#relliot takes on javier pena

[unstoppableforcce]

dark side

—PROLOGUE: the first mistake

“we are rarely proud when we are alone”

pairing: Javier Peña x reader (narcos)

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a/n: ooo so this is the first part, but idk if I’ll keep writing more for him or not. all I know is that narcos is a damn good show, I’m enjoying my rewatch and I love pedro pascal

The second Stechner got up from the stool next to him, he knew he needed something more than just whiskey to quiet his mind for the remainder of the night.

He knew coming back to all of this was going to take its toll, hell, his dad had practically foretold it that night, sat in the truck halfway up the driveway. He expected the weight to pull at his shoulders, he expected there to be some form of consequences for all the bad he had done in a futile quest to do some good, he just didn’t know exactly how much it would all hurt his head to have it all drudged back up.

Every street he passed looked remarkably similar to the one Carrillo had dragged the young boys into, pulling the trigger to make a point. Everywhere he turned, he was reminded of the souls that met their end a part of a war that spiraled too far out of control far too fast. And everyone in the embassy seemed to know that it was all his fault.

Half wouldn’t say it, too busy regarding him as more myth than man. The dashing DEA agent who took down Escobar...

The other half only spoke of it to hold it over his head. The man who is responsible for setting los pepes out on Colombia should be in jail...

And they brought him back for what exactly? So Stechner could use him as a pretty face and solid name for the surrender he already had organized before he even signed the forms to bring him back down? What was he even doing there?

Was he just paying his dues? Was there enough money in this disgusting world to even cover the debt he created when he played his role in bringing down this country’s most notorious drug lord? Was there enough good left to be done to make up for all the bad that bloodied his hands?

Staring at the whiskey in the bottom of his glass, it was hard not to see a phantom hand, bruised and bloody, grasping the glass just over his own hand. He had been so naive back in Texas to think that coming back and jumping straight into what he left behind would somehow make the ghost constantly looking over his shoulder disappear.

No, he needed more than whiskey for any sort of reprieve from that haunting spirit.

He glanced around the bar, searching for someone to help and surprisingly found many candidates on what had been a pretty slow night when he first walked in.

There were women dressed like they were looking for what the same thing he was, there were women who worked at the same place he did, but there was only one woman in the whole bar who sat in the same silent suffering he did. Furrowed brow narrowed at the bottom of the glass in hand, giving the brown liquid an occasional swirl around the ice for no reason other that to occupy the probable onslaught of thoughts within the mind for a second longer than even the whiskey bought.

You were the only person in the whole bar who looked like you were going through something even close to what he was currently working through. All of which made you the only one he wanted. At least, that was what he told himself as got up and made his way towards you and settled onto the stool next to you, nodding to the bartender for a fresh drink for himself and for you.

“No thanks.” You waved to the bartender first, then turned to him and repeated the sentiment still in perfect Spanish.

“Sorry,” he nodded, still accepting his new drink and keeping the stool next to you. “You looked like you could use some company.”

That brought an almost heartless chuckle from your lips as you brought your glass back up to down the final sip. “I prefer my company silent”

He returned the same cold laughter, “funny.” You glanced to him and quirked your brow but he just continued, “me too.”

And silent was how the two of you stayed until he finished off the rest of his drink, laid money on the counter and offered to take you home. There was nothing silent about the two of you once he got you pressed up against the door to your apartment however.

Each sloppy kiss he trailed along your neck line seemed to echo in the dimly lit hall, each grab of his hands along your body causing the keys in your hand to rattle despite your desperate grip on them to keep them silent. And by the time you turned and began working on the locks, his groans against your skin had become anything but silent despite his best attempts to muffle them, his hands still pulling your hips back into his while you worked to undo the several locks you had.

And in the morning, he was going to wish he had paid more attention, but in that moment, all he cared about was that the taste of your lips was making him forget for the time being.

All he wanted to do was forget.

His suit jacket hit the floor the second the two of you stumbled inside, quickly followed by yours as he kicked the door shut with his foot and found the nearest wall to press you up against. Your hands found the bottom hem of your shirt before he even considered making a move for it, your body leaning back from him to whip the shirt off and over your head before reconnecting your lips to his.

The disparity of your touch was nearly familiar, though he was all too sure he would remember if he had ever met anyone like you before. No, this was a different type of familiarity, one that was more like looking in the mirror than it was seeing someone again after such a long time. As the tips of his fingers danced down your arms and stomach, he caught a few scars here and there and took that to be the only explanation he needed.

In the morning, he was going to wish he paid more attention. He was going to wish he thought with his head and not the quickly hardening length between his legs, but in the moment, he didn’t even have access to the part of his brain he needed to think that rationally.

