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spacecowboyhotch · 4 months

Text

Personal Issue

summary: santi invites you to his hotel room the day after your engagement to talk. he says the unexpected— that he’s in love with you.

prompt: "Why did you never tell me?" "It was a personal issue." "You being in love with me kind of also involves me." - @creativepromptsforwriting

pairing: santi garcia x f!reader

contents: get together fic, best friends to lovers, simp!santi (he’s lowkey a lil pathetic but i love him), angst, mental health issues/thoughts of dying, cheating, kissing

wc: 1,966

an: a teeny tiny something bc i miss santi. thanks to @ivystoryweaver for the beta <3

oscar characters masterlist

"Why did you never tell me?" You demand, unable to keep the horror out of your voice.

Santi ignores the way your tone scrapes at the wound in his heart— the wound that’s always been open because of you. Always fresh, unable to heal because of you. You always seemed to be just out of reach, slipping through his fingers for one reason or another.

"It was a personal issue,” He reasons, shoving his hands in his pockets.

He can hardly look at you. It’s humbling. He’s never had an issue with charming a woman, but you aren’t just any woman. You’re his best friend. There are too many eggs in this basket.

You scoff, crossing your arms against your chest, "You being in love with me kind of also involves me."

“I didn’t— things were different before.”

“Different,” You test the word, not at all buying it. It feels like bullshit. Like a cop-out.

“Yes, different. We were kids, and then I was gone all the time.”

“No, Santi, you can’t do this to me.”

Santi smiles, though there is no humor in it. You’re right— he shouldn’t be doing this. Not today, not any day, but he’s finally reached his limit. It’s now or never.

“I don’t really have a choice, now did I, cariño?”

You glare at him, about ready to rip his head off because that‘s not true. You and Santiago have known each other for most of your lives— and you’ve loved him for at least half that. He could’ve told you days, weeks, months, years ago that he felt the same. But in true Santiago Garcia fashion, thinking only of himself and the consequences that sit right in front of him, he’d told you today.

Today wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t the day after you’d gotten engaged. No, Santi chose the day after you’d finally given yourself to someone else completely, the day after you promised yourself you’d settle and try to stop loving him. What you’ve wanted for years and years on end has finally come and now it feels like some sort of cruel joke.

“That’s one of the most heinous lies you’ve ever told.”

“The Colombian government would disagree.”

“You know what— get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see you ever again. I can’t believe that you think you can just waltz right in here and—“

Santi takes two long strides towards you, closing the gap between you so that he can cup your face. “Tell me no. Say it. You have to say it to me.”

“Santiago, please,” You plead softly with him, your eyes round with fear. Your hands reach up to grasp his, making futile attempts to pull them away. “Don’t make me choose.”

Santi leans closer, the tip of his nose ghosting yours. His eyes are darker than usual, burning into you, a little angry— though he has no right to be— and a little desperate. “Why? Why not, hmm? He’s not that important, is he? Because you know you’ll choose me, don’t you?”

“Stop. Stop. Do you know how unfair this is? How fucked up it is for you to tell me this?”

Santi’s grip on your face tightens— it’s not painful but it’s frantic. You can feel the urgency in his fingertips. “Yes. Yes, I know. And I’ve always wanted to be better for you. I want to be a good man, I want to be worthy. Not some fucked up guy who’s better at killing than he is at telling the woman he loves how much she means to him. But, I’m not.”

“You could try.”

“I have. Don’t you get it, baby, I have. Yesterday when I saw those pictures. When I saw this—“ He tangles his fingers with your own, twisting your hand so you have to stare the ring sat on your finger in the face.

It glistens and gleams like it taunting you. It’s exactly what you wanted— the right cut, the right material—sparkling even in the dark. Your stomach churns at the sight of it. You shouldn’t have said yes, that much you know for sure. When you went back to your apartment last night you sat in the shower, your tears disguised under its spray. And when you had emerged, you’d made yourself a promise. To be a good and loyal spouse to the man that had actually chosen you.

“It drove me fucking insane. I lost it because I’m losing you. I had to try. If you say no, I’ll never come back. I’ll take assignment after assignment but if there’s even a small chance, baby, that you could still love me— because I know you did…I know you do.”

“I don’t want you gone forever, Santi. I said that because I’m angry.”

“You have every right to be.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“Then what do you need, huh? Tell me, and I’ll give it to you. Whatever you want.”

There’s more than one answer to that, but you have to give him the right answer. You’d just promised yourself last night that you would move on. Who knew that he would make it so difficult.

With a soft, shaky breath you say, “I…I need you to let me go.”

Santi goes dangerously still, his breath catching. “What?”

“I need you to let me go,” You repeat gently, closing your eyes so you don’t have to face him. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

The words sound syrupy in his ears, far away and unreal. He looks at you with confusion. “You want me to let you go?”

“Yes.”

The sharp anger and desperation in Santi’s eyes fade away, leaving his features soft and round and sad. So markedly sad. He lets his eyes trace your face for memorization; lips and eyes, the slope of your nose. He leans in to kiss your forehead, letting out a soft sigh.

Santi has done wrong by so many others and even done wrong by you. But this he’ll do right. If you want him to let you go then he will. He’ll let you walk out of here and never look back. Maybe he’ll get so involved in his work that he won’t think of you or this moment ever again. Maybe something will take him away completely. He flinches at his thought— it’s been a long time since something that has floated around in his mind like that. Taking a step away from you, he lets you go, fingers aching with the ghost of your skin against his.

You rest your face in your hands for a few moments, trying to pull yourself together. And when you straighten, you’re sure not to look Santi in his, just in his general direction. You’re broken enough and meeting his gaze would surely cause you to fall apart.

“Thank you, Santi,” You whisper, not trusting yourself to speak any louder.

He gives you a stiff nod, “Anything for you.”

