Beautiful Chaos (jake x johnnie)

twelve

Searing pain was the first thing Johnnie felt when he opened his eyes. The next thing he felt were the heaviness of his eye lids and then he could taste dry cotton in his mouth. Loud beeps of a machine beside his head sounded next. He squinted against the fluorescent lights that basked down on him. His brain was foggy as he managed to move his stiff neck to look down at his body.

He was in a hospital gown. He shakily moved his hand to look inside of it and was met with his bare body. There were bandages and dressings wrapped around his torso. He stared at the bandages blankly as the painful events that unfolded earlier scraped back into his mind. Jake blowing up on stage, their disqualification, and then Mackenzie stabbing him. Everything was so perfect that morning—how did it all go wrong so quickly?

Jake's traumatized face flashed inside Johnnie's head then and he blinked. Jake, where was he? Johnnie looked up from his stomach and looked around the hospital room. There was an IV drip attached to his wrist that stung when he shifted. He glanced across the room and saw someone asleep on a bench. But it wasn't Jake. They turned then and he realized it was his mom.

Johnnie tried to sit up but he winced at the burning pain. His mom fluttered her eyes open then and glanced at him. Her eyes widened when she noticed he was awake and she rushed over to him quickly.

"Johnnie! Oh my god, you're awake, are you okay? Are you in pain?" She asked tearfully as she touched his face.

"I'm okay, don't worry," Johnnie reassured her.

She grabbed a water bottle off of the table next to him and twisted it open quickly. "You need to drink, okay? You need a lot of fluids—"

"I'm not thirsty," Johnnie turned his head away when she tried to thrust the bottle towards him, "mom, my roommate, Jake. Where is he? Did he come to the hospital with you?"

"Jake...does he have like a mullet and a lot of tattoos—"

Johnnie's heart stopped. He nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes that's him, where is he?"

"He was in the waiting room the last time I saw him, but he may have gone down to the police station for questioning. I don't know if he's returned," his mom gave him a hard look, "the police, they want to question you too when you get better. What happened at your school, Johnnie? You're lucky that psychotic girl didn't hit any vital organs, why would you jump in front of a knife like that?"

Johnnie ignored her questions. "Mom, where's my phone, I need to call him—"

"Hey," she pressed, "are you listening to me? Do you not understand the severity of what happened—"

"I know, okay?" Johnnie snapped, "why are you even acting like you care anyways? You sent me here so you didn't have to deal with my shit and so some therapist could fix me!"

"No, I was trying to help you Johnnie, you were suffering—"

"Some help you gave me, look where I ended up! You don't even know what's going on in my life which is why you're so lost right now!" He shouted, "now please give me my phone so I can reach the one person who actually gives a shit about me—"

"Johnnie," Jake's voice rattled his heart.

Johnnie looked slowly towards the entrance of the hospital room and saw him standing in the doorway. He was pale and there were dark circles underneath his eyes.

Johnnie's mom looked back and forth between them and then sighed. She stepped away from Johnnie's bed. "I'll give you two a moment, but we're going to talk again later, okay? And you need to explain everything that happened. Do you understand me?"

Johnnie didn't reply.

She walked towards Jake but stopped beside him before leaving. "If you're the reason why my son almost got killed today, I won't ever forgive you," she said to him.