The need to forget was too strong, overpowering everything in its way as he placed his hand above your head to steady himself while your hands moved for his belt and saw the same bloodied phantom hand grasp around it.

It was easier to bury it into your hair than to look at it for too long.

He repeated that over and over as he moved you to the nearby couch and settled your bare legs over his lap. It was easier to lose himself in you than to really look at you. He said it again and again as your silence turned to hushed moans into the side of his face. It was easier to feel you than to think about why he was so desperate to.

And as his hand reached up around your throat to coax the final string of curses from your lips as you clenched around him, he reminded himself again, that this was easier. He could deal with the real consequences later.

Except the consequences didn’t come later, they came much too quickly.

When he woke up still pressed against you on the couch a few hours later and got up to search your apartment for a cigarette, he found a badge and gun in your purse, which both you and he had tossed so carelessly aside the night before, instead of a smoke. He couldn’t stop himself from flipping the leather foldable open to reveal your face, which he only barely recognized, and three very important letters next to it.

CIA.

“Fuck.”

His brain still muddled with whiskey could sadly still read, and now all he could think about were all the things he had been so quick to ignore in favor of forgetting. The locks, the scars, the same look in your eye that he often found in himself when he stared at the bottom of his own glass of whiskey...

You were even in the bar where Stechner found him to catch him up on the plan he was working to bring to fruition... what were the odds that this whole night was a fluke?

What were the odds he went home with a CIA agent out of a sea of women who would have gladly filled their beds with him? What were the odds that it was some of the best sex he had in years? What were the odds that this wasn’t going to come back to haunt him...

Stechner was hell on two legs and all the badge said was that you worked for him, you were apart of the organization playing games with a country on the verge of a crisis. He was organizing a surrender for the leaders of a murderous empire and you... he glanced back to the couch where you laid, still alseep and half-wrapped in a blanket where he left you, unsure of everything he ever knew.

There was no way this ended well for him if he stayed.

And he almost forgot, while still holding your purse in his hands that he didn’t find a cigarette. A lighter but no cigarette. Why the hell was he trying to quit again?

Rubbing at his brow once, he shook his head and sat your purse back onto the counter, moving now to collect the clothes strewn about the entrance to your apartment.

He was out the door before you even stirred awake with the name he got off your badge repeating over and over in his head all the way down the stairs and back to his apartment.

It was a stupid mistake, and while a part of him held onto a sliver of hope, thinking that once he left he’d never see you again, every other part of him knew it wasn’t true. That just wasn’t the kind of luck he had. Not when he had done all the things he had done and damned his karma to hell ages ago.

So walking to the ambassador’s office the next morning and finding you waiting just outside with Stechner at your side, it really just felt like he deserved it.

It was just his luck, wasn’t it? This was just what he deserved...

“Fuck.”

—

tags->

(if anyone is interested in being added let me know)

[unstoppableforcce]

dark side

—CHAPTER TWO: complicated

pairing: Javier Peña x reader

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a/n: this part may not flow the best but I think the next chapter is where a lot of it is going to come together. I just really love these two but to show y’all why, I have to get to the next chapter so bear with me here

There’s more to Colombia than drugs and communists.

He’d been in deep in this game for longer than he liked to admit, but he had never once heard a single soul at the Embassy acknowledge the country for anything more than America’s playground as moral authority. The United States government wanted to protect their interests, they put the DEA on the ground to stop the coke influx stateside and they put the CIA there to make sure their precious capitalism was protected.

That was drugs and that was communism. So what the hell did you mean when you said there was more?

He understood the greater sense of the sentiment, that it’s a real country with real people and real culture, but he figured that wasn’t what you had meant. When you said it, you meant there was another reason for you to be in Colombia.

Not something as big as coke and communism, otherwise Stechner would have never pulled you off of it, but clearly something big enough to piss you off about the new position you had in his bullpen. He just didn’t know what.

What he did know was that Stechner, for all that he was, was not lying when he said you were good at your job.

Javi spent the majority of his days trying to keep his head down in budget meetings and strategy discussions with the Ambassador, the Colombian government, and more men in suits than he cared to count, but you sat at your desk, and against every grain of rational thought you surely possessed, did work as you were ordered. Reviewing intelligence reports from the police that gave up nothing because the police were paid to give up nothing, transcribing summaries on useless movements of underling cartel members, making phone calls for tips that turned out to be nothing 99% of the time and most of all, leaving the room whenever he wanted to talk without CIA ears around.

