take me to yours

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/45429022.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: Narcos (TV)
Relationship: Javier Peña (Narcos)/Reader, Javier Peña (Narcos)/Original Female
Character(s), Javier Peña (Narcos)/You, Javier Peña (Narcos) &
Reader
Character: Javier Peña (Narcos), Steve Murphy (Narcos), Original Female
Character(s), You
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending,
Worried Javier Peña (Narcos), Protective Javier Peña (Narcos), Gun
Violence, Feelings Realization, Developing Relationship, Javi Thinks He
Doesn't Love You, Banter, No use of y/n
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-03-01 Words: 3902

take me to yours
by mvtthewmurdvck

Summary

His mind sinks into itself. It pulled open drawers he’d rather keep closed, yanking out past
reports and horrid tales, seeing it like a horrid mirage playing out across the dust and debris.
A part of him having already carved out space for her, and yet—
She may not be around to fill it.

A bead of sweat ran down his spine as time slowed to nothing.

It was the sound of her voice that made it. Birthed it. It doing a number of other things to him. His
spine tensing as something twists. Sticking painfully into his abdomen—similar to the blade of a
knife.

Hey, Javi. I’m real sorry to bother you, but something doesn’t feel right here.
What?
I don’t… I don’t know, it just doesn’t.

She never calls—not in the day. Not even when night kisses the city and he expects her.

Their conversations had started as fleeting. More said around breaths as hands explore fabric to
unveil skin. Then they had grown into stolen moments, huddled in file rooms and down the side of
buildings.
Now she had called him.

Not anyone else: him.

Anyone with you?

No. I’m… I’m alone. Shit—m y car. It won’t start.

The sweat had begun building at the nape of his neck when Javi had heard her voice. A reaction
flooding through him almost instantly—far too quickly.

Something he’d have to unpack later when he wasn’t under the watchful eye of Murphy or holding
her voice in his hand.

The bead had hung on for dear life, growing under the tension as he tapped Murphy, and stormed
back to the car.

I didn’t know who to call—and it’s you and me, right?

Look—
Fuck, Javi. I think they’ve seen me.
Bonita—

Something strummed inside of him. It shifted, changed. All violent and unpredictable.

It played on his nerves and organs. It made his hand shake as he rammed the key into the hole, the
engine roaring to life—ignoring the questionable stares from Murphy.

All he focused on was the nervousness in her tone.

The worry.

The one he expects from others, but never from her. Not the woman who’d burned her lips against
his, mixing tequila and whiskey as he pressed her back against brick; not the woman who raised her
chin when someone talked down to her.

The tone and the fact she’d called him.

I’m coming, Bonita. Alright?

What do I do, Javi? What do I do—
Do not go into that house, Cariño. We’re coming, okay? We’re—

That same bead of sweat slid under his shirt collar when he saw the holes in her vehicle. The same
ones he had heard being fired at her when the call went dead. How it had been accompanied by a
gasp, the last noise he’d heard from her.

The one which unlocked a fear he hadn’t known he even had for her.

His fingers gripped her truck door. His eyes taking in the phone discarded on the passenger side
floor. A bullet firmly in the place keys once were. It lay in a pattern of shattered glass—all of the
pieces twinkling under the bright sunlight. Appearing like stars which had fallen from the sky.

It was everywhere, shards that were dragged to the other door—the one half-open that Murphy
stood at.

He can’t meet his eyes. Not yet.

Instead, he sweeps his gaze over the backseat does he spot her denim jacket. His stomach lurching.
He knows without thought it’s the same one she’d had on earlier. The one which had spent weeks
hanging on the hook near his front door from a time when she’d “forgotten” it.

I’ll get it soon. Don’t worry, I’m not sneak moving in.

Now, it’s covered in the softest spray of drying red.

Complicated. That’s what she had said about them. When she’d been busy reapplying her lipstick
in the bar’s bathroom. His fingers having zipped up his jeans, meeting her eyes in the dirty mirror.
We’re complicated. You and me.

He hadn’t argued then, and he didn’t now.

