cw: she/her reader. friends to lovers. suggested cheating, but it's something else.
When Johnny came back from deployment, even more bright-eyed and ruddy-cheeked than usual, and told you he'd found himself a boyfriend, you figured it as good a time as any to confess your 15 years of unrequited love. Lie it to rest.
Your best friend can enjoy his newfound happiness from a respectful, knowing distance- and you can move on.
It was tough, at first. The way he gawked at you. New, horrible territory. Things between you had never been awkward.
But, the tension was short lived before he got another call. Your ever-loyal dog of a man, answering to his new whistle. You did not watch him go.
Then, it was somewhat easier to breathe. Somewhat easier to bawl on your couch to your comfort movies and mope around the grocers without fear of his pitying, puppy dog eyes.
What you had not accounted for, in this whole healing process, was his banging at your front door the same night he got home.
Only a season had passed. Not long enough to mourn 15 years. You figured he'd give you more time. He's a caring person, your best friend.
But, only Johnny's knock sounded like that. And only Johnny would turn up at this hour, theatrics and all hell.
He's soaked to the bone, eyes twinkling with something offensively alive.
"Do you know what time it is?"
"'course not. Thoughtless fucker, I am."
His jokes always made you laugh. Now, you only keep frowning. Briefly, he considers sitting down at your slipper-clad feet and begging.
"What do you want, MacTavish?"
You try to look angry. 10 feet tall. Not in love with him, anymore.
"None of that. I'm yer Johnny."
Your eyes widen, stinging wet.
"I could slap you. Do you have any idea h-"
"Simon wants to meet my girl."
The rain falls hard and messy on your awning, a clatter of confusing reality, made louder with the door open and him in it.
You lose your bite in the sadness.
"I-" you whisper, "I'm not sure I'm ready to meet him."
You take your nail between your teeth, shuffling your feet.
"Don't you think this is a little mean, John? That you're being mean to me right now?"
He slides down the side of your door, pooling at your feet as you yelp in surprise.
Big, gray eyes, pleading.
"Mean he wants to know you. Told him everything. Our life together as wean. How bonnie yah are. How I still feel about yah. 's how I feel about him."
"How you... still feel about me?"
He kisses your ankle. Big, warm hands on the skin of your calves. You gasp, but don't draw back.
"Never didn't love yah back, bonnie."
And he looks so ridiculous, this virile, burly mass of man, on the ground, in your tiny doorway, in the middle of the night, that you really start to cry.
"I don't understand, Johnny." Four months of heartbreak, fat tears and snot. "Why wouldn't he be jealous of me, then?"
He looks back up at you. And when you make eye contact, and he doesn't say anything, lightening cracks across the sky.