In all honesty, he had never, in a million years, expected you to have been telling the truth when you said you didn’t want to be the spy you were placed there to be, but each and every day, he showed up to the office and there you were, already there before him, head down and doing work that wasn’t close to worth your time.

He just didn’t get it. He didn’t get you.

But against as better judgement, he was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, he was starting to believe you, to trust you.

So when the reporter outside all but told him explicitly that the accidental gas leak in Cali was a coverup, he got stuck on an idea he knew was bad the second it hit his mind.

“Can we talk in my office?”

Standing at the front of your desk as you listened to tapes through headphones, at first all he got was a finger held up to his face, asking him to wait while you tried to hear the last of the recording. From the looks of the files scattered across the top of your desk, it looked like it was probably a tape from a cornerstone interrogation in Miami.

However, from the look of the empty pad underneath the tip of your pen, it wasn’t yielding much in the way of information.

After a few seconds, you stopped the tape and pulled the headphones off, looking back up to him, “yeah?”

“My office?”

You nodded, following him in through the sliding glass door and waiting by his desk as he slowly shut it behind him. “Is there a problem?”

“What do you know about this gas leak?” He asked somewhat mindlessly as he slid around you and sat back at his desk. If this whole ‘putting a plant on his team’ thing was under the cover of interagency cooperation, shouldn’t he be getting something out of it too?

Judging by the way your brow quirked, he figured maybe not.

But after a second to steal a glance to the bullpen then to scan over him, your face returned to the look before the shock and you took a step closer with a shrug of your shoulders. “What do you know?”

“That there was a gas leak.”

You scoffed at that, shaking your head. “Amazing detective work there—“

“What do you know?” He was quick to cut you off before your sarcasm could make a full appearance but you merely shrugged again.

“They’re calling it an accident.” You took a step forward, resting your hands on the back of the chair across from him, “I think anyone with the ability to think for themselves know it probably wasn’t, or at least, not the kind they are going say it is.”

“You have more information that we do?”

“The CIA has guys on the ground in Cali, you don’t.” Everything sounded so matter-of-fact when you said it, like you had this infinite knowledge and his questions merely bored you. He hated that he wanted to know what you know, he hated it because he knew how you knew it.

Looking at you, he didn’t see you as the enemy anymore, but you certainly weren’t an ally, not as long as you were CIA. He couldn’t ignore that.

“I kind of got shit on the last time I had guys in Cali.” He tried to play off casually, like the weight of the mistakes made wasn’t still sitting on his shoulders, like he didn’t have to send two perfectly good agents back to the states to appease the absurdity of the situation...

But it got you to chuckle, a break in your serious disposition he had yet to see from you until now. And he really didn’t mind it. If anything, he wanted more.

“You have to play by the rules.” You smirked, “until you can’t.”

He quirked his head at that this time, “What do you know that I don’t?”

Another chuckle. He was in much deeper than he thought if you were going to keep doing that.

“The total tonnage of what I know that you don’t...” you shook your head as you trailed off, patting the chair gently before standing back up to full height. “You trust your people more than me anyways, right?”

He gave a curt nod.

“Then put some of them on the ground in Cali.”

With that, he gave you another nod and watched you leave, back to your desk to do more work that was so far beneath your skill level it wasn’t even funny. And that night, long after he noticed you leave with a stack of files under your arm, he turned on his TV to watch the news call the leak in Cali an accident, and like you said, it didn’t feel right.

He needed people in Cali, despite everything the ambassador wanted from him and Stechner expected of him, he knew what he wanted from himself.

He wasn’t so much as sleeping these days as he was laying in bed, threatening to succumb to the hellish weight of guilt on his chest. Both from the past and from now. And it certainly didn’t help that every time he fell to his bed even slightly sober that he was enraptured with thoughts of you and that one idiotic night.

The days of using woman as sources were over now that he was dealing with Cali and not Escobar, so his days of going home with anyone else had really ended the night he was with you and getting off to the thought of you, the CIA agent, and his hand certainly wasn’t helping his conscience.

He knew what he needed to do, he knew he needed to be a real agent again, supposed surrender or not.

So that night, before he left the office, he ordered Fiestl to Cali with his partner, and by the time he made it home, he actually caught an hour of real sleep.

Turns out you gave good advice.

Not just on putting men in Cali, but two days later, when he found you lingering by the coffee pot, you silently encouraged him to “follow the money”, and you were right then too.

The combined wit of himself, your sly commentary, and the ample help of the reporter and he found himself thanking Bill Clinton and knowing the name of the cartel’s money man within a matter of days. It was luck he hadn’t had in a very long time, so long that it felt way too good to be true.

