“You fucking know exactly what I’m talking about, girl, you better be careful with your next choice of words.”

“Or what? You’re gonna ground me?” The teasing made him take a deep and warning breath. “I could use some days without going out with my friends, you know?”

“I was cleaning the mess of this stupid country before you could even clean your shit dirty ass, so you better know what you’re getting here,” He pressed, getting even closer to put a finger on your face. “Think you can be that person? To play dirty behind my back and thinking I wouldn’t know?”

“Was trying my best to be like you.”

He didn’t answer. You licked your lips, nodded. The guy was fucking desperate and taken aback.

You smiled.

“What? She took your toys away?” Again, silence. “I bet she said you’re here like a second chance. I even risk saying that the big guys needed a dog to do the dirty work and keep all the blame. You’re good at it, aren’t you? Being incompetent but leaving that good trail of blood behind your back? Doing that shit they’ll all deny or say it was a ‘collateral effect’?”

And then you said something you didn’t dare to comment on for years. Years.

“Or fucking whores around the country and having bastard kids with them?”

He reacted to that - of course he would. In the blink of an eye, he grabbed your jaw and pressed his fingers on the meat of your face, growling at the implication of such a harsh truth.

“You don’t want to do that…” A threat. “Being my daughter or not, I can fucking destroy your career piece by piece and take any remote chance of you to have a reputation, enough to make you spend the rest of your life cleaning bathrooms for a meal. Do you hear me?”

This time, you didn’t answer. He took that as indifference.

“I’ll do better. I’ll take Peña away, because I can do that. Perhaps they’ll like to know about Los Pepes and all of the other shit your partner is involved in. Maybe even Carrillo can go back to Madrid or whatever the fuck they decided to, since you’d been grown so fond of him recently.”

You couldn’t hide your surprise at the sudden revelation, which brought a devious smile on that face. His fingers flexed against your jaw and when you made the mistake of holding his wrist to stop the touch, he saw all the confirmation he needed to know, if he really needed one.

“Honestly, it took me a while to notice. But there’s the thing with him, maybe he thinks you’re worth the waste of time. You always proved yourself to be a very good warm hole for men in general, maybe that’s your best feature.”

Just then, after saying what probably had been stuck on his throat, he distanced himself. You didn’t move a finger to massage the area, watching him take a handkerchief from inside his pocket and wiping his fingers as if you had somehow soiled him.

“I killed Juan Marcos for you. I did it. You can just imagine my surprise to know that my own daughter, the one I killed for, decided to fight against me…” He said it without looking at you, still brushing his stupid fingers. “But I’ll take it, you know? You’re emotional like your mother and it disappointed me a lot.”

When he raised his eyes to you again, he measured your stance, the way your fists were clenched and your breathing intense. If you could, you would kill him right there, would… Fuck, you would make him swallow all of that humiliation. The rage was bubbling in your insides, ready to snap against him in a second.

Perhaps he expected you to. He wanted that excuse. And when you gave him nothing, he scoffed, putting his hands inside the pockets again and he sighed.

“Look at the bright side of things, sweetheart, we can have some similarities. These people, these… latinos… They can have you by the neck, anyone would fall for it and you wouldn’t be different. This we have in common. Just don’t be stupid enough to get pregnant or whatever, they don’t pay much for these guys around here.”

You felt like you couldn’t breathe until he left the room, unsure if what that could do to your sanity such was the tension and hatred he has instilled in you. When he did leave, not giving you a single glance back, the same clenched fists were raised to your eyes where you brushed them in hopes to prevent any tears from spilling out. Your heart was beating so fast, so incessantly, that you didn’t move a finger until you could collect yourself.

It was too overwhelming, too much, too much, too much…

You crouched down on the desk, hidden from whoever might be there so early in the day, and put your palms against your mouth. Eyes tightly closed, you stifled a sob as you felt the wetness of tears between your fingers. Any curse word that was on the tip of his tongue, any… unbridled urge to retort, it was all stuck inside your mind and in no time, during that breakdown, you thought the response would be as passive as your reaction.

But you were passive.

More than that, you let yourself be carried away by resentment and anger, thinking that you would be superior if you just kept quiet.

He did it, you thought. The asshole broke you.

--------------------------

One of the things about Carrillo was that he always made himself… present. After a considerable amount of time under him, on top of him or close enough to him, you could recognize scents, things intrinsic to what he was and wore and did and knew how to be.

You were virtually dating an almost full glass of lemon vodka when you smelled the perfume. At first, you thought it was some kind of hallucination, like your abused and lost mind trying to find traces of comfort (even if lying, even if cruel or momentary) to keep you going. After all this time, it was an automatic escape mechanism - if you were more politicized about it, you'd have a box of pills by your bed instead of your badge and your gun.

Just after a moment, when you felt someone sitting beside you and you could see his wrist watch there, your body reacted. You didn’t know if it was for resentment or just all the shit you’d been through with your father, but for a moment you wanted to avoid everyone - including him. Especially him.

Which was a fucking hypocrisy, given the place you were at.

“Did your father talk to you?”

And he didn’t ask in a inquisitive tone, like he was demanding for you to say the truth, but you felt taken aback by the neutral curiosity that filled his question and was splayed all over his face. With your silence, Horacio raised his eyebrows and got a good look at your confused expression.

“I heard he's been speculating about your physical state since the incident earlier today.”

“Just him?”

He tilted his head to the side, hiding a small smile.

“We all know you’re tough,” A shrug. “But I’m happy to know that you came back in one piece.”

“Happy is a big word, don’t you think?” You frowned, taking a sip on your drink while watching him raise a hand to the bartender.

“What would you rather me say?”

“Relieved.”

“That was quite fast.”

“I'm just saying I saved you a lot of red tape and paperwork.”

“What you're telling me is that your conversation with your father was much more intense than I thought.”

It made you lose what little humor you had left, enough for your face to visibly stiffen at the insinuation. Still, Carrillo was unaffected, but understood that maybe it wasn't the time. Rather than speculating further, he settled back on the stool when the whiskey arrived in front of him on the counter and didn't look at you for a while, as if he was just there to keep you company. This breath gave you time to observe him calmly.

He wasn't in uniform, but you doubted he'd just left the house to be right there, judging by the obvious sweat and dull expression. From what you heard, he's been in negotiation meetings with other minor sicarios who've been arrested, probably even Los Pepes if you pushed hard enough, but that was the kind of context you really liked to stay out of.

He certainly wasn't satisfied; sure enough, for one plus one, Carrillo was just frustrated by the way things had turned out and he could suddenly use alcohol. It was an ordinary bar, you were there when you decided to have good sex that would become delicately complicated. The difference was that there was less wear and tear, less fatigue. You two certainly weren't fresh for the job anymore.

And even so, Horacio continued to have this brusque, striking and not very delicate beauty. Unlike Javier or Steve, he hasn't lost any weight, and perhaps made good use of homemade meals to gain a little more physical mass. A very discreet bulge poked out on his belly, but that only meant he was healthy.

There was a soft smirk on his face, almost imperceptible, when you raised your eyes - he caught you staring. You noticed, of course, because you still were stupid enough to keep notes on him. It was inevitable, the way you and him stared at each other. Lights low, soft music, a ton of feelings all over the place - you couldn’t ride any other way.

“... Why are you here?” The question came in a low tone, breaking that spell for a moment. You blinked a few times, self aware of your body language, and gestured with the cup.

“Different motives, similar interests, I guess.”

“How do you know my motives?”

“Consider this my intuition.”

He nodded, not defeated but understanding. A silence hung in the air, more comfortable and cozy; it was easy to be more abrupt in your next comment, like a revelation suddenly caught in your throat by an instant memory of what had happened earlier that day.

“Did you know?” Like a spilled thought, you asked as if he would know what you were referring to. When nothing but a frown appeared on his face, you clarified with simplicity. “That we fucked. You knew my father knew about it?”

You could expect a lot of things, because Carrillo was very intuitive and certainly wouldn't run away from a confrontation if that were the case, just like your father wouldn't either. So when he looked even more confused and taken aback by the question, you reconsidered your position for a moment and turned your eyes to the drink in your hands, not knowing what to say next.

Horacio shifted in his seat, visibly uncomfortable.

“What did he tell you?” He asked then, more inquisitive this time.

“Nothing I didn’t deal with before. It's just… Sounded like something he could have guessed, like it was simple. I don’t remember a moment where we showed we were explicitly involved. Like the way we were, I mean.”

Casting a glance in his direction, you saw his jaw clench, then his face averting your gaze. Carrillo looked… angry?

“You know I don't have any hierarchical ties with him, right?”

“I do.”

“So why don't you tell me exactly what he told you?”

“Because it's complicated!” You bit back with exasperation. “Look, there was a reason why I’ve been so reticent about him being here. It’s not just his past or whatever the fuck he did here, we didn’t talk for years! Years, Horacio. And there’s a reason why it happened and it’s nothing like you can simply do something about. Honestly, I think it would be better if you didn't get involved.”

“It doesn't make any difference now.”

“Yes! I-” You stopped your own rambling and took a deep breath. “I know it. That’s the fucking problem.”

More silence. That made you aware of your tone, your mood, the way you’d been holding your shit together in such a pathetic way.

“I’m tired,” Your fingers massaged the bridge of your nose, elbow on the counter and a defeated sigh falling from your lips. “Don’t tell this to anyone, tho. I would like to finish my fucking job without people feeling pity of me.”

