Disclaimer: I don't own or intend to profit from any of this. All the characters, the general plot, and snippets taken directly from the libretto and/or lyrics are property of Green Day and all other parties involved. I'm merely a fan expressing my love :)

Notes: This fic centers around Johnny and seeks to flesh out his character and story. I'm going out on a limb and saying that the city our beloved hero finds himself in is New York, mostly because that's the city where I live and imagine all of this going down. Still deciding if this will be a one-shot or not. We'll see how it goes! ALSO: some of the things written here may be offensive to some readers. The views expressed herein are not necessarily my own, but how I imagine Johnny to feel. I hope that it doesn't offend anyone too much.


Terminal Velocity

I.

It's somewhere between the millionth YouTube video of laughing babies and the nth bullied-teen suicide that Johnny realizes he's sick of it all. Sick of the trailer parks and the super Walmart, celebrities going back to rehab and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He's tired of feeling like a fly stuck on the wall of his own life, smothered by an inertia that renders him helpless – no, even worse, complacent and idle while the great world spins frenetically yet tantalizingly just beyond his fingertips.

When he was little, he wanted to be an astronaut. A ninja. A fucking dinosaur. Then his dad died, and he doesn't remember expecting much from life after that.

Maybe it was the moment a gallon of gasoline cost more than $3.00 that finally roused him from his torpor. Or maybe it was the news of drowning polar bears and disappearing honey bees, or when the word 'American' became synonymous with 'douchebag.' Either way, his world is suddenly and irrevocably broken.

They say there are five stages of grief, the first of which – denial – he probably passed the other night, when Brad made another comment about him moving out and getting a decent job, to stop being such a failure, an urchin, a fuckup, etc., and Johnny fucking snapped. He punched the wall behind Brad's head so hard that he left a hole in the drywall in the shape of his fist.

"There's nothing wrong with me," he smoldered, later, on Will's couch with marijuana buzzing through his lethargic synapses. "This is how I'm supposed to be." But even then, some part of him doesn't believe it. Oh shit, he thinks, is this my life?

Next comes the anger. He's not sure if 'acceptance' will ever arrive, but knows that he sure as hell won't find it here.

II.

"You really leaving?"

His mother's voice wafts up from the cloud of cigarette smoke haloed around her overly-permed head, equal parts accusation and resignation. Standing there in her ratty bathrobe and frayed bedroom slippers, she presses the cigarette again to her dry, white lips and chuckles, smoke pouring out from between her teeth with every syllable. "I always knew you would."

Johnny doesn't reply. He wants to spit something vitriolic at her, to tell her that she married a cocksucker. To tell her that she ruined him. That her perm looks like shit. But for some reason he can't, and instead shoves his last pair of jeans into his backpack with bitter finality.

"You know, your father could never sit still for very long, either," his mother continues. "'S why he joined the military and got himself killed" – her voice catches on the last word, the faintest scar of an old and unimaginably deep wound. She hardens, though, and finishes, "Fucking idiot."

Johnny's had enough. The last of his most valuable possessions are snugly compartmentalized in the confines of his backpack, vacuum sealed, freeze dried, like those packets of powdered ice cream they feed to astronauts. He's ready for liftoff, for outer orbit, and to leave this fucking landfill of a planet behind.

He's almost through the door when his mother's hand on his chest stops him. He looks up, and her eyes are suddenly sad. They're blue like his, but he gets his eyelashes from his father – no, not Brad, his real dad. Half of his DNA. Her hand shifts upward, lifted as if to gently smooth across his face like it used to when he was a child; but then it drops away, a crumpled wad of cash falling between them as she turns and walks away.

III.

He wakes up on a Greyhound bus, his neck sore from lolling against the window as he slept. When he looks out the New York City skyline is already visible, all twinkling lights rising prettily into the night sky. For a while it almost doesn't seem real; how wonderfully strange it is, truly, that he should find himself here, so that even as he and Tunny watch the bus pull away from the sidewalk he's still half-expecting to be jolted awake on Will's couch after smoking too much weed, again.

