#triger warning | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ally-holmes · 1 year

Text

Screw bad days | Will Johnson x Reader

My Fanfic Masterlist | Multifandom

Fandom: Wanted (2016)

Pairing: Will Johnson x Fem!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Content Warnings: blood, graphic descriptions of violence, trauma, angst, miscommunication, group therapy, spoilers of Wanted season 2. Happy ending.

Summary: You've been through something awful and part of your therapy implies group sessions in which you met Will Johnson. When you gather the courage to ask him out on a date, he rejects you, doesn't he? Maybe there's some miscommunication going on, and maybe your bad days have mushed the true meaning of a lot of things.

Note: I wanted to do something lighthearted with Will Johnson, but then I saw 'Wanted' and all of a sudden this cheesy 'do you want coffee' miscommunication plot turned into something dramatic. I'm sorry. There's a happy ending, though.

Word Count: 5153

Also avialable on AO3

This work was created to be part of the Deanobingo2023 event by @deanobingo It fills the Character Card with Will Johnson and the General Prompt Card with Miscommunication.

Screw bad days | Oneshot

Sometimes reality and expectations clash. Expecting something in your life to be like it was portrayed in the movies was inconvenient at best, although not completely incapacitating.

When you were walking down the street towards your friend's house you weren't scared of the darkness surrounding you, or the fact that the sound of your boots against the pavement echoed in the silence of the night. On the contrary, you walked slower than usual to rejoice in the moment. You took a deep breath feeling the humidity of the last rain creep inside of you and you felt extremely pleased with your life at that very moment. There were no odd shadows following you, no hairs in your nape standing in a warning.

Your quietness was broken when you reached your friend's place. She had moved places that very week and invited her acquittances to a small home warming with a barbeque in her backyard. She's been ecstatic about moving out of her small apartment to that family house that she was going to share with her partner. Things were going well for her and you were a supportive friend. However, when you saw the front door ajar you shook your head. She always did that in her apartment when she was waiting for someone to come over, a very dangerous habit you've tried over and over to correct. Pop music for parties poured out of the opening, not loud enough to bother the neighbors.

In a movie, you might've sensed that something was off, but you didn't. You pushed the door with a big smile on your face saying something, maybe calling for your friend, you really cannot remember. What you do remember is the blood stain, fresh and dramatically red, across the floor. Before you could understand that for that amount of blood to be shed someone must've been badly injured, your brain caught that whatever was bleeding had been moved, dragged from the small hall of the house to the open area of the living room.

You always thought that if you found yourself in a situation like that you'd scream loudly, like a banshee maybe. You did not. Swallowing a big lump stuck in your throat you moved your eyes scanning the room. Your friend laid on the floor, in a pool of her own blood, as a man hovered over her with a knife deep in her body. Her eyes were open, unfocused, and lifeless looking in your direction.

The man had been shocked by your appearance and apparently was having the same trouble coming to a solution as you. The adrenaline kicked in, your system turning on like a fine machine. You ran towards him wielding your big rainbow umbrella like a heavy bat, and you hit him in the head with the heavy handle. The man flew away from your friend with a grunt, the knife lost under the couch. As you aimed to land another blow, he kicked your knees which ended with your fall into the slick blood.

The survival instinct kicked again, or so you've rationalized with time, but the next thing you remember is crawling towards your bent umbrella figuring that the moment you had it between your hands again you'd be in charge of the situation. Oh, you fool.

He grabbed your ankle, manhandling your body at will. His breathing was fast and arduous, he was grunting and cursing under his breath. You kicked at him and landed hits on any part of his body you'd miraculously reach. He pulled your hair with one hand and landed a good punch with the other. It had muffled your surroundings; your brain had turned into a cotton ball. He punched you several times, that much you remember, although your conscious self only registered the first one and the last one with which he left your wounded body resting on the floor.

Once he was standing he kicked your torso, most like stomping on you with his heavy boots. You whined, unable to scream.