The sweat had finally dripped. Followed by so much more. It all burning a path down under his
shirt.

His hand swipes across his jaw as he meets Murphy’s gaze—trying not to crack under it. Even as
one thought loops continuously, almost making him fearful of even speaking:

Where is she, Murphy?

Images conjured, appearing one after the other. Her bent in odd places, her eyes devoid of life—her
soul, her sparkle.

The bead began its path down his shoulder blade until it finds a home at the base of his spine.
Collecting with the others, his fingers brushing his hair back, following his partner's eyes to the
house. The one with its door wide open, banging against the inside wall as the warm breezes
swipes against it.

The one he told her not to go in. He takes a breath.

The two of them fall into a line—one practised and drilled into them from training. One the two of
them do countless times as Murphy gestures and he follows.

Javi is too busy trying to banish the thoughts which threaten to boil him over. The ones where his
mind conjures her in positions he’ll never be able to forget; holes in her he’ll never be able to fix.

It takes more than one breath, but two, until he feels a semblance of calmness washing over him.

It’s quiet, eerily so. Each time their sole hits a loose floorboard, they expect a sea of bullets. Ones
which never come.

Not as they clear the hallway, moving into a room with matted chairs and dead bodies. Alcohol,
copper and cigarettes staining the air, all sliding past the hair in his nose into his throat.

He should be thankful she’s not amongst them. But, he’s not. Not as he sees scarlet red spreading
across the rickety wooden floor, some even with handprints, some of it even on the walls.

That same pain twists in his stomach. The silence between the two agents remaining, thick and
uncomfortable. A mist falling, something churning in him that he fears Murphy can feel too.

I’m coming, Bonita.

He meets Murphy’s eyes. The two swap the same hopeful sentiment: the blood won’t be hers.

The tip of his boot kicks at one of the men, and his heel slides the gun from the second—content
they’re both bathing in their own blood. All very much disposed of, taken care of.

He’s set to move, to follow Murphy when Javi sees a third gun, one that’s like theirs. A dread
ballooning, growing so large it almost consumes him.

“She could still—“

“Let’s clear the rooms.”

He doesn’t mean to snap—didn’t mean to spit the words at him like poison.

It’s just… his breath is all mattered and clinging to his throat. A thing inside of him unfurling. It
spreads itself through him. It tries to drag him into darkness, tries to make the corners of his eyes
see speckles of red.

The cracks in his walls widen as he begins to unravel. All of the well-kept emotions suddenly not
remaining in their cage, escaping in bursts from him until they’re all out, hammering away at his
bones.

It’s Murphy who suggests they split, taking the next few rooms. Be quicker to find her, won’t it?

He doesn’t argue—can’t, argue. Swallowing the thickness which is doubling with each passing
moment.

The shell of the house whistles in its emptiness as Javi scans for beautiful eyes and a kind smile.

He tries not to feel anything when he doesn’t. Tries not to linger on the fact that as every second
pass, the likeness of him hearing her voice grows thinner. It burns into him, twisting something in
his stomach as the first room he clears is spared of death.

Gratitude—glee—almost escaping with a sigh as he moves to the second.

The second is the sight of disaster, but he’s not sure of what kind or magnitude.

The stench hits him first. The smell of torture, cigarettes and sex. The matted mattress in the corner
is stained with things he only casts his eyes over, the body in the centre of the room demanding his
attention.

He spots several body-shaped holes in the plaster, ones he hates the realisation that they match her
height and frame. He sees the smallest amount of drying blood on what hasn’t crumbled to the
ground from the force, the contrast of the once-magnolia plaster stark against the dark
floorboards.

The man in the centre is more than dead. The hole in his neck had stopped leaking at some point,
having begun to congeal against the floor and the man’s shoulder. More holes in his chest, stomach
and thigh follow a similar pattern.

Javi spots the knife—the culprit of what had done the damage. It’s lodged in the decaying skirting
board on the opposite wall, likely kicked there through fury and fear.

