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Johnny hears the familiar beep of the microwave, indicating their snack is ready. He opens its door and retrieves the hot bag, proceeding to pour the popcorn in a bowl and season it with salt.
Then he walks to the living room and lays the bowl on the coffee table, by his Coors Banquet and the fancy schmancy beer Daniel is having.
“There,” he says, climbing under the blanket by Daniel’s side on the sofa and shoving a handful of popcorn in his mouth, “decided what we’re gonna watch?”
“Ah, we’ve watched everything already...” Daniel searches through the Netflix titles, not missing when Johnny drops a bunch of popcorns on the sofa, even if he picks them up quickly in a futile attempt of disguising it. He was getting grease all over the leather.
“How ‘bout Rambo? It’s been awhile.”
“We watched Rambo last week, Johnny...”
“That was the last movie from last year, that sucked, man. No, I’m talking about the good old Rambo, you know, first blood, remember? From our time, ’82 I think it was.”
Daniel sighed. Not another Rambo night.
Friday night is always movie night for them, and he loves every minute of cuddling with Johnny on the couch, eating snacks and watching some old movie, then when the movie ends (Johnny always waits till the end), one of them takes the other in his arms and long story short, they end up making sweet love in the bed.
But Daniel's fed up with Rambo. Nothing against Stallone, though.
“How about Rocky?”
“That depends. Which one?”
“The third one.”
“Okay...” he combs Daniel’s hair with his fingers, mesmerised at how the black strands feel like silk against his rough fingers. “You do know that one is the worst one, right?”
“What? It is not.”
“C’mon, with the whole Apollo thing?”
“It’s a beautiful plot, Johnny! They overcome their differences, become friends... Reminds me of us.”
“Well, I bet Apollo didn’t take Rocky’s dick as well as you take mine...” Johnny teased, putting on that self-assured smirk on his face and pinching Daniel’s ribs from under the covers.
“You’re terrible, you know that?”
“You like it, don’t you?”
Daniel succumbs, kissing him briefly on the lips.
“Jackass... besides, you know they could end up together, if Hollywood wasn’t so bigoted! It was the eighties!”
“Just put it on...”
Daniel presses play and scoots down to cuddle next to Johnny, propping his feet up on the cushion and resting his head on his shoulder. He feels Johnny’s hand caressing his head, his fingers playing with his hair. The lavender scent from the shampoo Daniel got him, even if he insisted it was too fancy, emanates from him and right into his nose. It is intoxicating, mixed with a smell that is pure Johnny’s and makes it a whole lot special. He feels his chest go up and down with Johnny’s steady breathing, occasionally shuddering when he laughs. The strong beating of his heart a constant, and Daniel’s eyes are closing. It has been a long week, perhaps he’s skipping Rocky after all.
Suddenly the noise from the television stops and even from behind his close eyelids Daniel can tell the room went dark.
“What the hell?” Johnny curses and Daniel forces his eyes open.
“What’s going on?”
Johnny untangles himself from Daniel’s arms and stands up.
“God only knows, I’m gonna check out the roof, maybe a cable got loose or something.”
“What, now?!” Daniel protests, but Johnny’s already carrying the ladder from the storage room. “C’mon honey, it’s dark already, we’ll call the guy tomorrow.”
“Nah, it must be nothing serious, chill out.”
Daniel follows him outside and watched him place the ladder. Johnny starts to climb it, but after a couple of steps he turns around and sees the concerned look on Daniel’s face.
“I’ll just take a look,” he promises, then gives him a chaste kiss on the lips before climbing all the way up.
“Be careful,” Daniel mumbles, and then everything happens so fast and it is so dark he can hardly see what happens. All he knows is he hears a metallic crack from the ladder, then Johnny’s coming down on his back with a loud thud, the ladder falling on top of him.
“JOHNNY!” Daniel shouts and runs to his side. He knows Johnny’s conscious because he can hear his cries of pain, and he doesn’t know if he’s relieved or more worried. He takes the ladder from over him and throws it somewhere, then kneels down by his side, using his phone to shine some light on him.
“Johnny, talk to me, Johnny!”
He runs a hand on the back of his head and thank God there’s no blood.
“I’m okay, I’m okay...” Johnny says through gritted teeth and doesn’t convince him for a second.
“Where does it hurt?” Daniel cries. He wants to hold him, but he keeps his hands to himself, he doesn’t want to make anything worse.
“My arm, my goddamn arm, I think I broke it.”
Daniel shines the light to his arm, and winces. Johnny’s right, his right elbow is deformed, the bones are not aligned. What else, his middle finger is broken and twisted upwards.
“Oh shit,” Johnny says, diverting his look.
“That’s okay, ‘s okay, sweetie... did you bump your head?”
“No, no. My back hurts, my legs... the head's okay.”
“Okay, I’m calling an ambulance.”
“What? No, I’m okay...”
Johnny sits up.
“Johnny, you could be hurt!”
“I’m fine, Daniel, just help me up.”
“Fine,” Daniel says, holding him by his left, apparently healthy, arm and helps him up. “But I am taking you to the hospital.”
He helps him walk slowly towards his car. Each step slower that the previous one and Daniel can tell Johnny’s not feeling well.
“Wait,” Johnny wheezes, “I-I need to stop for a minute.”
“C’mon, big boy, just a few more steps.”
Daniel manoeuvres Johnny’s good arm behind his back and takes a great portion of his weight to himself, but Johnny’s head drops and Daniel’s afraid he’s passing out.
“Here, here, Johnny!” He speeds up and opens the car door, dropping a semi conscious Johnny on the passenger seat. “Hey, hey,” he exclaims, patting him roughly on both cheeks.