“But you’re telling me.”

“... Yeah. Well, last time you decided to pick my pieces we ended up making out. It’s better than whatever Peña would have in the cards for me.”

He smiled - no, you would rather say he just scoffed and took a long sip of his drink, as if it was the closest you could get in a good mood.

“Peña.” Carrillo repeated, head shaking. “What would he offer to you? Mm?”

The question made you frown but, again, you weren’t in the mood to read between the lines and he probably didn’t want to make his intentions a secret. There was a hint of jealousy there, a resentment.

“You know we don’t-”

“I know.”

You hummed, eyeing the drink in front of you to consider the situation. That could make you smile a little, even for a second, knowing that Carrillo couldn’t hide the stupidness of it all.

“... It would be less complicated,” The confession was uncomfortable, too realistic, enough to make you embarrassed. “Sounds like a convenient statement, in fact. Peña doesn’t have an accent, he doesn't have both feet and heart in this country either.”

He considered.

“Am I not American enough for him?” Carrillo asked with a discreet frown.

“Nn-nn.”

“Gracias a Dios.” Thank God, he murmured against his cup, which almost brought another considerate smile to your lips.

“I tend to be controversial, it gets me into trouble occasionally,” Your hand unconsciously massaged your chin, as if sensing other fingers pressing the skin there. It brought a lot of discomfort - enough to make you clear your throat to prevent any intrusive memory.

But that was the crux of the matter, what put you on your toes about Horacio Carrillo in the first place: he was so observant. And he noticed the way you caressed that area for a nanosecond too long, which made him shift in his seat to get closer, just a little longer, just to get a better look in the dim light.

First it was his fingers gripping your jaw, bringing your face up to his watchful gaze. Then, carefully, those same fingers descended on your skin, on the sensitive part, and you didn't hesitate to hiss in slight pain. When you averted the touch with a tilt of your head, looking around suspiciously, he became stern - serious. Mad.

“All this secrecy, this… Fear that people would find out about us. Now it all seems truly in vain.”

“It was the best for everyone. If Noonan or Messina find out, I-”

“They weren't there when he touched you.”

“We both know it doesn't matter here. Not with people like us.”

“Offenders?”

“Disposable.” You took his hand on yours, taking his touch away even if not in a harsh way. He was still mad, you could sense, but it was like Carrillo turned into a preoccupied mess.

“... If he ever touches you again, you will tell me.” An order, one you resisted the urge to roll your eyes for. “That's what a disposable person does, isn't it? A good one-on-one with a gringo would do justice to the title.”

That made you smile - truly smile. At the genuine tone, at the perseverance of his intentions. A surprisingly astute man with wills that went beyond the position he had and he was there, cutting the caress of your body for the discreet touch of your hand, watching your reactions with such attention.

You observed him in silence, elbow on the counter, hand supporting your head while taking the guy in. He was so stunning, you couldn’t quite catch which detail of his physiognomy you liked best. And there were other attributes on him, like his body and capacity, but maybe… The mouth? Chin? Cheeks? Brows? Hair? Eyes?

Looking in retrospect, it made some sense. The attraction, the bickering. Carrillo was made like that, built to be exactly the way he was, ready to accept the fate of his messy world with strong hands and the perseverance of someone who always tried hard enough until he didn’t need it anymore.

“You know what I need right now?”

He shook his head.

“I’ve been through hell since I woke up, my body is tired and… I need a shower. A good, warm shower, yeah? And then a decent night's sleep, which I haven't had in weeks.”

There was another beat of silent consideration from him, a peaceful and relaxed one.

“... I have a warm shower.” His voice came in a teasing tone.

“You do?”

“Mm-hm.”

You bit your lip, mouth hidden behind your fingers.

“Okay.”

--------------------------

His house seemed more receptive, perhaps because of the circumstances or your condition. You looked around the place that remained the same, with different furniture here or there, something that reminded you of someone passing by to clean or organize. Juliana, maybe.

The thought made you frown, even if that detail (or that piece of memory) didn’t make the place look less… homemade. You were unsure, however. Even if some part of you knew what you should be doing now while Horacio made sure all the windows and doors were still locked, you couldn’t move from your spot in the middle of the living room, arms hanging on your sides while you felt lost, even a touch numb.

“Hey.”

Carrillo was standing in front of you, searching for you even if you were there, not so focused, not deciding if he should get closer or not. You blinked a few times, suddenly aware of your recent marks and physical pains. He didn’t try to poke through it, tho - he gave you his hand, palm open to your eyes.

That touch meant more, like the first deep breath of fresh air.

There were the stairs, then the corridor. You prevented yourself from saying out loud about your legs or feet; a few grunts followed the way, but he decided not to comment as well. Horacio just kept going, assured the steps of someone who knew the place well. When you reached the room (his bedroom), there wasn’t time to observe the details of that place you knew from the past experience, because he took you to the other door, one you didn’t notice at first.

The bathroom was considerably huge, made for two and with some space for more. Wife, perhaps kids. You also tried not to imagine this life, this possibility that seemed real for him before you and probably before Escobar. Standing still, your mind tried to make you feel more pathetic when you didn’t move to undress, but again, Carrillo didn’t ask.

He opened button by button, careful with his moves and the fabric of your shirt, which wasn’t so clean and had seen better days. You observed his movements, stoic and precise as always, and when the shirt was finally off, he stopped. Of course you were aware of the bruises, the not-so-sexy bra and even less sexier shape of your boobs.

No, that wasn’t the reason why he stopped. You knew it wasn’t. And you felt so embarrassed all of the sudden.

“No, no-” His hand covered yours before you could hide something. “Puede que no seamos los mismos de antes, pero tú sigues siendo tú. Y lo quiero todo de todos modos.” We may not be the same as before, but you are still you. And I want it all anyway.

“... It's not what I look like that worries me,” You said. “It just seems unfair that every time we're together, there's some shadow of what we do. I don't want you to look at me and think about it.”

“But it's what we do.”

“And are you by any chance proud of every part of this?”

“Huh,” He scoffed, but not in mockery, tilting his head to the side and going back to his small mission, this time going to your belt. “Sería estúpido no arrepentirse de algunas cosas en el camino, ¿no crees?” It would be stupid not to regret some things along the way, don't you think?

“¿Siempre cambias al español cuando hablas de cosas difíciles?” Do you always switch to Spanish when talking about difficult things?

“Recuerdo haber dicho que me gustabas en inglés.” I remember saying I liked you in English.

And he did stop again, your belt and the button of your jeans opened. Carrillo did that to look at your face, observe any reaction from you, and all you could give back was the same taken aback expression you had earlier that night. Saying it in front of you, like that, mentioning that he simply liked you… It still sounded easier, but it also sounded safe.

“... Will it be a lonely bath? Or do you intend to accompany me?”

He tilted his head to the side again, shrugged, then decided to go back to his work with your pants.

“I’m not fragile, you know?” You said in a low tone.

“What I know is that there’s too many people aware of that information.” Carrillo didn’t look at you, but honestly it wasn’t necessary. He said what he said, so you wouldn’t try to bite back.

The silence, though, made him frown and finally raise his eyes to you. Just then, with his attention and heavy gaze, you noticed your own eyes were wet. You blinked a few times, shook your head. For some reason, or maybe for obvious ones, there was a big cloud of resentment surrounding you two all of the sudden - of bad decisions or just a touch of cowardness from your part. Horacio was hot headed, sometimes too impulsive for his own good; your father, quite the opposite, patiently waiting for the right opportunity to make what he thought was best.

“... I’ll take the guest bathroom. There’s probably something you can borrow from my wardrobe too.”

“Okay.”

“If you need anything-”

“Mm-hm. I know.”

He placed a gentle kiss on your temple - right above the bandage still hanging for dear life there. Took you a lot to move from there, to shake the warm touches from your body and mind, and a few minutes after he left, you rubbed your eyes with the palms of your hands to keep any emotions from spilling over and finished taking off your clothes.

The water was hot, but not hot enough to be uncomfortable. You felt each drop washing your pores as if it were taking away pieces of your skin, as if all the dirt of the day had not been washed away enough even though this was your second shower of the day.

The skin on your jaw was irritated by how hard you rubbed it, trying to get something out that might not be coming off any time soon.

--------------------------

“... He said something.”

Carrillo raised his eyes from the small patterns he was tracing on your skin with his finger, observing you with curiosity. He had these comfy pants, the flip-flops laying on the floor, the basic shirt - it was like entering another world, seeing someone else instead of… him. But it was him, indeed. Domestic him. And after the dinner (the one he promised a lifetime before), he took you to his bed and made more compliments about you wearing one of his shirts.

Honestly, you didn’t want to bring it at that moment. You didn’t even want to make this a conversation with him, to remember whatever happened that led to that specific space of time where you found comfort in his arms, but that thing entered your mind like a plague and you couldn’t shake it out of your mind.

“‘Said he killed Juan Marcos for me.”

He didn’t react - not for the first few seconds. In the middle of that half-dark, warm room, with you two between his comfy sheets, Horacio let the information sink in, averting your gaze to watch his movements on the skin peaking through the collar of that old shirt. For a moment you even thought he wouldn’t say anything; for what felt like ages, Horacio Carrillo didn’t move.

You stared at the ceiling, then, that thought burning your insides like a fucking infection. That made you press, just a little, just to… feel something.