Time got lost for a moment. With each pant that left your lips, you felt a pinch of pain in your body. Feeling too much moisture in your mouth you tried to swallow which left you nauseous as it wasn't only saliva, but it had blended with your blood; you moved to your side and spat it disgusted by the gooey texture and the metallic taste. The man was nowhere to be found, although your senses weren't reliable at the moment. You pulled yourself together with work minding each little sound that wanted to sleep out of your body; on your knees, with a hand holding your ribs, the arm across your body, you used the other hand to crawl, almost slithering, to the sofa where you knew the knife was. The need to protect yourself made you move, and when you thought you'd achieved your goal, you took the smartphone out of your pocket calling emergency.

Of course, in the movies, when the main character is calling for help and whispers to the phone two things usually happen: first, the operator understands each word, no matter how mumbled and slurred it is; secondly, the bad guy can't hear shit. Well, you weren't in a move, were you? The operator didn't understand you so you talked fast, loud, and clear, begging for help and giving the address immediately knowing that the man was going to listen to you. Just as the operator asked you not to hang up, your head was hit from behind and you collapsed under your weight.

He turned your body to look at you. You could see it in his eyes, he was enjoying your fighting and he pretended to milk the moment of your death to the last drop. His hands grasped around your neck and he pressed, not as tight as to kill you on the spot, he wanted you to suffer.

He had seated heavily on your damaged torso, a savage smile printed on his face. On instinct you grabbed his hands wanting to pull them away from you, your fingernails scratched his skin and he only laughed. Taking advantage of how close he was to your face because he wanted to savor each of your whining gasps, you pushed your fingers into his eyes, as strongly as you were able. It didn't do much, but it bought you time. Only a few seconds for you to reach for the knife and then–

Then the knife was in his neck and he was recoiling from you, slipping on your friend's blood.

You heard him choke on his own blood until the only sound left in the room was your pitiful gasps and the pop music vibrating from the speakers. You laid there, eyes lost in the ceiling until the police came.

Being a trauma survivor wasn't like the movies either. You expected dark nightmares that would awaken you damp in a cold sweat while screaming so loudly that you tore your throat. The nightmares happened, of course, but they pushed you away from sleep with the terrible feeling of falling abruptly, then you usually got up from bed in fly or fight mode, hypervigilant, with a boost of adrenaline in your system.

Your therapist reminds you weekly that you don't have to compare your experience to anybody else's, that you are you, and that there's no wrong way of facing your fears as long as you keep facing them. The fact that he has to remind you once a week is self-explanatory. However, the point stands, you don't have to justify to anyone why you have three new locks on your apartment door, two on the one in your bathroom, and five in your bedroom. You don't have to, yet you keep feeling weird about the fact that you're different now. And that–

A patient voice calls your name for the fourth time and you become aware that you've arrived at group therapy. Funny how sometimes your mind just wanders tuning out the background noise making your feet take you where you have to be, and other times you're in a state of hypervigilance, aware of every single detail surrounding you.

Jed is a patient man. He has a soft smile and a compassionate look in his eyes when he addresses any of you. Your smile is tight when you greet him; which is not uncommon, all of you now understand smiling as a social conduct that must be required, not a gesture to express content.

Group therapy was one of those things you expected to be something intense with a lot of praying, but in reality, it was more mundane than that. The key factor was to listen to your fellow traumatized buddies and understand that you weren't alone in your eerieness. Because that's what you think you've become, eerie.

Sometimes group therapy is held in a small room with chairs facing a podium where people talk in front of everybody assuming the main role of the session. In others, like today, the room is even smaller and there're just a few chairs forming a circle.

You take your place two seats away from Jed who's in charge of conducting these sessions, and, as usually happens, you find Will seated in front of you. He acknowledges you with a soft movement of his head that you correspond.