Why do those words feel like you’re being stabbed in the heart? If he meant them, then why did he wait so long? Why did he do this to the both of you? Your vision blurs a bit with tears and you quickly grab your coat from where it’s laid on his bed, taking deliberate steps towards the door. Your hand lingers on the doorknob— are you sure that you want to do this? To walk away from the man you’ve always wanted?

“Wait,” He calls after you.

You freeze, but don’t turn towards him— that would be asking for trouble. Trouble you are trying so fucking hard to avoid. “What is it?”

“I just— I have to say it to you one more time because I don’t know if I’ll be able to again.”

“I told you I didn’t want you gone for good, Santi. We don’t have to do this, you can just let me walk away and we can act like it never happened,” You say, though you’re not sure if you’re trying to convince him or yourself more.

“I don’t think I can promise to stick around. I can’t watch you marry someone else. I’m not gracious enough, querida.”

“Okay,” You whisper, the tears in your eyes starting to fall.

“I…I love you. I always will.”

Silence falls between you two, an empty cove. Santi hopes that it’ll be enough, that somehow, miraculously you’ll turn around and run into his arms, telling him that you love him too. Instead, he hears a soft sob and watches as your hand rises to wipe at your face before you straighten up and step out into the hall.

When the door shuts behind you he feels like he’s drowning. Like he can’t breathe. His heart is thrumming loudly in his ears, and he crumbles, letting out a groan as his knees hit the ground.

What the fuck has he done? Lost you forever, and told you that he can’t stick around. That was the last time he would ever see you. A world without you is one he’s sure he doesn’t want to be in.

He’s completely paralyzed with fear. He’s not sure how long he sits on the ground like this, shocked and still, but eventually his body starts to ache so badly he’s unable to ignore it. He crawls to the bed, reaching up to rest his weight on it and lift himself onto it. Here he can rot until he can no longer. Until Frankie or Will or Benny come to bang down the door and figure out what the hell is wrong with him.

It’s not long after that that someone does start knocking on his door. Has it been days? One of them was here already. Santi feels like it’s been minutes and weeks all at the same time, time stretching and squeezing in a way that feels unreal. It takes real effort to rise out of bed and make his way to the door. He doesn’t bother to check who it is, opening it with no reservations.

Maybe he died of starvation or dehydration. He must have been lying there much longer than he thought because it’s you. You’re standing at the door, tear-stained and so goddamn beautiful. This has to be heaven— except he’s undeserving.

“I love you too,” You blurt out.

“What?”

“I love you too,” You repeat. When Santi says nothing, staring at you in a daze you start to ramble. “I tried to go home and I couldn’t sleep. And then I drove around a bunch but I couldn’t stop crying because how am I supposed to live my life without you? Then all of a sudden I was here again. I love you, Santiago.”

“You love me.”

“Yes, I love you. Are you okay?”

Santi feels like his body has recalibrated. “Am I— get over here,” He murmurs, reaching to pull you into his room and crushing your mouth to his.

He presses you against the wall, covering your body with his own as he completely devours your mouth, forcing his way in and sucking at your tongue. All you can do is melt into him, hands scrambling to find purchase in the fabric of his shirt so that you can clutch him closer. His mouth is firm and so sweet. You want to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him for the rest of your life. Something in your brain reminds you that maybe, just maybe, if he loves you as much as he claims he does you will. It has you giggling into his mouth.

He grins into the kiss. “My kissing is funny, is it?”

“Funny isn’t the word I’d use for it but just to be sure— kiss me again?”

“Anything for you,” He murmurs, his mouth capturing yours once more.

santi taglist: @jitterbugs927, @theconsultingdoctor10, @tanzthompson, @clairevoyanceee, @moonmalice, @tiffanypooh, @dearvirtualdiary-blog1, @marc-spectorr, @xbellaxcarolinax, @toracainz, @mccn-bcys, @missdictatorme, @whatthefishh

#santi garcia x reader #santiago garcia x reader #santi garcia x fem!reader #santiago garcia x fem!reader #triple frontier #triple frontier fanfiction #arson writes

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tropes-and-tales · 19 days

Text

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 to.

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.”

#colonel horacio carrillo x reader #colonel horacio carrillo #horacio carrillo x reader #horacio carrillo imagine #horacio carrillo #colonel carrillo #colonel carrillo imagine #colonel carrillo x reader #narcos #tropes and tales

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cherry-holmes · 7 months

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Glimpse of a life with Javier Peña (series)

Chapter 1

MAIN MASTERLIST

Summary: Javier Peña met you while you worked in the Embassy's Translation Department, and now he finds himself wondering why he can't stop thinking about you, even at the most inappropriate moments.

SERIES MASTERLIST Part 2

Pairing: Javier Peña x f!Reader

Word count: +3k

Warnings: SMUT. Javier has sex but not with reader. Oral sex (m receiving). Degradation kink. Cum eating. Fingering. Hair pulling. Let me know if I miss anything.

A/N: Hola! So… this is the official first chapter of the series “Glimpse of a life with Javier Peña”!! Yeeey

I hope you enjoy it. Thanks a lot for the support in the firsts works of the serie❤️ PLEASE, CHECK ON THE SERIES MASTERLIST FOR LEARN HOW TO READ IT! If you have any questions, my box is always open.

I’m also open for requests.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

He didn't used to take his reports himself to the Embassy's Translation Department, but Messina wanted to punish him for being stubborn and disobedient in the last raid, so she made him take his and Murphy's daily reports to you.

He knocked on the door, with an annoyed look on his face as he was eager to just go home, call one of his informants with the excuse of "catching up", have one or two glasses of whiskey and some cigarettes, and then kick her out of his apartment when they were done. It was a routine as much as brushing his teeth every morning. It wasn't healthy and it was miserable, but it was what it was.

"Come in," said a gentle and tired voice from behind the tallest file holder he had ever seen in his life.

