Head Over Feet
→ Pairing: Johnny Knoxville x Female! Reader
→ Summary: The Jackass crew decided to come back for a second movie, and they'd never be able to do it without their trusty angel keeping them all alive during their death-defying stunts. This time around, you're married, pregnant, and pretty sure it isn't a prank anymore.
→ Word Count: 11.8k
→ Multi Chapter
Jackass Number Two
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Four years later, and they still decided to film all their Pennsylvania scenes in goddamn winter.
It had stopped snowing just before you’d arrived, but there were still piles of snow dotted around the empty parking lot, and just the sight of them made you feel colder than you probably were. You burrowed deeper into the faux shearling jacket you’d brought this time, much more used to packing for West Chester with how often you’d visited it over the past four years at April’s insistence. You shoved your gloved hands into your fur-lined pockets and ducked your chin below the matching black scarf. You were still shivering. Your cable knit sweater was no help, nor was the thick Henley underneath, and your toes still felt like they were going to fall off in your heavy boots. You were definitely pouting.
“What’s with the face, angel?” Johnny asked, leaning against one of the penny farthing bikes they had rented for this stunt. It wobbled a little, and he twisted to catch it. It would usually make you giggle to see him flail around, all gangly limbs he controlled in the most over-the-top fashion, even without the cameras on him. You were too cold to giggle.
Johnny noticed immediately, and the teasing grin fell off his face. He left behind the bicycle to wrap his arms around your waist and tug you as close as your many layers would allow him. At least that warmed you a little.
“C’mon, pretty girl, what’s got you so pouty?”
“Why do we always come to Pennsylvania when it’s cold?”
Amusement flashed over his face, like he couldn’t believe you were still complaining about the cold, but he held back the chuckle that he so clearly wanted to let free. “Angel.” One of his hands slid around to sit on the bump that was becoming just a little bit more noticeable. It was, however, hidden pretty well by your considerable number of layers to keep out the chill. “Better to bring you to West Chester when you’re four months along and not eight. Right?”
You shrugged, but you knew Johnny was right. The boys were all set to go to India next month for filming, then you’d head to Miami after that, and from May you wanted to be in Los Angeles, to be close enough to your OB in case your water broke when you were least expecting it. It’d be just your luck you’d go into labour while they were filming.
“Please stop pouting.” He leaned down to press a kiss to your nose. “Else I’d be a shit personal jester.” It was enough to make you smile again, and he mirrored you, bright and sparkling even in the cold. This time, he pecked your lips. “Promise, after this, we’ll get you right back to Phil and Ape’s to get you some hot chocolate. Hand on heart.” He lifted his left hand to sit on the right side of his chest, and you finally burst out laughing, quickly moving his hand to the other side of his body. You liked the way his golden wedding band twinkled in the low, grey sunlight.
You kept yours on a chain around your neck when you were working, out of the way and safe. It was gold and diamond, just as you deserved – or so Johnny claimed when he presented it in that pretty Las Vegas chapel in front of the Elvis impersonator who cried during your vows.
You moved back into place beside Jeff and Rick behind the cameras, out of the way of the stunt. Johnny and Ryan were supposed to try stunts usually reserved for BMX’s on the penny farthings they’d rented just for this, and you’d all spent the better half of an hour setting up the ramps around the empty parking lot just to watch them probably hurt themselves.
“Now, it’s time for a little Bicentennial BMX-ing.”
The two of them clambered up onto their penny farthings and struggled for a few minutes as they got used to the two different wheel sizes, wobbling as they cycled from one side of the set to the other.
“Hear ye, hear ye,” Johnny called out, and you had to refrain from telling him that he was in completely the wrong century with that. “This is really gonna suck.”
“Why would anyone ride this shit?” Ryan asked. “Like, what’s the reasoning? Why wouldn’t they just make two of the same size wheel?”
Your giggles cut off as you watched Johnny ride straight towards a thick snow mound with a too-loud war cry. You prepared for the worst watching him get closer and closer, and then the wheel caught in the snow and he was thrown from the seat. He was clearly expecting to fall into the snow, but he hurtled right over the mound and landed on his face. You heard the unmistakable thud of his face smacking against the concrete, but you’d gotten used to not running straight into helping even if you really wanted to. More often than not, the boys would get back up and shake it off.
Instead, you clutched your backpack closer to yourself as you watched your husband roll around the ground, clutching at his head, and whimpering to himself.
“You alright, PJ?” you, eventually, asked. You knew it’d be loud enough for the cameras to pick up.
“Yeah.” His reply was weak, and you didn’t believe him at all. He only whimpered like that when he really hurt himself. He had a completely different kind of whimpering for the bedroom.
“You didn’t land it,” Rick pointed out.
“My head stopped my body from getting really hurt.”
As everyone else laughed, you moved into action. The concrete was chilly through the knees of your corduroy pants, but you ignored that to check on Johnny. He blinked up at you as you reached for him, fingers smoothing over the bump that was already beginning to form on his temple. His hand curled around your own.
“I’m okay, angel, promise.”
“Who are you?” you asked, batting his hand away so you could get a better look at his head. He hadn’t cut it, thankfully, though the bump looked like it would bruise too. He’d have a nasty headache shortly.
“Johnny Knoxville. PJ to my friends. Philip John to my ma. Your husband.”
You blushed under his intense gaze. He wasn’t concussed, but you still wanted to check. Of course, he would use any excuse to make your cheeks flame, especially with the camera zooming in on the gentle way you twisted his head around to get a better look at where he’d hit it. Your fingers felt around for any more bumps starting to rise.
“Where are you?”
“Heaven, I think. Or did they send you to Earth just for me?”
Your fingers froze in their prodding, and you settled what you hoped was an unimpressed look onto him. Though your cheeks were too red, and you were doing a pretty bad job at keeping your smile from pushing through.
“Next time, I’m gonna leave you to bleed out.”
Johnny laughed so loudly he fell back onto the concrete, and you were sure he was going to hit his head again. Eventually, you got him back on his feet, and even though Ryan was sure he could try a stunt or two, the rest of the crew knew that Johnny’s face plant was more than enough for the cameras, and you wanted to be able to keep an eye on that bump without adding any more to his face. If he even attempted to cycle up a ramp, he’d probably break his nose, and you weren’t dealing with that so early on in filming.
Back at the Margera’s house, you found Bam, Brandon Novak, and Brandon DiCamillo shovelling snow on their front lawn. You ignored their random act of goodwill to rush indoors and find warmth again, greeting April and Phil with a hearty hello while Johnny’s laughter rang loudly behind you. You hung up your jacket, tugged off the sweater, and found April already making you a hot chocolate in the kitchen.