They're staying at a friend's cousin's sister-in-law's apartment, who needed to sublet for a few months. It's practically a shoebox in the sketchiest corner of Alphabet City, where even the homeless don't dare accost passers-by for spare change. Johnny could care less, really; it's all just part of the experience, isn't it? Still, in his postcard to Will he omits the fact that he can't leave any of his valuables in the apartment unattended, even if he locks and deadbolts the door.

He also omits mentioning how different Tunny seems a few weeks later. Yeah, he writes about how all Tunny ever does is sleep, but he doesn't bring up how much time Tunny spends staring at the television every night, or how he's practically forgotten about his guitar. And shunned all forms of human communication. Sometimes Johnny wants to grab him by shoulders and shake him until he realizes that they're here, that they can be what they always wanted to be, and that they'd promised each other they were in this for real – don't you understand it yet?

He never works up the courage say any of this out loud, because every time he sees Tunny's blank face and bloodshot eyes, his own conviction starts to crumble.

IV.

He sees her one night as he's quietly strumming his guitar outside on the fire escape. She lives across the alleyway from him, her window level with his so that he catches her from time to time as she's washing dishes or just sitting at the table, thinking. He's too chicken shit to say anything to her, and she seems too cool for him anyway, with that streak of electric fuchsia running through her hair and those hot pink combat boots. He gives himself up to thinking about her, instead, about what she must be like and who she might love, even the sound of her voice.

In the end, however, it always leaves him feeling worse. Lately he's been feeling perpetually out of sync with the world: Tunny, who barely makes eye contact with him anymore; his nameless neighbor, whom he longs to know but appears so very remote; Will, whose written messages are gradually becoming shorter and sparser; and above all this city that seems with every passing moment more hostile and violent, reeking of despair. He feels like a planet knocked off its orbit, with everything and everyone else zooming around as they should, and he as the only one confused, discombobulated, and alone.

She smiles at him, once. They run into each other the small square meter of sidewalk shared between their respective apartment buildings, and do that awkward dance of two people trying to pass each other but always anticipating the wrong moves. She laughs, then, and flashes a beautiful smile before easily skirting around him and walking away.

At first he can't tell if he's been cursed or blessed by that smile. Maybe he's both: on one hand reassured that beauty still exists, even here and even now, and on the other ever more so reminded of its distance.

V.

He knows Tunny is gone before he even walks into the empty apartment. In all honesty he probably knew weeks ago, when a commercial for the Marines appeared on the television, the one that makes war and service seem awesome as fuck. He scoffed, "Can you believe this bullshit?" and Tunny shot him a look somewhere between repulsion and loathing, frighteningly alien in its intensity. He supposes that he should have definitely known last week, when Tunny would disappear for hours and refuse to talk to him. Still, the silence and stillness of the apartment are shocking, and he lingers in the doorway too long, hesitant before the gaping and terrible maw of reality.

There's a note taped to the television when he gets inside. Its words are terse and leave much to be desired by way of an explanation. Although Johnny can't say he's surprised, he cannot deny that he's hurt. Pissed, even. Seriously – whatthefuck.

He rips the note from the TV and crumples it in his fist until his nails bite into the palm of his hand. With shaky limbs and a pounding heart he makes his way to the kitchen freezer, where they had stashed some reserves of hard liquor "for celebratory purposes only." Johnny laughs at the thought, the sound sinister and bitter and so unlike his own voice that it almost scares him. He pushes it aside, though, along with the other cacophonous feelings rushing through him, unscrewing the top of the bottle without stopping to think – and longing not to feel; as if on its own volition the bottle meets his lips and his head tilts back so that the liquid sears down his throat, bringing with it the familiar sensation of tumbling down into a dark and unfathomable abyss.

Going.

Going.

Gone.