You have a secret
Part of the Metanoia series | Part 1 | Masterlist |
| SingleDad!Johnny x f!reader | 18+ MDNI | CW death of a loved one, grief, attempted SA, Johnny and reader are going through it |
Glasgow is cold in January.
Hogmanay came and went with the typical rambunctious celebrations, every bar and pub in the city overflowing with patrons that spill out onto the pavement and the streets, properly drunk and stumbling over one another as they make their way to the next bar. Some of your coworkers invited you out for a bar crawl, just as they did last year, but you’d decided going out in the freezing weather and nursing a hangover at work in the morning isn’t worth the trouble. So home you stay, curled up with cheap Tesco sparkling wine and the last book on your reading list for the year, the tv playing a montage of celebrations across the city quietly in the background, and you slink off to bed just as the fireworks settle and the night falls quiet.
The days that follow are quiet too, the first week of the new year creeping along in the hazy in between, that little reset that comes between the holiday season and the yawning winter that looms before you, corporate deadlines and end of fiscal year reports that will start to pile up soon. You enjoy the quiet calm of that in between, try to remember what it feels like to be able to step away from your desk and take a lap around the office to stretch your legs before you’re inundated with so many reports you hardly have time to break away to use the restroom.
Johnny frequents your thoughts more than you'd like to admit as you stroll around the office floor, wondering if he's operating in the same lull as you are, biding his time until his next assignment with dull busywork and monotonous routine. Wondering if he and Isobel had celebrated Hogmanay at home like you had or if maybe he’d taken her to a friends flat with him, one of his team members. Wondered if he let her stay up late with him and counted down the fireworks display together, or if he tucked her into a spare bedroom some hours before, waking her up just in time to see them and take her home to her own bed for the night.
The growing tinge of disappointment hung like storm clouds over your mood when you hadn’t seen much of them in the days leading up to the new year, and you began to think maybe all the smiles, all the double entendres, were just a friendly personality and polite kindness on his part; just a neighbor being neighborly. There was an exchange of phone numbers with the offer to call or text one another if the other ever needed anything after dinner several weeks ago. Hardly an invitation for conversation. Another polite exchange and thanks for your mutual goodwill.
Pretending not to care, to resist the urge to check your phone whenever it vibrates on your desk or in your back pocket, takes more effort than you had expected. It’s not him. Why would it be him? It’s not like he said he would call.
But Johnny has a habit of surprising you.
Snow and lights and festive wreaths don’t hold the same wonderment they used to. They all remind him of her. Remind him how she always insisted on a big family dinner. How she was always the one who invited everyone to their home and always had his favorite scotch on hand to toast with at midnight. The lights remind him of flashing red and blue, screaming sirens that cut through the air like the mournful wail of a banshee. The snow covered roads look too much like the roads did that day, tires slipping and sliding, the tail end of his car nearly spinning him out on the highway in his desperation to get to her.
And the quiet.
The quiet of the world when snow falls and blankets the earth in layers of glittering sorrow makes the silence deafening. Her laughter doesn’t echo Isobels, there are no footsteps mirrored in the snow beside hers, and the tiny angel in the front yard stares up at the clouds where its missing guardian watches over them. It’s hard, for both of them. Isobel doesn't remember the accident, doesn’t remember riding in the ambulance with her mother or the way the security guard and several nurses had to hold Johnny back when she coded. She doesn't remember the tears, the anger, the denial of everything unfolding in front of him, crumbling around him and knocking the air from his lungs, leaving him crumpled on the floor outside her room.
Isobel didn’t see how he sat slumped against the wall with his head between his knees, arms folded over his legs and fingers digging into his skin until the blunt edges of his nails drew blood. She never saw the procession of doctors and nurses that slowly filed out of the room, the only sound in the somber silence the soft tapping of rubber soles on tile. No beeping from monitors, no clicks and whooshes of the ventilator. Heavy, suffocating silence.
The social worker sat with him, let him fall apart right there on the hospital floor, a sympathetic hand resting on his trembling shoulder as he poured his heart out onto the cold, sterile white tile beneath him. When the silence became unbearable, when it started clawing at his skull and slicing into his skin like razor wire, he let her fill it. He listened to her tell him that Isobel is okay–scared, in shock–but alive and breathing. Lets her lead him through more sterile hallways to an office where another social worker does their best to occupy the tiny girl, but the minute Johnny walks through that door she’s all trembling hands and watery eyes, wobbly chin and confused tears.