“Would you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Kill for anyone.”

Carrillo sighed.

“I’ve been doing that for a living,” He argumented. “But that’s not the question, right?”

“No,” You shook your head. “I wouldn’t ask you to, though. Nor Javi or Steve or… him.”

“Well, I think we all know that too,” With a grunt, he adjusted his body to eye you from above, leaning on his elbow. “Killing in someone's name can be a lot if we weren't who we are, at least. In this kind of life, this is just a consequence or a detail that bumps into our routine.”

His words made you consider.

“Sicarios kill for loyalty and money, we kill for a solution... A father kills for his daughter for love and protection.” You pointed out, more like a reflection than a proper opinion. When you looked at him again, he waited for that conclusion with patience. “He didn't want to protect me, Horacio. He never did this, why would he do it now? To get some kind of leverage when he found out I put Noonan against him?”

“What?”

The realization on his face made you feel ashamed, as if all the days you've been beating yourself up about it materialized right there, in front of you, in the form of the disappointment that would stamp his face when he owned up to what you'd done. You waited, waited, waited… And when nothing came, you distanced yourself physically by sitting up on the bed, fingers playing with itselves while he just kept staring.

With a deep breath and a lot to say, you confirmed.

“She was always my father's friend, probably since I can remember. When she called me into a meeting, I figured he might have said something to arouse suspicion, to make her suspicious of my ability to do my job. I knew he was planting something there, waiting for the right chance to take me out of the picture. Not for protection, just… Perhaps he saw me as a problem, perhaps I am a problem.”

Carrillo listened with a neutral expression, which started to make you feel even more tense.

“I struggled a lot to do that, to have the least amount of respect without being in his shadow. Every day, in every single thing I've done since I chose this career, I've always been sure I wanted to be better than him. Realizing that he throws every shovel possible into our relationship has me panicking, especially since he's my father and he's trying to sabotage me for his own benefit.”

It's been a long time since you've done this - venting your frustrations. For some reason, you knew Carrillo wouldn't do anything with that information, at least nothing other than keeping it to himself. Being there with him, in that private universe, you were free to get it all out there, to expose an unspoken truth of hardship and cruelty. Of course, given the circumstances, that comfort would just be another unspoken truth between the two of you. A secret magnetism that made sense, as long as it wasn't said to the four winds, because you were never exceptionally good at it and it was evident.

You sighed in defeat, unsure of what that silence meant - condescendence, weighting, reticence. There was a vision of you before your confession and there was certainly another after it - it wasn't like you could justify yourself.

All that considered, it was a surprise when he reached over and kissed your cheek, subtly, just to get your attention. When you looked up, Horacio cupped your face in one hand and looked into your eyes, using the gentlest of caresses to gaze at you with a certain amount of admiration and affection. You probably had that same expression at the moment, because he couldn’t stop staring.

“I couldn’t judge him if his intentions were true,” He mumbled. “But mine are. Sometimes, my respect can blind me and I can be… obnoxious towards my feelings for you, almost… dumb. Perhaps. Perhaps you don’t even want to know that now, being here and going through this, but I would kill for you. Viviría por ti.”

I would live for you.

You looked into his eyes and felt a courage you only felt at the sight of a gun, or the sight of your father's eyes. It wasn't usual, it felt very uncomfortable, but accept the reality that he only considered it all a passing fever of passion rather than something that really had consistency.

There was no consistency in that life, nor in the fact that you met, crossed paths and exchanged a single word to each other - because no minimally consistent relationship could come from that reality.

“This can’t be,” You said, holding his hand with your palm. “You can’t do this to me, Horacio.”

“You didn't have that right either. Don't believe for a second I didn't think this was all crazy, all... una gran mierda,” His last words came as a whisper, as if he just confessed something serious enough to make him grab all of the circumstances inside his head.

Carrillo sighed.

“Juliana had never confronted me this way, she had never told me what she felt with such certainty. I spent a lot of time blaming her for this, but the truth is, being with me hurts. I'm a ticking time bomb, a static creature that lives by rules that I don't always believe in but that make me who I am. I'm a big bunch of beliefs that don't take me anywhere.”

“... But I did.”

He let the silence linger, your other hand passing through his face while he nodded.

“Yeah,” You could see, deep down, that he was on the verge of crying. Carrillo. Crying. Suddenly, he was that boy, pristine and full of feelings he couldn’t spill out for the sake of being well-behaved, of not building any more problems for his mama.

You never thought you'd witness it - or find sense in a man like that looking so torn apart for so long.

“And I honestly don't know what to make of it all.”

Ultimately, you realized as you took the initiative to give him a subtle kiss on the mouth, discreet enough to hear him sigh in relief, that it felt right because Carrillo lived in absolutes. Life or death. Right or wrong. To shoot or not to shoot. There was a weight there, a responsibility; all of a sudden, if you could, you'd take it all away from him because you… you needed it. From him? From his company? Of the feelings he caused? You couldn't tell, even while kissing him.

What you could say, for sure, was that a mess encounter led you to a difficult realization: that you loved him.

And you were afraid of it.

--------------------------

Next part’s snippet:

“What?”

He asked with a confused expression, but you couldn’t quite catch his question right away. With a hand in front of your mouth, you swallowed a sob and held that letter with a firm grip, afraid of it all being a lie or an illusion or… A trick. A fucking universe trick for your mind and soul.

You raised your eyes to Carrillo, gulping again to prevent any big emotion from spreading all over the place.

“... It’s… It’s Jorge.”

“And who is it?”

The words almost didn’t leave your mouth, as if you were scared of the consequences of just… saying it.

“My brother.”

------------------------------------

No pressure tags:

@cheesybadgers

@thesandbeneathmytoes ​

@616wilsons ​

@nessamc​

@thoroughlymodernminutia ​

@padbrookcottage ​

@mysoulisasunflower ​​

[ficjoelispunk]

Ch 05 - RELIEF

You can find the continuation here

<< Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >>

Author's Note: Guys, like always, I'm sorry for any grammatical errors, don't give up on me, translating is not easy, but I did my best. Correct me as much as you can. Thanks.

After the attack, see so many lives lost by a rude mistake, for overestimating your enemy. Pinzón resigned.

So Colonel Carrillo took his place. Bringing controversies about their methods. But you couldn't deny that he passed on trust to people. He was the only one who really scared Escobar.

Peña was excited. But Carrillo's methods were really peculiar. Escobar used the children to protect himself and pass on information as scouts. And as soon as Carrillo came back, and paraded through the streets with a train of 100 men, to make a fuss you began to question the sanity of the new Colonel.

Maybe you were traumatized. Because when you became aware, you wanted to find a way to prevent it, thinking if if there was another attack, it would be 100 men killed. But Carrillo had a free pass given directly by President Gavilla, and nothing could be done.

After the incident with the soldiers. You and Javier had apparently given a "truce". But it wasn't something 100% right. You still quarreled often. In fact, every time you met, especially if it was during working hours.

After your kiss, you both made a point of simply pretending that nothing had happened. Simply ignoring and not saying anything about it. Both dealing with the situation with a lot of maturity. You two have avoided each other.

But your line of reasoning was as follows, if he was the one who kissed you, he should explain himself. After all, you didn't grab anyone. Despite having reciprocated, until a certain point. Anyway, it was something you really wanted to ignore.

It's better that way.

It is important to emphasize that working in the same place as the individual in question did not help at all.

So, first lesson: don't get involved with co-workers. Never. Under no circumstances.

"Shit! Damn it!" You hit the copying machine.

"It's fucking 6:50 a.m.," Peña murmured at the door of the copy room. "Calm down"

You closed your eyes. And he sighed.

"Perfect."

He took a step towards you. You haven't looked at him yet.

"What happened?" His voice calms and hoarse.

He does it on purpose.

"I don't know. I think the paper got stuck inside, and chewed some copies..." you ran your hands over your face, exhausted.

"You need to put fewer leaves..."

"Really? Wow, as I could imagine... maybe because it's written in the fucking opening, "up to 10 sheets" I know how to read Agent Peña"

"Jesus! You're tireless. Allow yourself a truce. Let me solve the problem with the copier, and we pretend it never happened"

"Yeah, you're great in that"

"In that what?"

You meant pretending that certain things had never happened, but you answered something else.

“Copiers”

He rolled his eyes.

Javier walked to you, stopping next to you. The fact that he walked towards you left you with your legs soft. How stupid it is to have your whole body responding to a man, as if you were a teenager.

"Excuse me," he said already next to you, making a gesture with his hands so that you could move so that he could handle the copier.

He opened the lid, skillfully and removed the papers that had been curled and chewed by the copier. It's closed. And he made a gesture with his hands as if he had done magic.

You rolled your eyes.

"None "thank you Javi"?"

How about, "get out of my face Javi"?"

"You really need someone to take all this tension away from you dear, otherwise you will explode at any moment..."

Javier liked to meet you, bump into you, have the minimum amount of time to provoke you or talk to you. He liked the smell of your perfume, and the symptoms you caused in his body.

You were unpredictable and surprising. There hasn't been a day since you arrived in Bogotá perched in Noonan, that he didn't wish he could touch you.

Everything about you was inviting to him. Your soft skin. Your hair that falls messy perfectly from your hairstyles. Your hands moving the papers. The noise of the heel of your shoe when you walked. You were the perfect distraction.