He walked closer to your desk, and then he saw you: a pair of beautiful bright eyes looking up at him behind a pair of reading glasses, a blue dress that perfectly accentuated your breasts and waist effortlessly, but it also didn't reveal anything that could look purposefully vulgar. No, it wasn't your intention; you were professional.

"Umm... Hi," he said, surprised by his suddenly own nervousness towards you. That doesn't happen to him; Javier Peña never felt intimidated by any woman before. Never. But that was before you. He lifted the files in his hand, and you frowned with a cute expression. "Messina asked me to bring these to you," he explained.

"Is it late already?" you asked as you looked at your wristwatch to check the hour, but it was fine, you still had an hour and a half. You looked back at him and reached a hand to take the papers. "I usually go to collect them myself from your desks after I finish my working day... Did she need me to take them earlier?" you asked, a bit worried. You always performed your duties as well as you could, and you had never received a complaint about your working style: you took the reports from the DEA agents at night, translated them the next day, and delivered them to the Colombian Government's office by the evening, then repeated the routine.

"No, no," he was quick to say as he saw your concern, "She was actually making me do it to punish me," he explained, scratching the back of his head.

"Oh..." you exclaimed, "Well, thank you," you said as you placed the file in your pending-file organizer.

Javier couldn't help but notice the attractive woman before him, her beauty and intelligence captivating him. As he handed over the files, he couldn't resist striking up a conversation.

"You know," he began with a charming smile, "I've been around this office for quite some time, it's surprising I haven't crossed paths with you before. I thought I knew everyone here."

You smiled, appreciating his evident charm, but also aware of his reputation. "Well, I tend to keep a low profile," you replied, a hint of playfulness in your tone. "I'm not one to seek the spotlight."

He chuckled softly, his voice lowering playfully, locked onto yours. "Maybe I've just been looking in all the wrong places, then."

Your heart raced a bit as he flirted with you. You had heard about his reputation as a bit of a playboy, and as attracted as you already were to him, you knew better than to let your guard down completely.

"Well, I must say, I'm glad Messina decided to send me your way today. It's refreshing to meet someone so intriguing."

Your blush deepened as his flattery made you smile. You quickly composed yourself and replied, "Thank you, Agent Peña. I'll make sure to handle these reports promptly."

Javier assumed that you knew his name because you worked on his reports. Now he wanted to know yours. "I look forward to seeing you around more, Miss..." He paused, waiting for you to supply your name.

When you do, he repeated your name in a way you had never heard before, as it was the most precious sound he had ever heard.

"Well, it would be a shame to keep such a charming presence hidden away."

You could feel your heart flutter at his words, and you managed to reply with a playful tone, "I'll consider it, Agent Peña. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some translations to attend to."

With a final smile and a parting glance, you turned your attention back to the files, leaving Javier with a lingering sense of curiosity and attraction.

When you were sure he was far from your office, you couldn't help but smile and giggle like a teenage girl. He hadn't seen you before, but surely you had seen him. It was almost impossible not to know about Javier Peña, the DEA agent who was a complete playboy, the one almost every woman in the office talked about. You had seen him from a distance before, and you always thought he was handsome, but you never attempted to get closer to him. You never thought he would cross the threshold of your office either.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

That night, Javier called Helena and took her on his couch, as usual. She gave him everything he wanted just as she knew how he liked it. It was completely obscene, it was sinful. That was how he liked it.

Helena offered her head to please him. Moving up and down along his length, filthy noises filling his living room as he gripped her hair tightly.

Javier tried his best to concentrate on her mouth, but his mind kept drifting to you. What's even weirder was that he wasn't even thinking about you for that purpose. No, he was thinking of your blushed cheeks when he flirted with you, your shiny eyes, and that dress... How would it feel to kiss you? To touch your soft hair? How would it be to feel your skin against his, to trace every contour of your body with his lips?

Well, now he was thinking about you in that way. He couldn't help it, and it made him feel guilty, to be honest. He didn't really know you beyond your name, and thinking about you while another woman was giving him a blowjob wasn't morally right.

Helena kept doing her job, taking him deeply into her throat until her nose rubbed his pubic hair, licking his heavy balls, spitting on it, choking on it. Javier told himself that he must get you out of his mind. So he did.

Pulling her hair, he lifted her head to him so he could see the mess she did. Teary eyes looking at him full of lust and sin, saliva dripping down her chin until it landed on her bare breasts. She was a whore, he liked that.

"En el sillón," he ordered as he stood up. Helena obeyed and climb to the couch, settling her arms on the backrest and offering her ass. He slapped her and she moan in the middle of a giggle. He passed his fingers between her soaking wet folds. "Estás muy mojadita, ¿todo eso solo por chuparme la verga?," he played.

She giggle again. Fuck, she liked him so damn much.

"Tienes una verga muy rica," she answered.

Javier grabbed her hips and pulled her closer to him as he grabbed his cock to position it on her entrance.

"I've heard about that," he groaned as he buried himself on her pussy, making her cried with pleasure.

He began to thrust into her without giving truce. His hand gripped her hair, forcing her to throw her head back so he can see her features lost in pleasure and ecstasy. Javier could feel her fluids soaking his balls as they hit on her clit so hard, making a vulgar, filthy sound that echoed through the apartment.

"Fucking whore," he groaned, making her fluid run like a river down her legs. She liked when he speaks English to her. "You liked that, whore? Mhm?," she nodded, "Respóndeme cuando te hablo, puta," he demanded.

"Si... oh, mier..., ¡Si, si, Javier!," she screamed, "¡Que rico, no pares!," she begged as her fingers clung to the chair in search of balance.

He was completely wild, lost in her. Helena didn't know exactly why; he never talked to her about his working day or his problems. But she did know that when he was that desperate, it was because a very complicated day had preceded him.

Javier was so close, he could feel it in his balls and the knot that tightened in his lower belly. He could also feel that she was about to finish too, by the way her cunt started to dripped even more and how she clenched around his cock.

