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

"Five."

The morning sun creeps through the window, little slivers highlighting your slowly waking form. You wake up with a pain in your neck, sharp and unrelenting. You try to move, only to realize your arms are stuck under something. You groan slightly, shifting as much as you can to get rid of some of the stiffness in your muscles.

It is then that you recall why you are where you are. Johnny is collapsed on top of you, head resting on your chest, and your legs are tangled together on the couch. You can not help but be uncomfortable with how things have turned out for you. Out of all the things that you may have expected when you witnessed what you did, that you would one day wake up borderline cuddling with the man who committed such heinous acts never occurred to you, not once.

"Johnny-" You fear what will happen if you wake him, but you can not stay here while he catches up on the hours of sleep he has apparently missed. You have things to do, more important than any concern you may have for him. Which, you remark to yourself, is very small. "Get up." You move again and he mumbles something in his sleep, wrapping his arms around your shoulders and holding you tight. The fates quite like toying with you. They enjoy making things go from bad to worse in an instant, and you doubt you're going to be catching a break any time soon.

"Come on!" For someone so waifish, he has quite the strong grip on you. You are beginning to lose your patience with him, even knowing that he needs to rest or otherwise the consequences will likely be dire. You are not his parent, you remind yourself, so it isn't any of your business if he's tired to the point of collapse again or not. All you want is him out of your house. You want your solitude, you want your life back the way it was before you met him. You wrestle your arms out of his grasp and do the only thing that you can think to do. You push him off of you, and directly onto the floor.

"What the fuck!" He jumps up from the ground, form tensed like he could take off running any second. "What- why am I-"

"Glad to see you're awake, jackass." You mumble, sitting up and stretching out your arms above your head.

"I..." Johnny looks around the room, bug-eyed and confused. "You let me sleep?!" He suddenly shrieks, and you nearly jump out of your skin. So you were right. He is angry that you let him sleep.

"I thought you needed it." You reply, trying to keep calm. You are fairly certain if you show fear, he will feed off of it. "You certainly seemed like you did."

"I- You- No! No!" Johnny stamps his foot like a petulant child. "You can't do that! I don't ever want to sleep, how dare you let me!"

"Listen-!" You abruptly stand up to face him, chest puffed out and fists clenched at your sides. "You're the one who collapsed on top of me, alright? I didn't tell you to do it. If it was that important to you, you should have warned me beforehand and I would've woken you up!"

Johnny wilts, like your anger is something terrifying and unexpected. He functions based on how much control he has, you have decided, and you have taken that away from him. He has lost his hold over you, only for the moment, and he has no idea how to cope with that. "Okay." He replies, relaxing his visibly tense body. This has turned out better than you expected, which is to say you do not have a knife buried in your gut or an ax lodged in your brain. You have no clue where he would get either of those things, but something tells you that he could get them if he wanted to badly enough.

Johnny sits down on the couch again, bunching in on himself and staring at the TV. You can tell he is not watching it; his gaze is far too absent for that to be the case. You decide you are going to forget that he is there at all and get on with your life.

You walk into the kitchen, feet cold against the tile. You find yourself more grateful than usual that this is not a workday. If you had overslept this much, you might be looking at losing your job altogether. How much that would both you seems to vary on a day to day basis, but at the moment, you figure that you would be pretty upset by it. You make yourself some tea, and as an afterthought, you make Johnny some, too. You suppose you are not doing a very good job at forgetting he is there.