so desperately obvious - Jake Webber x Johnnie Guilbert

did you try to punch a ghost?

Jake wakes up with a splitting headache, feeling almost as if he just experienced multiple deaths. A combination of stinging and throbbing pain from what must have been glass shards and the subsequent head trauma are at the forefront of his mind.

His heart monitor picks up as he's reminded of the last time they were in the hospital.. He should've fucking listened to his friend and not used that Ouija board. Something was very wrong with that house.. He doesn't even know what to do with the footage that was running during that whole ordeal.. how is he supposed to edit that?

He isn't even sure where their stuff is but he knows for a fact that they aren't going back there.

Where's Johnnie..? Nurses arrive quickly, letting him know that he has a 'Grade 3' or 'high grade' concussion. Just fuckin' great, he doesn't really need brain damage but that's an amazing bonus isn't it? Fucking great. This is definitely some sort of karma.

After the nurse leaves, stating that he's gonna have to stay in the vicinity for a while for them to monitor his vitals, he swings the plastic divider open to look out at the room.

Johnnie's slumped across a shitty hospital chair, fried and blackened hair on end from recent struggles pertaining to a certain haunted house. His frame looks so small on the white plastic, Jake wants to hold him.

Okay, that's a very gay thought.

The roles are reversed from their last hospitalization and an odd sense of inverse deja vu washes over the taller man, is that even a thing? It should be. If not he just invented it.

Johnnie grumbles and curles up so that his face is towards the wall to hide from harsh sterile lights in a position that looks amazingly uncomfortable, Jake is almost impressed.

He laughs quietly as the smaller man continues to twist and turn on the small furniture (the chair can barely be considered such but bygones).. and Johnnie eventually opens his eyes, moaning about the uncomfortable lighting situation. His rubs his face with a very bandaged hand.

"Did you try to punch a ghost.." He gestures to the injury and Johnnie just looks at hin for a second, confused.

"Oh! Yeah, I fought glass.."  It's a lame joke but Jake doesn't say that, maybe he's gone soft.

"That didn't happen when the.. yaknow." He's talking about the very recent explosion that they endured - not wanting to directly mention it for some unexplainable reason - and the other man seems to get it. He would absolutely remember if something had happened to his friend's hand. Especially something that needed so much medical attention.

"Hey, waitwaitwait, we aren't not gonna acknowledge this!!" Johnnie starts using the most roundabout phrasing possible accidentally, "I thought you were gonna die, you fucker!"

The emo man practically yells the sentance and Jake chuckles because what else is he supposed to do,

"Sorry about that.."

"Sorry??"

"Yeah, the whole Ouija thing was kinda a dick move."

Johnnie looks suprised at the apology but his expression softens quickly ever so slightly,

"It's fine, dumbass. Sorry for leaving you down there by the way.. I didn't know anything was wrong, I was just so.." He's sitting beside Jake on the hospital bed by now, so close as he trails off. Jake finds it kinda funny that they can't get through a serious conversation without calling eachother insults (they're more 'pet names' than anything at this point...).

He actually finds it endearing and that thought isn't buried as deeply as it should be..

Memories fly through his mind unwarranted, the smaller's misty disassociated expression, the fear that came with him leaving. The darkness. Fuck, this is heavy.