Will Johnson entered the group four months ago. In his first session, he introduced himself as the killer of Bambi's mother, which made your lips twitch in something remotely similar to a smile for the first time in three years since what had happened to you. You two have been talking at the end of the sessions about anything but the trauma, that's how you found out that he had not less than fifty different flannels mostly because he didn't want to throw any of them away. From his interactions, you learned that he was a flirt too confident in his looks with a cheeky light in his eyes when suited.

Falling for someone as broken as yourself didn't seem like a sound idea; Jed kept saying that none of you were broken, nonetheless, so…

You've drifted again because the session's been going on for twenty minutes and you missed it.

"Thank you, Amanda. That was a very insightful thought. Anyone else wants to share?" Jed offered with his sweet voice that had never been raised. You truly believe that he was born solely to take care of traumatized people.

Will, across from you, straights in his chair raising his hand with a tiny wave; his legs are wide open, wanting to occupy as much room as possible. He winks at you because you've previously pointed out this fixation wondering if it was because he was short and cute; he huffed a laugh at you then while you cursed your damn mouth, but he still shrugged and said "maybe".

"Go ahead, Will."

"Um… Yeah. So, here's the thing, I've been told I have this Stockholm Syndrome or whatever," he dismisses the idea with a gesture of his hand before crossing his arms on his chest and extending his legs in front of him to cross them as well. He was in defensive mode. "The point is that I don't think I do. I don't know."

"Could you elaborate?" Jed gently pushes after a minute of silence.

Will looks at you and then at Jed before nodding.

"Bare with me then. You already know that I got kidnaped and shot. Um… My parents cleaned a crime scene for a bad man, right? Right. So, my old man kept the gun I don't really know why, and my mom buried the bodies so she was the only one knowing where they were.

"When my dad got sick he told me about the gun and I immediately thought that I could get some compensation, you know? That's the point. I wasn't thinking of bringing justice to the victims when I took it. Giving it to the police? Never crossed my mind. I just wanted cash. Um…

"There were these two ladies. They had the gun and I took advantage of the younger one and– and grabbed the gun. They found me and kidnaped me, right? So here I am, in my cabin after a car crash with two ladies looking for the gun that would give me money. Or so I thought, because apparently when you're a greedy bastard you're unable to think properly about the consequences of your acts."

"Will, sorry to interrupt," Jed held his hands in apology. "Try not to be self-hurtful. There's always room for redemption, we mustn't feed on our past. Please, continue."

"Yeah… Sure. Anyway, so I thought they will never find the gun and that they won't kill me. Wrong. The younger one– The one I've tricked, found it, right? And so they have what they wanted but can't actually leave just yet. And then this guy shows up and I got free of my restraints and got out even if the older lady told me that the guy was bad news. The dude was going to shoot me in the head, you know? I was there, on the ground and he was going to–

"She shot him first. Not deadly, though. Um… She saved me and then dragged me with them. Still kidnapped. Um… At some point I helped them of my own will, you know? And that's when my therapist says that I might've felt grateful that the older lady had saved me or something.

"Here's the thing. I– I wanted the gun for the money. They wanted it to put the bad guy behind bars. Were they doing questionable shit? Yeah. I think we were all full of shit, but my shit was the stinkiest, you know? I just– I don't feel really like a victim. I helped them because I felt like shit about the whole situation. If I hadn't taken the damn thing from them… Who knows?

"My mom was afraid. When we lost the gun because the bad guy got it, I learned that my mom had buried the bodies, right? She told the ladies where they were buried, but, as it turned out, it was a trap. Shitty, hey?" He started fidgeting. "Then I went to help them, right? Because it was my fault. That's– That's how it felt. And I got shot. Right here, on my side.

"They tried to help me then, but the police showed up and everything got mushy. I don't know… I– I don't think they were bad people, and I'm certain that neither do you so I'm not so sure about that Stockholm Syndrome, or whatever."

