thinking about johnny being completely smitten with an extremely reserved reader <3
johnny was head over heels from the very beginning. he couldn’t pinpoint when it had happened, but maybe it was when you first joined the force. at the initial greeting, he’d struck you with one of his bright smiles, only for a blank canvas to stare in return.
you hadn’t said a word, not a peep, and while others would be turned off by such reclusiveness, he was in awe.
an enigma, you were, and johnny was someone who loved a good puzzle.
you were cold and distant, but not in the way that was cruel and unnerving. you didn’t throw out snarky comments, you didn’t show a single bit of rudeness when somebody’s ticked you off. you weren’t hard headed, nor did you pitch a fight. you were a calm sea with peaceful waves lapping at the shore. a light rain on a dry day, one where in ancient times would’ve been a blessing from the gods. as cold as snow, but the kind that layered the ground in a fresh sheet of white right after a blizzard, painting the earth with powdered beauty.
if anything, you weren’t cold at all. you were just so incredibly awkward that johnny couldn’t help but be smitten by it.
you were that type of awkward where social cues were nearly impossible for you to comprehend. jokes didn’t land quite right whenever somebody made them, and you’d give a blank look to whomever fell victim, added on with a dumb “what?” because you didn’t understand it.
johnny’s been an unfortunate victim on many occasions. he’s always the type to nudge you on the shoulder with a crooked grin as he spilled out whatever joke ghost had told him over comms, only to be met with your complete and utter confusion.
that never stopped him, though. if anything, it made him much more determined to search up more jokes on the screen of a burner phone, reading through every single one and noting them in the back of his mind.
you were also as stone-faced as could be. some theorized you were a robot, others thought you were a demon in disguse. an experiment, placed into 141 as a trial run.
really, expressing yourself just wasn’t your thing.
you felt emotions, sure. plenty of them. you could find the humor in the occasional bar night with the force, amused at the linger of carefree conversation that carried between the men. you just didn’t show it.
it wasn’t something you realized until johnny had made the point of asking you if you ever smiled. thinking back on it, you recalled never directly doing so. you’d do it in your head, but when it came down to it, no, no you didn’t.
johnny was determined when keeping a goal in mind, and found himself ruthlessly running towards that goal of seeing you smile. he was enamored in the thought of seeing the slant of your lips when they curved upwards, in seeing your eyes crinkle and glimmer with delight, and he’d go through every single joke website in order to make it happen.
it took him an approximate year of you being in the force to get it to work.
it was lame, really. hardly one of his best jokes, he’d drunkenly slurred out, “what rank are all cats in the army? corpurrral,” with a tongue roll effect to go with it.
you had burst into laughter, filling the bar air with ringing church bells that he swore made the drunken state of his mind believe he was truly on his way to heaven. the gates had opened, inviting him in. he was levitating, slowly floating his way to the clouds.
your smile was like a breath of air — refreshing. it filled his lungs with such purity that all the cigarettes he’d smoked over the years of being in the force seemingly melted the thick layer of tar away, leaving him clean and refurbished.
it was like a drug, and johnny found himself seeking more out to get another taste, even if it took him another year to do so.
this is lowkey self insert bc this is my personality offline and i think other people who are so painfully awkward with socializing are cute and deserve love. wrote this with no sleep and a dream, silly ramble before i go to bed
i also just really love johnny, goodnight
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