Perfect Illness || lookism x reader

16. Totally Relaxing Holiday

Retreat lead straight to the holidays so she basically lived like a hermit with Eli until a few nights in.

"So, what did happen to you after you left Big Deal?" YN asked Johan, who briefly paused from shoveling food down his throat to respond. YN supposed the least she could do was let him eat after asking him to meet up with her in the middle of the night. Surprisingly, he had agreed when she asked.

"I don't know." He shrugged unhelpfully. "Fighting just seemed the way to go. I needed to regain control of my life. So, I learned how to box, entered some competitions to beat the biggest competition in my life."

"And that is....?"

Johan's eyes darkened. "Defeated." He ate more of the scrambled eggs. YN reached over and stabbed a mushroom on his plate with her fork, pensively chewing on it, waiting for him to continue.

He kept eating eggs. "You like the mushrooms? I don't really." He offered her a mushroom. On his fork. YN fought to keep a blush off her face. Calm down. It doesn't mean anything." She gingerly removed the mushroom from his fork with her teeth, trying to forget the fact that he was feeding her. She glanced out the window from the booth, into the dark rainy night. Lights from other stores in the strip mall were dark, the 24 hr diner being the only one with people left.

Johan still didn't continue his explanation.

"How did you end up in God Dog?" YN pressed. That finally seemed to get him to stop gobbling food and look her in the eye.

"I needed the money."

"For what...?"

He didn't seem to want to answer that. So she waited, staring intensely at him.

"My mom's eyes."

Drip. A bead of blood dripped from YN's nose and onto the plastic table. As her eyes rolled shut and she fell forward, the last thing she saw was Johan's alarmed expression.

"I can't go home," Johan was telling her. YN raised a judgmental eyebrow.

"Why not? Me personally, if I had a mom, I wouldn't leave her."

"Wha- how do you not have a mom. That's like physically impossible."

"Really– ? Nevermind, tell me why." (YN had no sex ed at this point in time, but with Eli's... accident, he had now made sure to drill it permanently into her head, no matter how awkward the event)

"Well, she's going blind."

Huh....That was a very abrupt bomb, YN mused, waiting for him to continue.

"I came from a bad place." Johan shuddered thinking about it. YN glanced at his fists, which were wrapped in bandages similar to Wright's work. They were sitting in an alley that YN somehow recognized as one she would frequent when she was with Big Deal. Johan was hugging his knees and leaning against the alley wall as if trying to shrink away. YN sat dramatically, legs sprawled, leaning on some crates, as if she ruled the world. Which, compared to her life before, probably felt true.

"And my mom got involved in some bad stuff. She's in rehab now."

Rehab had something to do with drugs. YN knew that much, at least, the druggies who would lurk the streets were rather harmless most of the time; ok people who had fallen into bad situations, and were great sources of gossip.

"Before that I mostly took care of myself. She's been on this path for a while now, so not much will change. At least she'll be taken care of." Johan suddenly leaned forward and grabbed YN's shoulders. "You're right. I'm never going to leave her. Big Deal is a family for people who didn't have them. But I do. My mom is my family. I won't ever leave her." He let go of her shoulder, and leaned back against the alley wall, his posture far more confident.