He takes a moment, and runs a hand through his face, "It's been five years. Five years and I'm not even mad at them. I'm mad at myself. I shouldn't have myself involved in that. I should've known better. Then, of course, my mom. I love her. I love my mother because she's my mother, but fuck! She sold them. She– Was she trying to keep me and her safe? Perhaps. Probably. The point is that if she hadn't betrayed us then the bad guy would've been put down and we'll still be safe. I– Sometimes I keep thinking about the possibilities and the what ifs and my therapist says that's not healthy, yet I have no clue how to stop. In these five years, though, I haven't felt about my mom the same as I use to. I want to love my mom, but I can't. It's– I don't know."

"That's been an emotional journey, Will. Thank you for sharing it with us. I'm sure we can work with it. Does anybody want to say something? No? Well, let's explore Stockholm Syndrome first. What do you believe it means?"

You can see how Will's still close, tense, and uncomfortable. He runs his hands through his hair, face, and beard in a pattern; crosses and uncrosses his arms and legs, moves his foot, and taps his fingers against his arm in an unknown rhythm. Will's eyes won't focus on anyone until the session is done, you know as much.

Once the session is over, the patients help themselves to some beverages and sweet food that Jed carefully arranges beforehand. You approach Will, it's been quite some time since you two met and you've finally gathered the courage to ask him out.

"So, I was wondering if you're up for some coffee. There's a new café down the street and–"

You're nervous and slightly uncomfortable asking someone out as you haven't done it since the incident. You've talked to your therapist about Will and how you seemed to click, and he's encouraged you to hit that milestone.

Will blinks rapidly and focuses his beautiful blue eyes on you cutting your rambling, "What?" He asks with a smile.

It makes you shake a bit. You ponder on whether or not he really hasn't listened to you or if he's kind of giving you an out from your awkwardness pit and backpedal. You fist your hands feeling the blunt nails digging into the skin. No take-backs.

"Coffee. They've opened a new café and I was wondering if you wanted to go."

"Oh, right. I think Jade's coffee's pretty good. I'll go grab some. You coming?"

He starts to walk away before you can answer because he rightfully assumes you're going to follow. Your eyes get moist and cloudy, your nose gets filled, and your throat closes. You've been rejected. It's not the first time that it has happened to you and yet, somehow, it hurts badly. At least he hasn't been smug about it, he hasn't feasted on your cringe; no, Will has pretended not to understand what you were implying and then turned around to give you time and space to put yourself together again. That's exactly what you do. You pull a paper handkerchief and blow your nose aware that the people around you would assume you've run cold with the crazy weather that's been hitting the country lately.

After Will's rejection, you've felt your presence unwanted next to him in the group therapy sessions; mostly your brain telling you that it would make it awkward for him, but he hasn't mentioned anything.

Just a week after the coffee debacle, Brianna approached Will after a session and asked him "They've opened a new café and I was wondering if you wanted to go." Like, literally what you've said. Only this time he agreed to go.

You weren't jealous or envious of Brianna, you could clearly see how Will would find her more attractive than you. She was a goddess. She was very tall and gorgeous, perfectly aware of how the amazingly clear color in her clothes would emphasize the shiny darkness of her skin; her hair was a perfect mane of defined curls. Brianna was also goofy and fun, brilliant and witty. You admired her and you weren't mad that she got the man you liked, but it stung a bit, especially since it has been the same sentence.

So, yeah, four weeks later, and there you are again, in a group therapy session without tearing your eyes from your hands. You're in a hypervigilant state today which makes you aware of Will's eyes on you since you've crossed the threshold, and your brain is catching, listening, and understanding everything your fellow patients are talking about.

Jed's eyes are on you while Chad's speaking. You know. You're feeling it and it's making your skin crawl. He uses his soothing voice to call out your name wondering if you're willing to expose what's keeping you so quiet and closed today.

A part of you wants to say that it's because Will rejected you, but you know that's not true. It hurt, yes, but you're not having a bad day because of that, you're not fucking thirteen.

"I killed a man," you answer, your voice soft and impersonal. Something in your brain ponders if they can listen to you as your tone could easily pass as a whisper; you're unable to make yourself care, however. "I killed a man and I feel nothing about it.