Your lips. Which often irritated him. Javier thought of so many possible ways to silence your lips. That kiss was one of the ways he imagined for months. It made you connect in a more tacit way. But he promised himself not to move forward like this with you anymore.

Since then, he's only been orbiting over you. Maybe, waiting for a new opportunity. The fact that you were there within the reach of his eyes all fucking day was a torture, and a relief.

He thought several times about talking to you about what happened in the file room. But he couldn't think of anything to talk about. And he has more things to worry about than that. Much more things. He doesn't have time for relationships. Never had it.

Javier organized himself to go out with the police, and he noticed your restlessness. Your chest would go up and decide on your shirt. And your forehead made a soft crease of concern.

As he prepared, his eyes met his own. Javier seemed too excited. Too anxious.

He ran in great strides, jumping the stairs every two steps, to his table. Javier didn't think much about what he was going to do. Especially in relation to you, it was always driven by impulses.

You followed his movement, so about the eyelashes.

"Are you okay?" He asked leaning over the table, as he always did.

You nodded.

His look has changed. And he made himself calmer. Time-consuming. Looking at you. The eyes are melting little by little.

"No need to worry. We'll be back in a few hours"

You looked at him over his eyelashes.

"I'm not worried" you tried to hold a smile.

He smiled.

"No?"

"Nop”

"Okay, so if I die..."

"Shut up, Agent Peña" you shuddered closing your eyes tightly.

He smiled.

"It's Javi, and you seem worried..."

You opened your mouth to speak...

"Peña" Murphy called him.

He turned around. Murphy gestured with his arms.

"Don't miss me" he patted your table three.

You pointed to the door.

"Go"

He laughed.

And incredibly in this little moment. You felt calmer. Your breathing was stable. And your expression was soft, because you was smiling, while shaking your head.

With this operation they were able to locate basically all the points that the scouts were. Carrillo had his methods, but he also had his merits. He was smart. And articulate.

You, Murphy, Edward, Peña, Carrillo and Trujillo spent the afternoon accessing the recordings of the wiretaps that the train was able to record. And separating the locations. The scouts made contact informing where the train was passing, and you could get an idea of where more or less the warning points were.

Colonel Carrillo organized the way of approaching the scouts. And you recorded everything, to document the operation. With it there, now you hardly needed to worry about the requirements, you needed to worry about the file, the records of the operations.

"Peña, you're coming with me. Murphy, Jacoby and you stay here, to guide us" Carrillo gave the orders.

You nodded.

Peña looked at you for a few minutes before leaving.

"Be careful outside," you said to both of them.

And that's how the night started.

On the radio you could follow the operation with Murphy, listening to the capture of the scouts. It was terribly agonizing just to listen. You had the feeling that at any moment something would go wrong.

You were walking from one side to the other, nibbling on the loose skin of your nail.

"Stay calm," Murphy said on a break.

You looked at him.

"It's going to sink the ground from walking on the same place so much," he smiled.

You looked around the room trying to find a new focus.

"They're doing well"

You nodded. And sat down.

And then the radio whistled.

"Sixth scout caught" was Peña's voice.

Murphy looked at you, smiling. Victorious.

You smiled back. Sighing deeply, relieved. Happy. It was worthy of a victory after so much struggle. You deserved an advantage.

"Go get some rest," Murphy said.

You nodded, getting up from the chair.

"You should do the same," you said as you passed by him.

He nodded.

You knew he wouldn't do that.

And you wouldn't be able to sleep either. You haven't been able to have a sleep routine for weeks. That was the price you got for sleeping where you worked.

It turns out that you went to your dorm, but you couldn't nail your eye even if you were tired. It was as if you had taken too much caffeine and your body did not succumb to fatigue.

When this happened, you left, and sometimes you stayed in the file room. There was a comforting melancholy in that room smelling of old paper, silent, illuminated by the moon.

Today was no different. You went there. You spent some time reading something about some operations, and when you was returning to the dormitory, when you turned the corridor you came face to face with Agent Peña.

"Hey" you spoke with your hand on his chest to avoid the thud "you scared me" you smiled blandly.

He didn't say anything.

You removed your hands from his chest quickly.

"Congratulations, everything worked out, didn't it? Where are the scouts? Have you started the questions?" You asked studying his face.

"They are children" he murmured.

Well, that was a possibility, but it was still a surprise.

Javier didn't look at you, he looked over your head. The whole body is stiff, the hands on the waist. Swinging the weight of the body between one leg and another.

"Are you okay?" You were trying to find his eyes.

"Yes, Carrillo let them go, tried another method," he murmured, the sound of the voice failing.

You've seen him like this very few times.

"Released? Another method? What do you mean?" You asked confused.

He wanted to get out of your way, but you took a step to the side finding him. He closed his eyes, turning his face, unhappy, as he ran his fingers through his nose.

"Don't worry about that" he took another step to the side.

You followed him.

"Hey" you held his arm gently "talk to me" you looked for his eyes, talking gently to him.

He finally looked at you. The dark eyes, but not of anger, were pain, resentment, guilt, sadness.

You frowned. Worried. It was strange to see Peña in all his grandeur and arrogance, disarmed in this way, he seemed so vulnerable. A man who seemed indestructible with an impenetrable shell, now so fragile in front of you, brought you a little affliction. When he always passed a certain security.

He wanted to get out of your way, but you stood in front of him following your body with your hands in his arms.

You knew that if he really wanted to, he could go over you and you would never reach him. But instead he was still there, with you.

"What happened?" You insisted.

He swallowed it dry. Hesitant.

"Carrillo pointed the gun at the head of one of the boys and shot" he paused still looking deep into his eyes "to give a fucking message" the voice so thick coming out in a murmur.

You were silent looking at each other for a few minutes.

When Javi abruptly advanced on top of you, sticking your back to the wall and pressing his lips on yours.

This urgent time, you couldn't resist. You immediately kissed back. You missed that. Their mouths fit perfectly. Javier was aggressively immediate. You could barely breathe.

You started pushing him gently. Just to separate your lips. He didn't let his hands off your face, but he gave you a break.

"I need you" he spoke with his lips brushing yours, his breath panting “Fuck, I need you"

You held his fists around your face.

"Okay," you whispered.

He pressed his lips on yours again, but this time calmer. More organized. You ran your arms over his shoulders, until your hands were tangled in his hair.

Javier passed his hands through the back of your thigh and lifted you to hold her on his lap. You held yourself around his neck crossing your legs around his waist. He walked to the archive room a little behind you, with you on his lap while kissing you.

He opened the door, passed with you, closing the door with his feet. Javier took you to the table at the back of the room. Putting you sitting on the table.

His hands went to your face, and went down your neck, gently passing over your breasts, instinctively making you arch towards him. Your clitoris was throbbing painfully, with the heat radiating through your body. Your lips met.

Javier leaned his forehead on his, panting, in an impasse. You had your hands intertwined in his hair.

"Maybe it's better if we don't do this right now," he murmured, as he placed his arms on the table on the side of your body, leaning, leaning to be at the same height as you.

You ran your hand over his face. You thought of some provocative answers, but that's not what came out of your mouth.

"What do you want to do?" You whispered.

He walked away a little, almost nothing, just to look at you.

"I don't know if I want to do this to you," he said.

You smashed your eyes, and smiled in surprise.

"Okay, then" you bit your lips.

Wait. What?

He looked at you, thinking better about what he had said.

"No.." he shook his head looking down "that's not what I meant..."

"So, explain it to me"

He raised his head to look at you, giving a dull smile.

"You can talk to me" you held his face, and he closed his eyes to your touch "whatever it is, you've already told me worse things..." you tried to comfort him.

After a moment of silence, and a sigh.

"I do this with..." he hesitated "you know..."

"Prostitutes? Who could have imagined..." You were ironic.

He looked at the ceiling, perhaps embarrassed, to admit it in front of him.

"It relieves me, it distracts me in situations like this," he murmured, almost a whisper, with his head down avoiding your gaze.

So, maybe now some things would start to make sense. And a lot of things had an explanation. Javier relieved the tension of working with sex. Sick? Maybe. But understandable.

"And what do you do with them?" You murmured, weighing your breath, and crawling forward to the edge of the table, almost sinking Javier's head into your breasts.

You were already in your hell. What's wrong with hugging the devil?

He was still propped up on the table, but when he heard you he raised his head, his noses almost brushing each other, his eyes doubting what he had just heard.

You brought your lips closer to his.

"Show me" your voice was a soft whisper.

You could only hear your breaths. Your heart beat so hard in your chest, that you had the feeling that Javier could hear.

"You know I'm not a gentleman..."

"Maybe, I don't like the good boys..."

In an abrupt gesture, Javier raised your skirt to his waist, without reducing the distance from his faces, turning one hand on the table next to your hip to support himself, and with the other, opening you legs to him.

Your mouth opened, letting out a trembling sigh, with the touch of his hands on the skin of your thigh.

Javier would never treat you the way he treated the prostitutes he met. You were his prize. There, offering to provide the relief he sought in other bodies, but now you offered yours. Not even in his best dreams, you would be like that, so perfect.

"You're already wet for me, aren't you?"

You closed your eyes as his fingers slid smoothly down your thigh, rising towards your panties.

"No" was more of a sigh than an answer.

Javier gave some light kisses on your neck. Sending goosebumps through your body.

Your hands were in his hair.