“I just knew you’d be freezing out there, sweetheart.” She added those tiny marshmallows you’d never liked until your pregnancy, and then suddenly, they were one of your favourite snacks. Those and pickles and root beer. Johnny was constantly getting grossed out by the random cravings you filled your cart with. One day you’d eaten so many pickles he had to hide the jars in a cupboard you couldn’t reach.
“Can I live here forever?” you asked, holding the hot chocolate in your hands just to feel the warmth spike through your veins. Outside, you could hear Johnny laughing. You’d gotten used to ignoring the sound, otherwise you were sure to stress yourself out worrying what he was getting up to. You were pretty sure April was the same with Bam and all his friends.
“I’d swap you for Bam in a heartbeat.”
You giggled together, and sat at the kitchen table to drink your hot chocolates. You told April all about the stunt, but by the end of your story, you were yawning far more than you should have been. The pregnancy had made you sleepy, and you found yourself napping probably more often than you were awake. Every time Kristy came to visit you, you’d start falling asleep while she was in the middle of a story, yet she never listened to your apologies. She was just as excited for the baby as you were.
You napped in Bam’s old bedroom, still decorated to his exact tastes, but were awoken by shouting you recognised too well. Most likely, Bam had done something to piss off his mom again. You crawled out of bed, wrapped a blanket around your shoulders, and shuffled through to the hallway to see what all the shouting was about.
Brandon Novak went racing past you to ski down the makeshift ski slope they had made of April and Phil’s staircase. He tore right through their door. You blinked tiredly at the snow paving the staircase. Now the shovelling made sense; Bam would never shovel his parents’ lawn just because. There was always something to be had out of it.
Johnny pulled you into his side as laughter bounced through the house. You could hear Phil saying that he wanted a shot, and April begging them to get the snow out of the house before it melted and flooded the place.
You nuzzled your face into Johnny’s neck.
“Still tired, angel?”
“You’re a tiring lot.”
“I’ll buy you some of those extra-large pickles for dealing with us.”
And you smiled against his neck, because he would have bought them anyway.
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Kristy held up the three-piece bedding set that was loosely based on a garden theme. Your face crumpled. The embroidered butterflies on the quilt were too cute, and anything you found adorable filled your eyes with tears these days.
“You need this,” Kristy said. “She needs this.” She nodded down at your slightly more noticeable bump. You’d found out you were having a girl just before Johnny went to India to film with the others, and, of course, your best friend wanted to be the one to take you shopping for all the girly stuff you could find.
“We do need that.”
Kristy grinned triumphantly as she threw the bedding set in the shopping cart that was already half-full of clothes, room accessories, and the like that you probably didn’t need so much of but that you couldn’t help but add. Everything just looked so cute. Everything looked necessary. Of course, you needed four different sleepsacks, one of each of the colours available, because you needed one to use while another was washing, one as a spare, and one for travelling. That just made sense. Of course, you needed all those bibs. You didn’t know how messy your baby girl was going to be. Of course, you needed those little socks in pink and those ones in yellow because they had ducks embroidered on them, and all the other ones Kristy kept throwing in that you didn’t say no to just in case she got cold feet.
It was a good thing Johnny wasn’t home. You’d never hear the end of it when you got back with all those bags full of all those things you absolutely could buy later.
“But why buy later what you can buy now?” Kristy reminded you, then picked up a mobile with hopping green frogs dangling from it. “Like this. She’s going to need a mobile to keep her occupied.”
“That is adorable. But–” you grabbed the mobile sitting nearby, with the yellow ducks hanging from it. “This is so her.”
“Oh my gosh, that is so baby Knox.”
Kristy had taken to calling your unborn daughter Knox while you and Johnny ruminated on the list of names that seemed only to grow with each passing day. Every time you tried to cut it down, you’d find another name to add that you just couldn’t agree on. Even the cast and crew had picked up on the nickname and often asked you how Baby Knox was getting on. You were worried it would stick, and they’d call her that even when she had a name of her own.
You added the mobile, a couple more teddy bears, the cutest little dresses, even more bedding, and you stopped caring about where you would store it all. It could all sit in boxes until Johnny came home, and then you could take him to go and buy the furniture for her nursery, and then you could worry about storage. But for now, you were going to buy all the cute stuff, and your husband could help you deal with it in a couple of weeks.
“This–”
“No.” You shook your head at the lace bassinet skirt and hood that most likely should have stopped being manufactured decades ago.
“What do you mean no?”
“I mean, I think it looks like it was made for Gone with the Wind and they forgot to burn it.”
Kristy frowned at you, but upon closer inspection, she had to admit you were right. There was no way you’d be caught with anything she easily could have found in her grandmother’s house, so she left it behind and found much cuter accessories for the bassinet – that you still didn’t have – to fill your shopping cart with. All of this stuff was just going in boxes anyway. You weren’t even going to worry about them until closer to the due date; you just wanted to be prepared.
That’s what you kept telling yourself on the way to the tills.
But nothing ever just sat in their boxes. Every night while Johnny was away, you’d sit cross-legged on the floor of the nursery that still needed to be painted and still needed furniture, and you’d go through each item piece by piece. You’d hold the tiny onesies to your chest and spend hours telling your daughter about every little thing you’d bought her. Just so she knew how much you loved her from the very start.
The night Johnny came home, it was close to midnight, and you’d fallen asleep hours ago. You never had as much energy as you did pre-pregnancy, and now you’d start falling asleep as soon as it got dark outside, as if your body knew just how much you needed the rest. You didn’t even hear him come in. You didn’t hear his suitcase bumping against the dresser in the downstairs hallway; you didn’t hear the creak of the stairs under his feet; you didn’t hear his little giggle as he pushed open the door to find you sprawled across the bed like you’d forgotten he was supposed to come home that night. And you didn’t hear the way he slipped into bed beside you and leaned down to whisper a greeting to the baby who kicked as soon as she heard him.
The next morning, he was completely dumbfounded by all the boxes you’d already filled the nursery with.
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It was warm enough in Miami to go to the beach.
You’d gone to Florida to visit Steve-O’s family and film more stupid stunts, but with the sun shining so brightly and the crew’s hangovers bursting their heads, you clambered into the crew vans and headed down to the quieter Dania Beach.
Behind the windbreaker the boys had hammered into the sand, you could hear the rest of the cast laughing, loud and choking. You ignored it. Whenever they were laughing like that, you knew it was always something bad, something that probably wouldn’t even make it into the movie but that they wanted to film anyway just because they could. You glanced up at Johnny over your sunglasses and caught the smile struggling on his lips.
“I thought we came here to relax?” You poked him, and he twisted back towards you, smile stretching into a full-sized grin.
“We are relaxing.” Your husband lay beside you on the sand, jostling your shoulder with his movements. He pointed out the kite that was just about stretching into the sky. “See that?” You hummed. “Guess who’s flying that?”
“I dunno. Ehren?”
