so desperately obvious - Jake Webber x Johnnie Guilbert

playing hard to get, huh?

"Alright, you and your boyfriend should be good to go in a couple minutes, we just need to have you fill out the paperwork." A nurse expectantly hands a wide eyed Johnnie Guilbert a stack of papers. The shorter man just stands there with his hand half extended and looks from Jake to the nurse and back again.

"I-" His voice cracks at the end of the vowel and he looks at his friend again, Jake gives him a meaningful look which he takes to mean 'just go with it' so he does - albeit begrudgingly.

"Yeah, my uh.." He coughs, not sure whether it's disguising a laugh or awkwardness - probably both, "Boyfriend..." His cheeks are heating up - maybe this is why he wears so much concealer. Fuckin' hell. He can tell that his friend notices by the way his brown eyes are glued to his face.

At least Jake is blushing too. It's barely noticeable but there nonetheless.

Jake metaphorically hovers over his shoulder while he's filling out paperwork. The shorter man gives him a 'do you mind?!' look that has no real malice to it.

Johnnie feels so weak and a little disoriented. They barely kept him in the hospital for twenty four hours - it couldn't have been that serious, and he worried his closest friend for nothing...

They take an uber home with Scuff having moved out and no one else available still.

"We have some fake friends, huh?" Johnnie jokes as Jake helps him out of the hospital since his muscles are so weak from the strain of the cold (seriously, embarrassing).

Jake smiles and makes an offhand comment about how 'if any of them get stuck in a creepy ass motel, we aren't gonna be their savior'.

After a few moments, Johnnie can't help but break the silence, "Soo.. we're boyfriends now, yeah?"

Jake chuckles at that and rubs the back of his neck, nervous.

"Yeah.." He laughs that uncomfortable laugh, "I really needed them to let me stay overnight with you.."

"Fuck man.. that's actually really wholesome.." Johnnie pretends to be indignant when in reality, he's kinda melting internally at how sappy that is, "What the fuck?" His voice cracks again - stupid emotions - and Jake laughs, he actually laughs; Johnnie thinks his crush might be getting out of hand because he feels a flutter in his chest at the action. The fuck?

Eventually they get home and Johnnie basically falls down onto the couch, melting into the soft fabric in the oversized hospital clothes that were given to him seeing as all his actual clothes are still damp.

He drifts off to sleep in the living room with the oddly comforting feeling of being watched in the back of his mind, kind of like floating on a pillowy cloud. After a couple minutes or maybe even an hour, there's a soft blanket draped over him before he hears the dull click of Jake's door closing.

-

Jake looks at Johnnie's sleeping form, still soaking in the fact that his friend is alive - he didn't murder (technically manslaughter?) him. Johnnie looks so peaceful all cuddled up in the couch with his oversized hospital clothes, he just wants to wrap the other man up in a cacoon of blankets until he makes up for all the warmth he was deprived of.

But Jake can't do that, so he settles for draping a blanket over the sleeping man. He notes how a small smile forms on the other's relaxed face and he smiles back ever so slightly before retreating to his room, feeling kinda like a creep for staring so long.

-

Weeks go by and everything is fine, truly, it is. Though Jake begins to notice that Johnnie really hates rain when he didn't before 'the incident'... from there it's pretty easy to connect the dots. He has quite literally traumatized his friend (inadvertently - but still...).