And when he felt the touch of his finger on the fabric of your panties, brushing your greeting so wet that it passed the moisture into the fabric. You pulled your breath and didn't breathe anymore.

He laughed softly. Victorious. Yes, you were dripping through it.

He took a break. Studying your face. The signs of pleasure and anxiety in the face. Your mouth open, and your eyebrows furrowed. Javier tortured you, wondering how much you wanted the relief of his touch in your pussy.

When he finally touched your middle, you let out the air. And he started sliding his finger over you. Your hands pulled his hair gently, as his finger went up and down.

"I always knew that your desire for me flowed down your legs"

"Javi..." you sighed, eyes closed.

He smiled maliciously at you calling him Javi, for him, he was always Agent Peña. But now for you, he was just Javi.

You felt the touch of his finger finally touch your skin when he pulled the fabric of your panties to the side. Your body had a spasm.

"Don't worry hermosa, I'll relieve your tension, I'll take care of you"

Your breathing was panting. You were needy and desperate, but fuck, you didn't care, the situation was too intoxicating at that moment for you to think clearly.

And finally the relief came, you were so horny, that the simple touch of Javier's fingers on your clitoris could have made you cum.

"You're so sensitive" Javier lowered his finger to your entrance, circling it to bring your lubrication all over his pussy, "You needed this a long time ago, didn't you, baby?"

Javier then slid his finger bringing your wet to your clit, and pressing his finger on it as he circled the set of rigid nerves that was accumulating a tension that radiated shocks through your body.

"Jesus... I've never had something so wet in my hands..."

"I'm not what you usually have" between moans.

Your head tilted back.

"Yes" he murmured with his lips walking around your neck "usually they don't speak"

You started moving your hip together with Javier's fingers.

"Take off your shirt for me, cariño" his lips were in your ear, and the low timbre of his voice combined with the accent, sent a direct blow to your core.

You nodded, loosening his hair, unbuttoning your shirt.

His fingers kept making the movement of going down to your entrance, and going back around your clitoris. Your walls squeezed desperately around nothing. He seemed to have a fucking map, touching and moving his fingers exactly where you needed it.

"I wanted this from the moment I put my eyes on you in that damn office 3 fucking years ago" he murmured more to himself than to you.

"You're so fucking hot" His eyes danced through your naked tits as if it were a suitcase of money. With devotion.

"Do you always think of me?" You provoked.

His lips went down to your nipple. Javier passed his tongue through the sensitivity of your nipple, and this set of him stimulating your nipple, and your clitoris, made you tilt your head back again, releasing the air through your mouth.

Javier slid two fingers into you, your mouth swallowed the air, your feeling dividing you, making you follow the movement with your hip, biting your lips. He made the movement of going back and forth studying your body, introducing another big and thick finger inside you.

He let go of your nipple, the look of simulated piety.

"What happened, baby?" His mustache pinching the skin of your breast. "Can't you find your words?" He smiles.

And it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, to observe the pleasure he caused in you. You bit your lips, frowning. Your breasts went up and down without rhythm demonstrating your erratic breathing, depending on the movement he made inside you.

"So needy," he said with his eyes inebriated with your heavenly image, grinding your hips over his fingers, with your bare breasts in front of him.

Javier bowed his fingers finding the spongy point inside you, which made you have a spasm, and a moan from the bottom of your throat escaped through your half-open lips.

He pressed his thumb on your clitoris, and you contracted. Feeling the pressure of your orgasm form inside you. Javier lowered his head reaching your other nipple this time, passing his tongue gently over him, your skin shivered all over his body.

"You're close cariño, I feel your pussy squeezing around my fingers"

You moaned, while moving your hips together with Javier's fingers, biting your lips.

"Keep going." you sighed "Javi..." he smiled when he heard his name coming out of your mouth again, he wanted you to sing his name like this every day.

"Come for me, baby, " you obeyed, gave in to the collapse of your body "that's it, good girl" Javier passed his arm over your back, holding you, while your body leaned towards him at the same time as he moved his fingers inside you in the right way.

When you came down from your height. Your spasms of pleasure stopped, you passed your hands through his hair, to kiss him. But he walked away, you opened your eyes, confused.

Javier took his fingers out of you slowly.

"I want you to clean up this mess you made" his voice was dark, sexy.

You would do anything he asked you to do.

He stretched his fingers in front of you. You held his hand with your hands and opened your mouth.

"Look at me"

You looked. Obeying like a puppy. He pushed his fingers into your mouth, and you sucked, passing your tongue through them, taking every piece, and sucking as your tongue passed through the greeting of his fingers.

"Fuck" he whispered to himself. Wondering what your mouth could do with his cock already throbbing in his pants.

He studied you, darkly. Javier was slowly pulling his fingers out of your mouth. Leaving a mental note for another way to make you shut up.

"I want to taste you," Javier approached to kiss you.

The kiss was deep, as if he took you. Your bittersweet taste in his mouth. His hands went down to your breasts, squeezing, painful, but pleasurable flesh.

"Tastes like heaven” he murmured, between your lips.

In an abrupt movement he pulled you off the table, pulled your panties leaving them on your ankle. Javier turned your back to him, your ass exposed to him.

Javier squeezes your ass, letting out a growl between thentes. His hand pushes your back down on the table.

You hear his zipper opening, and the belt buckle unraving. You get anxious, you wanted to see him. Keep his image in memory.

He separates your legs more with his hand. Your wet gets cold with the touch of the wind over your middle, and you stiffen your body.

"Relax for me, cariño" Javier whispered as he climbed his fingers up your lower leg. Passing through your hole, to get your wet, and pass over his cock.

You hear him get behind you. He stop for a moment.

"When I do this, I use protection, do you want me to put one on?"

You bite your lips. You turns back, and has a glimpse of Javier's cock. Taking a long time to look at him. He stroked himself, he's big, possibly the biggest you've ever seen, big enough that you would be apprehensive if you weren't desperate for him, you wanted to touch him. The thick veins for their fulfillment. You run your tongue through your lips.

"Do you want a picture?"

You roll your eyes.

And you feel the burning of a slap on your ass. You retract, whining.

“Don't have that kind of behavior with me"

You look at him, needy. While he caresses the heat that his slap left on your skin. Your eyes go down to his cock again, biting his lips.

God, you wanted him inside you urgently.

“Was that what you imagined?”

“Maybe”

He’s possessed.

“I’ll make you remember me for a week”

He approaches you.

"You didn't answer me"

"I want to feel you"

"Damn baby, asking me to fuck you like a whore, with your ass turned to me, did I win the fucking lottery?"

Javier doesn't waste time, the head of his cock goes up and down through his folds, you follow his movement listening to his breath weigh in anticipation, growling behind you. Until he fits the head of his cock in your entrance, it sinks into you slowly.

You pull the air with your mouth feeling it fill you.

He pushes his cock on you little by little, inch by inch. You feel the burning of the grip of his cock in your pussy, opening you in half, stretching you. You moan, and you can't help but move your hip in an attempt to adjust to its size.

You feel so fucking full.

"Fuck" he murmurs on top of you, pulling his breath, panting "so tight"

He holds his hip with both hands.

"Stop moving, darling," the hoarse voice.

You whine for him.

And he pushes the rest that was missing at once, you feel his hip in your ass. The table hitting the wall with his impulse.

"So tight I thought I wouldn't be able to make it to the end" he makes his way back and you almost collapse.

You moan.

Javier started slowly, but hard, dragging his cock back, so only his head was inside you, at a slow pace that you felt your head sliding inside you.

“Feels so good”

He pushed himself back to you hard, as if he couldn’t stand not being inside you again immediately, as if being without you was almost painful. He moaned

You lift your butt to him, and feel the burning of a slap on your ass, making you jump.

"I told you not to move" his voice between you.

Javier was sure that if you moved this hot way with his cock I would come in from you, it wouldn't last for just 1 minute. You were so tight, he thanked him for making you cum before, even so wet for him, it would be hard to penetrate you if you weren't excited enough.

You try to obey, but feeling his cock inside you filling you is so good, that you can't help it, you want more from him, you want him to be deep in you.

"Javi..." your voice is trembling, you bite your lips.

And he seems to read your thoughts. His thrusts inside you become faster. More violent. You feel his cock in your stomach, a pleasant pain to know that he is all inside if you.

Javier sinks into you hard. Their hips hitting each other making obscene sounds.

The head of his cock was almost permanently against the point inside you that made your back arch on him and your pussy was so tight around him that you were sure you couldn’t take it anymore.

Javi pulls you to stand up. And you support your leg on the table in front of you, being more open to him, giving him more access.

He growls at you, over your hair, pulling your hair to the side, to bite your skin on your shoulders, suck your neck.

Everything was so intense that you didn’t seem to worry about someone listening to you both in there.

"Javi" you seemed to hum his name, which made him get so close to the edge of ejaculation, that he could hardly hold it before making you cum once again.

“Fuck, need to feel you come while I’m inside you” He murmured between his ears in the ear “Please, babe, fuck, please come for me…” 

You held the pulp of your ass, opening it for him.

"Ahhh" the heavy air of pleasure coming out of your mouth "Javi... ahn, that's it, oh, Javi..."

That was a song for Javier Peña's ears. He would cum just hearing you talk to him like that.

You collapse on his cock, your sight turns white, your body in shock with the discharge of pleasure, he feels your walls squeezing around him, and he can't hold it anymore, cumming on you.