Johnny did a perfect impression of a buzzer, and you poked him again, right between the ribs, just above another bruise from another stunt. You’d gotten used to finding him covered in bruises, and usually used them to map your kisses around his body until his legs were shaking and he was making you stop before he came too soon. But you weren’t going to think about that on the beach. Not when you were surrounded by strangers just trying to enjoy the sun.
“Wrong. Bam. Guess what he’s flying it with?”
“I’m gonna hate the answer, aren’t I?”
“His ass.”
Johnny dissolved into giggles, and you watched him, the humour rising in your chest. It was difficult to not laugh around Johnny, and though you tried to remain straight-faced, soon enough you too were giggling. For a moment, you could pretend it was just the two of you, spread out across the warm sand, the slightest salt-tinged breeze from the ocean skimming your bodies, Johnny’s laughter caressing you. All the other people on the beach didn’t matter. All those voices mixing in the air, the laughter from your friends caught behind the windbreaker, the tinny music from strangers’ radios. You didn’t think about Jeff’s camcorder or the kite high above you. Not when the sun was kissing your skin in just the right way. Not when Johnny leaned close enough that you could feel his body pressing against you.
He was surprisingly talented at making you feel like the only two people in the world.
Johnny pressed a kiss to the curve of your shoulder. “Have I told you how sexy you look in that bikini?” You were wearing a blue floral one you’d bought on the waterfront when you realised your boobs had grown too large for any of your other bikinis. Johnny had helped pick it out, though you could see him practically salivating at every set you held up to your body, but blue was his favourite colour, so you went with blue.
“Only five or six hundred times.”
Johnny spread his kisses along your shoulder, into the dip of your collarbone, and up to your pulse point. You tilted your chin up to give him better access to your neck. You didn’t care if people could see. Not when Johnny’s lips felt so good trailing over your skin, as warm as the sun, soft like the sea breeze.
“D’you believe me, darlin’, or need me to say it another five hundred times?”
Your giggle got cut off by your strangled moan as Johnny’s hand slid over your bump and landed on your thigh, squeezing just enough for you to feel it. He smelled less like cigarettes with every month you got closer to your due date, and though you did miss the ashy scent you’d grown used to over the years, you liked that now you could smell the sweat that clung to him without any interference. You blamed the odd need to always be within sniffing range on your new hormones, but you knew you just liked that smell. You tried not to let it show as you slid closer to him, tried to play it off as if you were still sunbathing and were barely paying attention to his light touches.
“What’ya doin’ there?”
“Sunbathing.”
“Uh-uh.” You shivered at the mocking tint to his voice. He fucking knew how much you liked it when he spoke to you like that. Just a little degrading, just enough to make you press your thighs together. “Looks to me, angel, like you’re trying to get me to touch you more. Out here. On the beach in front of all these people.”
His hand slid further around your thigh, long fingers stretching across your skin, grazing against the line of your bikini bottoms. “PJ,” you whined, as much of a warning as you could bite out when really, you did want him to touch you. Right here. On the beach in front of everybody.
“Nobody’ll notice if we disappear–”
“Everybody will notice.”
“C’mon, angel,” Johnny whined this time, head ducking into your shoulder so that his words blew cold air against your skin. You shivered, though you knew it was all because you liked the way his voice deepened, the way his accent drawled out of his mouth, the way his tongue curled around certain vowels. “Can’t keep my hands to myself when you look this good.” His hand curled over your stomach, and you felt his smirk. Just on the right side of smug. “Still can’t believe I managed to knock you up. Look so pretty with your little belly–”
You sat up, trying to hide the sudden wetness between your thighs, the quickening of your heartbeat, the fire you knew only your husband could quench in the back of one of the crew vans while you hoped the rest of the crew were too busy trying to outdo each other to notice your disappearance.
“You’re really desperate, Knoxville, you know that?” But you were still packing your stuff away as quickly as your hands would allow you, shoving your towels into your beach bag, not even caring to roll them up first. You could worry about that later, when you’d quenched the sudden thirst Johnny had brought to the forefront.
“Yeah, but you get off on making me so desperate, baby.”
And in that, Johnny Knoxville was completely correct.
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You spent more time at the Gary Leffew School of Bull Riding than you ever expected you would, but Johnny never laughed as much as he did when he watched people fail to bull ride.
He gave it a go more often than not, and the staff knew he was happy to try out anything with the bulls as long as a camera was pointed at him. Riding backwards, dressing up just to ride Mr Mean, they even had a stunt planned later that day where four of them were going to try to see-saw as bulls raced towards them. For that, they’d called in both you and Ed, with your backpacks full of equipment and worry already starting to set in as the cast and crew gathered in the stands. Nobody let you carry the backpack anymore now that you were six months along and they didn’t want you lifting anything heavy, so Ed had both strung over his shoulders. You could still bend down a little, though you weren’t exactly in the mood to go racing around a bull pen when one of them got thrown in the air against their will.
Rain had started to fall in a gentle, dreary drizzle, and you flipped up the hood of the hoodie you’d stolen from Johnny on the way out of the door that morning. Beside you, Chris did the same, grumbling about ruining his hair. He’d grown it out since the first movie, and now it hung just past his shoulders, bouncier and shinier than your hair had ever been. Today it sat in two braids on either side of his head like a schoolgirl, and you’d spent the entire drive in the crew van tugging on it just to annoy him.
Johnny shrugged off his leather jacket and slung it over the railing, leaning his forearms against it as you all watched them coax the huge, shaggy yak into place. You caught the fear fighting the excitement on his face. You never could quite understand why he enjoyed messing around in the bull pen so much, but it filled him with the sort of joy most people only ever found in children.
“I’ll ask again,” you said to Johnny, touching his elbow with your own. “Are you sure about this?”
“It’ll be funny.”
And you knew with that alone you’d never be able to convince your husband otherwise. As long as he could make everybody else laugh, you’d have to contend with Johnny putting himself in the stupidest, most dangerous situations. Even though you always watched with your heart beating in your throat and your knuckles whitening with worry, you always ended up laughing too.
For Johnny Knoxville, your laughter was worth the pain.
He left you with a kiss lingering on your temple, and you all gathered closer to watch him prepare in the middle of the bull pen. They set up the cameras. Everyone was here for the Toro Totter stunt later, all the cameramen, all the sound crew, all the riggers, all of you gathered in the stands to watch Johnny and his stupid friends play with bulls.
His red shirt was like a blazing symbol for the yak, and from the corner of the pen, you could see it starting to gear up to charge towards him. Your hands curled around the railing, knuckles paling. Chris stood slightly behind you to rest his chin on your shoulder, and you couldn’t tell if he was comforting you or comforting himself.