He was getting back into the rhythm that reminded him of working on Escobar, doing real work, working towards real answers. He lacked good men to bounce ideas off of, missing Murphy and Carrillo more and more everyday, but he was doing good work. For the first time since he had been back in Colombia, he felt like he was doing the right thing.

He should’ve know the second he moved for a plane to Panama that nothing could ever work this perfectly for him, he just didn’t deserve it.

But you looked good in fatigues.

He wished he could’ve done more looking at the way you were practically highlighted against the drab airfield by the sharp cuts of your black tank top and the stilling army green of your cargo pants. He wished he could’ve taken a dive head deep into that distraction but he couldn’t.

As with every time he almost got caught staring at you, he was painfully reminded of exactly who you were. This time, it was you arguing with Stechner to pull him back to reality.

He didn’t hear the argument, he could just see the two of you were locked in it as he approached. By the time Stechner spotted his approach, he dismissed whatever you were saying and ended the conversation before Peña came close enough to hear.

He caught your stare briefly, noticing what he almost tricked himself into thinking was a blink of apology in your sincere stare, but he knew now that he didn’t have that kind of luck.

“What the fuck is going on?” He turned to the CIA station chief, trying to figure out if he really knew the definition of smug until he met him.

“Orders are orders, you heard the ambassador.” Stechner responded simply, the same kind of simple he always got from you, but at least a thousand times more superior in every way as he crossed his arms over his chest and gave a minuscule shrug. “Our friends from the senate want the down low from a real life hero.”

He heard your scoff from where you leaned against the helicopter, even as you tried to muffle it.

“Guess that’s you.” Stechner continued on, gesturing with a turn of his shoulders to the senators he had met earlier in the week, suiting up in vests and boots. “You got somewhere better to be?”

With that, he turned away completely, leaving just you, still leaning against the helicopter colored in the same shade of camouflage green as your fatigue pants were.

“You’re wearing the wrong shoes.” You tried to joke out but it was clear even through the heavy sheet of tension between the two of you that he didn’t find it very funny.

He let out an exhausted sigh and reluctantly loaded into the helicopter with you, Stechner and the two senators, pulling out his tie as he did. Unfortunately, as you moved for the empty seat next to him, Stechner grabbed ahold of your hand and redirected you to the seat next to him, leaving the prime real estate next to Peña wide open for the desperately chatty senators.

You tried to offer something of an apology in your stare as you pulled your headphones on and strapped in, but either he wasn’t reading into it what you were putting into it or he was just too annoyed to care. You certainly had no problem reading the frustrated annoyance in his stare, especially as the senator next to him tried to ask some question you couldn’t hear over the noise from the helicopter.

After a while of traversing over the seemingly endless green landscape, you felt the acceleration shift as the chopper began to land, but as you hopped out behind Stechner and tried to steal a glance back to Javier, he was back to ignoring you, stripping off he jacket and rolling up his sleeves.

He was terribly overdressed for a day in the jungle, which was a shame, it was a good suit on him.

As Stechner began his lecture for the Senators, you specifically hung back to be only a step in front of him.

“You were out, otherwise I would have warned you.” You offered over you shoulder once you were convinced the senators were entranced by the demonstration.

He was out tailing the king of cartel money laundering, he was making real progress... he couldn’t help but roll his eyes, no matter how genuine you sounded.

“I’m being serious—“

“I’m supposed to trust you?” He spoke in more of a whisper as he crunched through the jungle on your heel.

“Some things do exist outside my range of control, Peña.”

He starts making real progress and he gets detoured like this? No matter what you argued, mo matter what he thought about his own bad luck, coincidences like this didn’t just happen. He wasn’t needed here, ambassador’s orders or not, what the hell did the senators need to come out here for anyways?

Then came the smell.

The jungle had its own smell, but coke and dead bodies always managed to shine through.

“FARC or traffickers?” The senator asked.

“Both...” he heard Stechner say as he continued his explanation.

A blatant lie. All of this was a big fucking lie, one you seemed to have a personal hand in telling now that Stechner turned to you and easily coaxed facts from you, he couldn’t stand it.

He peeled off from the group, just trying to get out of his head but by the sound of crunching jungle beneath boots from behind him, he knew you were close following. Turning back towards you, he threw his hands up by his sides and let a scoff slip out, not expecting you to flinch but in no way comforted by your near robotic stare directed back his way.

Glancing behind you to be sure the senators and Stechner were out of range, he blew out a breath and turned back towards the jungle, “this whole thing is staged.”

You didn’t respond though, you just maneuvered around him, coming face to face with him.

“These aren’t traffickers.” He would kill for a cigarette as he stared you down, “they’re strapped with AK ammo and those fancy guns Stechner had you modeling are M-4s.”