Grubbing his cock deep into you. You feel his jets fill you. He sighs, still pressing deep into his pussy.

You are panting. He holds your body, still feeling your spasms. Your body gets soft, as if you turned into gelatin.

He rests his head on his back as he regains his breath, Javi's hands holding your abdomen. You felt him coming out of you. You whined.

He kissed the skin of his back, while squeezing your ass, lowering his skirt.

You reached for your shirt, and you were wearing it, when you turned to Javier who was fixing him pants.

You took a step in his direction.

Javier looked at you with intensity, still regulating his breathing, his eyes melted like lava in a volcano.

"Do you feel better?" You raise your hand to fix his hair that you made clumsy.

He grabs your waist pulling you to him. Nodding and kissing your forehead.

You smile.

"Good night, Agent Peña"

You got rid of his grip, to walk when he held your arm, and pulled for a slow, careful kiss, from which it was difficult to distance yourself. You walked away from him, against his will, because he held your waist firmly against his body.

Javier seemed drunk after this sex you had. And you found it hard to believe that he treated a prostitute like that.

He held your hand as you walked away.

Javier didn't want you to leave. For the first time he wanted something after sex. So used to simply opening your wallet and not having to worry about the later.

Everyone knew that he was the kind of man who would under no circumstances run after someone, unless he was a criminal. That he used people to achieve his goals, and that he wouldn't call the next day.

But you were already prepared for that.

But Javier wanted to take you to his bed, let you fall asleep in his arms, wake you up to sink into you, again, again and again. He wanted to smell you, the warmth of your skin. He wanted you for so long, and now that he had it, he felt so good inside you that having just that from you wasn't enough.

With other women he had something momentary. The relief was in that sexual warmth. Then he just wanted them to leave. It's always been like that. He wouldn't even know if he would know what to do after sex, for so long that he didn't have to worry about this kind of thing.

And that's where he realized how fucked up he was. The only thing he managed was to wish you a good night.

"Good night, Mrs. Assistant"

You smiled. You let go of his hand. And you left the file room, feeling him run down his legs.

[tropes-and-tales]

Celeste

Day 12:  Stripping (Colonel Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event that I created on my own because I am boring and basic and am trying to keep it simple this year...found here!) 

CW:  A minor mention of drug use; Smut-ish but nothing explicit; stripping; talk of a naked body; imagined sex; 18+ only to be safe.

Word Count:  1377

AN:  This was requested by the lovely @justreblogginfics

Colonel Carrillo sits deep in the shadows of the club, hidden away.  Most men cluster up close to the stage for the best view, but he doesn’t want to be noticed.  He’s tucked away out of sight, out of his usual uniform, blending in with the other men there to ogle beautiful women. 

The club is a frequent hangout for many of Escobar’s men, low-level narcos who nonetheless have important intel that they often blab to their dancer girlfriends.  Those dancer girlfriends then blab backstage, snicker and laugh as they touch up their hair and makeup, as they do bumps of coke to keep their energy up for a long night of dancing.

And you’re there too, a willing ear to listen for that intel that you pass onto your fellow agents.  You have arranged drops that Murphy picks up, and Carrillo combs through them carefully each time.  He waits until he’s alone in his office at night, and then he traces over your neat printing, the simple code that you and Javier devised before you went undercover. 

Carrillo pictures you in your UC apartment, shabby and small.  He pictures you bent over the slips of paper as you pick at a late dinner, pictures you rubbing the calf of one leg with your other foot, that absent-minded habit you have that he noticed immediately when you sat outside of his office.  He pictures you sighing, tired, missing home, missing even your DEA-issued apartment in the expat block of buildings.  He pictures you missing your real name, your real job.

Carrillo hasn’t laid eyes on you in months.  He can edge up to the truth but can’t quite admit it to himself, and you may miss your life, but he misses you. 

-----

Your UC work has layers.  You’re you, normally, but undercover, you’re Elena Aguilar, a Mexican-American ex-pat with shadowy provenance.  Your cover is that you possibly maybe probably had legal troubles in the States and fled to Medellin to avoid arrest.  It’s an easy way to explain away your American-born Spanish, and it gives you an extra layer of cover:  you don’t answer personal questions because Elena Aguilar is wanted by authorities in the States.

But Elena Aguilar becomes Celeste on the stage, and when Carrillo finally sees you again after so many months, he almost doesn’t recognize you.  Even clothed for a gentlemen’s club, you’re more exposed than he’s ever seen you before.  You’re in a short, pleated skirt that barely covers your ass, and it flounces as you take the stage, platform heels that add entire inches to your height.  You’re dressed up like a Catholic school girl—a tight, low-cut white blouse, a loosely-knotted tie, and a pair of loose braids—and Carrillo hates the hot beat of desire that pulses through him when he sees you.

The music is loud; Carrillo’s heartbeat seems to sync up to the bassline, and he catches himself holding his breath as he watches.  Dios, but why did he never consider how good of a dancer you are?  You had made a joke once to Murphy before you went UC, said something about all those ballet lessons in childhood finally paying off, but maybe there’s some truth to it. 

Watching you, there’s a sensuous, natural movement to your body that Carrillo never would have guessed at.  Some of the other dancers before you were blatant with their sexuality, sharp snaps of the hips, pushing their bared breasts into the faces of the patrons crowded against the stage, but you seduce the crowd, and by extension, you seduce him.

You work to the beat, but you don’t rush it.  You unbutton your tight blouse to reveal a flimsy see-through bra that pushes your breasts up.  You lean against the pole, slide down along it, arch your back like a cat, which makes your breasts push up even further.  You stand again, turn away, push the tiny skirt over your hips and ass.  When you bend over to push it down the rest of the way—you’re in a tiny thong—Carrillo inhales a harsh breath, and his throat feels too tight.

Maybe the song you dance to is long.  Maybe time slows down.  Carrillo knows you must be blinded by the colored lights dancing over you as you strip, and he knows he’s invisible in the shadows, but sometimes it feels like your eyes meet his.  Sometimes everyone else in the club—the hooting, leering men waving Colombian pesos and American dollars (he even swears he sees a Panamanian balboa at one point)—falls away, and it’s like you’re dancing just for him.

Carrillo went to Catholic school.  The man has few sexual predilections that veer into kink territory, but something about the Catholic school girl uniform makes him feel a certain way, reminds him of coming of age around other boys in slacks and button down shirts, around girls in knee socks and pleated skirts.  And you, as Elena Aguilar, as Celeste, has chosen his one, lone kink as your on-stage costume.

He only wanted to lay eyes on you, but here he is, reduced to a panting idiot, hard just from watching you, his erection straining until he shifts in his seat uncomfortably.  He’s a moment away from rushing the stage and wrapping his coat around you, carrying you home and fucking you senseless.  You, though:  not Celeste or Elena.

It doesn’t get easier for him as you finish your set.  You’re naturally athletic, graceful, and when you wrap around the pole, Carrillo can imagine it translating.  He can picture your legs wrapped around him.  He can picture your back arching underneath him, your arms above your head, your eyes heavy-lidded as he makes you come.  And when you shed your bra, Carrillo actually groans:  your breasts are perfect, your nipples pert and pebbled, and he can imagine putting his mouth on them, kissing you there, your hand against the back of head as he sucks against those perfect nipples, the sounds he could pull from you—

The songs ends.  It breaks the spell; the crowd claps and hollers, crude propositions in Spanish, a flurry of paper money that you bend down to gather up along with your clothing.  You do a cute little curtsy, flash the crowd a winning smile, and then you’re gone.

He wants to stay only long enough to calm.  He can’t careen out onto the streets of Medellin with an erection, so he sits in the shadows and watches the next dancer.  She doesn’t elicit the same response, thankfully—only you seem to have that power—so his blood cools by degrees and he deflates and his heartrate slows.

But when he starts to plan his exit, a waitress brings him a fresh drink.  He hadn’t ordered it, and when he tries to wave it away, she insists.

“On the house,” she says, and she sets down a clean cocktail napkin and sets the glass down on top of it.

His first thought is that he’s been made.  A narco in the club has recognized him and is sending him this drink.  As a message?  Poisoned, perhaps?  He runs his thumb over the rim of the glass and jostles it so the ice clinks.  He looks around but doesn’t see anyone obviously watching him.

Then he sees it:  slowly bleeding as the condensation of the glass wets the napkin, but he snatches the glass away before it becomes illegible.  A message on the cocktail napkin, and he recognizes the neat handwriting immediately.

You must have seen him come in.  Carrillo knows little about strip clubs, but it would make sense that there be cameras posted everywhere, and it would make sense that the dancers would watch them.  How else might they target the men who might give them the most money?  How else might they identify problem men?  Maybe you watched him enter the club, watched him be seated, and maybe those moments where he felt like he was locking eyes with you were real after all.

But the message, half-blurred by his drink.  Carrillo reads it on the sly, pretends to sip his drink and toy with the napkin like he’s bored. 

H - I want to come home.

[bullet-prooflove]

31. Never tease me like that again.

With Horacio Carrillo. Pretty please. (I'm sorry both these prompts jumped out at me.)

His hand was on your jaw, his digging into that deviant little spot just underneath the hinge of it as he angled your face away from him. His lips were on your throat, teeth grazing the sensitive skin as he thrust deep inside of you, his hips pinning yours in place as he filled you.

"Never tease me like that again." His voice was rough and fierce and he withdrew slowly before thrusting into you again. "It took all of my self control not to fuck you over the desk."

