Johnny wasn't really sure what to expect anymore. Go to her place, make sure she was up to speed with everything, that was the plan. Ever since this Ultor thing happened, she'd been… different. Not around as much - and while he didn't want to admit it, he was a little bit worried about her.
The suburb was nice, like the one he and Aisha used to live in, and that's what had thrown him off at first. She hadn't said shit about moving, and she didn't exactly look like a suburbs girl in the time he'd been rolling with her - spare when she first showed up, but he figured that'd been kicked out of her when she was canonized.
Driving slowly down the clean street, his eyes thinned. All the buildings were white or tanned or some light-ass shade of paint, all of them fenced off, some with hedges, others with security cameras. This wasn't like her at all, unless she'd been lying to him. Had she been? She never talked about where she was from, now that he thought about it. Fuck, he'd never even been to her place before, unless you counted the few safe houses or the hideout.
And then, as he pulled up at the dilapidated house squeezed neatly between the two luxury homes, a few purple-donned figures sitting on the front porch in a cloud of smoke eyeing him, he felt a little better about the situation. This was definitely her.
Getting out of his car, one of the figures nodded and raised a beer to him, nodding to another, who ran inside to find her. "She home?" He called to the figure as he arrived on the porch.
"Yeah, give her a second."
"What, she too fuckin' busy for me, now?" He snorted, almost insulted, the figure seeming to shrink a little.
"Gimme a fuckin' second, Johnny!" Her voice called from inside, several footsteps following before she threw open the slightly-torn and therefore useless security door.
"You look like shit," he observed, crossing his arms.
"Fuck you."
He wasn't exactly lying. She did look like shit. Her hair was a mess in one big matted rat nest in the back, meaning she'd either been fucking someone or she hadn't brushed her hair in weeks. Her hoodie, which probably wasn't hers judging by how baggy it was, hung off her shoulder without a strap to be seen, and she was fucking around with her belt to try and get it fastened. Yep. She'd been fucking someone.
"Where the fuck've you been?" he asked her.
"Here." She was blunt with him, gesturing for him to follow her inside as she opened the door for him. As he stepped through, the frame of the security door broke away from the actual house with a loud crack. "Oh for fuck's…" she gave a grumble and kicked the frame with her foot, giving up when it didn't force it back into place and following him into the hall.
"You fuckin live here or something?" He asked. "Fuck, Mira-"
"Don't fucking call me that." She snapped, pointing at him as she passed him in the hall.
"...Homie," he quickly corrected himself and took his turn to follow her. "This place is a shithole." He looked down, the at least 40-year-old carpet looked as though it'd never been washed and had worn out spots all over it. The walls looked like they were probably white or something once, but had since gone a tarnished yellow, peppered with scratches, marks and the occasional hole in the plaster. The ceiling was a sight to behold in itself, covered with various smoke stains and god knows what along with countless cobwebs. The entire place smelled like a mix of dust, old cigarette smoke and spilled beer with just a hint of her to it, which was probably her perfume or something - not that he'd ever admit to associating it with her. Seemed… weird to do that.
"Yeah, well, I've lived here since before day one." She pointed to a spot on the wall which had dark red, almost brown fingerprints on it. Dried up blood. "From when I was canonized."
"You ever thought of cleaning the place?" he asked.
"Shit no." She opened a door and the perfume smell was even stronger. Her room. She stepped in, tilting her head to someone inside. "Make yourself scarce. Got business to attend to." Within a few moments, a tall, tanned recruit pulling his shirt on over the top of his head passed by them, not even shooting Johnny so much as a glance.
"Who the fuck was he?!" Johnny asked as she made her way inside.
"Paul," she shrugged as he followed, closing the bedroom down behind him. "No, wait" she sat on her bed and reached for a small tin, opening it after a small moment of struggling to get a good enough grip on the body of the tin. "Pete? Peter? Eh," she took a joint from the tin and placed it behind her ear, snapping the tin shut with one hand. "Whatever."
"Okay, seriously," he looked around, finding a chair and carelessly clearing the clothes sitting on it onto the floor. It wouldn't matter, the place was messy enough. "What the fuck is with you?" She said nothing, choosing to just raise an eyebrow curiously as she lit the joint in her mouth as he continued. "Since when did you disappear for days at a time to get high and fuck randoms? What the fuck are you now, Shaundi?"