He pulled out of her, pumping himself, and then pulled her by the arm to guide her off the couch.

"De rodillas," he said. She kneel in front of him and opened her mouth nice and wide for him. "Make yourself cum," he ordered her.

After a few strokes, Javier cum with a a deep growl all over her tongue. Helena pumped two of her own fingers in and out of her sensitive pussy, and used her other hand to traced circles on her swollen clit. The moment she felt his warm load on her mouth, she started to quivering with pleasure, reaching her own climax.

"Let me see," he grabbed her chin, squeezing her cheeks so she wouldn't close her mouth. "Such a nice slut," he praised. He slapped her and she smiled evilly. "Trágatelo."

She would do anything he asked of her, and Javier knew it. He wasn't proud, but he often took advantage of that for two purposes: to satisfy his most primitive desires and to fulfill the needs of his job by obtaining valuable information about the sicarios and the cartel. Helena was a prostitute, which made her perfect for the job.

The sicarios had the same needs as any other men; they enjoyed sex and didn't mind paying for it. And since nobody paid attention to the whore they hired, they could infiltrate cartel parties, listen to their conversations, and seduce them to gather information in an inconspicuous way.

That was what Helena did: she gathered information from every sicario that hired her services and handed it all over to Javier. He trusted her because she was loyal. She also trusted him; she even gave him her real name and sometimes mentioned her daughter.

Javier hated it when she did that. He didn't want to know too much about her life, but he pretended to listen anyway. She was a single mother and, of course, didn't like her job. But it paid the bills and, most importantly, it provided her daughter with food and clothes.

Javier didn't like to pay for sex. Money implied pretense, which could lead to betrayal. Prostitutes would say what you wanted to hear, do what you wanted them to do, as long as you paid, of course. You couldn't trust them blindly, but in the context of Javier's work, if not them, then who?

Moreover, he believed that there was nothing like a woman who engaged in pleasure willingly. He was a handsome man and a cop, which was incredibly enticing and attractive to every woman he encountered. He did pay for the information they provided, and when they offered their services just because they were "already there," he didn't say no. Especially Helena; she was his favorite.

After using his bathroom to clean up, Helena walked half-naked to the kitchen while Javier lounged on his couch, a cigarette in his mouth and a glass of whiskey in his hand.

"¿Qué me ofreces de tomar?" she asked, taking a clean glass from the sink.

"Whiskey o agua de la llave," he answered as he light up the cigarette.

"Agüita, pues," she replied in a lower tone. She would never admit it, not to Javier, but deep down, she always hoped he would offer her a coffee and ask her to stay. He never did, and he never would. She would say no anyway; she had to pick up her daughter from her mother's place.

Javier took a sip of his whiskey and decided to steer the conversation toward business. "By the way, Helena, I was wondering if you've heard anything new about the cartel lately? You know, anything that might be relevant for us."

She nodded and leaned against the kitchen counter. "Yeah, there's been some chatter. They seem to be making a move down in Cali, and there are rumors about a new player on the scene. They call him 'El Fantasma.'"

"El Fantasma, huh?" Javier raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. We'll have to keep an eye on that." He reached for his wallet, pulled out some bills, and handed them to her.

Helena didn't like that part of their encounters because she felt like he was paying for the sex, not for the information. She had made it clear to him that "if you were my client, you would pay me first," just to let him know that she had sex with him because she liked him. She never rejected the money, though; she had a daughter.

As Helena finished her glass of water, she began to gather her things. "Well, Javier, I should get going. I need to pick up my daughter."

He nodded, his attention briefly diverted to the TV. "Sure, Helena. Thanks for the information."

She approached him, hoping for a warm goodbye, and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "Take care, Javier. Stay safe out there."

But instead of returning her gesture, he instinctively pulled away, avoiding her kiss. It was a reflex, something he couldn't control. "Yeah, you too," he mumbled, his eyes focused on the television.

Helena felt a pang of hurt but quickly masked it with a forced smile. "Alright, then. Buenas noches, Javier."

"Buenas noches," he replied, still focused on the TV.

She turned and left his apartment, trying to shake off the feeling of rejection, knowing that she was just another transaction in his complicated world.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

The Embassy's kitchen was an unexpected haven of calm amidst the chaos of daily operations. Javier, after a particularly grueling morning meeting, spotted you entering with purpose, a silent promise of coffee and respite. Perhaps it was the allure of a caffeine boost or a subconscious attraction that led him to follow you.

Unconsciously, he trailed behind, navigating the labyrinthine hallways of the office until he found himself standing next to you by the coffee machine. As he poured his own coffee, a wave of regret washed over him. He didn't want to be the type of guy who awkwardly followed someone around. Besides, how was he going to look at you after thinking about you the night before while he was involved with another woman? You deserved so much more than that.

He watched as you reached for a coffee mug, the aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafting through the air. Just as he was contemplating a hasty retreat, you turned, almost as if sensing his presence, and smiled at him. Javier mentally cursed himself for being so transparent.

"Morning," you greeted warmly, holding your coffee cup in your hand.

Javier cleared his throat and replied, "Morning," with a faint smile.

As you leaned against the counter while preparing your coffee, you engaged him in conversation. "So, how's it going with the reports today?"

Javier was surprised by your friendly tone and felt a bit awkward about the fact that he'd been trailing you, but he decided to go along with it. "Ah, you know, the usual. Paperwork and chasing leads. It's a never-ending cycle."

You chuckled, "Sounds like a tough gig."

"It has its moments," Javier admitted, feeling slightly more at ease. "But I can't complain."

The two of you continued chatting about work, the latest developments in the field, and more. As the conversation flowed, Javier began to appreciate your intelligence and wit. You weren't just another pretty face in the office; you had substance and depth.

"You have a curious accent," he pointed out, breaking a brief silence as you took a bite of a cookie. "Can I know where are you from?" he asked, genuinely curious.

