¿Plata o Plomo?

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/45529672.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Category: F/M, M/M, Multi
Fandom: Narcos (TV)
Relationship: Steve Murphy/Javier Peña, Steve Murphy/Javier Pena/Original Female
Character, Pablo Escobar/Original Female Character, Javier
Peña/Original Female Character, Steve Murphy/Original Female
Character, Pablo Escobar/Tata Escobar, Other(s) - Relationship
Character: Steve Murphy, Javier Peña, Cecilia Clarke "Agent Silver", Pablo
Escobar, Gustavo Gaviria, Connia Murphy, Tata Escobar, Juan Pablo
Escobar, Ambassador Noonan, César Gaviria, Original Character(s) -
Character, Olivia Murphy
Additional Tags: Slow Burn, not historically accurate, Shit It's Not Even Show Accurate,
Polyamory, minor infidelity, Shit Actually Major Infidelity, Polyamory
Negotiations, Fake Identities, lying, Angst, Hurt feelings, Minor
Character Death, Criminals Committing Crimes, Officers Committing
Crimes, Secret Agents Committing Crimes, Fuck It Everyone's
Committing Crimes, It's a Fucking Crime Fest in the Bitch, Smut,
Threesome, gay shit, Bi Shit, The American Government Doing Evil
Shit, Mild Kidnapping
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-03-06 Updated: 2023-03-12 Chapters: 2/? Words:
2599

¿Plata o Plomo?
by animebawseqween

Summary

In 1983, American Agent Silver, or "Agente Plata", is sent to help DEA Agents Steve
Murphy and Javier Peña take down Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel. They would get
help with more than just that.

Notes

In this fic, anything that is BOTH bold and italicized is meant to be Spanish.
 Prologue:

Date: October 4th, 1962

Reporting Officer:

Second Lieutenant Thomas Clarke

Report Location:

Bogota, Colombia

Incident Location:

Manzanares, Colombia

Involved Officers:

Second Lieutenant Aaron Herrera, Colonel James R. Chase

Incident Description:

Colonel Chase had been handed down orders from the Embassy in Bogota that our unit was meant
to head to Manzanares—a small village between Bogota and Medellin—in order to liberate the
village from the hands of communist guerillas that had recently taken up residence and were
terrorizing the villagers.

Our unit arrived at the beginning of September, welcomed to the jungle village with fog, rain, and
overall poor weather for a tactical mission of the kind we deemed necessary in order to cause as
little loss of life to the villagers of Manzanares as possible. Therefore we spent the better part of the
month setting up an extensive base camp and recognisance centre, gathering intel on the
communist guerillas, and determining the most opportune time in order to carry out our mission.

We first engaged the guerillas on September 29th, 1968 due to our intel having gathered that they
were planning the execution of an American expat and her family in protest of other liberation
missions similar to ours.

There were many days of fighting between ourselves and the guerillas, but by the end of the
fighting on October 3rd, 1968 there had been menial loss of life on our part and on the part of
villagers of Manzanares, but many of the guerillas died within the first couple days of the conflict.
On the morning of October 3rd, 1968 the local guerilla leader Luis Juan Hernandez surrendered on
behalf of the guerillas, giving the location of the guerilla camp.

Half of the unit went to arrest and detain the guerillas before heading back to Bogota, but Colonel
Chase demanded that the other half of the unit sweep the town in pairs for stray communists or
assist any villagers that may have had property damaged in the fighting.
I was partnered with Second Lieutenant Aaron “Ducky” Herrera—another sniper and surveillance
officer in the unit—and we began patrolling our area of the city. There was initially nothing to
report in our area; we assumed that the locals were wary of all foreigners and decided not to
antagonize them; however on our second pass through the area we encountered a young man who
would later tell us his name was Jorge Canstrato.

“Señors! Señor Americanos! You need to come quickly, Americanos! I think that the
communists shot Miss Paula and her daughter!” the young boy shouted from an apartment
balcony up ahead. “Please, you need help them!”

Ducky and I took off in a run into the building where the young man had been standing, strapping
our rifles to our backs deciding that it was unlikely we would get involved in any conflict and they
would only serve to scare the young child.

“What’s wrong, Tommy?” Ducky asked, completely incompetent when it came to speaking
Spanish.

“He thinks that one of the other tenants has been shot,” I responded, turning back to the young
man. “Which apartment?”

“This one; apartment 1C. Please hurry, I don’t know how long it’s been,” he begged, prompting
me to kick down the door rather than waste time seeing whether it was locked or not.

“Boy, take the other officer and head back down outside. Show him where your parents are,” I
ordered, repeating the same thing to Ducky right after, stepping into the apartment on my own. It
was a breach of protocol, but I thought that if it was true that this Miss Paula and her daughter had
in fact been shot, then it was best to do as much as possible as quickly as possible.