Johnny looked, unsurprisingly, sexy standing there. Somehow confident despite the yak staring him down, the rainwater sticking some hair to his head, his shirt hanging loosely around his body. He pulled out a blindfold and tied it around his head, and you knew he was thinking about the Bugs Bunny skit you’d caught the end dregs of on TV last night, loosely based on history. He tugged a half-empty packet of cigarettes from his back pocket, and pulled one out with his teeth, and you blamed your sudden flipping stomach on the baby hormones. Some weeks you were hornier than you’d ever been pre-pregnancy, and it didn’t help that the sight of Johnny with a cigarette hanging from his mouth spoke to the most primal parts of you.
He lit the cigarette just as the yak was let go.
He barely got a full drag out of it before the yak charged into him and sent him flying up into the air, doing the sort of flip you were sure only gymnasts could get away with. You looked away before you had to watch him hit the ground, but the sound was enough to have nausea rising up your throat. Everyone else erupted with laughter, and you slowly opened one eye to see your husband somehow managing to push himself to his feet. He still had that damn cigarette in his mouth.
He found you in the watching crowd, pointed like he’d always meant to do that, and winked, and it was enough to make you laugh too.
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You don’t remember pube shaver being in your job description.
But there you were, going around all the cast and crew while Rick’s camera followed you, taking a cheap razor from the dollar store to all the men’s pubes and collecting them in a plastic takeout container. Chris was happy to give you the whole bush he’d been growing, not caring about how he’d look hairless when he was able to get women either way, so you shaved, and shaved, and shaved until his curly brown hair filled the dish. After that, he followed you and Rick around with his metal guitar and sang songs about pubes.
He was always singing stupid songs around the set, and they never failed to make you laugh. Even now, as you tried to shave only a little bit off Bam, Chris’ high-pitched singing caught you off guard, and you laughed so hard you accidentally shaved far more than you were supposed to.
Bam jumped back from your razor. “Dude!”
You tried to apologise through your laughter, but it kept getting caught in your humour, and it didn’t help that Chris was still playing a stupid song about Bam’s pubes. Or the rather jagged, long hairless line through his pubes you’d accidentally created. This was Bam’s idea anyway, collecting all these pubes to stick to Ehren’s face as a fake beard. Which Ehren wasn’t supposed to know anything about. It was for some terror taxi bit that you didn’t think was going to end well, but that the rest of the boys found hilarious and that was probably going to make it into the movie anyway. They’d probably add this bit too, of you slipping from cast to crew to collect enough pubes to seem believable.
Ryan’s hair was as blonde and curly as the hair on top of his head; Rick’s smelled of sweat; Jeff’s was very, very fine; and Wee Man let you have some from his chest as well as his pubes. Eventually, you found your husband waiting for you in one of the crew vans, completely naked and covering his dick with his hand.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Letting you shave some of my pubes.”
You blinked at Johnny. Chris had given up on his singing to laugh so hard it sounded like he might even vomit, bent over and wheezing, choking on his laughter. Even Rick was trying not to shake the camera with his laugh, but you stood there with the razor pointed at your surprisingly naked husband.
“Let me rephrase because clearly all those concussions have made you stupid.” Chris fell to his knees, and his amusement even brought tears to his eyes. “Why are you naked?”
“To make it easier for you, angel.”
You looked at the camera and then back at him, at the clearly false innocence in his smile. He was clearly doing this just to get the funniest possible shot, and it had worked, even though you were doing a pretty good job at dampening your amusement – the fans would love that too, you knew. Chris’ laughter was starting to cramp his stomach, and yet he could not stop.
“How much am I taking off?”
“Just the tiniest little bit. Just enough for Ehren to say, ‘hey, I’m wearing Johnny Knoxville’s pubes’.” You shook your head, but your smile started to poke through, and he clearly caught it. As you leaned over him to shave off the smallest section of pubes that you could, you felt his finger reaching for your most ticklish spot, just between your armpit and your ribcage. You slapped his hand away.
“I have a razor, Knoxville. I’ll shave them all off.”
“No, you won’t,” he teased, but didn’t tickle you, after all. “You like ‘em too much.”
You ignored his teasing to shave off a little of his pubes and add them to the collection you’d amassed throughout the day. You kept going until eventually you’d managed to get pubes off of every man on set, including some you were pretty sure were infected with crabs, but they were still going to stick to Ehren’s face no matter what. You tried to warn against that. Nobody listened.
“Pube delivery,” you called out, knocking on the makeup department’s door. They weren’t alone. Johnny spun around in one of the leather makeup chairs like a terrible James Bond villain, holding a clean razor. You tried to back out of the room, but the door swung shut behind you, and there was Preston, leaning against the door to keep you from running out. You were just as much a part of the crew as the rest of them; you’d have to add to the pube pile.
“Well, well, well.” Wee Man uncurled from under the dressing table. “You thought you’d get out of this unscathed.”
“Come on, guys.”
“No way, young lady.”
Johnny stood, branding the razor like it was a sword. Wee Man held the camcorder up, and you were pretty sure they would use this bit in the credits like it was some found footage akin to the Blair Witch Project. Kristy always screamed too loudly when you appeared on the screen, even if only for a few seconds. You must have had, like, 10 minutes of screentime over all three seasons of Wildboyz, and still she acted like you were a real television star.
“Lift your arms.”
“My arms?”
“Don’t make me repeat yourself.”
You bit your tongue to hold back your laughter and lifted your arms. Preston held the pube container under your armpit as Johnny shaved, up and down and up, and your armpit hair joined the pile, sweaty from the long day on set. It was odd to say, but in that moment, staring down at your hair being shaken around to mix in with the rest of the crew, you felt like you were truly part of the team. All the pranks, all the jokes, all the after-parties, that was a pretty good start, but this is what made you feel like there was no separating you from the flock now. You’d be there for every Jackass movie just like the rest of them, an unwavering, unflinching group of total jackasses.
You started to cry, quietly, before you could hold back the tears.
“Hey, wait, are you crying?” Preston asked, the only one close enough to notice at first while Johnny and Wee Man danced around with the pube container.
“Ignore me,” you tried to wave off, though the tears fell faster than you were expecting. “It’s just the baby hormones. I cry at everything.”
Preston wrapped an arm around your shoulder and curled you closer to him. You tried to sniffle without being too loud. “Did we make you uncomfortable? Sorry–”
“No, no. I just.” The tears came harder, faster. You tried to blink them away, but it was never going to work, not when they were hot and stinging and emotional. Not when they were happy. “I just really feel part of the team.”
Preston tightened his grip on you with a laugh. “You’ve always been part of the team. You’re our medic.”
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For some reason, you were back at A.L.S Technologies.
After Johnny’s long-lasting bruise from the last riot-gun control test – that you were still sure you could see the outline of every time you trailed kisses down his stomach – you don’t know why he decided to come back. Or why Ryan, Bam, and Dave decided to join him.