Javier wasn't one to dig into personal information about colleagues, or in general. Not even with his partner, Steve Murphy. Let alone with any woman; he preferred to keep such matters separate.

"I'm from Mexico, actually," you answered, lifting your chin with pride in your roots. Javier was on the verge of smirking but refrained. There was something about you, the way you spoke and articulated things with your delicate hands, that had him captivated.

Javier hesitated for a moment, unaccustomed to discussing his personal life with colleagues. He thought, fuck it. "My family is also from Mexico," he admitted.

You raised your elegant eyebrows, "Well, I guess 'Javier Peña' has to come from somewhere."

His smile couldn't be contained. "My father's grandparents were from Reynosa, Tamaulipas," he explained, "and my mother's parents were from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua."

"So your parents were born in America?" you inquired.

He nodded, "Texas. And so was I."

You opened your lips, ready to say something else, when the tall and blond figure of Murphy interrupted you. He had a file in his hand and a hurried expression. Steve looked at Javier and then at you, lifting his eyebrows when his gaze returned to Peña.

"Messina approved the raid," he said with a slight nod.

Javier straightened up, his broad shoulders becoming firm and resolute. Suddenly, he looked taller and more imposing, you thought.

"I'm gonna grab my gun, and I'll see you in the parking lot," Javier informed Murphy, who nodded and, after one last glance in your direction, turned around and left the kitchen.

"I'm sorry, I've got to..." he began, looking at you.

"It's okay," you replied, holding your coffee cup. Then, after a brief hesitation, you added, "Take care of yourself, Javier."

The sentence warmed his chest, and he felt a warmth that almost reached his cheeks. He nodded, not quite sure what to say, and then left the room.

But as he walked away, there was a moment of realization. You had extended a friendly gesture, an opportunity to get to know each other better, and he had responded with genuine interest.

Maybe, just maybe, Javier Peña wasn't that hijo de puta that everyone said he was.

NEXT CHAPTER

#pedro pascal #fanfic #narcos #pedro pascal x reader #javier pena smut #javier pena x you #javier peña #javierpeña x reader #javier peña x f!reader #javier peña x female reader #javier peña smut #javier peña fic #javier peña x reader #javier pena fanfiction #javier pena x y/n #javier pena x reader

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veryintricaterituals · 6 months

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I am Jewish, what does that mean?

I was born in Colombia on the 49th anniversary of Hitler's suicide, I was raised here but I lived in Israel for about four years. I am not white, I don't look white, and my first language is Spanish. I came back to Colombia three years ago because of the pandemic.

I grew up Jewish and swallowed all the pro-Israel propaganda, I moved there looking for better opportunities and somewhere safe where I could come out of the closet. It took me less than a month to understand where I really had ended up in. It wasn't so different from my own colonized third world country filled with violence.

I did my best, I voted against the current Israeli government four separate times, I worked with and was great friends with many Palestinians and Arab Israelis (there unfortunately is a difference), I went to protests, I donated blood, I donated food and money. I fucking hate Netanyahu with all my heart.

For two years I taught English at a low income school in Jerusalem where all my students were mizrahi jews (from Arab countries) whose families had been kicked out of various surrounding countries in the 20th century. When I spoke to their parents and grandparents they talked about Iran, Morroco, Egypt, Yemen, with such longing and they brought me the most delicious foods. (Two of my students were killed two weeks ago, kids, barely 18 now, much younger when I taught them, I remember them).

My great grandmother on my mom's side was born in Jerusalem and raised in Egypt until all Jews were expelled and she had to flee with my newborn grandfather. They ended up in Colombia because she spoke ladino (Jewish dialect that is close to Spanish) they were undocumented, without a nationality because Egypt had rejected them, they had to lie and pay for falsified documents in order to get a passport, I still have a Red Cross passport in my house with my grandfather's name that determines he has no home country.

My great grandparents on my dad's side were born and raised in Bielorrusia and had to escape with my newborn paternal grandfather from the progroms after they destroyed their shtetl, they tried to make it to the US but they wouldn't take any more Jews so they ended up in Colombia.

My great grandmother on my paternal side was born in Romania, at the age of 12 she got on a boat with her 15 year old cousin, not knowing where it would take them. Her parents had both died and antisemitism was on the rise. She was so afraid that they were going to send her back that she threw her passport (that said JEW in capital letters) into the sea when they arrived at the port of a country she had never heard of, to this day we don't know when her birthday was.

My maternal grandmother is Colombian, she was born and raised here, Catholic until she converted to marry my grandfather, and yet when I went looking up our family tree I found we came from Sephardic Jews that had been expelled from Spain almost 500 years ago by the inquisition.

There are less than 400 Jews in my city that homes over 4 million people. My synagogue has been closed since October 12th, our president has equated all of Israel with Nazism on multiple occasions in the last few weeks. The kids that go to our tiny Jewish school have stopped wearing the uniform so that they cannot be identified. Ours is one of the countries with the least amount of antisemitism in the world. Someone in my university saw my Magen David necklace and screamed at me to go back where I came from. I went online and saw countless posts telling Israelis to do the same.

I am Jewish, I am latina, I am gay. My story is complicated, my relationship with my community is complicated, my relationship with my country is complicated. My relationship with G-d is complicated, my relationship with Israel is incredibly complicated. My history is complicated.

I am Jewish. What does that mean?

#this is my story #jewish people are complicated #our stories are complicated #please reblog #judaism #jumblr #jewish #israel

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reasonsforhope · 9 months

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In 2016, when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement with the Colombian government, scientists realized that the rainforests, mountains, and savannahs, out of which the FARC waged a 50-year guerrilla war, and which were counted among the most biodiverse and least-explored places on earth, were suddenly safe to explore.

In Colombia, a few biologists who longed to journey to the heart of these places also saw them as the perfect way to bring 14,000 former guerrillas back into society in a meaningful way that would benefit not only them, but the country’s stunning biodiversity.