"I didn't mean..."

"Yes you did." He growled into your ear. "You come into my office with Peña, wearing that dress, telling me you've got intel... What am I supposed to think?"

"I didn't fuck anyone for it."

He grasped your chin, tilting your head so that your gaze was level with his eyes.

"You made them think you would and I can't have that." He told you, arching his hips so that he sank into your cunt all the way to the hilt. "I can't have them thinking your Colonel isn't giving you what you need."

[goodnitedrdead]

miscalculated steps

Colonel Carrillo x Reader

Summary: Horacio was a man of deliberate decisions. It’s one of the characteristics that got him to the position he held. When you came into his life, he threw all sense of premeditation out the window and knew he would follow you till the end of the world at a moment’s notice. The risk he took was calculated, but man, was he bad at math. 

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: Shootings, bullet wounds, death. Not towards any main characters though. fluff <3. silly things here and there.

Author's Note: sometimes I get possessed by the gremlin spirit of creativity so I just type words and hope they make sense when it's finished. feedback is greatly appreciated and will earn you a kiss from me <3

It amused you every time to have any sort of interaction with him and pretend you did not know the type of person he was behind closed doors. In fact, you both quite enjoyed the game you had to play outside of your own little shared universe.

It’s not like you didn’t want to share it with anyone else, the fact that you two were together, but you didn’t want any infiltrations to knock down the foundations you two had built.

For Horacio, it was the excitement and pure love he never really knew he wanted. Most of the time, he felt like a love-sick puppy. He was quite surprised nobody else had brought it up to his attention. He could already hear Javier snickering at him for the lingering and glazy looks he’d give you whenever you were in his presence. 

Truth be told, he tried his hardest to treat you like the rest of his team. He tried so hard to talk to you in the same stern voice he’d use with everyone else. He tried so hard to make sure you were always aware of your surroundings. He tried so damn hard to make sure you didn’t get any sort of special treatment from him. He tried and tried and tried so hard but the best he could do was soften his tone whenever he’d address you. The best he could do was make sure you were always in his line of sight and within reach in case he had to cover you. The very best he could do was to make sure you were his number one priority in that team.

It wasn’t always like that. He remembers when you were first assigned to Search Bloc. He didn’t think much of you. For him, it was another person to deal with which meant more weight on his shoulders that would slow him down. That all changed when you knocked him off his feet…. quite literally. 

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It had been during a stakeout gone wrong. Carrillo and Peña were informed about an exchange that was taking place in an abandoned farm-house outside of Medellín. As the two of them were heading towards their shared vehicle, you were leaning on yours having a cigarette. Javier called you out, and you looked up to see him waving at you. You quickly put your cigarette out and jogged towards them. Carrillo would eventually have to thank Javier for this, as he was the one who invited you to join them. You agreed, and got in the backseat of the car. 

As the three of you drove with minimal conversation, you kept shifting in your seat. Carrillo noticed after a while, the way you couldn’t seem to sit still, the way you kept readjusting the seat belt strap that went across your torso. 

“Everything alright, agent?” he asked, starting to get bothered by your actions. Looking at you through the rearview mirror.

You gave him a quick smile before you replied, “yeah.. All good.”

He raised an eyebrow at you and kept driving, falling into conversation with Javier.

Carrillo noticed the change in demeanor when you reached your destination. You weren’t fidgeting anymore. Instead, he found you to be overly-observant. As he placed the car in park, he saw the way you looked out the window, one hand on your gun and the other on the handle of the door. Alert.

As the three of you exited the vehicle, he was about to make a comment on your behavior, but it all changed when the bullets started to rain on the three of you. 

His eyes immediately searched for Peña as he was quick to find cover from the gunfire. The shooting was coming from above. The street was clear of civilians, except for the three of you and the shooters. It was four men, positioned on different balconies from the houses on the street. He could only see two in front of him, and he quickly took one down with his pistol. The man fell from the balcony, colliding with the hard concrete beneath him. 

Adrenaline coursed through his veins. His breath was coming in a quick and shallow rhythm.  Carrillo took cover behind a car, ducking from the bullets that were dancing around him. He paid close attention to the sound of the gunfire, trying his best to count how many rounds were left in the other man’s weapon. It wasn’t long before he heard the shooting from that direction stop, the man more than likely meeting the same fate as his partner. The smell of gunpowder clung to the air, silence was quick to take over the atmosphere.

He scouted the area around him, slowly rising to his feet with his gun drawn and ready. At the lack of sight of you and Peña, Carrillo started to panic. He was quick to inspect his surroundings, looking for either of you. He had counted four men before, and two of them got taken down. Sure he could take on the other two by himself, but the problem was that he didn’t know where they had gone. They could ambush him at any minute.

As he came close to an old house down the street, he was about to call out for Peña when he felt an overpowering force plow against him. He was knocked out of his breath, his back making contact with the uneven pavement below him. He felt a few rocks dig into his back, his head grazing the ground. It all happened so quickly he didn’t have time to register the weight on top of him, shielding him from the bullets. 

Just as he was about to strike his attacker, he was stopped at the sight of you. Definitely not the person he expected. 

You were out of breath, panting above him. Your hair untamed, framing your face in a way that made you look much younger. Carrillo never took the time to really look at you until now. You were beautiful. A part of him that he didn’t even know was there started to awaken. Was it the rush of adrenaline? Was the loneliness catching up to him? Was it the way you saved his life? Whatever it was, those thoughts vanished as he saw you jump back to your feet, running to the sound of gunfire. He didn’t even know you had pushed him into an alleyway, hiding him away from the danger.

As he got out of the trance he was in, he got back up and followed you. Only to find out you and Peña had taken care of the other men that were still on the loose.

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It still amused him, knowing that in an instant moment his whole world changed because of you. Never in a million years did he think he’d end up sharing a home with you. Where you two would create your own sanctuary and your own world together, a world so perfect that he’d feel giddy to get out of work and home to you. He couldn’t need anything else as long as he was in your shared space.

The excitement to come back to you at the end of the day was always there. But sometimes he’d get so wrapped up in his own mind. The exhaustion of work following him and finding a home in his bones, aching and wearing him down as the minutes ticked by. And there was no one to blame for such a feeling. It came with the profession. The formidable belief that you were changing the world, even if it cost giving up your own sanity.

 He was so thankful you understood. And you were thankful he did as well. The mutual understanding was something neither of you had in previous relationships, at least not to this level. Sure, previous partners of  yours knew of your profession and what you did, but they never really knew the extent of it until they had witnessed it first-hand. And it wasn’t a problem until you’d withdraw from your own existence. You would lose interest in the smallest of things, sometimes to the point where food wasn’t even an option for you. Finding solace in the cigarettes and cheap coffee you’d consume on your way to the office or with your own colleagues. You pitted the opposing party in these situations. Your self-awareness sometimes failing you to see that you would neglect your partners from being so involved with your job. Only realizing once they’ve been long gone, leaving you confused and a tad disappointed with your behavior. 

Making you wonder if you were even meant to be loved.

But that was until you met Horacio. 

With him, things were unlike any other. He understood. He got it. He knew the game plan and he knew how to play it. Both of you wouldn’t even have to speak a word to understand it had been one of those days. You learned how to read each other based on the most simple microexpressions. Sometimes it was the way he’d breathe. He would hold his breath at times, almost as if he were restraining himself from unleashing the anger he suppressed. Anger at the world, anger at the people who would do their part to make the world a shitty place. Anger at Pablo Escobar. 

Horacio couldn’t even begin to understand a man like Escobar. Why build your empire above the souls of Colombia? Why paint the walls with the blood of those whose lives you felt entitled to take? Who was he to choose who got to live and who got to die? 

The thoughts faded as he walked inside the only place that managed to bring him tranquility. With a deep breath, he allowed himself to engulf the feeling of calmness. The warmth of your shared home embraced his very soul, settling in his bones and scaring away the ache and weariness that usually resided there. He couldn’t hold back the smile that formed on his face as he walked deeper inside, looking for you. 

He heard you before he could see you. A string of quiet curses that left your mouth, along with things hitting the floor. The faint melody that flowed from the radio got louder as he approached the bathroom. Finding you haunched over the edge of the bathtub, you're back facing the door. As much as he wanted to surprise you by wrapping his arms around your waist, he couldn’t bring himself to scare you like that. Fear was an ever present feeling in your field of work and he was not about to let it follow you home. Instead he just learned against the frame of the door, delightfully observing you. 

You were setting candles around the edge of the tub, trying to somehow make it look… romantic. Inviting? Relaxing? You weren’t even sure what you were going for. All you wanted was to do something nice for Horacio, you knew how hard of a time he was having lately. He wasn’t the only one, sure, but as the Colonel and head of Search Bloc, he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. You wanted to relieve some of that pressure he carried, at least for this moment. 

You checked your watch, lifting a fist in a celebratory manner as you managed to finish before Horacio arrived home. Or so you thought. You had completely forgotten to retrieve the matchsticks to light the candles. Challenging yourself to go downstairs and get the matchstick box in under ten seconds, you turned and tried to make a run for it when you collided with a goddamn human brick wall. Oof.

You instantly felt arms wrap around you, trapping you in place. A smile immediately appeared on your face as you looked at the man who embraced you. Horacio planted kisses all over your face, making the most exaggerated kissing sounds as he did so. You giggled before you gently shoved him away, suddenly realizing he was home and your surprise was ruined.