True to what Jorge had said, I found a young woman—oldest in her early thirties—laying on the
ground, holding a toddler in her arms. There was a rather large pool of blood around both of them,
but I nevertheless stopped to check their pulses. Both the mother and the child were unfortunately
dead, likely due to the many bullet wounds that had sustained. I decided to check the bullets that
they had been shot with, and determined that they were from a small handgun, rather than one of
our rifles.

I was preparing to exit the building and call the local authorities in order to have them collect the
bodies, but as I was leaving, I heard the faint sound of a small child crying further into the
apartment. Again breaching protocol, I went in to investigate, discovering that the origin of the
sound was a closet at the end of the apartment’s only hallway.

I opened the door, revealing a four or five year old girl, wrapped in a blanket and wearing what had
once been a nice dress, but was now covered in tears and dirt.

“Who are you? What have you done with my mom and sister? Tell me!” She shrieked, kicking at
me and receding further back into the closet.

“Your mom and your sister sent me in here to get you. Paula is your mother right?” I asked,
doing my best to get her to calm down. She nodded, ceasing the kicking. “Alright, well they said
that I should come in here and play a game with you while they go to the market. You’re going
to put your head against my chest and I’m going to carry you out of the apartment. Sound
good?”

“That doesn’t sound like a good game,” she said matter of factly. “But my mom’s pretty boring
so I get it.”

I chuckled, gently picking the girl up and pulling the blanket over her head so that she wouldn’t be
able to see even if she did lift her head. “You’re American, aren’t you Mr. Soldier.” she asked as
we left the apartment.

“Yes, but I’ve been stationed in Colombia for two years. I bet I’ve been to places you’ve never
even heard of. What’s your name?”

“Cecilia Callava. What’s your name, Mr. Soldier?”

“Second Lieutenant Thomas Clarke.” Cecilia and I chatted until we were back on the street with
Ducky, who had apparently gotten Jorge successfully back to his parents. “Alright, Ducky, I found
this girl upstairs, the communists shot her mother and sister, I’m going to bring her back to base
with us.”

Ducky agreed that the Colonel would best know what’s best for the girl. When we returned to base
the Colonel interviewed the girl on her family and her history and it was decided that we would
bring her to the Orphaned Children’s Bureau upon our own return to Bogota. From then on, Cecilia
was completely in the care of myself and Ducky while we were still in Manzanares.

Statement Signed: Thomas Clarke

Statement Approved: Colonel James R. Chase

TWENTY YEARS LATER

“Agent Silver, you’ve been selected by the council for a mission abroad. You’ll be flying into
Bogota, Colombia once you’ve collected your things from your room. From then you’re to report
to the US embassy, Ambassador Noonan will introduce you to your partners in Colombia.”

“Yes, Sir, what is the objective and the target for this mission?” Agent Silver responded, standing
at attention like the ideal operative she was.

“You’ll be working with the DEA at the Embassy to capture, or in the worst case scenario, kill
Pablo Escobar and bring down the Medellin cartel.”
 Steve
Chapter Notes

No warnings specific to this chapter.

In this fic anything that is in BOTH bold and italics is meant to be in Spanish.

Peña and I may not have known it when we were celebrating the incoming New Year, but we were
about to get pretty damn lucky.

For what must have been the first time in Noonan’s history as the American Ambassador to
Colombia, the embassy was going to be closed for something that was not a mandatory holiday.
Technically, Noonan and any other Ambassador had the power to close their embassies whenever
they deemed it necessary or appropriate, and from what Steve had gathered, Noonan was the only
one that insisted on keeping it open as often as possible.

Yet, on New Year’s Eve, 1987, Noonan called all the department heads—and Peña and Steve since
they had yet to decide who should head the department—into her office to announce that the
embassy would close at five sharp that day, and that we wouldn’t re-open until the 2nd save for a
terrorist attack or a communist invasion.

“Hey, Stevie, you got any plans for our new, free day?” Peña asked, his eyebrows waggingly in his
own particularly annoying way. “Because I personally am planning on getting really drunk tonight,
seeing a couple of old friends, and then using tomorrow to sleep off my bad decisions.”

“I don’t know, Javi, I’m probably just going to sit at home and watch the ball drop on TV. I think
we’ve got like one channel that’ll be showing it.”

Steve Murphy would be the first person to admit that his already minimal social life had changed
drastically when Connie and Olivia had gone back to Miami. He used to go out with Javier and
whoever had agreed—foolishly—to put up with Peña for the night, but that had lost its appeal once
he couldn’t go home and make fun of Javier’s attempt to pick up anything that breathed with
Connie.

For the past couple of months, Javier had simply been putting up with his growing alcoholic and
antisocial tendencies, but apparently Steve’s unwillingness to go out on New Year’s Eve was the
straw that broke the camel’s back. Javier placed a hand on his chest, pushing him to a halt in the
middle of the corridor.