Colombia is often referred to as the world’s most biodiverse country. Although this is a hard thing to designate since many species around the world of all kinds remain undiscovered, she does lay claim to the most bird species anywhere on earth – both endemic and migratory.

Who better to help protect Colombia’s wild spaces than those who know them best, thought Jaime Góngora, a wildlife geneticist at the University of Sydney but who is originally from Colombia.

Góngora now leads a group of researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia, and 10 different Colombian scientific institutions in a program to train ex‑guerrillas to study Colombia’s native plants and animals, which to date has uncovered nearly 100 previously-unknown species.

Peace with Nature

Peace with Nature is the result of these scientists working together with guerillas to help protect Colombia’s biodiversity and aid in the post-conflict situation for thousands of people, 84% of whom, according to Góngora, are interested in pursuing, of all things, river habitat restoration as their post-conflict career path.

Góngora and his colleagues are only too happy to help, and Peace with Nature began hosting citizen scientist workshops to help train eager folks how to find, identify, catalogue, and study wild plants, insects, birds, amphibians, and more.

The preparation work was long and hard – between 15 and 18 months according to Góngora...

“In some of the workshops, we have the presence of the police and military forces along with the ex-combatants,” explains Góngora. “I think what has surprised me most is the opportunity that biodiversity offers for reconciliation and healing after an armed conflict. These workshops have been spaces for a respectful dialogue about biodiversity and nature.”"

youtube

-via World at Large, 7/13/20

Note: Video is half in English, half in Spanish. Spanish subtitles for English parts only.

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iiconicxpersona · 8 months

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Whatever It Takes.

Javier Peña x f!Reader

Warnings: this fic features a scene from s02e03 Our Man in Madrid and that episode is a trigger warning in its own, but if you need specifics then this fic includes ANGST, mvrder, su!c!d3 attempt, depression, alcoholism. MINORS DNI & READ AT YOUR OWN RISK (I cannot stress that enough)

Word count: 3.4k

Summary: You and Javier get tagged along in a manhunt gone wrong with the return of Colonel Carrillo. After the tragedy that occurs, you look to Javier for comfort only to get heartbroken when he seeks comfort from another woman.

From the moment you were assigned the Escobar case in Bogotá, you prepared yourself for the best and the worst. You knew that once this case was finally over, and God only knew how long that would take, you would not return to Texas like the woman you were when you left. However, it didn’t seem to matter exactly how much you prepared yourself ahead of time in all aspects; nothing was ever going to prepare you for all the horrors you had witnessed and the ones still yet to come.

“We’re all in. Whatever it takes.”

Words you, Agent Javier Peña, and Agent Steve Murphy repeated to each other almost frequently to remind yourselves and each other that this is what you signed up for when you agreed to do whatever it took to catch Escobar and every single person whoever took a single dollar from him. Of course, Messina and the entire force did everything they could to keep your missions restricted, but to catch a bad guy; you must be willing to break some rules.

━◦○◦━◦○◦━

Colonel Carrillo was the King of playing by his own rules. His methods were cruel and relentless, but they were effective in one way or another. But those same methods ultimately led him to be transferred to Spain. When he was brought back on the team by the Colombian government, it shook you to the core, and the only problem was that you could no longer tell if that was good or bad.

━◦○◦━◦○◦━

The first mission at hand with Colonel Carrillo is to track down every spotter Escobar had hiding in the area. It seems simple enough, considering the spotters were mainly children under eighteen.

“Peña, Y/L/N, you come with me.” Carrillo orders.

You and Javier exchange looks of concern to each other and then to Steve, who's disappointed when Carrillo tells him to stay behind for radio contact.

“You be careful out there,” Steve adds as you and Javier follow Carrillo to one of the unmarked cars.

“You got your vest on?” Javier asks without looking at you.

You nod and pat your stomach hard enough to make the bulletproof padding audible. “I never leave without it.”

“Good. This could get ugly, so I want you to always stay beside me. Understand?” He finally looks at you while still walking forward.

“Jesus, Javi, this isn’t my first rodeo.” You scoff.

He rolls his eyes, clearly not amused by your comment. “Cariño, I’m fucking serious. These kids are dangerous, and the last thing I want is for you to underestimate one, and he holds you at gunpoint or worse.”

Just then, you remembered what Javi had told you the day Steve’s adopted baby girl, Oliva, was rescued, and you instantly regretted trying to be sarcastic. He never told Steve, but while they were chasing down the two men responsible for murdering Olivia’s biological family and you were in the house guarding her, Javier came close to catching one of the men until a little boy caught him off guard from behind and held him at gunpoint. Javier was sure that at any moment, the kid would pull the trigger and kill him, or worse, he would miss his shot, and Javier would have to kill the kid instead. Thankfully, once the guy he was chasing got away, so did the kid, and ever since then, Javier knew that with the right amount of money and power, Escobar could make anyone do anything.

“Always stay beside me. Understand?” Javier demandingly repeated.

You nod. “I understand.”

━◦○◦━◦○◦━

One by one, each kid that Escobar hired as a spotter was taken into custody. However, Carrillo had other plans instead of taking them straight to the station for interrogation like you and Javier thought.

Given Carrillo's extreme methods in the past, you should’ve known that this wouldn’t be as simple as you had hoped. Though you figured that because they were just kids, what could go wrong?

Everything.

One right next to the other, at least seven boys are lined up in the middle of a dark alley with their hands behind their heads and sitting upright on their knees. You stand next to Javier off in the distance while Carrillo paces slowly in front of them. As you examine their faces, it breaks your heart to see how young they are. Some look at least sixteen, but the youngest looks six or seven.

They try to keep stone-cold faces on while Carrillo attempts to scare them straight. A couple of the boys laugh at him and make insults in Spanish.

“Shut up, kid.” Javier mumbles.