“Why are you here? You weren’t supposed to be home for another twenty minutes!” you couldn’t help but whine, you really wanted to surprise him with this.

Horacio smirked, walking towards you with his hands on his hips, “I can always go back to the office and crash there. Would you prefer that, mi amor?”

You walked backwards, rolling your eyes before they settled on his gaze. The back of your knees softly touching the side of the tub, coming to a stop. You mimicked his posture, hands on your hips and a playful look in your eyes. “You’re more than welcome to do so. You probably wouldn’t even last five minutes before complaining about–”

He caged you in between his body and the tub, towering over you and wrapping his arms around you once again. His fingers making contact with the parts of your body that were the most ticklish. Wanting to make you regret your words.

You laughed as he tickled you, trying to squirm and get out of his grasp before it could continue. You jerked back to try to avoid his hands from touching you, but he had grabbed you by the waist and you forgot where you were and you lost your balance and the next thing you knew, you were falling backwards into the full tub and on your attempt to grab onto something, you ended up grasping his biceps and pulling him down with you. 

Horacio was a man of deliberate decisions. It’s one of the characteristics that got him to the position he held. When you came into his life, he threw all sense of premeditation out the window and knew he would follow you till the end of the world at a moment’s notice. The risk he took was calculated, but man, was he bad at math. 

He tried to act quick and move so he wouldn’t fall completely on top of you and crush you, but that didn’t work out. You started laughing once again as his weight held you down, the look of oh shit we fucked up evident on his face and you couldn’t even look at him because you weren’t sure what was funnier, that look or the fact that both of you had fallen into the tub, his drenched military uniform clinging onto every part of his body. The usually military green turned even darker as the water made contact with it.

He stopped caring about what happened when he heard your laugh, and he couldn’t help himself from joining you. The both of you now looking at each other and finding humor in the fact that both of you were completely wet. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you pulled him in even further, not caring about the situation anymore. 

He looked down at you and let his laughter subside, the feeling of adoration taking over. He was completely enamored with you and couldn’t even tell you because he was sure there was not a word on the planet that could convey the feelings he had for you. Horacio placed a hand on your cheek, leaning in slowly and taking in all of your features. 

You pulled away just barely enough to miss his lips, a smirk settling on your face as you told him, “you’re definitely sleeping at the office from now on.” 

Whatever quick comeback he tried to come up with disappeared when he felt your lips press against his.

[violentdelightsandviolentends]

Murphy's 500 Followers Celebration!!

masterlist.

in honour of this very exciting milestone, I thought I'd have a little celebration. i'm going to be writing short drabbles of your choosing!! i've created a prompt list, but I am absolutely encouraging your own ideas x

how to request -

pick a category - fluff, angst or smut

pick a character - there is a list below, but I am open to more suggestions!!

pick a dialogue prompt and/or a scenario prompt - there is a list below - feel free to choose multiple!!

then, send it in to me!! use the button at the top of my page, or request here !!

I'm gonna start writing next week, on 22/04. maybe earlier if I have the time. feel free to request multiple drabbles- the more I get sent, the more fun we'll have!!

Categories -

☀️ Fluff

🌧️ Angst

🔥 Smut

Characters -

Top Gun Maverick

Jake "Hangman" Seresin

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw

Mickey "Fanboy" Garcia

Robert "Bob" Floyd

✦

The Last of Us

Joel Miller

Tommy Miller

✦

Marvel

Steve Rogers

Bucky Barnes

Stucky

Sam Wilson

Matt Murdock

Frank Castle

✦

Succession

Stewy Hosseini

Kendall Roy

✦

Triple Frontier

Will Miller

Frankie Morales

Benny Miller

Santiago Garcia

✦

Narcos

Javier Peña

Steve Murphy

Colonel Carrillo

✦

The Bear

Carmen Berzatto

✦

Sons of Anarchy

Jax Teller

✦

9-1-1

Eddie Diaz

Evan Buckley

✦

Criminal Minds

Spencer Reid

Luke Alvez

Derek Morgan

✦

Dialogue Prompts -

1. "You love me?"

2. "Don't go on that date."

3. "Will you let me cut your hair?"

4. "Marry me."

5. "It's always been you."

6. "You're my best friend."

7. "You were my first love."

8. "I had a dream about you."

9. "I saw this and it reminded me of you."

10. "I have something to tell you."

11. "I thought you hated me."

12. "Is that all you got?"

13. "In your dreams."

14. "I don't deserve you."

15. "Talk to me."

16. "Is that my shirt?"

17. "I would choose you over anyone."

18. "You look so pretty like this."

19. "Most beautiful sound I've ever heard."

20. "You're killing me." / "You're gonna be the death of me."

21. "Just like that."

22. "Use your words."

23. "Good girl." / "Perfect girl."

24. "You like it when I'm mean to you?"

25. "Let's get out of here."

26. "You don't want them to hear, do you?"

27. "I need you."

28. "Let me see those eyes." / "Keep your eyes on me."

29. "Tell me what you want."

30. "I can't get enough of you."

31. "Wanted this for so long."

32. "Can I touch you?"

33. "Been thinking about you all day."

34. "You look so pretty on your knees."

35. "Better than I ever imagined."

36. "Let him watch."

37. "Let me hear you."

38. "Tell me you're mine."

39. "I'm yours."

40. "I love you."

41. "Don't you dare walk away from me."

42. "I can't do this anymore."

43. "You don't deserve me." / "I deserve better."

44. "Was any of this even real?"

45. "How stupid do you think I am?"

46. "Please don't leave me."

47. "I wish you were here."

48. "Do not raise your voice at me."

49. "Stay. Please."

50. "Don't tell me to calm down."

Scenario Prompts -

a. Kissing in the rain

b. First kiss

c. Electricity blackout

d. Camping

e. Heatwave

f. Childhood best friends

g. Grumpy / sunshine

h. Fake dating

i. Only one bed

j. Moving in together

k. Finding out you're pregnant

l. Catching eyes in a crowded room

m. Keeping the relationship a secret

n. Blind date

o. Reunion

p. Meet cute

q. Cheesy pick up lines

r. Exes

s. College friends / lovers

t. Roommates

u. Coming home drunk

v. Singing together / dancing together

w. An accidental kiss

x. A bet

y. Brothers best friend / best friends brother

z. Reading to each other

✦

these are just suggestions / jumping off points!! if you have an idea you'd like me to write a drabble for, just send it over. can't wait to see what you lovely people come up with. excited!! as always, so much love x

[kaira-diaries]

Hello, welcome to my page! I’ve been doing a lot of editing on my blog so bear with me!

I write for three different characters, who are listed down below

Some writings are mature and will be marked as so with (*).

Requests are welcome for ( D.M and Javier Peña )

I write one shots & am currently working on a Din Djarin multi chapter story, which can be found here and down below.

꧁ 𝘋𝘪𝘯 𝘋𝘫𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯:

𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘴:

- Inhale:

- The Lakes:

- Strangers:*

𝘔𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪-𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴:

- The Heiress’s Dilemma:

Elara Voss, a former galactic senator, finds herself at the heart of a crisis that threatens her family's legacy and the very essence of their honor. As she grapples with the fallout of her decline in the political world, she's forced into hiding with a mysterious bounty hunter. Together, they embark on a perilous journey to retrieve a relic that holds the key to Voss's redemption while avoiding enemies at every turn. Little did she know, this journey would unlock the emergence of a love she never saw coming and leave her stronger than she ever was before.

꧁ 𝘑𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘳 𝘗𝘦𝘯̃𝘢:

𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘴:

Pistol:

You are the daughter of Pablo Escobar's business partner, and your life takes an uncomfortable turn when you're thrown into your first task.

The Colonel’s Sister:

she's Carrillo's sister, and off limits, until Javier says otherwise.

I was Never There:

it's the height of the Escobar case and Javi just is never around. You're feeling a bit down and head to a club for the night with some friends. You flirt with a handsome stranger, not knowing the club you stood in was a narcos hotspot and Steve and Javi were about to raid it.

One More Night:

you're hired for a job at the embassy with Javi, but make one life threatening mistake.

꧁ 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘰 𝘔𝘢𝘭𝘧𝘰𝘺:

𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘴:

- Safety Net:*

Just a dash of fluff and smut for your timeline. (NO SUMMARY)

- High Enough:*

Smutty // Club Owner (DxF!character) (NO SUMMARY)

- Say it Again:*

fluffy // soft // astronomy tower (DxF!Character) (NO SUMMARY)

- Kiss it off Me:*

self-harm// blood// behavioral signs of recession. // Fluffy (NO SUMMARY)

- Always the Fool:*

Blaire is an intelligent RavenClaw with a broken heart. Draco is a loathsome Slytherin Prince with a familiar..stalker. With similar interests the two pair up for the Yule ball, hoping to find the solutions to their two very different problems.

- Loyalties:*

subtle implication of sexual behavior // Fluff // Soft Draco (NO SUMMARY)

-Labyrinth: SOON

Years after the war, you make your way through a magical relic auction, seeking unique additions for your shop. However, the atmosphere shifts as you discover a familiar stranger bidding on the same enigmatic relic that has captured your interest. What begins as a bidding war between you, transforms into an unexpected deal, propelling you into a whirlwind of adventure and unraveling a secret beyond your wildest imagination.