Johnny Truant (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
johnny_truant) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bigapplesauce2015-07-24 06:42 pm
johnny_truant) wrote in bigapplesauce2015-07-24 06:42 pm
Entry tags:
and I have become such an ungrateful man [closed]
[[Content Warning: this post contains street harassment, references to racist/homophobic slurs, and pretty severe physical violence/assault. Putting it behind a cut cause it's both unsettling and kinda long. The thread itself will contain terrifying & brutal angelic wrath. Yay!]]
This isn't going to fucking work.
It might work.
But what if it doesn't.
More space and more dates - that's what Gabe had suggested the first time Johnny fucked up, after he came back with his tail between his legs. And this time it was Johnny to suggest it, with a brusque, inelegant text (hey can we please have dinner tonight just the two of us), sent several hours earlier after he realized he'd been staring angrily at the Bethesda fountain for almost ten whole minutes.
Now it's dark, and he barely sketched anything the whole damn day because he's been too busy thinking about what he's going to say when he gets to the restaurant.
I didn't pray because I thought I could handle it. Lie.
I didn't tell you who did it because I promised I wouldn't. Way too much of a clue.
I don't want you to hurt anyone for me.
Maybe that one. But he's not going to like that either.
Doesn't matter.
Maybe they can talk about something else entirely. Maybe they can go back to pretending everything is fine between them.
Hah.
Where is he, anyway? He's been wandering, distracted. He takes a moment to glance around, and finds he's gone half a block too far. He sighs, turns back sharply, and slams right into someone.
"Fuck!" he blurts, and a rough voice returns, "Hey, watch where you're fucking going."
"You watch it!" he snaps, a comeback just reflexive enough to make it out before he can fully take in the person he's talking to, who is nothing short of enormous, at least compared to him. Tall, thick, mean, and smelling strongly of cheap alcohol. Staring at him now, red-eyed, like he's stunned, offended almost, that this little tiny creature actually came back at him like that.
Johnny steps neatly around him. "I got somewhere to fucking be," he mutters.
The cast of the streetlights stretches the man's shadow along the sidewalk with him, and he sees it out of the corner of his eye as it starts to move. Fucking great. He starts moving a little faster, faster, maybe he should run, should he run?
"Hey," says the guy, and a shudder moves down Johnny's spine at the sound of it. He knows the type too well. Drunk, anger issues, and Johnny put himself right at the center of his crosshairs. The kind of guy who used to be the kind of kid that would beat him up at school. The kind of guy who'd grow up to be his foster father. "Hey!"
A younger, stupider Johnny would have picked the fight and come out bleeding and better for it. But this Johnny has gone soft and weak. This Johnny runs.
The guy's closer than he thinks and the sudden pounding of his footsteps on the sidewalk almost gives him a heart attack, but not so much as when a hand clamps around his arm, pulls him off balance and shoves him hard into a narrow alleyway. His back slams against a dumpster and he crumples, gasping, struggling to recover his breath, struggling to get his bearings, get up, get up, fight back.
"You talk real fucking big," says the guy, and drops another couple slurs, what is it with people assuming Johnny is Chinese, and gay, does he look particularly gay, or? He's still scrambling to right himself when the guy kicks him in the stomach, knocking him right back down. He curls over on himself, groaning, breathless, leaving himself totally vulnerable to being dragged up off the ground and shoved against the adjacent brick wall.
"You should go back to where you came from," he growls, sounding too much like Raymond, and hitting the mark a little too close, for all the wrong reasons. Johnny struggles back against him, come on, get a fucking punch in there, you used to be a goddamn fighter, but all he can do is choke and gasp for breath, pushing back feebly against the broad shoulders boxing him in.
The guy slams him back against the wall and drops him hard, he goes down like a ton of bricks, his head ringing too hard to think, too loud to pray. He kicks sharply in raw panic, hits the guy right in the shin, which only pisses him off more. The guy kicks him back and Johnny's too winded to even scream, and then the guy comes down on top of him, the better to beat the living shit out of him.
This isn't going to fucking work.
It might work.