This one looked a hundred times more painful than the last one. You stared at the machine that would throw out all these tiny balls, and you were pretty sure hundreds of rubber balls were so much worse than that one beanbag all those years ago.
“We’re here with Daniel Alvarez from A.L.S Technologies, and uh, why don’t you explain what this is and what we’re gonna be doing?”
Daniel nodded. He at least looked more comfortable on screen than George was. “Well, this is the 460 Stingmore Mine–” Stingmore? God, the name was bad enough. “–which has approximately 745 calibre rubber balls in it, and they’ll fly out of there at about 500 feet per second.” Fuck. That was faster than the last one. It could tear right through them. “They use these charges on the outside of embassies to protect the gates from people trying to break in.”
“Looks like it’s going to suck.”
“It is. I promise.”
Johnny laughed loudly, but you were too busy staring at the weapon to join in. So, it seemed, where the three other men who now had to contend with the fact that they were supposed to stand there with Johnny and get shot at. With rubber balls going at such a speed, you wouldn’t be able to see them. Dave looked like he was about to throw up.
“Let me reiterate,” you said as soon as Johnny reached you. His hands slid over your far-more-noticeable bump and landed on your hips. He always had to be touching you in one way or another. Sometimes he would just play with your hair when you were close enough; sometimes he couldn’t help but kiss any slivers of your skin he could reach; and a lot of the time, he would lean behind you, wrap his arms around your waist, and hold up your bump so it didn’t have to do all the heavy lifting by yourself. “I think this is stupid.”
In front of the camera, Daniel Alvarez was setting up for the test shot.
“You’re so sexy when you use big words.”
You knew you shouldn’t give in to his bad habits, but he did look good when he smirked at you like that, and every time he called you sexy, you were pretty sure your blush took over your entire body and made you look like a walking STOP sign. You tugged on the collar of his shirt to pull him close enough to kiss, though you refused to let him deepen it when he tried to. Not in front of the rest of the crew. You still had to set some boundaries, and you weren’t going to start by letting Jeff Tremaine see you and Johnny tongue kiss.
“You’re going to get hurt.” Your lips touched briefly at your warning, and you felt him smile.
“That’s the plan, angel.”
You gathered to watch the practice shot, pulling on ear defenders at Daniel’s insistence. Johnny, for some reason, was allowed to press the button, and he did it as dramatically as any of you expected, slapping his hand down like this was some cartoon and he was trying to blow up his arch-nemesis. The rubber balls went flying out so fast you were sure you’d missed it entirely, until you looked up at the paper dummy and saw that it was completely destroyed.
Nausea crawled up your throat.
Beside you, Ryan and Bam ripped off their ear protectors and stormed from the room, talking about how they were absolutely not going to be doing that while Johnny cackled in delight. You never could quite understand how he found so much joy in putting himself in dangerous situations, but you were pretty sure a part of it was just because you were there to patch him up on the other side.
You turned away from the frayed paper and found Dave clutching his ear protectors to his chest, paler than the wall he was leaning against, looking moments away from retching up the Denny’s breakfast you’d had a few hours ago. You were still holding onto your own ear protectors as you slipped past the rest of the crew to reach him, head tilting in sympathy when you noticed the greenish tinge to the edges of his skin. His breathing was shallower than usual.
You’d never seen Dave actually nervous.
“Are you okay?”
“No, I just.” He sucked in a shuddering breath. “I’m about to have an anxiety attack. I just can’t do this one.”
“Okay. That’s okay; you don’t have to do it. Come on, let’s get you some air.”
You wrapped your arm around Dave’s shoulder to lead him outside and noticed that he was shaking. You’d never seen him this scared before. Usually, Dave took on any challenge that the boys set for him. Sometimes, he cursed at them and called the idea stupid, but he did it anyway. This was one of the first times you’d seen any of them refuse to do a stunt. You led him past the rest of the crew, running your hand up and down his arm slowly so that he had something to focus his breathing on, and grabbed a bottle of water from the cool bag you’d stuffed full of water, Gatorade, and sugary snacks just in case one of the boys needed a pick-me-up. Strictly for medical reasons, you always told Jeff, who now had to help carry it because Johnny refused to let you carry anything.
Outside, Ryan and Bam were sharing a pack of cigarettes. You watched them finish the cigarettes they were smoking, crush them in the ashtray on the glass table between them, and then instantly grab a new one to light. For once, you didn’t tell them off, just led Dave over to the nearby metal staircase, and sat him down so you could help control his anxiety attack.
“Knoxville must be fucked in the head if he thinks we’re doing this,” Bam said, taking a drag of his cigarette before chewing on his fingernails.
Ryan nodded. “No fucking way am I going back in there.”
“Did you see what happened to that target?” Dave shuddered. “He’s gonna get himself killed doing that.” Dave looked up at you from between his hands. “Are you just gonna let him?”
“Do you think I can stop him?”
“Someone has to,” interjected Bam, using his cigarette to point at you. “I mean, Jesus, those things were lethal.” You didn’t tell him that, technically, they weren’t. The reason Johnny and Jeff chose A.L.S Technologies for their riot control stunts was that they specialised in non-lethal weapons, but Bam probably wouldn’t like the correction when he was cursing Johnny’s name.
The man in question appeared, clearly looking for the four of you. He grinned so widely you were sure he hadn’t caught on to the fact that they were all freaking out about the stunt. Well, until the three men started talking over each other about how they absolutely were not getting involved in this one. They were out. That was it. Johnny looked truly aghast. He’d never make anyone do a stunt they didn’t want to, but he was still going out there to stand in front of that weapon and let it demolish him.
You raised your hand just enough to shut them all up. “From a medical point of view, I’m not allowing Dave to participate.” Johnny blinked at you. You’d never used the medic argument to stop any of them getting involved, but Dave looked genuinely appreciative of your efforts. You motioned to his bottle of water to get him to keep drinking until his anxiety passed. Most likely, that wouldn’t be until you got back into the van to leave behind A.L.S Technologies for good.
“Really, man?”
“Doctor’s orders.”
Johnny turned his attention to Ryan, whom he was most likely to convince to join him, and that would be enough to get Bam to join in too. Bam would never allow Ryan to outdo him. “Come on. Dunn, come on, man.”
“Are you insane?”
“All you do is stand there.”
“And get killed? That thing is insane.”
“It’s just loud. It’s gonna hurt really bad, but it’s just loud.” And, somehow, that was enough to get Ryan to shrug and decide he was in. He crushed the last remnants of his cigarette in the ashtray, and because he was joining in, so was Bam. Maybe it was because Johnny told them the truth, but they followed him back inside, and once Dave had finished his water, so did the both of you.
Ryan and Bam had been given masks to cover their faces, but Johnny had gone without, choosing instead to cover his face and balls with his hands as if that was going to do anything but hurt him even more. Even from the other side of the room, you could see Bam’s knees shaking. Johnny gave the thumbs up, and your breath caught in your throat as you waited.