"People– People usually say that they understand why I had to do it. Survival instinct kicking in or something like that. They ask me if I was scared. I wasn't. I was– furious, maybe.

"He was…" you gasp a hysteric laugh, "He was on top of my friend, pulling her apart. Twisting his knife inside of her. There was so much blood… Her… Her insides were out. Her organs. I– I'm unable to eat meat now," you snap your head up fixing your eyes on Jed's. "Some meats aren't much of a problem, but when I see sausages I think of her intestines. A big stake, why does it look like a piece of her body? I don't know."

Signing, you look at your hands again. They're clean, pristinely clean. You've washed them sixty-seven times today. Still, you can feel the dry blood under your fingernails.

"He hit me. Punched me and crushed my ribs. He– He choked me. I stabbed him in the neck. I stabbed him in the neck," you repeat. "Shouldn't I feel something about it?

"Her parents thanked me after the funeral. I couldn't go because I've been admitted to the hospital after the events, of course. They thanked me, though, saying they could sleep better knowing that their daughter was avenged.

"I didn't do it because of that. I don't feel justice or vengeance or relief knowing that I killed him. I– I don't feel joy nor do I feel sorrow. Shouldn't I be having some sort of emotions related to the fact that I took a life, no matter how bad that life had been?

"I just don't care and I think that I should care. Does it make me a psycho? The fact that I don't care. I would totally do it again if I have to. I didn't hesitate then and I don't think I would do it now."

"You don't feel anything at all?" Will voice breaks your staring contest with your hands.

Your eyes search for his and once they're locked, you feel numbness fill your body. "I feel dread. All the time. I'm scared out of my skin wondering when it's going to happen again. Not if, when."

Will holds your look in silence, something in you refuses to relent at first and so you stare into his eyes until he finally glances to his feet, crossing his arms. You rub your thumbs against your other fingers itching to wash the blood again.

The moment Jed finishes the session, he intercepts you with his kindness. "Are you having a bad day today?"

"Yes," you answer clipped.

He sighs in understanding, "Here," he hands you a travel-sized tube of hand cream.

Usually, you don't forget that Jed had been through some heavy trauma as well, that he knows about what you've been through. He was stabbed while doing his internship on the psych floor of a hospital, and he had to turn the tables which ended up with the attacker dead and Jed's hands stained with blood. You forgot today. Jed noticed your foul mood, your scared eyes, and your jumpy behavior; but the loudest cry for help was how dry and exposed your hands were.

If you pouted he didn't mention it.

Unable to stay for more time, you left the building without looking back.

Your hands are still quite dry two days after Jed's intervention although you've used the cream almost entirely. Your therapist saved two hours for you today when you explained how bad your days had been, and once you're out of his practice you feel drained.

Walking aimlessly with your hands in your jacket pockets and the world tuned down again, you think about your session and the new points your therapist has made. You've been measuring your PTSD and your status as a victim with comparisons between reality and fiction, plus the eventual forum on the internet. That was wrong. Yes, some things have been studied by professionals that have listed a compound of shared symptoms and how to recover, but your therapist is right: you are your own person. Seeking validation and feeling awful when we're questioned is part of our nature as social mammals, you logically know that, yet you stumble upon yourself when you feel numb facing the idea that you've killed a man. Moreover, you aren't sad that your friend died. It was awful, yes, and you miss her, but there's just a hole inside of you where she used to be. Just that. Nothingness.

Startled, you look around and find yourself in front of the cashier in that new café you wanted to go on a date with Will. Your mind has wandered again. The cashier repeats the question that has shaken you out of your stupor and you order a hot chocolate with whipped cream. You're in the mood for something sweet. As the cashier is about to take your money, someone else hands the cash that doesn't belong to you.

"Ring us both. I'll take a cappuccino."

Will Johnson is right next to you, so close that you can smell the fabric softener of his clothes. You don't know what to say, and he doesn't seem to mind as he just gifts you a cheeky smile and a wink.

