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#c.i.:most wanted fandoms.
sirtadcooper · 3 years
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Javier Peña and the Brown-Nosed Bear
Fandom: Narcos Category: Gen, Humour, Crack Relationships: Javier Peña & Steve Murphy Characters: Javier Peña, Steve Murphy Word Count: 1,900+ For: @djarsdin and @javierian.
Warnings: Swearing, drug mentions, crack (as in a silly idea) treated far too seriously, period inaccuracies, food, McDonald’s.
Summary: Javier Peña is not having a good day so Steve Murphy brings him a McDonald’s Happy Meal to cheer him up.
Notes: This makes no sense. The Happy Meal menu is from the UK in 2021, the toys are from 2018 and the boys are in the 1980s. But just go with it, for me, pretty please?
This, all of this, was inspired by @djarsdin’s tag “someone get this man a happy meal” under this already dryly funny post by @javierian. This is for both of you. :)
Any Spanish is from Google Translate so please forgive me if it’s wrong.
(One-shot.)
Javier Peña and the Brown-Nosed Bear
Javier is staring blankly down at a page, cigarette hanging loosely from one hand as he cups his chin with the other. The typewritten words are blurring and he’s read the same paragraph countless times now, in limbo, unable to get any further.
A small red box, having evidently just been thrown in his direction, lands with a soft thud right under his nose. Javi jerks back with a start, blurry black and white suddenly replaced with bright red and… yellow? Javi blinks, his tired eyes finally focus — it’s a McDonald’s Happy Meal.
“There,” says Steve, “now cheer the fuck up.”
He sets two soda cups down safely on the desk and throws himself down onto his chair with enough force to send it rolling backwards a few feet. Identical Happy Meal box cradled lovingly on his lap, he rolls the chair forwards with his feet until he’s close enough to his desk again to put his boots up on it.
Looking over, Steve nods meaningfully at Javi’s paperwork.
Javi follows his gaze. “Shit.”
Javi’s half cigarette has been dropping flakes of ash onto his page. He swipes the tiny flakes away with the side of his hand — when only faint grey stains remain on the crisp white paper, he rests the still lit cigarette on the rim of the ashtray and leaves it sitting there, hazy wisps of smoke rising into the air.
“You look like shit,” Steve comments needlessly around a huge bite of a chicken burger.
Javi grimaces, rubbing at his tired eyes. He feels like shit, he doesn’t need to be told, thank you, he wants to say. Instead, he says aloud, “How’d things go with your C.I.?”
Chewing noisily, Steve shrugs. “No shop talk over dinner. I’ll tell you later. Eat up.”
With a pointed look, Javi sets the paperwork aside. Perhaps he will try to finish it again later, perhaps tomorrow, or even better still it may find itself in Steve’s annoyingly sparse inbox.
Opening the red and yellow box, Javi finds a bag of fries and a box of chicken nuggets. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was — as soon as the scent of fried fast food hits his nostrils his mouth starts to water. He glances at the clock — well after four in the afternoon. Last time he had checked it was just before one.
“Oh — almost forgot.” Steve plunges his hand into his jacket pocket. First he places a tiny tub of ketchup on Javi’s side of their desk, then a wad of napkins an inch thick.
“Your kid joining us?” Javi asks, meaning the excessive collection of napkins, but concentrating on pulling the lid off the ketchup dip.
Steve, halfway through his chicken burger already, adopts an enigmatic expression. “I’ve learned to be prepared.”
Javi is absolutely ravenous — the chicken nuggets and fries after almost a day’s unintended fasting are heavenly.
They both eat in companionable silence until—
Crunch!
Javi looks up from his food, takes a moment to register what’s in front of his eyes. “What the fuck is that?”
“It’s a carrot stick.”
“What’s it doing in a kid’s meal?” Javi asks, and then, more to himself, “Why am I eating a kid’s meal?”
“One — it’s healthy. Connie and I are watching what we eat right now and trying to keep in shape.” Javi can think of other ways two married people could keep in shape, but hasn’t the chance to voice his opinion as Steve carries on, “Two — shut up, it’s tasty, ain’t it? And three — I thought it might cheer you up, you’ve been a real downer today.” He doesn’t use a finger to emphasise each point, rather a wiggle of a carrot stick with the end bitten off. Javi decides instantly that he doesn’t like that.
“I’m touched,” he says dryly, dipping a fry in his sauce. He really is touched by the kind thought from his partner, but the kind thought is wrapped in so many layers of hillbilly bullshit that it’s hard to find the words to express that. He leaves his gratitude unsaid, veers the conversation away. “How did you order all this, anyways? Your Spanish isn’t that good.”
Steve appears offended, which Javi knows to mean that he isn’t offended at all. “Hey, I know the words for ‘drug dealer’ and ‘cocaine’ and ‘gun’.”
Javi peers into his red and yellow box — only a plastic bag with something black inside remains. “I don’t see any cocaine in here,” Javi mutters under his breath, deliberately loud enough to be heard.
“These carrot sticks are better than coke, believe me,” Steve says, shoving another piece of carrot into his mouth with a triumphant grin as if that proved it.
Javi shakes his head, sips on his soda. “Lying bastard.”
Steve’s expression gives nothing away.
“I just pointed at what I wanted. Took me a few attempts but I got there in the end. How do you say carrot sticks in Spanish? Just, you know, for future reference.”
