I Slithered Here From Eden; Prologue
Summary: The Embassy’s newest intern has a run in with everyone’s favorite Colonel
Word count: 1.2k
Warnings: I haven’t written in like two years so enter at your own risk, idk man age gap??? Reader has graduated college and is like midish twenties, neither party wants to pine but oh well, the university girl and the colonel tag is becoming a fic
A/N: Consider this like a teaser trailer for the feature length fic coming soon to a screen near you......I’m putting my clown wig on as we speak
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You’re too focused on the files in front of you to notice his entrance, mind too full of manila folders and grainy photographs, trying to divine an organizational system that makes sense to more than just you from redacted words and red ink. Trying to make sense of how things work in this place where the green of the jungle and the humidity are each living, breathing things— so unlike the sleepy college town you’d been imported from, courtesy of the Embassy. Professional internship, they had called it. Your reward for all the sleepless nights over the years, studying into the small hours of the morning to graduate well within the top of your class, several minors and certificates tacked along behind your actual major because you wanted to be good. Wanted to save the world, wanted to weasel your way into international politics and diplomacy and communications because you thought that changing it from within, from the room where it happened, would be the best strategy.
And you still do, but sometimes you wish saving the world came with better coffee. You don’t bother hiding the grimace as you gulp it down, too bitter and burnt for the cheap, breakroom creamer in the little plastic cups to really touch it but it’s still your second cup of the day and beggars can’t be choosers. In the short weeks since your arrival you had gotten used to the acrid taste, the way it liked to stick to your teeth. It seems to underscore your work in times like these, when it’s barely ten o’clock in the morning and you’re already frustrated, ran fifteen minutes late because you thought you could walk to the Embassy this morning, wanted to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city waking from its fitful sleep. You made three wrong turns before you’d admitted defeat and caught a taxi.
But you had made it and you’re here now, engrossed in your work, lost to the outside world until a voice sounds from right in front of you, cutting through the din of the office because he’s actually addressing you in a voice you’ve never heard before. You can’t help the way you jump, heart tripping over itself and one of the papers in your hand slicing across the pad of your thumb, right down the middle.
“Colonel Carrillo,” Because you know who he is, had been given a run down on all the important players when your plane had landed so you’d be able to hit the ground running, wouldn’t have to wait for formal introductions that may never come. He looks the same as he did in the photo you were shown, right down to the uniform he’s wearing, but you’re seeing him in the flesh now, can see the true breadth of his shoulders and the way he seems to fill the whole room up. Can see the way the coworkers who’ve noticed keep sneaking glances from the corner of their eye, like they want to look but don’t want the full weight of his attention on them.
Because it is a weight, thick and heavy and warm as it settles on your eyes, your skin.
“What can I do for you?” You can feel heat rising up the back of your neck but you rally, proud when there’s no quaver in your voice despite the way you almost jumped out of your skin. This is what you do, after all. Your job. You did not come here just to shake like a leaf at the sight of Escobar’s own personal boogie man, the man you’ve been hearing stories about since you arrived. Mean, they say. Brutal. And you have half a mind to believe them, of course, because this is Colonel Horacio Carrillo. The one person in charge of the Search Bloc, the man leading the war on the ground.
But his voice is soft as he speaks to you, so at odds with the harsh lines of his face, the set of his jaw. “Get these to Peña and Murphy,” No please, no thank you as he hands the small stack of files over, just the silent expectation that his orders will be fulfilled.
His fingers are warm and rough as you take the files from him, skin brushing skin and for some reason that small touch, that one small feel of him, makes your breath catch and something dangerous prickle across your skin. You try not to think about it the same way you’re trying not to think about the blood that’s surely blooming on your thumb, the little ache that’s underscoring everything that’s happening, the throb underneath the skin. The same way you’re trying not to think about the heat that’s begun pooling low in your belly, the way the hair on the back of your neck is standing up because he hasn’t looked away from you once. Not once, and the realization makes it a little harder to breathe.
“I’ll make sure they get them,” You hope your smile is easy, if a little bland. Hope he can’t read anything else in the curve of your lips because the last thing you need is him. Older and meaner than you have any right to want. Dark in a way you can’t quite fathom yet, the kind of dark that justifies the means to an end everyone in this building wants to see. An end you want to see.
He nods once, a simple dip of his chin and what might have been a murmured ‘thank you,’ and you don’t look at his shoulders as he walks away. You don’t look at how he moves, how people get out of his way long before he reaches them. He’s something quiet and seething and it shouldn’t make your mouth water, the latent power that you already know lies just beneath his skin. It shouldn’t make something low in your belly quiver, almost in time with the throbbing of your thumb.
You swipe the blood way with your tongue, sucking on the cut until it stops its slow drip, taking care not to get any on the paperwork spread around you. It tastes like pennies and the coffee that had spilled over the rim of your cup when you’d walked back to your desk. It tastes like Carrillo’s name.
You don’t see him for the rest of the week but you can’t keep him out of your head, his voice haunting you when it’s late at night and the air is warm and heavy, when the shadows can keep your secrets. You blame it on the fact that you’d never met someone like him before, never seen someone like him before— so big and solid with that scowl on his face.
You don’t want to know what it says about you that he’s the one that you can’t stop thinking about, not Peña or even Murphy, or any of the other men at the Embassy you see on a semi-regular basis. You don’t want to know what it says about you that instead of wanting one of them, a good portion nice-enough-seeming and closer to your age bracket, you want the Colonel.
You don’t know that he’s thinking about you either, so bright and soft he didn’t know what he was looking at, at first. You kept your word though, getting the files to Peña and Murphy as soon as you could, and he tells himself that's why he comes back to you when he needs something else. Why he keeps coming back until he learns your name, until you smile when you see him and start asking how his day is going.
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