You do your best to look as emotionless as possible, but mentally, you are frightened to know what is going through Carrillo’s mind, especially when he pulls out his gun and begins loading it in front of them.

One of the older boys laughs and asks Carrillo if he should be scared.

“No,” Carrillo replies.

BANG.

You stood there and watched the now young lifeless body slowly fall to the ground. Aside from the streetlights, the alleyway is pitch dark due to the summer evening, but you’d swear you could see everywhere the boy’s blood had splattered as if it happened in daylight.

It took every fiber in your being not to lose your cool or vomit at the scene. You were even too afraid to reach for Javier, who was only a couple of inches away from you, for some comfort. Although judging from how his body tensed up and the look on his face, he was just as distraught inside as you were.

What was Carrillo thinking? Even if the kid tried to be a fearless macho man about it, he was still just a kid. There were plenty of other ways Carrillo could’ve tried to prove a point to them about the dangers of working with someone like Escobar. Regardless of whether you liked it, he gave them a harsh reality check.

Carrillo then takes one bullet from his gun and hands it to the youngest boy, telling him to give it to Escobar and let him know who it is from. You watch helplessly as the boy takes the bullet with tears running down his face and stuffs it in his pocket. Then Carrillo finally sets the remaining boys free. You immediately cling to Javier once they are out of sight.

He hesitates for a moment before slowly wrapping his arms around you, still in shock from what just happened as you tried your best to hold back your sobs.

“Cariño…” Javier struggles to find the right words. How could he comfort you when he couldn’t convince himself that everything was fine? “We have to go.” He finally said.

Whatever it takes.

━◦○◦━◦○◦━

This is one of those nights you wish Javier wouldn’t depend on a cheap hooker to help him forget.

About six months ago, after almost losing you during a shootout mission, Javier suggested that you move in with him “for your safety,” which you hesitantly accepted two months later. Murphy always teased how Javier always had a soft spot for you, and although you couldn’t deny you also had a soft spot for Javier, you tried to keep your crush precisely that: just a crush. Even if it nearly killed you inside when he would come home late smelling of sex, cheap perfume, and cigarettes.

While staring blankly at a pile of paperwork, your mind couldn’t stop replaying what happened less than an hour ago. Steve tried talking to you about how frustrated he was about Carrillo not trusting him to tag along with the mission, but his words only went in one ear and out of the other.

“You should be grateful.” You finally spoke up, still not taking your eyes off the paperwork.

At that moment, Steve gave up on his argument. As much as he hated feeling like an outsider because of his looks, nationality, or poor Spanish, he knew his troubles were nothing compared to what you and Javier were going through at this very moment.

You could hear Javier mumbling under his breath on the phone at his desk, which generally meant he was talking to one of his hookers. At that point, you were already two shots deep in tequila and resting your head on your arms to hide your face like the game you used to play at school as a kid.

You hated the jealous feeling that crept up inside you as he talked to her about meeting with her in the next half an hour.

Why tonight of all nights? Or if he needed a good fuck to help him forget, then why couldn’t it be with you? You were there. You saw everything happen just as he did. Did it ever occur to him that maybe you needed a night of meaningless sex to help you forget everything too? In all the years you had known Peña, he had no shame in screwing every woman in sight, but he never once offered to put his hands on you. Sure, you flirt with each other almost every day, but would there ever be more? Were you not pretty enough? Or not skinny enough? Or because you didn’t open your legs to every man in sight?

“Cariño, you all right?” Javier’s low voice startles you out of your thoughts. He places his hands on your shoulders and begins to massage you once you sit up and lean back into your chair, feeling your body relax under his touch.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” You lie. Your voice is now hoarse from choking back all the tears and emotions.

Javier leans down and wraps his arms around your upper body with his chin resting on your shoulder. “Don’t you disappear on me, okay?”

You nod, and he kisses your cheek and gives you one last squeeze.

“I gotta run a few errands, but I’ll be home late.”

Desperation kicks into high gear, and you cling to his arms for dear life. “Wait, you’re leaving?”

“It’s just for a few hours. I need to clear my head. You understand, right?” He pulls away from you once your grip loosens, but you still reach for him.

“Well yeah, but…”

“But what!” He snaps at you in frustration.

Then it hits you in that very second like a ton of bricks: you and Javier Peña will never be more than just friends.

You let go of his hand when the tears build up again. “You know what? Just go. I won’t wait up.”

Realizing what he had just done, a wave of guilt washes over Javier, and he slowly steps towards you. “Shit, cariño I’m sor…”

“I said go!”

━◦○◦━◦○◦━

By the night's end, you had already downed most of the tequila. Murphy knew Javier would kill him if he had let you go home by yourself, so being the southern gentleman he is, he gave you a ride home.

On the inside, you were trying to fight off too many emotions. You didn’t dare to let Steve see you cry, especially after witnessing your little moment with Javier. For what? So that he can tell Javi, and they can laugh at how pathetic you are behind your back? Though you knew they would never do that, it was still a fear that helped keep your emotions in check.

“Thanks for the ride, Murphy.” You half smiled at him.

“Of course.” He could hear the pain in your voice, but he tried his best to keep cool. You’re already going through enough as it is. “Hey, just know I’m right next door if you need anything.”

“You’re a good man, Steve. Connie’s a lucky girl.” You lean in to give him a small peck on the cheek before letting yourself out of the car.

You dread every single step toward your shared apartment with Javi. You dread it so much that if you were stable enough, you’d walk to your old apartment two buildings over. Most of your stuff is still there, considering you had just moved in with Javier four months ago. You had only brought essential things like clothes, makeup, bathroom stuff, and a few sentimental values. But the fact that you were barely making it on your own to Javi’s front door was enough to make you rethink.

Once you stumble inside, the first thing you noticed was how quiet it is. Too quiet. Not that you and Javi were noisy people when he didn’t have women over, which thankfully wasn’t often ever since you moved in. But even then, the apartment is never this quiet. You hate the silence. It only made the events of tonight replay louder and louder in your brain.