“Alright, look, this whole ‘My wife left and I have no idea how to cope’ bit of yours has gone on
long enough. You are going to accompany me on my traditional Colombian New Years’ Eve:
we’re going to go out, we’re getting drunk, we might bang some hookers, and we’re not going back
to my apartment any sooner than three a.m. Are we clear, Murphy?”

Steve sighed, wanting to laugh a little about how Peña thought that one night out was going to
change his whole view of things all over again. Nevertheless, one night couldn’t do that much
damage.
“Fine, I will go out, I will drink, and I will stay out until three a.m., but you’re on crack if you
think I’m going anywhere near a hooker, Javi.”

“Fine, alright, no hookers,” he conceded. “But get ready Steve-o, because this is your first
Colombian New Years’ Eve, and trust me, things are a little bit different done here.”

***

Peña was right, New Years’ Eve in Miami and New Years’ Eve in Bogota were not even close to
the same realm of things. Yeah there was your usual drinking and partying and bars thumping
music into the streets so loud that you didn’t even need to go in to hear it, but by the time he and
Javier had finished pre-gaming in Steve’s apartment, there were fifty bonfires lit in the middle of
the streets just in between their apartment and the bar district.

“It’s a tradition!” Peña explained, handing Steve their first ‘real’ beer of the night. “It’s supposed
to represent the burning of the past in order to make way for the future or some shit! All I know is
that they’re there, and you can throw anything you want to get rid of into it.”

Throughout the night they drank more than twice their weights in liquor each, Javier managed to
drag him into a stripper bar to get a lap dance before Steve nearly vomited on the poor dancer, and
at one point Javier actually almost tried to buy coke off someone, before remembering that he was
a DEA agent. Steve, being left the more sober of the two because as much as he hated to admit it,
Javi was a bit of a lightweight, hooked his arm around Javi’s waist, hoisting him off the curb.

“Alright, Javi, I think it’s officially time to head home. Do you know where your keys are?”

“Nuh-uh, I think I left em at home. Gonna have to break in tomorrow,” he slurred, fully slumped
against Steve’s side. “I’m getting pretty good at it actually. Think that means I’m probably doing it
too much, right?”

“Alright, buddy, I’m sure you are. You can sleep at my place tonight, then. I think I’ve got leftover
soup from Carillo’s wife in the freezer and everything.”

“Mmm, sounds delicious,” he muttered into Steve’s chest. “You know what else is delicious,
Stevie? Me. Do you wanna eat me?”

Steve went white at his partner’s comment, hoping to whatever god was out there that Peña wasn’t
being serious. Javi flirting with Steve while he was wasted like this was a fairly regular occurrence,
but it never sounded the way that he had in that moment. He sounded so serious, like he would let
Steve take him right now, on the public street outside the American Embassy. He would never
know though, because the moment passed the second that Javi buckled over, vomiting all over
Steve’s shoes.

“Oh, Javi! That’s fucking disgusting!” He shouted, trying to kick as much of the vomit into the
gutter as possible. “I’m gonna have to hose this off now. That’s sick.”

“‘M sorry, Stevie,” Javi muttered into his chest, probably getting more vomit on his shirt as well.
“I’ll help clean it up tomorrow. Promise.”

“I know, Buddy,” Steve said, dragging Javier up the stairs to his apartment, struggling with getting
the door open for a moment before he was able to walk Javier to his bedroom, throwing him down
on the bed.

“Alright, Javi, your clothes are pretty much ruined, so they’re going to have to go to the bathroom
tonight. Are you okay with me taking them off you?” He asked, throwing his shoes and jacket in
the ensuite immediately.

Lo and behold, Javi was already passed out on Steve’s bed when he returned to the scene. Steve
did his best to strip Javi down to his underwear—thank Christ he was actually wearing some
tonight—as clinically as possible, not giving his fingers a moment to linger on the planes of
smoothe, tanned skin that he now had access to. ‘No, Steve’ he thought to himself ‘This isn’t you.
Javi was being weird earlier and the alcohol is helping him get to you.’

Once he was done, he gently tucked his partner into the bed, allowing himself to stroke Javier’s
curls just once before he moved to the bathroom. As he stripped his own clothes off and placed
them in the bathtub with everything else, he debated whether he should risk backlash in the
morning for sharing a bed with Javi or ruining his back trying to sleep on the couch.

Ultimately, he decided that he needed his back more than he needed Javi not to be mad at him, so
he methodically placed on an old t-shirt and some flannel pajama pants. Then, carefully weighing
his options because maybe, maybe he couldn’t actually deal with Javi being mad at him for
personal shit.

As gingerly as possible, Steve slipped himself under the covers beside his partner, staring at his
face under the pale moonlight, sprinkled with the colours of fireworks and bonfires from the
celebrations happening around them.

“Y’know, Stevie,” Javi breathes, so soft it was more like he was still asleep. Hell, he probably was
still asleep, just dreaming or something. “I’m pretty lucky to have met you. You’re like the best
thing that happened to me this year.”

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