But what if it doesn't.
More space and more dates - that's what Gabe had suggested the first time Johnny fucked up, after he came back with his tail between his legs. And this time it was Johnny to suggest it, with a brusque, inelegant text (hey can we please have dinner tonight just the two of us), sent several hours earlier after he realized he'd been staring angrily at the Bethesda fountain for almost ten whole minutes.
Now it's dark, and he barely sketched anything the whole damn day because he's been too busy thinking about what he's going to say when he gets to the restaurant.
I didn't pray because I thought I could handle it. Lie.
I didn't tell you who did it because I promised I wouldn't. Way too much of a clue.
I don't want you to hurt anyone for me.
Maybe that one. But he's not going to like that either.
Doesn't matter.
Maybe they can talk about something else entirely. Maybe they can go back to pretending everything is fine between them.
Hah.
Where is he, anyway? He's been wandering, distracted. He takes a moment to glance around, and finds he's gone half a block too far. He sighs, turns back sharply, and slams right into someone.
"Fuck!" he blurts, and a rough voice returns, "Hey, watch where you're fucking going."
"You watch it!" he snaps, a comeback just reflexive enough to make it out before he can fully take in the person he's talking to, who is nothing short of enormous, at least compared to him. Tall, thick, mean, and smelling strongly of cheap alcohol. Staring at him now, red-eyed, like he's stunned, offended almost, that this little tiny creature actually came back at him like that.
Johnny steps neatly around him. "I got somewhere to fucking be," he mutters.
The cast of the streetlights stretches the man's shadow along the sidewalk with him, and he sees it out of the corner of his eye as it starts to move. Fucking great. He starts moving a little faster, faster, maybe he should run, should he run?
"Hey," says the guy, and a shudder moves down Johnny's spine at the sound of it. He knows the type too well. Drunk, anger issues, and Johnny put himself right at the center of his crosshairs. The kind of guy who used to be the kind of kid that would beat him up at school. The kind of guy who'd grow up to be his foster father. "Hey!"
A younger, stupider Johnny would have picked the fight and come out bleeding and better for it. But this Johnny has gone soft and weak. This Johnny runs.
The guy's closer than he thinks and the sudden pounding of his footsteps on the sidewalk almost gives him a heart attack, but not so much as when a hand clamps around his arm, pulls him off balance and shoves him hard into a narrow alleyway. His back slams against a dumpster and he crumples, gasping, struggling to recover his breath, struggling to get his bearings, get up, get up, fight back.
"You talk real fucking big," says the guy, and drops another couple slurs, what is it with people assuming Johnny is Chinese, and gay, does he look particularly gay, or? He's still scrambling to right himself when the guy kicks him in the stomach, knocking him right back down. He curls over on himself, groaning, breathless, leaving himself totally vulnerable to being dragged up off the ground and shoved against the adjacent brick wall.
"You should go back to where you came from," he growls, sounding too much like Raymond, and hitting the mark a little too close, for all the wrong reasons. Johnny struggles back against him, come on, get a fucking punch in there, you used to be a goddamn fighter, but all he can do is choke and gasp for breath, pushing back feebly against the broad shoulders boxing him in.
The guy slams him back against the wall and drops him hard, he goes down like a ton of bricks, his head ringing too hard to think, too loud to pray. He kicks sharply in raw panic, hits the guy right in the shin, which only pisses him off more. The guy kicks him back and Johnny's too winded to even scream, and then the guy comes down on top of him, the better to beat the living shit out of him.
no subject
"Yeah." He lets his eyes fall shut, relishing this, this rare uncomplicated moment. Feels like it's been such a long time. He nudges his head under Gabe's chin, a sort of catlike motion. "Hey - can you, um." He feels his face flush. He wishes he could blame this on drunkenness rather than just - whatever this is. He peeks up at the wing hovering over him. "Can you like, fold that back over me, or-"
He breaks off, too embarrassed to continue. He doesn't even know why this is so hard to request, maybe because it's so intimate and so weird, he just knows he feels safe here, and that's such an unusual thing, and he wants to hang onto it.