Throwing off your coat and shoes, you let them land wherever as you make your way to the radio and turn it on to a local rock station with the volume on full blast. You swerve over to Javier’s liquor cabinet and mindlessly scan around at each of his selections. The one bottle of bourbon he saved for special occasions had caught your eye. Judging from how rich the bottle looks, it must be one of his most expensive liquors. Your conscious told you to stop, but the music and your drunk state of mind were enough to tune it out. You grab the bottle from the glass shelf and gnaw the cap off before downing the liquor like water.

You never smoked a cigarette, but once you found Javier’s carton in the cabinet, you pulled out a fresh pack and ripped off the plastic wrap. Javier was already a heavy smoker as it was, but he seemed to smoke a lot more when he was stressed out, and you wanted to know what it was like. If it helps Javi calm down, why wouldn’t it help you?

You flick the first white stick out of the small paper box as if you were already a natural to smoking. Not that you would admit it out loud, but after seeing Javi do it a few times, you were tempted and tried it for shits and giggles.

Lighting the stick between your lips, you inhaled deeply only to choke out the nicotine and smoke immediately. “I can’t believe Javi likes this shit.” You gag.

The first few puffs were disgusting, and if it weren’t for the bourbon making it easier to wash down the horrid taste, you would’ve thrown up after the first puff. But soon enough, you were already on your second and third cigarette. Each smoke is smoother than the last.

Dancing around in the living room in a tank top and panties, with a cigarette in your mouth and another bottle of whiskey in your hands, you were on cloud nine, and for the first time that night, nothing else mattered. You weren’t aware of how much you had already drunk or how you were already almost finished with the first pack of cigarettes. You even forgot you were in Javier’s apartment until the clock caught your attention. It’s 2:30 am, and Javier still isn’t home. If you were sober, you probably would’ve been worried sick about him, but his delay made you angry. He didn’t have to spend the night with another cheap hooker, and if he did feel the need to, he could’ve at least called you to let you know he wasn’t coming home.

How dare he? After everything you two had been through tonight, how dare he leave you alone? How dare he not be here so you two can try to comfort each other? How dare he yell at you in front of Murphy, embarrassing you when you only wanted him to stay? How dare he be a typical douchebag and leave you just to get his dick wet by some random bitch he barely knows? How dare he not see that you care about him so damn much? How fucking dare Javier Peña!?

At that moment, you refused to reason anymore and instead let your anger-fueled adrenaline take complete control of your body.

His precious liquor cabinet is the first item to fall victim to your rage. You push it off the wall with full force and watch it slowly crash to the ground, just like the little boy did in the alley. Then you grab every bottle that didn’t break in the fall and throw them in random areas of the living room. Only the shattering noise, your cries, and the loud music fill the void that is Javier’s apartment.

━◦○◦━◦○◦━

You don’t remember how you wound up on the bathroom floor next to the toilet with more bourbon in one hand and your pistol in the other. Your adrenaline was still pumping through your veins uncontrollably, and you couldn’t feel any of the cuts that formed all over your body from the broken glass. Miraculously, none of which were too deep to leave a permanent scar.

There’s no telling how long ago your rampage began, but suddenly the radio that was once blaring rock music had gone silent. You didn’t care. You sat there hugging your knees with the hand holding the pistol while continuing to drink.

You could hear heavy footsteps slowly inching closer to the bathroom, and then he turned the corner with his pistol pointing directly at you.

“C—Cariño…” Javier mumbled in shock.

He was about to rush to you, but then he froze in place the second you extended your arm and aimed your pistol at him. “Don’t. Come. Any. Closer.” You demand.

Suddenly, every ounce of color was flushed from Javi’s face. He slowly put his gun down on the sink and raised his hands in surrender. The image made you chuckle as he slowly dropped to his knees before you.

“Baby, plea—”

“SHUT UP!” You scream, and it catches you both off guard. “All I wanted was for you to stay with me. To help me forget. But no! Typical Javier Peña; you had to think with your dick! You didn’t even care enough to call me to let me know when you’ll be home or to see if I was all right. Do you realize that I probably would’ve never made it home if it wasn't for Murphy? Thank God he’s a fucking decent human being, unlike you!” At this point, you couldn’t hold back the tears as you cock the gun, making Javier tense up in fear for the second time.

“Cariño, I’m sorry. I fucked up, and I’m sorry. I should’ve been here for you, and I know that now. But please don’t do this.” Javier pleaded.

“It’s too late.” You choke out.

Javier felt his heart stop when you pointed the gun barrel at your temple. In his mind, he had already snatched the gun from your hand, but physically he couldn’t move.

However, once you pulled the trigger, the only sound filling the apartment was a click.

You gasp at the reality of what you were about to do and drop everything in your hands. Only then did Javier find the strength to stumble over and embrace you tightly in his arms.

You hyperventilate and bawl into his shirt as Javi tries to calm you down. Once again, your hands cling to him for dear life. “I’m so sorry, Javi!” You cry.

“Shh. Shh. It’s all right, baby. It’s all right. I’m here now.” He strokes your hair and slowly rocks you back and forth in his arms until you finally fall asleep.

Javier gently picks you up bridal style and carries you to his room, where he could grab a wet towel and some hydrogen peroxide to clean some of your cuts off before tucking you into bed. He took a second to sit there and stare at you as you slept peacefully. If he didn’t feel guilty before, he does now.

Javier sometimes liked to think of himself as a sharp man, but he was blind when it came to you. Murphy often told him that anyone could see you two were head over heels for each other, but he never accepted it as the truth. He never thought you cared about him as more than a friend. And he blew it when he finally had his chance to prove to you that he was worthy of your heart.

There was no telling how long it would take you to forgive him, but he was willing to do whatever it took to regain your trust. He’s all in now, and this time, he wouldn’t make this mistake again.

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