The bang reverberated around the room, and the tiny balls found their targets.
Through the haze of the smoke, it was carnage. Johnny, miraculously, managed to stay on his feet, but Ryan tore off his mask and fell to his knees, and both of them yelled out all the curse words they knew because they didn’t know what else to do with all that pain bouncing around their bodies. It was Bam, curled in on himself on the floor, who was suspiciously quiet.
You didn’t like that.
Bam was usually the first one to shout and swear, to make his pain and annoyance well known to anyone who would listen. You started forward, but Johnny lifted his hand to stop you, and you froze on the outskirts of the camera’s lens. But you really didn’t like the way Bam had barely moved since he’d gone down.
“Are you all right?” Johnny asked him.
Bam, finally, tore off his mask and tried to push himself up to stand, but could barely get above a sitting position. Even from beside the camera, you could see the tear tracks staining his cheeks. Had you ever seen Bam cry before? Maybe when he was drunk, but they all cried when they were drunk.
“Are you crying?”
“I think he’s hurt,” Ryan pointed out, though you were sure they were all hurt.
“Can we get Bam some water? Maybe a Shirley Temple?” Johnny looked right at you, and you took that as permission to finally walk into the shot. You carried your medical bag with you, and a bottle of water, and with Johnny’s help, managed to crouch beside Bam. He’d gotten himself into a sitting position, finally, but he was still crying, and every time he took a sip of water, he started to cough.
You waited until he finished the water to ease him onto his feet, and when he was up, you forced the three men to show you the damage.
“They all went for my stomach,” Ryan told you as he lifted his shirt. He was right, the bullets had created a smattering of nasty, red welts across his stomach, and you gently felt around them to see how raised they were. He winced at every touch. There wasn’t much you could do, but you handed him an ice pack and told him to keep icing the welts for now.
You turned to your husband, and he smiled sheepishly at you. Most likely, because he could see you were unimpressed by the welts that had risen along his inner thighs.
“See, they only got me in the legs.”
“Did they?” You lifted his arm to show off the welts all along his hands and arms. You were grateful, though; otherwise, his face would have been absolutely destroyed by the number of balls that had struck his arm.
“Did any get me in the face?” You shook your head, and he breathed a sigh of relief. You couldn’t believe that had been his biggest worry this entire time, and as you handed him the ice packs to help soothe the welts, you reminded him that he could have worn a mask, too. “Clearly, I didn’t need it,” he teased, leaning down into your face so you could see that his was unscathed. You flicked his nose to get him to move out of the way, and he pouted, though he knew you were too deep into medic mode to laugh at his antics. Bam’s crying had switched on the side of you that you’d thought you left behind in the hospital, the woman who could drown out the laughter and the noise to focus on the task at hand. The side of you that had forgotten how to have fun, that came home stressed and argumentative, that hated a day off because it meant having to sit in your own thoughts. That was one of the reasons you’d left it all behind to become a set medic.
You lifted Bam’s shirt, and the whistle that flew from between your teeth made the rest of the crew laugh. His were somehow worse than Johnny and Ryan’s combined. Welts that were such a deep red they looked like they were bleeding ran along his stomach and lower waistline. One had sprung up right in the middle of the tattoo just above his pelvis.
“You got hit in the stomach pretty good,” Johnny said, and then laughed so loud you were pretty sure the pain had turned him manic.
You iced Bam’s welts for him, and when you were sure it would stop the swelling for now, you slathered the witch hazel stick you’d brought with you over his welts, then made Johnny and Ryan stand still while you did the same to them. Johnny stood as still as he could, even though you being so close to his thighs did make his dick twitch very obviously in your face, and attempted to be the perfect patient he had proven himself to be over and over again. He didn’t even try to make a joke, much to the amusement of the rest of the crew watching you slather witch hazel over his welts. He just watched you work like he’d never seen anyone so beautiful, with your hair starting to slip from its updo, with his cardigan falling off your shoulder, with your tongue poking out the corner of your mouth as you concentrated.
When you were finally finished, Johnny turned to the camera. “Hey, is this okay?” he asked, gesturing to his face. Rick threw him a thumbs-up, and he grinned. “Then we’re good.”
It was enough to make you laugh again. Of all the worries he could have had, of course, that was the thing lingering in his mind. Not how long the welts would last, not if he would have any scars, not if there were any internal injuries. All he cared about was that he still looked good enough for the cameras. (For you, but that was the quiet bit he didn’t trust himself to say out loud). He looked pretty pleased to bring you back to yourself, and his arms twined around your waist to pull you close enough to rest your foreheads together. You made sure not to touch the welts on his arms.
“There’s my girl,” he said, and kissed you gently. “Wasn’t sure I’d get you back for another hour. Went into nurse mode pretty quickly.”
“Trust you to bring me back, Knoxville.”
“Gotta keep my angel tethered to Earth, don’t I?”
You were still laughing as he kissed you again, and for once, you didn’t really care about the crew surrounding you. You didn’t care about the cameras, or Jeff, or even the fake retching noises Bam and Dave were making as you allowed Johnny to deepen the kiss just enough to remind you that he wasn’t that badly hurt.
There was a reason you left the hospital. And there was a reason why you’d never say no to working on a Jackass movie, even if you were bursting at the seams, even if every day you started to feel heavier and heavier.
Because there was nowhere else you laughed more.
Because there was nobody who could make you laugh as much as Johnny Knoxville.
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The arcade was bouncing when you arrived.
It was your bi-weekly date night, dedicated solely to you and Johnny, where you didn’t talk about work, about stunts, about the sets you were working on. You focused on each other, on just getting to be together without interruption, and like you always ended up doing, you found yourselves at your favourite arcade. Your date nights always ended like this. Even if you’d just been to the cinema near your house that only showed classic movies, or you’d gotten dressed up for a fancy dinner in the kind of establishment neither of you felt entirely comfortable in, or you scored tickets to one of the local band’s concerts. You always ended up here, at the 24-hour arcade with the acne-ridden teenagers and young couples and gamer boys.
There was always a stale scent of sweat clinging to the air, probably because of all the people crammed into the place, that was sometimes masked by the yeasty beer everyone was drinking, or the body sprays that the teenagers used far too much of, or the oddly metallic scent that the flickering neon signs emitted when you stepped too close. By the hand, Johnny led you past the rows and rows of enticing claw machines – that you often spent a fortune on trying to win a teddy just for the bragging rights – and the coin pushers you had spent hours at one night just because you could. The lights were always too bright in here, but you liked the way they flickered like no one cared to see if they were working, and you liked all the noise that crammed into the space. The shouting of kids enjoying themselves, the bleep-bloop of the old-school arcade games, the revving of the racing games, and exaggerated explosions of the shooters, someone cursing as they lost again, someone cheering as they won, the ticket machine eating up the tickets. You loved the feeling of slippery, cold coins in your palms, of slamming on the buttons as you got too into it, the squeezing of the rifle trigger, the push and pull of every game.
