Pacifier

❤️Camille🍀

I made him wait 24 hours. That was all I could convince him of, just long enough to get the painkillers, just long enough to hear the doctors verdict. Was he going to recover now? Was this us both alright. 

They hadn't wanted to say, hadn't wanted to make promises they couldn't keep, kept leaning on the state we'd arrived in. Reminding us we were lucky to be alive. 

But we were alive and we were anxious. Johnny was restless and I couldn't sooth him enough to keep him still. 

So in the dead of night we left the hospital without saying goodbye. I helped him change into the trackies and tshirt Benji had dropped in for us - predicting our early departure -and then he helped me too, undressing me in the pale blue light leaking through the thin blinds in our hospital room. the machines buzzed and flickered. I wasn't naive enough to believe that the other patients on the ward slept soundly. Johnnys fingers traced my waist tender and slow, savouring the softness of my skin. 

"Missed you," he mumbled in my ear, chuckling when I shook my head. 

"Not now," I smirked kissing his lips quickly, letting my hand linger on his chest. Looking up at him with glowing eyes which told him I'd missed him too. 

Our bodies were tired, aching and sore. My legs felt strange walking. It must have been harder for Johnny but he didn't say a word, didn't let it show. As we left our private room his hand lingered on the door handle, his expression serious, determined, with a sharp kind of careful, a clarity in his eyes. He was focussed now, he wouldn't feel a thing until he felt he had time to. He wouldn't feel a thing until he was by Isabelle's side. 

We walked slowly, purposefully down the corridor, took the stairs at the end of the ward. Johnny took the first step and looked back at me, he knew the question in my eyes before I'd asked it. I'd known I wouldn't need to say a word. 

"It's just pain doll, its not the end of the word," his voice low and soft, the way it always had been, thick like treacle too reassuring. I shouldn't have been letting him con me like this, I should have been the mother Lyra would have been in that moment. But i was weak to Johnnys careless authority and when he looked at me like that, with that low glow about him, I wouldn't deny him. "Are you hurtin love? I can carry you..." he said, smirking as he trailed off, knowing that if he wouldn't let me be soft with him, I wouldn't let him carry me downstairs. 

"It's just pain doll," I smirked with narrow eyes, teasing him, feeling a spark in my chest and the pit of my stomach, a gratitude that we once again found ourselves, teasing each other at the most inappropriate of times, "its not the end of the world." 

"Its all country lanes," I said as the cold air in the carpark hit my cheeks, Johnny was already scanning the view for a suitable vehicle. One we could hot wire easily, but which wouldn't let us down in the middle of nowhere. 

He took my hand as we stepped out into the car park, walking slowly, doing our best to look as though we were simply trying to remember where we had parked. 

The carpark was quiet and though there was a solitary smoker out by the front entrance, we were far enough away from the doors and the glow from inside, that we'd be seen only in shadow, unidentifiable in the middle of the night. 

"Ooo Hyundai, Hyundai," I whispered nodding to my left waiting for him to follow my gaze. My smile mirrored by his as he grinned a slow forming grin, a low chuckle escaping him. 

"My genius little dove," he smirked, "clever girl," he said picking up the pace as we changed direction and headed to our victim. 

That was something we'd learnt growing up, from none other than Van's old man himself, I'd been taught which cars were easiest to steal, which cars weren't worth it, and which cars couldn't be hot wired but could be nicked off with if you tried. Hyundais being the most vulnerable.