"When did what I do in my spare time become any of your fucking business?" She asked.
"When it walked past me in your goddamn doorway. The fuck is going on?"
She didn't respond right away, giving herself a minute to exhale the heavy smoke first. "Lots of changes happening, Johnny. I need me time."
"This isn't 'me time' for you and you fucking know it. You know what 'me time' is for you? Spray painting giant dicks on the side of shopping malls. Shooting tyres out on ice-cream trucks from a distance. Hiring hookers to play Uno with you - not fucking the first recruit with a six pack you can fucking find."
"Will you stop bringing that up?" She asked, her voice raising a little for the first time. "The fuck are you, jealous? You want my dick, too?"
He opened his mouth to respond, but just shook his head in frustration instead. "You know what?" He stood up. "You call me when you feel like being the boss of the Saints instead of acting like a regular deadshit recruit. This isn't you and I'm not fucking dealing with it today, Mirabelle." There was venom in his voice as he said her name, which he knew she hated, and he almost felt a little bit bad about it, but he wasn't about to apologise given this special brand of bullshit.
He walked to her door without another word, but when he turned the knob on the door, he heard something. A deep breath. Not of her taking a drag. Not a sigh or something like it. Like she was building up to something.
"I'm fuckin' scared, Johnny."
He felt his shoulders drop a bit as he exhaled. "There it is," he said quietly, in almost a whisper. "There it fucking is." He took his hand from the knob and turned to look back at her. She sat on her bed, staring at her feet, her cockiness from before completely gone as the joint idly burned away between her fingers. "Scared of what?" he asked, making his way across the room to take the seat back. "Don't tell me you're pussying out now."
"We just… keep losing people."
"We're always going to lose people, kid, you knew that when you got your flags."
"I know… but…" she shook her head. "It's fuckin' stupid. Don't worry about it."
"No," Johnny's voice was firm. "We're fuckin' talking about this because I am fucked if I'm going to deal with two Shaundi's any time soon."
She gave a short smile, putting out her joint on the top of the tin. "It's just… so much at once, you know? People I thought would be okay because they could handle their shit. Gone. It's all just kinda… caught up with me, you know? Now shit's quiet."
"We've all lost people lately, they won't be the last."
She quickly shook her head and reached out for a hair-tie on her bedside table, finally pulling her rat's nest back into a bun, which was only really a slight improvement. "Sorry. I'm here bitching about my fuckin feelings when Aisha…"
"I'm not the one taking dick to try and deal." He watched her for a moment as she scratched her neck. "This is about Carlos, isn't it?"
"A little," her voice was soft, croaking a bit from the smoke. "I miss him."
"You've never lost someone close before, have you?"
She shook her head. "Not that I didn't already want dead."
He chuckled a little at that, even this couldn't get that last bit of spirit out of her. "Well, you'll deal. It's hard as fuck. But you'll deal. Helps we're all in the same place right now."
"Even though we're not all taking dick, right?" She asked, a little smile on her face.
"Damned fucking straight." He shot her a smile. "You've always had my back, kid, I've got yours."
Suddenly, she threw her head back, rolling her eyes a little. "Will you fuckin' stop calling me kid already?"
Johnny watched her for a moment in silence, his eyes glancing over one of the many scars she'd picked up, this one on her bare shoulder. She was right. She wasn't a kid anymore. She'd become something else since she'd shown up at that church, doe-eyed and antsy before she took a smack to the nose- which may or may not have been Johnny's handiwork.
Now she sat on her bed, Boss of the Saints, covered in her own battlescars including the little scar on her jawline from when Johnny - accidentally - cut her with a box-cutter that one time. When they'd started rolling together his biggest concern was that she couldn't handle himself and he'd have to keep carrying her. But he didn't. At least if he ever by some scary chance got knocked-off, he'd know she'd be able to handle herself and the rest of The Saints. He'd done a good job.
"Alright," he exhaled. "I'll stop calling you kid when you go take a goddamn shower."
She was quiet for a moment, a soft smile on her face. "...Thanks."
They shared the silence for a few more moments, content in each other's company until Johnny cracked a grin. "No, seriously, go take a fuckin' shower. I can smell your ass from over here."
"Fuck you."
"You wish you could."