There was a reason you both kept coming back.
You didn’t know if you could just chalk it up to nostalgia, that you spent your childhood in arcades just like this with your friends so being back here was comforting, or if it was because Johnny was right there with you, just as involved, just as lost in the sights and sounds. Slamming his hand against the side of the Pac Man machine in frustration, pressing his face up against the glass of a claw machine because he just had to get you that Kermit teddy, drinking a red slushie so you could make purple when you drank a blue one, and he kissed you with tongue.
“Ready for another round?” Johnny asked once you reached the air hockey machine.
“The question is–” You leaned against the machine, on your usual side with the red pusher. Johnny always played with the blue pusher. “–are you ready to get beat again?”
“No way. No way!” He slipped a coin through the slot and moved into place just as the puck appeared below his knee. “This time, angel, you’re toast.”
“Babe,” you tutted. “I always win.” Which was true. You always won at air hockey. But he always won at the zombie shooting game, so you felt pretty equal.
He slammed the puck hard with his pusher, and it pinged around the table, whizzing with exaggerated effort. It was a little harder to lean with your round bump getting in the way, but you still managed to block your goal and send the puck careening back over to him. He wasn’t as quick as you – he never was, and you liked to brag about it, of course – and the puck went straight through the tiny goal on his side of the table. 1-0 already. You kept going, getting increasingly faster, increasingly sloppier, increasingly more annoyed when the other person scored, but by the end of your first match, it was 10-4 to you, and you danced around as if you didn’t always beat him.
In the arcade, it was easy to pretend nobody was watching.
You played again, and again, until Johnny was sick of losing and got you to move to the car racing. You could never quite get the hang of the steering and relied too much on the booster button, but at least this time, when your husband won, you could blame your bump for the interference. He didn’t fall for it, but he did crouch to press a kiss just above your belly button.
“Keep interfering,” he whispered against your skin, and you bit back your laugh, stroking the hair from his face. He always had surprisingly soft hair for how spiky it appeared. “It helps daddy win.”
At least now you had an excuse for losing.
You tried the shooters he was always better at, then the dance mat you had been competing on since you were tall enough, and ended up at the basketball hoops that you were equally as bad at and which made you both laugh so hard you probably caught the attention of the entire arcade. Nobody bothered you here. If anyone recognised Johnny – which you were pretty sure they did, because you’d caught them staring often enough – they never came up to him, though he wouldn’t have scorned them if they did. He loved fans, he loved signing autographs, and he loved getting to talk about Jackass with people who seemed to genuinely enjoy it. But the other patrons of the arcade must have sensed it was date night and kept their distance.
You were always grateful that you had this little place to go to when the world was starting to feel too big, and the baby was starting to feel too close, and adulthood was starting to feel too real.
Just as you were about to waste too much time and money on the claw machines, you caught the tail-end of a familiar laugh, and you spun around before you could think to ignore it. Johnny must have caught it too, for he glanced at you, then back to where the sound came from, expressive eyebrows drawn together almost comically.
“Don’t tell me that’s–”
Steve-O and Chris rounded the corner, pushing and shoving each other. When you’d mentioned the arcade to them, randomly, one day, you hadn’t expected them to actually come here too. Especially not on date night.
“They haven’t spotted us yet,” you whispered back, “we have time to run.”
But Johnny still had money in the claw machine, and he was adamant he was winning this pink teddy bear for your baby. “If we just turn our backs, they won’t even notice us.”
“Smart.”
It was, unsurprisingly, not smart.
When the claw dropped the teddy, only inches from the tube, Johnny let out a too-loud fuck that caught the attention of the two men who would have walked past otherwise. They skipped over, bright and bouncy the way they always were, and slung their arms over your shoulder.
“Why if it isn’t our favourite medic,” sang Chris, pressing a sloppy kiss to your cheek. Steve-O copied him, but your arms were trapped between their bodies, and you couldn’t reach up to wipe the saliva from your face.
“What are you doing here, favourite medic?”
“It’s date night.”
“Date night?” they echoed, then both burst into laughter, teasing you both about how cute your date night was. Johnny shot them a tired look as the teddy was freed from the claw once more.
“I’m trying to win something over here.”
And that was enough to have all three men gathered around the claw machine, their words jumbling as they tried to give tips on how best to win this teddy bear for your unborn daughter. Closer to me. No, go to the right. No, no, that’s nowhere close enough. You need to grab the belly, not the head. You’re way off. Oh fuck man, that was so close. You just leaned on the machine next to you and watched them, the easy way they fell into familiar behaviours, how much they felt like a little family. Even if date night had been crashed, at least it was by two men you could always rely on to make you laugh. Two men who your daughter was going to grow up calling Uncle because they were always right there, trying to win her teddies from claw machines, and promising to look after her so you and Johnny could continue your date night tradition that always ended right here, in this arcade, where laughter was painted into the walls.
You fell asleep with that pink teddy between you.
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For the first time ever, Johnny was telling you not to do something.
And he was probably right. After all, the other women in your antenatal class had stopped working the week before their pregnancies, and their work didn’t exactly involve being around anacondas and men throwing themselves into dangerous activities just for the fun of it. You’d told Johnny that you didn’t want to sit at home knowing he was going to enter a ball pit with an anaconda; otherwise, you’d stress out too much instead of relaxing like he wanted, and left out just how much you wanted to spend all day with him.
The closer you got to your due date, the needier you became. All day, every day, you wanted to be with your husband. When he was cooking, you had to be in the kitchen too, even if the smell made you a little nauseous. When he was showering, you wanted to shower with him, just to feel him massaging the shampoo into your scalp. When he was trying to write something for the movie, you were right there just to watch him work, with a mug of decaf tea and your feet in his lap.
Johnny wasn’t exactly happy about you still working, but he stopped arguing. He knew he’d never win. So, he kept quiet for the entire drive to the set, fingers tightening around the steering wheel, only allowing the radio to cut through the silence he’d set. You didn’t try to fill it either. For once, he knew how you felt, always worried about his safety before every stunt, always worried that you’d be leaving the set in an ambulance instead of the car. And, as you’d reminded him that morning over breakfast, you weren’t the one doing anything dangerous. You were just watching like you always did.
Unlike Johnny, who was probably about to be crushed by an anaconda.
“How’d Knoxville convince you to come along?” Ryan asked as you helped wrap black electrical tape around his wrists. He and Wee-Man were joining Johnny in the anaconda-infested ball pit, and they’d decided to protect their veins in the stupidest way you’d ever heard. You were just glad Ed had electrical tape in his backpack for some reason.