His mind sinks into itself. It pulled open drawers he’d rather keep closed, yanking out past reports
and horrid tales, seeing it like a horrid mirage playing out across the dust and debris. A part of him
having already carved out space for her, and yet—

She may not be around to fill it.

We’re complicated. You and me.

Protocol recounts in the back of his head.

His fingers twitch at his side, needing to be busy.

He should go to the car, and call ahead. He should check out the wallets of the deceased, and see if
they’ve done damage against Escobar—she’s done damage.

Javi does none of that.

Instead, he puts the safety on and sheathes his gun in the back of his jeans, fingertips sliding
against his thumb as he stares at the dead man in the centre of the floor.

He waits. His teeth return to peeling the skin from his lip. Suddenly busy recalling the ways he
could have kept her safe. The main one being he shouldn’t have allowed her to leave his bed. His
hand should have slid over her hip, slid his thigh between hers and married his lips to hers until
they both forgot about alarm clocks and responsibilities.

The sight of her this morning is what he wants back. The way her eyes had smiled more than her
lips. That her palm had pressed against his cheek, laughing at something he’d said.

It’s why he doesn’t leave the room now. Not wanting to stumble across her bent in a broken way
and devoid of any life behind her eyes.

Needing, almost praying, for Murphy’s voice to carry through the house.

That tone—that particular voice which said she was breathing, that she hadn’t been taken from him
too.

“Javi?!”

His boots sound on the floorboards before his name has stopped echoing around the emptiness.
Eyes taking in Murphy, him leaning against a doorframe, gun in his bulletproof, hands over his
arms. He shoots a look, one that earns him a jut of his head.

“I’ll call ahead. Give you both a minute.”

“Yeah, sure. T-Thanks, Murphy.”

He pats him as he passes—his partner. The one who likely knows too much, but Javi suddenly
cares that much about.

His focus on the room. The one with no scent. The room where the plaster is peeling and the
floorboards groan under his soles.

Occasionally, speckled shimmers of sunlight dance over the room from the hole-bitten curtains.
The cracked window blowing a warm breeze, sliding over the cobwebs and the creatures that likely
hide inside the walls.

He sidesteps around the slanted wardrobe, eyes finding her in the corner—spine pressed against
two walls. She looks so small, so unlike the person he’d bid goodbye to this morning.

Her knees to her chest, arms around her calves, chin resting. But, it’s her eyes he focuses on. How
they’re blurred, lost—that she’s fractured and withered at the edges.
Her clothes splattered in red, splotches on her skin. None of it bothering her, she’s being haunted
by a moment they’ve not let go of.

“Bonita?”

She blinks. It’s quick, the way she banishes her thoughts as she drinks him in.

Realisation dawning, covering her face and body language as though he’s the sun at the start of a
new day.

Javi is slow as he coming down in front of her, knees protesting as he does so. Her shaky smile
growing, wearily placed joy spreading across her features.

“H-Hey, Peña—you came? I know. I know you said you would-d, but… I’m glad you did. Really
glad. Didn’t know if you’d find me. Anyone would find-d me. You know? You do, know. I know
—”

He cups her chin, swiping his thumb under it as she swallows. “Hey, look at me. There she is…
Bonita, you’re in shock, ok—”

“I am?”

It’s forced nature not meeting her eyes, choosing to nod instead. His eyes assess the cut above her
head, noticing how it’s become tacky—somewhat healing in various shades of red and black. He
turns her face, surprised she allows him to, watching her eyes slide from him to the space behind
him.

The minutes before their arrival trying to steal her from him, almost doing so until her palm
plastered around his wrist, surprising him.

“Had to sit down… just for a minute. So tired, and then I couldn’t… I couldn’t get up—“

“Cariño…” His thumb strokes her cheek, the one blooming in the bluest shades of a rainbow.
“Hey, keep those eyes on me.”

His hand tilts her face, spotting the slight swelling around her eye, her gaze blurring, altering.

“You should see the other guy.”

“I did. All three of them. You did good.”

She swallows and it looks like it was harder to do than he cares to think about. “I-I did?”

“You did, Bonita.”

