#forget Weapons, These Arethe Real Apocalypse Essentials

#forget weapons, these are the real apocalypse essentials

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) dir. Ryan Coogler

Narcos fic: Don’t Look And It Won’t Hurt

A Javier Peña x waitress OFC story

Fandom: Narcos

Summary: Javi is a regular at an all-night diner in Texas where he makes a connection with a lonely waitress.

Rating: Explicit for eventual smut

Relationship: Javier Peña x waitress OFC

Tags/warnings: Idiots To Lovers; Eventual smut; Soft Javi; Mutual Pining; Mild Angst with a happy ending; Touch Starved; Emotional Hurt/Comfort; Intimacy; Panic Attack (just one instance).

Word count: 25.5 total so far (This Chapter is 5K)

Chapters: 4/?

Also posted on Ao3 (link in my Masterlist )

Read Chapter Two  |  Read Chapter Three  | Read Chapter Four

A/N: With love and thanks to @yespolkadotkitty​ for beta and cheerleading ❤

Read on Ao3, or here:

Don’t Look And It Won’t Hurt

Chapter One

There is a town some way outside Laredo whose main street has barely changed in twenty years. It has a faded pool hall and a one screen movie theatre. Next door to the movie theatre is a pawn broker that Buys Any Gold, Cashes Checks and places No Limit On Debit Cards. There’s a diner here too, Harper’s. It’s a dreary place but it’s open 24 hours and, being the only diner in town, does just enough business to stay afloat. On the corner is a laundromat with a little store attached. From sparsely furnished shelves it offers cigarettes, bait and other items deemed essential in a town like this. It’s early in the morning. Still so early and so quiet that you can hear the rough pads and unclipped claws of stray dogs as they strike the August-dry concrete. A woman turns the corner and walks into Harper’s. It’s her birthday today but she’s going to work anyway. 

“Morning Justine.”

“Hey Frances, happy birthday.”

“Thanks. Busy night?”

“Not really. You know.”

Frances walks through the empty restaurant and into the little locker room where Billy is sleeping, propped against the wall. He’s taking his usual nap in the no-man’s-land between feeding the night workers from the mill and the early risers who come in before the day cook arrives.

Her uniform is the kind of button-down dress that the retro places in the city have a team of marketers design for their staff in cheerful shades of turquoise or pink. Frances’ is a hand-me-down in beige polyester, with countless pin-prick holes marking the fabric around the machine-embroidered Frances above her left breast, where other women have unravelled before her. She leans in close to the rust-dotted mirror and presses a concealer stick on the shadows beneath her eyes.

As Frances re-enters the restaurant a man she doesn’t recognise is settling on a stool at the counter. He seems out of place, as though he was looking for the nearest bar but gave up before he found it. He has dark hair that’s a little rumpled, but maybe that’s because of the early hour, or the late one. Though he is sitting she can tell he is tall. Long limbs, broad shoulders. His face is all hard angles, with cheek bones you could cut yourself on. But there’s a softness there, too. Something in the eyes. They’re dark brown and turn down at the edges. They give him a sad look. If he was a woman he’d probably get told to cheer up all the time.

He’s wearing jeans fitted close around his hips and thighs. And a black shirt with short sleeves that show a long lean strength in his arms. She wonders what he does for a living. He has the kind of body that’s been built by life rather than a gym. A feeling she can’t identify rises from her belly and sits in her throat and then she realises, oh yes. He’s the kind of man she’d have had a crush on, back when there was any point in having crushes. In the days before there were shadows to conceal and tables to wait on. 

Frances looks up at the man’s face to find that he is looking right back at her and she stiffens with embarrassment. 

She looks at the floor and concentrates on walking to the counter to relieve Justine.

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