“Oh, he didn’t want me anywhere near this today. He wanted me at home.”
“No way, dude. He gets seriously freaked whenever you’re not around.”
You blinked up at Ryan. You wished you had a video to show him just how adamant Johnny was that you stay at home today. It was the worst argument you’d had in the four years you’d known each other, and it was clear Johnny still wasn’t happy with you being here.
“I’m being serious,” Ryan insisted. You used your teeth to tear the strip of tape around his wrist. “I’ve never seen him like this. He seriously worries about you. He's always talking about practicing with the car seat, or diapers, whatever. He's been writing down all the tips the other dads have been giving him. He's gone crazy.”
Your heart quickened. Nobody had dared mention anything like that around Johnny before, not when he could laugh it off before you could let the emotion swirl in your gut. You knew he loved you – he made sure to tell you so as often as he could – but this was more than just words he could whisper in your ear to placate you. This was him showing the rest of the cast and crew that this little family you were creating was the most important thing in the world to him. This was his way of showing his true feelings without having to say them.
You twisted your head just enough to find him across the room, getting a sailor hat fitted to his head. He was already watching you. You could always find those deep brown eyes in a room, always trained on you, always softening as soon as your gazes met. You thanked Ryan, but your attention was trained solely on your husband, already crossing the room towards you. You met in the middle and smiled when he helped free the hair that had gotten trapped under your necklace, fingers grazing the top of your spine. It was a delicious feeling, the type that made your entire body shiver and flame.
“Don’t get yourself killed in there,” you warned him.
Johnny held out his wrists like you were about to arrest him. “Wouldn’t dream of it, angel.”
You giggled and stepped closer, as close as you could get without actually treading on his toes. For once, he did not stay still to let you work, instead using the opportunity of having you this close to run his fingers through your hair, to nuzzle his nose against the side of your head, to splatter kisses across your shoulders while you giggled and tried to push him away. Maybe he was feeling just as needy as you were. Maybe there was all this tension because you both just wanted the other person right there without coming right out and saying it.
“Don’t like arguing with you,” Johnny mumbled against your temple as you tore the end of the tape off with your teeth and fixed it into place. He could probably feel your bashful smile against his wrist. “You were right, feel better with you right here where I can see you.”
“That’s how I feel too. Like being able to keep my eye on you, Knoxville.”
He laughed, loud and carefree, and it was enough to quell all the tension that had filled the car that morning. He kissed you like he didn’t care that all the crew had gathered to watch the stunt. Now you could watch your husband climb into a ball pit they were going to hide an anaconda inside of, and you could laugh it off with the rest of the guys, instead of stewing in the righteousness of wanting to feel right.
“Hello, I’m Johnny Knoxville, and this is the Anaconda Ball Pit.” Wee Man, in the blink of an eye, punched Johnny in the balls. You bit back your amusement as he doubled over, cupping himself and wincing in pain. “Fuck. I have on a cup, and that still hurts.” In retaliation, he kicked Wee Man in the balls, and laughter tumbled around the room. Almost all the time, Johnny and Wee Man were trying to punch each other’s dicks, you were surprised they still worked.
Manny Puig, the crew’s animal handler whom you’d met for the first time while working on Wildboyz, lifted two anacondas into the ball pit. The rest of the boys had gathered around to watch while still being on camera, but Bam slowly inched to stand behind Ehren, as if he’d be able to keep Bam away from the snakes if they came slithering over. The crew had already gotten Bam with multiple snake-related pranks throughout filming, so you could understand his fear. He was probably half-expecting this skit to turn on him any minute.
“Anacondas are experts in camouflage. They’re ambush hunters.”
“So what does that mean?” Johnny asked. You were surprised they hadn’t gotten Chris and Steve-O to join him in the ball pit instead, but they were probably sick of the sight of snakes after all that filming for their own show.
“They surprise you.”
“I dunno if I’m gonna be that surprised.”
“You gotta catch these guys,” joked Chris, “they tried to kill JLo and Ice Cube.”
It took a minute or two for the guys to get into it, but then Johnny reached to pick up the anaconda, and it instantly bit him, and they all started laughing. Like they weren’t in a silly ball pit with a deadly animal. Like Johnny wasn’t bleeding. Like this wasn’t any more dangerous than just jumping off of roofs. Every time Johnny grabbed the anaconda, it would reach around and bite him. You watched through your fingers, unable to tear your gaze away from the blood dripping down his arms, over his biceps, twining through his fingers. The anaconda trapped Ryan’s legs with its tail and started squeezing, but Johnny managed to hold its head up to the camera, his smirk far too smug for a man within biting distance of a giant snake.
Though you couldn’t deny that the smugness of his smirk mixed with the blood dripping down his arms was sexy. It was doing something to you that you definitely didn’t want to admit but that you’d probably let slip that night, and that your husband would keep bringing up over and over again just because he could. Just because he liked making you blush and whine for him.
“Alright, we seized the snake–”
Wee Man screeched as he realised they had forgotten about the second snake.
You laughed so hard you were sure you’d peed. The wetness trickled down your leg, and you’d never been more grateful to be on a set where everyone had peed themselves at least once. Except it felt like it was never going to stop. Just a constant wetness that kept coming, while the pressure against your pubic bone that you’d been feeling for days now felt altogether heavier.
You stepped out of the puddle you created, and it was as if the truth had grabbed you by the shoulders and started shaking you.
“PJ,” you shouted, above all the laughter. Heads twisted towards you. You only ever called him PJ on set when you were worried about his safety. He vaulted over the edge of the ball pit, blood still dripping down his arm, to reach you. The snakes were forgotten about.
“Angel, you okay?”
“My water broke.”
You’d never seen a group of men panic as if they shared one brain cell and couldn’t quite decide who got to use it. Jeff drove you to the hospital in Johnny’s car because there was no way your husband could drive while he was that pale and had also lost a lot of blood. You weren’t sure if the rest of the boys followed in the crew vans, and you weren’t really sure that you cared. The entire thing was a blur of hands and voices and pain, but as you were pushing, you could so clearly see the ball pit, and the blood smeared on Johnny’s arms, and those stupid sailor hats they were wearing.
“What about the anacondas?” you asked your husband, and he was still laughing as Ramona Clapp took her first breath.
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Hi!
What an insane amount of love the first part of this fic received. I was so not expecting it to reach so many people, so I have to thank you all for all the comments, reblogs, and likes you've given it. Thank you <3
Also, I genuinely think Johnny Knoxville is the peak of male sexiness in Jackass 2, but I couldn't just write 'Johnny looked sexy' so have 11k words of that instead.
Also creating a tag list for anyone who seemed to want more parts:
@vvvioletstarsss @imogenmeandyou @girlfriendwithbowsinherhair @thefemininemystiquee @reaamon20