Her eyes close, a second longer than they have been as her chest tries to rise and fall. “I channelled
m-my inner P-Peña. What would P-Peña do? And h-he’d make sure they never g-got up-p…
especially when…”

He should let go of her chin, and drop his hand back to his lap. He doesn’t. Just stares instead,
taking in the flecks of her one good eye and the way her breath seems to be coming back to her.

She places her hand on his arm. “I’m okay.”

“You are.”
Biting the inside of her lip. “They’d spotted me.”

His heart slows, and almost stops. Just for a moment—so brief he could have ignored it, but he
doesn’t. “I heard, Cariño.”

Not sure if he’ll ever be able to drink away the sound.

“Thought… not him—not Escobar. But, someone… y’know? Important. That we could tick off.
Red cross over their face. You know? You know, of course you do. But, I don’t think they was.
Important, I mean?” Her lip trembles, the size of it sprouting the same as her eye. Tears welling up,
sitting in her eyes as she furiously doesn’t let them fall. “Even for the way they… they really
wanted to hur—kill me.”

It drops, his stomach. Practically almost falls out of his ass into the floorboards.

We’re complicated. You and me.

The fear he’d managed to stifle, darts through him again like wildfire. Scorching all the parts of
him, fanning its vine-like fingers through him, tangling around organs as it flexes and tightens,
making it hard to breathe.

He acknowledges what it means—what she means to him.

He does.

Javi knows she isn’t just someone who has kept his bed warm or been there when he’s needed to
fuck his frustration out; she’s not someone who he just looks for around the building. She’s—

“Where’s Murphy?”

Her breathing suddenly difficult—challenging. Her hand slides under her blouse, eyes dilating,
blurring before his eyes all over again.

All he can think is she shouldn’t have been here alone. Shouldn’t have been asked to come here
without someone like him, like Murphy.

“He’s outside. You good to walk?”

She nods, just about.

His brain latching, furiously clutching to the fact she’s alive—breathing.

He hadn’t lost her—she hadn’t been taken from him. Not yet. Something he hadn’t allowed
himself to believe could be true when he’d seen her truck. When they’d walked in and heard
nothing—not even the wheezes of someone’s last breath.

You like her. He thinks. You like her, you like her, you like her.

She’s taken to the ambulance the moment they exit the building.

It allowed him a horrid moment to take in the tips in her jeans, the way her once white blouse was
stained to ruin. How she limped, ever so slightly—something he hadn’t noticed from near carrying
her against him out of the building.

As soon as she was taken from him, he hated how far away she was. His hands lighting a cigarette,
and then another. Able to speak clearly to those who asked him things.

But, it didn’t quiet his thoughts or calm his frayed edges.

“Carillo says he can handle the rest, you coming?”

There’s a look in Murphy’s eyes as he asks—all-knowing and cocky. He hates it—despises it. It
feeling like a test.

Javi wants to roll it up and shove it down his partner’s neck.

“Um, no. Think I’ll stick around here.”

Nodding, Murphy casts his cigarette down. “I called it.”

“No, you fucking didn’t.”

“Did. Look after her, yeah?”

He jostles under the slap of Murphy’s hand on his back, half-rolling his eyes as he tries to ignore
the frustration building. The fact all of it, his feelings, are rising to the surface in thick bubbles.
And he’s not able to keep a lid on it. Not the way he feels or how much he’s showing it.

Me and you.

He lets his eyes find her again.

Having tried not to let her out of his sight the moment the medic had taken her from him. She’d
searched for him too, having been examined by the shut doors—desperately looking for him,
calming when she seated at the edge of the ambulance having found him. She soothed him too,
stopped the storm from taking over and rendering him more useless than he feels.

It’s why he waits, and spends far too long avoiding going over until her head turns and shifts. The
sight of it making him worry, panic.

Then he follows her line of sight, seeing the sheet-covered bodies, and his legs cut through the
people and trucks until he’s standing before her.

It pulls her back to him. Her eyes landing on him. An easier smile able to spread over her lips as
she leans her head against the inside of the vehicle.