“Palo de mierda,” Javi tells him with a straight face, without hesitation.
“What?”
“Palo de mierda,” Javi says again, unrepentant — he holds in a breath, hoping that Steve doesn’t catch on. He needn’t have worried.
Steve repeats it a few times, committing the phrase to memory. Javi stuffs a whole chicken nugget in his mouth before he can laugh.
They lapse into silence again — or as silent as it can be when one of them is crunching on raw carrots.
Chicken burger and carrot sticks finished, Steve wipes mayo off of his moustache with a napkin. A few minutes later when Javi reaches for a napkin from the pile as well, Steve looks very pleased with himself.
Javi starts tidying up, collecting the leftover rubbish from his desk and putting it inside his red box. Only his soda remains to be finished.
“Nice,” Steve says and Javi looks up — he’s got a little stuffed penguin toy in a plastic bag. “My little girl’s gonna love this.”
Javi reaches into his box and pulls out a bag too — it’s a black thing with a brown nose and tummy, some kind of stuffed animal he doesn’t recognise. He turns it over — there’s a card inside.
SLOTH BEAR, it reads.
“Here you go,” Javi says, lifting himself out of his chair to reach across their desk made out of two desks. He holds out the sloth bear in its plastic bag for Steve to take — but Steve doesn’t make a move, just stares at Javi like he’s sprouted an extra head that’s just told him the sky isn’t blue. Catching his look, Javi asks, “What? It’s for your kid.”
“No, no, man, that’s yours,” Steve says, shaking his head along with every ‘no’.
Javi doesn't retreat, just shakes his outstretched hand as if to tempt him — the little bear in the bag jumps up and down and the plastic crinkles noisily with the movement. (Javi hasn’t thought of the Serpent tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden for a long time.)
After a few moments of them staring stubbornly at each other, bear in a bag suspended between them, Javi falls back into his chair with a huff. He looks down at the bear in his hands. “What am I going to do with this?”
Steve rolls his eyes and lifts up his hand, fingers wiggling to beckon Javi — or the bear — to him.
He gets the bear — it flies across the desk and slaps him on the cheek with some force, bouncing off of him and to the ground. Steve bends over in his chair and it rolls back slightly as he strains to reach the bear where it has landed. He straightens, the bear clenched securely in his fist, and fixes Javi with an outraged look. “What the hell?”
Javi takes a drag of his half-finished cigarette, blows out the smoke. “It’s a tiny stuffed animal, Steve, it can’t feel a thing.”
“He’s got a brown nose.”
“He?” Javi mutters to himself, but is talked over.
“He’s got a brown nose, d’you know what that means?” Steve points at the bear’s pale brown muzzle, just in case Javi hasn’t noticed — he has noticed, he just doesn’t see why the hell he should care.
Steve’s expecting an answer — Javi rolls his eyes, feebly attempts, “He — it — has been using a sun bed wrong?”
“No, it means he’s your mascot,” Steve declares with childlike glee.
Javi blinks in the face of Steve’s unaccountable delight. “You’re losing it, Murphy.”
“He is. Think about it — how much brown-nosing do you and me have to do on a weekly basis? It’s a fuckton. I can handle it fine because I am calm and collected and an excellent people person — but you? You look like you’re constipated the whole time — quit flipping me the bird, man, I’m serious here — and the big cheeses know it, Javi, they’ll start taking a real dislike to you. But this bear is an expert, look at him, it’s all over his face. You take inspiration from him and he’ll show you how to brown-nose like the best of them.”
Steve holds out the bear in the bag for Javi to take. The three of them stare at each other — Steve with a look of ridiculous seriousness, Javi with straight-up disbelief, and the bear with the blank expression of the fucking inanimate.
“Kiss my ass,” Javi says, and in one swift and graceful movement he’s out of his chair and heading for the restroom. His knees protest after sitting for most of the day but he’s not fucking stopping. He has to get away from this maniac. “I’m going for a piss,” he throws over his shoulder as he disappears into the corridor.
When he returns several minutes later Steve is gone — but the brown-nosed bear is unwrapped from its plastic bag and nestled in between his outbox and his pen pot.
Javi sighs, but the bear stays.
TWO DAYS LATER
“Ambassador Noonan wants to see us about my C.I.,” Steve tells Javi, almost apologetic, as he puts the phone back on the hook.
“Both of us? Great,” Javi says, the final word sounding chipper but dripping with sarcasm.
They both head for their desks, collecting I.D. badges from drawers and putting their coats on. Steve fiddles with his hair — which makes very little difference, Javi thinks — and picks up his car keys. “I’ll drive,” he says, and goes on ahead.
The brown-nosed bear catches Javi’s eye as he turns to leave. He pauses despite himself, mutters, “Fuck it.”
He puts the bear in his pocket and follows Steve out of the building.
In the meeting, every time Noonan says something that will needlessly halt their progress in catching Escobar, Javi squeezes the bear hidden in his pocket and tries to look less ‘constipated’, as Steve succinctly put it.
Steve’s C.I. will get them a small step closer to Escobar but a small step is better than none at all. Noonan is pleased, grants them some extra funds and manpower to follow the C.I.’s lead. In all, the meeting goes much better than usual — they leave with more than they arrived with.
Javi and Steve are descending the stairs to the underground parking lot together when Javi says, “Palo de zanahoria.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Palo de zanahoria. Carrot sticks. In Spanish.”
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