He does his best not to let her see it, not when the snow is still full of magic and the lights still make her eyes bright with joy, pure and unbridled. But it's hard to hide the grief that dulls his own, the wintery haze that hardens them into icy pools that long for the warmth of summer skies. It’s hard to step outside and breathe the crisp winter air and not feel his throat constrict, feel the warmth seep from his body, replaced with the empty cold of a world without her in it.
Sometimes he can hear little bits of her in the way Isobel laughs, can see the same stubborn crease of her brow when she can’t quite figure something out and refuses to ask for his help. He sees the same light and spark in her eyes, the same mischief that they once shared through the years, and he can't bear to dim that light, to extinguish the joy and happiness that lives there.
It was a quiet holiday for the two of them. No big parties, no dinner and drinks, despite John's invitation. Just Johnny and Isobel, cuddled up together on the couch watching movies and sharing bites of whatever snack or dessert the other brought with them. He thought about texting you, asking if you had plans to go out, or maybe stay in. Isobel came trotting back from the kitchen, one of the cookies the two of you had made together in-hand, and clambered onto his lap, peering at the unsent message to you on his phone screen.
“What’s it say?” She squints her little eyes at the letters, still not quite able to put the words together.
“Nothin’, leannan.” The words disappear from the text field and he tosses his phone aside to settle his arms around her. “Did ye bring one for me?” She shakes her head no but breaks off a chunk and offers it up to him. “Thank ye.” He leans forward to take it from her, takes the bite straight from her hand, and her delighted giggles fill the gaping hole in his chest with comforting warmth.
Cinnamon and pine still lingers in the air, mingled with the scent of paper and ink, with the warm coffee several customers clutch between cold fingers. With boxing day and the holidays behind them, the shops are much less overwhelming at this time of year, most of the aisles in the book store blessedly empty and the silence only occasionally interrupted by the fluttering of pages or soft footsteps on carpeted floors. The perfect atmosphere for strolling between shelves and taking the time to read more than the blurb on the inside cover of a book before adding it to the small collection already cradled in your arms. It’s the perfect, quiet afternoon until it’s not. Until the silence is broken and every hair on the back of your neck is standing at attention.
“Well, lookit you. Pretty little thing, aren’t ya?” The words are clumsily spoken, slurred and hot against your cheek where his breath fans across clammy skin, sour and putrid, reeking of alcohol and god knows what else. He plucks the book from your hands, works hard to focus his eyes as he surveys the cover art and skims through a passage from the middle of the book. You stumble back a step, heels catching on the shelf behind you and nearly sending a few of the more precariously shelved titles tumbling to the ground. He follows, the only space between him and you created by the book in his hands, and you clutch your little stack tighter to your chest, willing hardbacks and delicate pages to become armor. “This isn’t the kinda stuff a little lady should be readin’.” He waves the book in your face, braces a hand on the shelf beside your head when he teeters off balance, and leans far too close, crowds you back against the shelf until the wood digs into your shoulder blades.
A glance at either end of the aisle reveals nothing but empty rows of shelves and not a soul in sight, no one to come to your rescue.
“I-I can read what I want. Please leave me alone, sir.”
“This is pure filth,” he sneers, shoving the book back at you. It lands on the floor at your feet with a fluttering ‘thump’ and the shelving behind you creaks as you try to maintain some distance from him. You wish that the novels at your back would open their covers and draw you in, hide you between the inked words within their pages. “Worse than porn, this is. ‘S not even any good. Why read this shite when you can have the real thing?” His hand dips down to fumble with something beneath his coat and you hear the metal teeth of a zipper unfurling.
You know what’s happening, know what you’ll see if you look down. You know that you should push and shove and yell and scream, but you can’t. Fear and realization settle heavy against your body, fog your mind with a haze so thick your vision turns blurry at the edges, and when you open your mouth to speak the only thing that comes out is a strangled, muted gasp as he presses his full body weight against you, searing heat pressed firm against your stomach and pinning you in place.