“I’m awake, I’m awake,” Johnny whispers and Daniel’s satisfied. He runs inside to get his keys, then runs back to the car, starting it and speeding away, disarranging the gravel.
“Johnny, talk to me.”
“’Bout what?”
“How’s the pain?”
Daniel turns on the inside lights and glances at Johnny. He has his eyes closed and his brows furrowed. He’s shivering and his hand holds his right arm. He must be agonising.
“Bearable.”
They arrive at the hospital in a flash and Daniel hasn’t driven that fast since Anthony was born.
“We’re here, honey, I’ll run inside and find someone to help us.”
He’s gone for a minute and Johnny feels himself drifting away, but Daniel’s back shortly, and there must be other people with him because he hears him telling them what happened, then someone is helping him out of the car and onto a gurney.
Daniel rushes after them when they stroll Johnny into the emergency room. They pump him up with analgesics and he seems to relax a bit. Everything is quick and organised, and soon they have him X rayed and thank God there’s nothing wrong with his back or his head. In fact the most serious injury is his arm, he must have landed elbow first onto the ground, disarticulating the joint and breaking his finger. Besides that, there are only bruised skin and sore muscles.
They let Daniel sit with him for a few minutes while the morphine kicks in.
Soon Johnny opens his eyes, and even though they look tired and worn out, Daniel doesn’t think he was ever so glad to see those baby blues.
“How do you feel?” he whispers, softly brushing his knuckles against Johnny’s stubbled cheek.
“Like I was run over. By a lawnmower.”
The doctor comes back in before Daniel could answer. He introduces himself as Dr. Cragen, explains Johnny’s condition showing them a bunch of x rays Daniel doesn’t really understand. What he does understand is that the bones in Johnny’s elbow are misaligned, and need to be realigned again.
They give him a sedative, which makes him groggy but not asleep, then a number of nurses come in and hold him down, and Daniel’s sure he’s never seen such a barbaric scene. His stomach twirls in anticipation; he’s allowed to stand by his head and so he does, his hands carefully bracketing Johnny’s head, his lips whispering sweet words of encouragment he knows will be pointless when the pain...
The doctor makes one single strong quick movement with Johnny’s arm and he howlers in pain, in a mixture of cursing and crying out. Daniel dries the tears from his face as he calms down, his yelling turning to soft whimpers.
Before he can breathe the pain away, with another harsh movement his finger is realigned, but his arm must hurt so much Daniel isn’t surprised when he barely whimpers at the new pain.
They put his arm in a cast.
“Mr. Lawrence, I want to keep you in observation for 24 hours to make sure you haven’t injured your head. So nurse Chapel here will accommodate both of you in a room for the night and-”
“What, no. I wanna go home.”
“Johnny, if he says we should stay, we-”
“Daniel, I’m not staying here.”
Thankfully for the doctor, a nurse barges in, needing his help, which gives the couple a few minutes to talk it over.
“I just wanna go home.”
“I know, me too,” Daniel utters, holding his good hand for emphasis, “but I wanna make sure you’re okay.”
Johnny sighs, there’s no use hiding it anymore.
“I-I don’t have insurance, okay?”
“I don’t care,” Daniel responds immediately, “we’ll worry about that later.”
“Daniel, I don’t have the money to spend a night-”
“I’ll take care of that, okay?”
“No way, no, I’m not-”
“Johnny,” Daniel interrupted, tilting his chin up so he would look him in the eye, “I know you hate to be taken care of, but just this time, let me, please?”
Daniel knows Johnny hates that, to feel he needs help, to have Daniel pay up after him consumes him from inside out. After all, it did take months of dating before he allowed Daniel to pay for dinner for the first time. That to thousand dollar medical bills was quite a leap.
Nevertheless he nods, and Daniel chooses to ignore the sad look in his eyes as he does it, preferring just to give him a long kiss to the forehead.
They are taken to a private room. Johnny doesn’t need to know, but Daniel dismissed the shared room avaiable.
One way or another, they get a private room. Your typical hospital room: a hospital bed, a TV and a pull-out couch.
The nurse brings Johnny a midnight snack, then they are left alone.
“Not hungry,” Johnny dismisses it.
“C’mon, there’re toasts with... butter, you love butter. You should eat something, Johnny, here.”
Daniel smears an alarming amount of butter on the toast, because why the hell not, and takes it to his mouth, a hand cupped under his chin so the crumbs wouldn’t fall on the bed and itch his back later, and how could Johnny say no to that?
After he eats some of it, Daniel dims the lights and lowers the bed so Johnny could sleep. He covers him with the blanket and lazily runs a hand through his hair.
“You worried me sick tonight, you know that?”
“Sorry,” Johnny mumbles, but he is halfway asleep already.
“Get some sleep, sweetie,” Daniel whispers and gives him another kiss to the forehead.
“Stay...”
“I’ll be right here.”
“No, come here.”
Johnny scoots to the side of the bed, disguising the lancinating pain that shoots through his whole body at the movement.
“Johnny, I want you to be comfortable...”
“I will, come here.”
Daniel gives up and crawls to his side. The bed is way too small for the both of them but Daniel lies on his side so Johnny can have some space, then squirms an arm under his neck and closes his eyes. He falls asleep hearing the soft snoring of Johnny’s.
A few hours pass before he wakes up again. He takes a minute to figure out where he is, then jolts awake by someone standing by his side.
It is the Ms. Chapel, the nurse.
“Oh, sorry, I will-”
He starts to get up.
“No, no, stay,” the woman says, touched by the scene, “I just needed to adjust his medication, go back to sleep.”
She smiles and leaves, but Johnny is already awake too.
“How do you feel?”
“Still hurts like a bitch. What did she want?”
“She was just checking up on you,” Daniel answers, nuzzling in his hair. “Ah, she said next time, to call the guy.”