“You know your guns...” you mused carefully and he purposefully scoffed directly in your face this time.

He was so far from amused, your comment barely registered with him before he continued on, “He’s using you as what? The pretty face behind all of this?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, like you’re the hero who brought down Escobar.” Shooting back, you took a challenging step up towards him. “He’s using you too.”

“You think I don’t know that?” He didn’t raise his voice, but his low shift in tone was just enough to send shivers down your spine.

But you weren’t one to back down, “Well you could’ve fooled me—“

“You’re the one who plays along—“ he was just as quick.

“It’s my job to play along, what the hell is your excuse?”

He stopped for a second, realizing just how close to argument brought him to you and took a step back, scratching at his brow as he did. He didn’t know why he let you get him so riled up, he didn’t know why you had the effect on him that you did.

Part of him figured it was because he liked you, that the determination and ability you demonstrate when you work as hard as you do is enough to distract him from who you are just long enough to let you in under his skin. But then he remembers why he isn’t supposed to like you, he remembers what you are a part of and it infuriates him. He can’t blame you for being what you are, he can’t even blame you for lying about it. Everything you had done up to this point was honest...

He could only blame himself for letting it get to him and he was pretty good at blaming himself for things.

“You have a cigarette?” He muttered as he turned back to you.

With your arms crossed over your chest, practically drawing his eyes to the low neck of your tank top, you shook your head, snapping his gaze back to yours. “I don’t smoke.”

He kicked the dirt beneath his shoes, the wrong shoes, and let out another hefty sigh.

“Were you lying about being in Colombia for something other that drugs and communism?” He eked out with a voice weaker than he could be proud of.

“I haven’t lied to you since I met you, Peña.” You were quick to retort, your voice never dropping in strength. “Why?”

He shook his head, settling his hands to his hips, “if you’re not here for this, why the hell do you let Stechner use you as a prop? Why do you let him get away with these lies for fucking fundraising?”

“It’s politics.” You scoffed back to him, taking a step closer. “You didn’t come to Colombia for it either, but here we both are.”

Great, he thought, another similarity between the two of you.

He hated that he couldn’t out-argue you, not that he was used to outsmarting the women he worked with, but most of the women he worked with were secretaries and assistants who were almost eager to bend to his will. You were smarter than him and he could tell the first time you opened your mouth in that bar.

He just wished he had realized then the shit he was about to bring down on himself and stopped before he even started.

But you were smarter than him, and he had to deal with that now.

“What did you come to Colombia for?”

You twisted your head, having not expected the question, but before you could open your mouth to give him the answer he was looking for, another voice called from behind the two of you.

“Agent Peña?” Both of you turned to see Stechner stood with his hands on his hips, “the Senators want to speak with you.”

He stole a glance back to you and you gave a heartless shrug, “good luck.”

A laugh nearly bubbled to the surface of his frustrated demeanor, like a joke the universe was playing. He had never had an ounce of good luck in his life, not before Colombia and certainly not now, as he scanned you over one last time.

You were his type, almost too perfectly his type. He couldn’t help but wonder if Stechner grew you in a tube just to mess with him, he certainly wouldn’t put it past the man. A beautiful woman, standing strong in army fatigues and a member of the CIA. He was shaking his head a lot more these days then his last time in Colombia, or at least it felt like he was.

Good luck...

He didn’t have any of that. All he could hope was that maybe Fiestl and Van Ness did.

-> tags: (let me know if you’d like to be added or if I missed you! I’m not great at tagging lol)

@the-feckless-wonder @arrowswithwifi @ms-dont-care @leo-moon @tiffdawg @readsalot73 @way-too-addicted-to-anime @keeper0fthestars @adikaofmandalore @opheliaelysia @magneticbucky

[unstoppableforcce]

I still don’t know how I feel about what I’ve tried writing for Javi but I made this cute header for my masterlist and now I kinda feel like I have to post the first part tonight

[unstoppableforcce]

Omg I would love to read a Javi fic from you! He’s my grumpy baby 💙

prologue coming tonight! we’ll see how it goes!!

[unstoppableforcce]

Please write about Javi, you're an incredible writer and i'd love to see how you picture him

awww thank you so much

I’m really considering it ;))

[unstoppableforcce]

Ahhhhh I love the Javier header!!

aaaaahhhhh thank you!! there will be some Javier writing coming soon to go with it!!

[unstoppableforcce]

I would literally read anything you write so a Javier Peña fic? I’ll be there 🙋🏻‍♀️

oh my goodness, you’re so sweet

thank you so much!!