#tw - this is literally narcos netflix fic my guy idk what u expect lmfao

[ashlingnarcos]

two tests

771 word ficlet for @narcosfandomdiscord's #narcoctober challenge: write an og narcos and mx narcos crossover. tw for canon-typical events

Most men got tested three times; Carrillo only got tested twice. 

He was in another country, a de facto representative of Colombia, and as such, he was on his best behavior. When the first man offered him a bribe, he smashed the man’s head into his shitty little plywood desk, and although the desk broke and the head did not, he left it there. Zero broken bones, zero bullets: civilized. Gentlemanly, even.

“Going soft,” Trujillo teased him later, and Carrillo laughed as he told him to go fuck himself. 

Trujillo was the one good thing about being in Mexico, a true partner of the soft Carrillo hadn’t had since sometime in the early eighties after the last of his partners had finally been killed. In the interim, Carrillo had been forced to make due with Peña, who wasn’t as stupid as he looked and had the singular virtue of being unkillable as only American could be—but it wasn’t the same.

He had missed this, he let himself think as Trujillo grumblingly, happily, paid their tab for the night.

The next day, when the second man offered him a bribe, Carrillo was in a good mood. However, he felt he had neglected to make his point the day before, and so he decided to detain the man instead of arresting him outright. Trujillo knew the score, they found themselves a little hole in the wall, and the grim work began. 

Calderoni found them there during the cleanup, with Carillo marking new locations on a map in red marker, Trujillo sharpening his knife, and their assigned driver halfheartedly wielding a bloody mop.

“Carillo,” said Calderoni said in the voice of a reproving grandfather. “Thought this was supposed to be a fact-finding mission.”

“It is,” said Carillo, unbothered, not even looking up from the map as Calderoni’s men began to fill the space around him. “Good news: we’ve found some facts.” As the soldiers began to carry out the body, he started rattling off addresses one by one. 

Something was wrong, and he sensed it instinctively before he even knew why. Lifting his head, he saw that the soldiers around him were watching him with their hands resting on their weapons, and that Calderoni’s eyes were far too serious under his veneer of calm complacency.

Trujillo had stopped sharpening his knife. That was the wrongness he’d sensed.

On a hunch, Carrillo straightened up, put the marker down, and walked towards them, straying a little to the right to avoid the pool of blood. He discovered that he had been right. He hadn’t wanted to be right.

Calderoni had his gun jammed into the small of Trujillo’s back.

“What?” Carrillo said. 

It was a challenge, not a question. He was measuring the distance between himself and Calderoni with his eyes, but then, so was everyone else. 

He did not look at Trujillo.

“Repeat that last address,” Calderoni said.

“881 Lope de Vega.”

Something went over Calderoni’s face, brief as a twitch. 

“Wow,” he said, clapping slowly a few times, the loud sounds getting swallowed up in the dingy little room filled with men. As ugly as Calderoni made it, there was a hint of respect there, too; this was the sort of look Carrillo was used to receiving from all quarters, but never in this context. It made his whole body light up with pure animal instinct. To flee was not an option.

“They told me to watch out for you,” Calderoni said. 

Carrillo tilted his head a half-inch in acknowledgement; he was the sort of man that needed a warning, and he felt that was fair.

There was a moment of not-quite silence as Calderoni let out a long-suffering sigh. “I didn’t realize it would take you less than three days.”

“I don’t have time to waste,” said Carilllo.

“Neither do I.”

With that, Calderoni withdrew his gun from where it had been jammed against Trujillo’s back. To his pride, Carillo noticed that Trujillo didn’t so much as slump in relief, only letting out a barely perceptible breath. 

Then Calderoni handed the gun to Trujillo. 

“Well?” he said.

As Carrillo looked across the room through the sea of soldiers, Trujillo met his eyes without a hint of emotion, alive only as a question. For at the end of all things, they reverted to their oldest, truest selves: Carrillo as colonel who could bend for no one, and Trujillo as the one who would carry on when he could not.

Carrillo couldn't even nod, but he didn't need to.

Most men got tested three times; Trujillo only got tested once.

He passed with flying colors.