You're secretly glad that there's no awkwardness between you after his rejection and you pushing yourself away from him. Still, it's unsettling.

With your mind slightly foggy and your soul craving company, you allow yourself to follow Will to a small table with comfortable chairs at the end of the café but next to a huge window. Tinny raindrops stain the cristal uncoordinated.

"So, um…" he coughs calling your attention awkwardly. His hands wrap around his coffee, and his shoulders are hunched. He's anxious, you can tell. "You've been absent lately."

You titled your head. Absent? You've been attending group therapy sessions on the clock, though. He seems to understand your body language as he crocs a smile.

"I mean," he gestures to his head, "not really in the moment. Your head was somewhere else." He caresses the rim of his mug, not quite keen on drinking just yet. "The other day was rough for you. I could tell. I wanted to talk to you after, but you were gone. I… Um…

"You know, something crazy happened the other day," he changes his tone, forcing cheerfulness instead of genuine weariness. "Breanna asked me to come here, right? And I met here with her and her wife."

You don't miss the special stress he does in the word 'wife', nor the long pause and brows lift after that. Shit, he knew you thought he accepted her date.

"Anyway, Brianna and Anne, her wife," repeats in the same tone, "sort of ambush me, you know? Apparently, you asked me out, on a date, to this very café and I rejected you. That's crazy, isn't it?"

Now you don't really know what to say or what to do. You feel cornered and anxious, you cross your arms in front of you and frown, pressing your lips together. You wait.

"See, it's insane because I've been flirting with you for about a month and sometimes you flirted back, but other times you just shut down. I told Breanna as much and she insult me. Listen, she has some creative insults under her sleeve, let me tell you." He worries his bottom lip between his teeth and runs a hand through his hair. "She enthusiastically pointed out that I've been missing the signals.

"What signals, I asked. Bad days signals, apparently. She convinced me that when you weren't as responsive as I expected to be from our previous exchange, it was because you were in a bad place and– Well, kind of misunderstood me.

"I must confess that I hardly believed her until she told me that you asked me out and I rejected you, again, so I said that you never did that; I would've jumped in joy if you had. You actually did, though, when I was in a bad place and I totally misunderstood. It's like we were both talking when the phone was off. Miscommunication was on point, am I right?

"So… It took me some time to come to terms with what she had said, but in the next session you were keeping your distance and then I paid better attention and I could easily pin down when you were having a regular day or a bad day. It shook me to understand that I knew how a good day looked, but you weren't having those anymore.

"I can see that you're better today, and that's a relief. I– Shit, this is going to sound so bad. I saw you a block back and I called your name but you ignored me, then I kind of–" he does a gesture with his hand towards you, "I saw that you were on your foggy walks, so I followed you waiting for the moment for you to snap it out. I was also worried, it's dangerous to walk not paying attention to your surroundings, you know?"

You look at him completely dumbfounded. He, Will Johnson, had been flirting with you and wanted to date you. Scrunching your nose, you open your mouth to reply but close it. The operation repeats a couple of times and you notice his tension disappear, his anxiousness evaporates and, in its place, there's a sweet smile, a small blush, and a cheeky glint in his eyes. He knows that you want him, and knows that you're going to say yes, but he asks you anyways.

"This is good for a pre-date, all things considered, but I'm kind of hungry. Do you want to grab a bite with me? As in a date. A romantic date. A date that's supposed to be the first of many and lead us to a relationship. Just to be clear."

Then you laugh.

It startles you at first. It's been so long since you truly laughed that it seems unnatural. You cannot control it, though, once it starts, your lips stretch in a big smile, and your body vibrates with your giggles, a full belly laugh. Will smiles at you adoringly and lets out a soft laugh of his own.

"Yeah," you manage to say, "I would love to have a date with you."

Perhaps your trauma and recovery aren't like the movies, at all, but you're starting to feel that your love life probably is going to be just like an indie rom-com with lots of drama as its season.

The end

8 notes · View notes