“You causing trouble?”

“Me? No. I leave that to you, Peña.”

He placed his hand on his hip, foot up on the ambulance's step as she watches him. Takes him in as
he does her.

The bruising has developed, spreading in thick shades which shouldn’t have ever touched her
skin, never mind had the chance to blossom out over it.

“You gotta go to the hospital?”

Slowly, she leans her head against the side of the vehicle. “No. But, I can’t be alone, so I suggested
this guy called Javier could keep an eye on me. Just has to make sure I don’t faint or pass out,
vomit and something else, I kinda stopped listening.”
“Cariño.”

Her tongue sweeps out over her lips. “What? You don’t want to keep an eye on me, Javi?”

More than fucking anything.

Never wants to let her out of his sight again, if he could. Wants to press her body against his until
no space remains, letting her breath fan out over his face and her heartbeat pelt against his ribs.

“Javi…?”

Lifting his head, he meets her eyes. A more detailed conversation happens in the stare, one with
words that fall with ease. Each is perfectly articulated, chosen and spoken which makes all of this
easy. Not that she’s easy—not that the two of them are either.

We’re complicated. You and me.

They are complicated and messy, and brilliant. He knows it—feels it even. How complex it is that
she even managed to get under his layers, weave herself into his life to the point he’s not sure if he
could breathe as easily without her.

He knows, on some distant level, he felt it more before today. That it had begun festering months
ago, blooming into something sweeter and nicer than he’d ever allowed himself to have only once
—if ever.

“I… thought I lost you…”

Slowly, her grin drops. Her lips spread out into a line—either in surprise at his confession, or at the
truth of it. His words remaining, hanging, settling between them—not dancing up into the sky.

Even as he heard them, he didn’t regret them. Even if it widened the gap in his carefully curated
walls.

It takes a lot to render her silent, he’s learnt that. He’s found ways, but never with words. So,
watching her mouth open and close is a sight to behold—somewhat waiting for a trophy he’s never
sure will come.

“Who’d annoy you if I went and died, Peña?”

“Knowing you, Bonita? You’d find some way to fuckin’ haunt me.”

It’s low, but it’s there—her laugh. It brushes through the air to his ears, both of them tuning in for
it, needing it. It settles a part of him—one which hadn’t believed she was out of the woods.
Somewhat expecting at any moment for her eyes to roll back into her head and her soul be whisked
from him, without him having much say in it.

“Javi… I should thank you. For coming for me.”

It takes all of his self-control to not let the words he feels slide out. Seeing something in her eyes
too. Something hidden, stuffed down. Something likely akin to how he’s feeling.

“You called me, Cariño. I’ll always come.”

Her lips slide into a smile, one softer, more genuine, and his heart skips a beat at the sight of it.
“Because it’s you and me, right?”
His chest tightens. A thought growing, mouldering—that he doesn’t deserve her, isn’t good
enough. It rises like a tide, filling his throat as he watches her lean forward, easing herself down
from the vehicle. He tries to force how he feels back down, swallowing back everything and
anything—

And then her palm brushes his cheek, soft and innocent.

“You’re coming to mine.”

She bites the inside of her mouth, lips pulling tight, nodding firmly. “Okay.”

He rolls his head on his neck, dragging his tongue over his bottom lip as he shifts his weight.
“Never… never do that again,” he whispers, just for her. “Please?”

“What?”

He finds her smirking. Knowingly. “Scare me. I—I can’t… I don’t think I can lose you.”

She moves closer, letting him see the pale strips against her wound—the one that the medic likely
fought to stick on. He notices the flecks in her eyes again, almost sees the reflection of himself in
how wide and beautiful they are.

“Take me to yours, Javi.”

Nodding, he swipes his thumb across his bottom lip.

"If you want… that is?

She shifts, unease across her features. Something he never sees in her, something she never shows
him. And he sighs in relief at it, knowing it as he does his own.

"More than fuckin' anything, Bonita."

She slides her hand down his forearm, fingers lightly brushing over his palm. "Come on then."

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