Pedro Pascal Character Imagines

Grocery Aisles at Midnight (Javier Pena)

Summary: Javier, a man who takes care of everyone else, is finally taken care of.

Javier walked into the grocery store after a long shift.

They'd gotten intel on Escobar that seemed viable enough until they looked further into it. It ended up being a dead end.

Now it was well after midnight and Javier was trying to delay going home. This was how he had ended up at the grocery store. He grabbed a basket and went straight for the alcohol section, grabbing a couple of bottles of whiskey. He walked through the aisles, picking up things he needed. He picked up a box of pasta and heard a giggle. Javier looked up and saw a pair of brown eyes looking at him from the other aisle.

The pair of eyes disappeared and Javier raised up on the balls of his feet, trying to see over the aisle. He heard the laugh again and he walked down the aisle trying to find the pair of eyes again. He caught glimpses of the person until finally they came to the end of the aisle.

It was a stand-off. Who would make the next move?

Finally, a woman came around the corner. She was tiny, not even hitting Javier's shoulder. She too had a small basket in her hand.

Javier cleared his throat. "Hola."

"Hi."

She's American, Javier realized. "What brings you here?" Javier asked her, kicking himself for sounding so awkward.

The woman laughed and said, "Same as you. Picking up some late-night things. Bad day at work?" She pointed to the liquor bottles.

Javier put a hand on his hip and huffed out a sigh. "Something like that."

"Wanna talk about it? Or if you tell me, would you have to kill me?"

"I'm not a Narco."

She smiled and pointed at the badge clipped to his belt.

Javier looked down, bashfully. He'd forgotten to take it off. The woman was more observant than he thought.

"C'mon. Let me pay for your stuff and then you can tell me all about it."

"You don't have..."

The woman grabbed the basket from his hand. "Please. As a thank you."

Javier let go of his basket and followed her to the registers.

Thea, as Javier learned she was called, took her back to her apartment.

Javier wasn't used to being in an apartment with a woman he wasn't having sex with and it showed. He awkwardly stood in her living room until she told him to sit down. He sat there for a few minutes until Thea joined him with two glass of whiskey.

"I'm making us pasta," she told him, "I'm having to use my own sauce, since you never put any in your basket."

Javier laughed and took a sip of his drink.

It was clear to Thea that Javier wasn't a man who did his own grocery shopping that often. She imagined being a DEA agent meant lots of eating out and hardly being home. As the pasta cooked, Javier told Thea what he could about his job. Thea admired his commitment to catching Escobar, but could tell that the job weighed heavily on him.

He told her of Lorraine and how he had abandoned his life in Texas to pursue this.

"Ah, I thought I detected a hint of an accent," Thea teased him, causing Javier to smile and let out a small laugh. Thea loved being able to get a smile and a laugh out of him.

He probably didn't get many happy moments nowadays with Escobar blowing up shopping centers and killing innocent people.

When dinner was ready, Thea brought Javier his bowl and turned on a shitty telenovela. She sat next to him, her legs draped over his knees.

It was the closest thing Javier had ever gotten to domesticity and he hated to admit that he kinda liked it. About an hour after dinner was finished, Javier passed out on the couch.

Thea smiled and covered him with the blanket laying across the back of the couch after pulling his boots off and unclipping his badge. She examined the badge that held such power and polished it, setting it next to Javier's gun on the coffee table.

Later, when Javier asked Thea why she had shown him such kindness, she said, "You just looked like you needed someone to take care of you for a change."