Everything feels slow and blurry. Like you're underwater, trying to run across the bottom of the ocean, salt water stinging your eyes. The dread that weighs so heavily on your chest keeps you there, refusing to let you surface, refusing to let you draw more than shallow breaths that feel like lungfuls of water instead.
Something cuts through the depths. A noise. Someone's shouting. Angry. And then that weight on your chest, the weight that pins your body to the shelf, is gone. You still can’t breathe, salt water still blurs your vision, distorts the movement in front of you and leaves you disoriented, unsteady on your own feet. There’s more noise, softer this time.
An employee. She’s asking you something. Asking if you’re ok. You let her guide you, away from the aisle to a back room to sit in a chair and drink water from a paper cup while she calls the police. She stays with you until they get there and while they ask you questions, sits in silent support beside you and refills your water when you need it. The police leave, tell you that if they see the man he’ll be picked up, and the younger woman asks if you want to call someone to get you, to drive you home.
The thought of anyone else seeing you, talking to you, trying to touch you, makes your stomach twist with nausea. So you drive yourself home, empty book bag tossed in the seat beside you, no music to fill the silence. You don’t quite know how you got there, sitting in your car outside your house. Can’t remember making the turn down your street or how long ago you killed the engine.
Long enough for Johnny to take notice, it seems. He’s knocking on the window, calling your name, and it startles you. Drags you up from the quiet depths of your mind and sets your heart racing. Too fast. Too much. The car is too small, the seat belt too tight across your chest, and you need out. He nearly gets hit with the door, dodges heavy metal as it swings open suddenly, and his brows slope together in concern when he sees your shaking hands, sees the way you won’t look at his face.
“Wa’s wrong, bonnie? Wha’ hap-” You shove the door closed behind you, brush him off and skitter around him, won’t come within more than a few meters of him, and he calls after you as you climb the stairs to your door, hurriedly fitting the key in the lock. “Have I done-”
You don't hear the rest of his sentence, and Johnny is left dumbstruck at the bottom of the steps, the slam of your front door and the sound of the deadbolt clicking into place ringing in his ears like he’s stood too close to a grenade.
Next>>>
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Happy soon-to-be Summer, everyone! I hope the changing weather is treating you well, and that you're ready for another art party hosted by my guild, [VS] Verdant Shield!
For those who aren’t familiar with art parties, they’re a concept carried over from Final Fantasy XIV - in-game get-togethers for artists/writers/creatives of all types to hang out, chat, and create together! Get your favorite character/look together, head to the location, find someone that catches your eye, and create! Afterwards, everyone posts their creations in a shared tag (ours is #VSArtParty) so others can see, interact, and share! Tl;dr: the ‘goal’ of an art party isn’t to be drawn, but to draw others, and share with the community!
Time and /squadjoin information is under the cut, but will also be posted again via reblogs as the squads go up on the day of the party!
Location Information:
It's been a bit since we've been in human lands, so let's take a little lakeside vacation just outside of Claypool in Queensdale! No fancy footwork required, this is a starter map and the location is easily accessible just by following the built-in roads!
Time & Squad Details:
As we always do, we’ll be having two parties - one on EU servers and one on NA ones - with an hour break in between. People tend to arrive early and/or jump between accounts as soon as the break comes up, so don’t be surprised to see tags and announcements going up ahead of schedule!
The first party will be on EU servers and begin at 9pm Central European Summer Time (aka 3pm Eastern Daylight Time or 5 hours before in-game reset). I’ll be hosting on my EU alt account, so to join either /squadjoin or whisper Runa Gravemourn for an invite.
The second party will be on NA servers and begin at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time (aka 1am Central European Summer Time or an hour before in-game reset). I’ll be hosting this one on my main account, so to join either /squadjoin or whisper Taliyah Markos for an invite.
Closing Words:
Sorry to keep y'all waiting in suspense for the location! Consider this a little bit of a beachy vacation, and look forward to when the Festival of the Four Winds appears in the near future for prime beach party activities!
Thank you again to everyone that comes to these events, you are what makes them great! As long as you guys are willing to come out and collaborate on all these great memories, I will always be around to herd your metaphorical (or sometimes literal) cats. See you soon! ♥
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