Of Journalists and Knives. [ Johnny C. x Reader ]

"One."

As the day grows older, sun drawing nearer to the horizon, you feel yourself age another twenty years. Something like the sun can exist for millennia, aging at a rate you can't even perceive, but you are an impermanent thing. A part of you knows that here, hunched over a desk on the seventh floor of a journalism company, is not the place for existential crises. Another part of you is still in that mode of thought, wondering if not now, when? If not here, where? You think your life took a wrong turn somewhere around two years ago, when your freshly-graduated self thought to take the first job you were offered was the best move. You regret it constantly, especially now, when you write of the most bland celebrity scandals, instead of the things you dreamed of. That's all a very distant dream, by now. You wanted to be something, and you didn't get the opportunity to be that. All you want is to either go out there and get what you want, or accept how things are and quit complaining.
Jesus, when did you get to be such a miserable son of a bitch?

The workday comes to a close, ending with you looking at your hard work with disdain and tossing it carelessly on a desk to be looked over by someone who most likely cares just as much as you do. That is to say, they don't care. No one does. Understanding how little things matter to everyone around you is exhausting. You have to wonder if everyone else knows it, too, or if you're alone in the realization. It doesn't matter who you are, what you think, what you do, as long as you give them the best gossip to toss out into the mobs. That's how things are, that's what you're supposed to be working on accepting. From what you can tell, all you're doing is getting bitter. Fine, then. You'll be bitter.
--

Outside, the chill of winter settles into your bones. You draw your coat tighter around your shoulders, hoping to spare yourself a bit of the cold. It doesn't work, which you should've been expecting. Snow crunches under your feet, a noise you just barely hear over the music in your headphones. As soon as you get home, back to your awful studio apartment with its drafty windows and space heater, you're making yourself a cup of hot chocolate and calling it a night. You were supposed to go out, meet with some coworkers for semi-mandatory bonding, but fuck that. You're going home.

The realization that you don't have a single thing that goes in hot chocolate at home hits you, and again, you are bitter about it. That is frighteningly consistent, you've learned, but it isn't as if there's anything that you can do about it. (There's plenty, you just aren't willing to put forth the effort. It's easier to act as if that isn't the case, whether you know that it is or not.)

You decide you're going to splurge on something from a coffee shop instead of having nothing at all. The decision takes both a long time and no time at all, because you had your mind made up already, but just to seem more frugal to your own self, you pretended to think it over. That's a waste of time, you know it is, it just makes you feel a little bit better.

The coffee shop, once you arrive, is warm and inviting. You feel warm, right down to your freezing heart. The soft, orange lighting brings you a sense of comfort like no other. As you walk to the counter, your gaze briefly catches on a man dressed in all black. He sticks out like a sore thumb, but you don't think much of that now. You feel a subtle chill run down your spine when he looks right back at you and smiles at you like the cat that caught the canary. Without a split second of thinking, you smile right back. You add a little wave, too. It's a reflex, just something you've learned to do, but you think that he might not like it all that much.

Really, you can't tell how he feels. But he stops looking at you, which is all that you really wanted. You get your hot chocolate, grateful for the smallest luxury, and the pleasant spell of the coffee shop keeps its hold on you while you sit down at a booth, pointedly the opposite direction of creepy guy. You're not trying to be rude, really, and you hope he doesn't notice.

Why would his opinion of you matter, anyway? It isn't as if it's going to alter the course of your life. You think this while sipping your drink and burning your upper lip slightly each time.
It doesn't matter.
--
An hour of staring out the window and drinking not one, but two cups of hot chocolate, has left you feeling content and little bit sick. You have no doubt that it was worth it, because you can convince yourself of anything if you simply try hard enough. That man has yet to leave, which you suppose you can't condemn him for, considering you haven't left either.

You settle back in your chair, trying to convince yourself to leave. The longer you stay, the more miserable the cold is going to be. Just as you prepare to move, you hear the most awful noise you've ever heard in your life.

Being the person you are, living an average life, you have never heard someone die. You have never heard the shriek of someone who knows their time is up, the noise of more blood than you've ever seen in your life hitting the slick wood floor beneath you, and you never had to think about whether you would or not. You duck under the table, not turning around to inspect the situation. You didn't come here to die, and you certainly aren't planning on doing it now.
You know you shouldn't, that you should do something to help or do anything at all, but you just turn your music up and cover your ears. It's a pathetic thing to do, drowning out the last moments of so many people around you. You'll regret it one day, you're sure, but right now you don't have anything to truly worry about besides your own life. With hands over your ears, you pretend everything is fine. Humans are selfish by default, after all, aren't they?

A tap on your knee from something wet drags your attention back to the real world.
Fuck, that's blood. Fuck, that's a knife.

If only you had bet your last twenty that you knew who it was going to be, staring at you, crouched under the table to meet your eyes.

"You thought you could hide, didn't you? I'm not dumb. I know you didn't leave." He remarks, a brow raised.

You slide your headphones around your neck, music still blaring and surrounding you. "Yeah, I did." You reply, your voice soft and airy. Maybe he'll leave you alone. Maybe you'll survive this. It's a miracle you can think that now, when someone with a knife is looking directly at you.

"I don't really like leaving witnesses." He drags the dull edge of the knife down your shin, staring at the indent it leaves in the denim of your jeans, before looking back up. "But you didn't see anything, right?" The knife is pointed close to your throat, not even an inch away from touching. Blood drips onto your clothes, and you feel bile rise in your throat.

"I've been under a t-table. What could I have seen?"

"Exactly." Then, he's gone. You're alive. He left, and you're alive. That repeats over and over, but you're too scared to come out from under the table. A trail of blood comes into your blurry vision, running down from somewhere to the left. You choke on your tears and look away.
In the midst of it all, your disgust and terror and sickness, a thought comes to mind.

This would make the cover story of the year.