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Aegri Somnia: A Sick Man's Dreams: Chapter Ten: Time
Then nothing, Todd decided. Johnny would spend the night however he chose, somewhere in the house. He, Todd, would sleep until his alarm went off at five thirty, and be out of the house by no later than six fifteen, after an uncomfortable conversation over a one-sided cup of coffee. By the time he came home, Johnny would be gone. All that would show he had ever been there would be a few dishes in the sink, some knickknack or another completely thrashed and hastily squirreled away somewhere almost quaint in it's randomness, and a scrawled, scarcely readable message in crayon or whatever was at hand on a blank wall or mirror. Johnny seemed to have a thing for writing on large, inappropriate surfaces.
But there would be no trouble. It would be easy. Todd could handle this.
"I..." It was easy to see how torn Johnny was. He was as plain as day, sometimes. Everything showed on his face, once you knew how to look properly. "Is it safe?" he asked finally.
In a million ways, the answer was no. But Todd doubted the other would take it well if he phrased it so bluntly. However, Johnny had always valued him for his honesty, so it wouldn't do to start fibbing now. So the truth, but best to, not sugarcoat, but lessen the blow by leaving a few things out. Only tell Johnny what he could handle. It was too dangerous otherwise.
It didn't help that their scope on "dangerous" had an irritating habit of being polar opposites, though.
"Well, probably not," Todd said with a soft laugh forced out by his diaphragm. "Nothing is ever completely safe, right?"
Johnny looked troubled. "That's true."
"But don't you think it'd be nice to take a—a break from everything? You know, over there?" A nod pressed him on. "And my place is nice enough, or that's what I like to think." He smiled.
Another nod. "It's quiet too."
"Yeah. And if it gets too quiet, you can always watch TV. Not too loud, though. I've got work in the morning and I can't pull any more all-nighters. I'm pretty tired."
Johnny seemed taken aback. "Work?"
Todd sighed.
"Yeah, Nny. I work." More often than not Johnny still seemed to see him as the little boy he had taken under his wing on that first night they had been so discourteously pushed together. It was a little grating on the patience, but nothing either of them could fix. "Here, I'll get you a pillow and blanket. Just in case. Um, do you want—want some pajamas?" The image of Johnny wearing anything of his was both disturbing and curiously funny, though he could not for the life of him figure out what had provoked the questions at all. Johnny did not sleep, not ever. It was probably just an excuse to leave the room.
"No." Johnny sounded weird, but then again when had he ever sounded normal? Still...
"Okay. Back in a minute." A pause before he added lamely, "Make yourself comfortable." He practically ran for the stairs.
In his room Todd shook his head, scoffing at the ridiculousness of it all. The whole night was taking on an almost surreal kind of quality. God, if Guinness World Records could get their hands on Johnny, they'd have a field day. The champion insomniac with more blood on his hands than Adolf Hitler, and yet he had never been caught, not once, and let's not forget he hadn't aged in like, what? Thirty, forty some-odd years? Not to mention his basement and its million-and-a-half levels stretched across half the city and who even knew how deep. And then there was the matter of—
Whoa, hang on there.
He paused, reaching for a pillow from his bed. That aging bit, it had to be wrong, right? Everyone got older in forty years, even the Antichrist, for god's sake. And although several decades of alien experimentation, time-space continuum hopping, ghost possession, and more explosions than there were digits in pi had considerably slowed down Todd's own aging processes, he still managed to look... thirty-fiveish, give or take. His fingers crawled to the iron key dangling from a long cord around his neck. Well... it paid to know said Antichrist so intimately too.
Shook his head. If he thought about it, thought about it hard enough, he could remember the early visits, before the respect, before the fame, before even Pepito, when Johnny had come through the window spouting advice like a demented older brother out of a cheap horror movie. Could remember the raw fear as a monster-clawed silhouette loomed with double rows of crooked teeth that tried to shape themselves into a kindly smile. And if you stripped away the wear and tear of that much service as a bon a fide hate funnel, the Johnny from then was the same as the Johnny sitting in his kitchen tonight.
A horrified frown crinkled his forehead into well-worn lines, his extended hand dropping limply against his thigh. It was so hard to remember... The memory chip installed the first few years of puberty had been removed and replaced, but far from cleanly. Now things from before became blurred sometimes if he didn't remind himself now and then, and Johnny was one thing he never tried to keep close. But, if he thought enough...
"Oh god."
Forty years? That had just been a generalization of time, a joke, a flippant remark with no real thought put into it. But it was wrong.
It had been so much longer.
And Johnny had scarcely aged a day.
From downstairs floated up a high, broken whimper, as if Johnny had come to the same conclusion. With a painful swallow Todd forced himself to keep functioning, let the terrible thoughts flow without restriction but keep going.
Johnny was in bad shape, the absolute rock bottom, the worst Todd had ever seen him, and thus was about as predictable and just as safe as a mob of ill-tempered nuclear zombies. If he didn't go down in the next five minutes, something was going to pop. So Todd kept going, taking care to tread slightly harder than he was accustomed to so Johnny could follow his movements as he prepared for what he now expected to be another sleepless night. His mind raced.
Why hadn't Johnny aged, even the slightest? The only possible explanation was the System's interference, but that only raised more questions. Again and again Pepito hailed Johnny a failure as a flusher, let alone as a human creature worth his weight in shit. Long discussions—curiously reluctant on Pepito's end—concerning the System and anyone and anything who had something to do with it had proven Johnny was indeed, a hopeless disappointment. And yet here he still was, working and killing and absorbing, a perfect little slave. To Todd it seemed an unlucky miracle Johnny could function at all. Hate did a lot of damage on a short term basis, and any one man shouldn't have been able to withstand so much of it for such an extended period of time, and that was true. Johnny had broken down a long time ago, broken down on more than one occasion, yet still the System drove him relentlessly, and with no end in sight.
Why Johnny? Why conform such a terrible misfit to the flusher mold when there were so many thousands of compatible candidates with nothing better to do in this very city alone? Todd sighed, pausing in the hallway, unconsciously staying out of sight if Johnny might be by the foot of the stairs. Fretful mutterings drifted up from the ground floor, pierced by short bursts of strained cursing. Todd flinched, wondering what kind of internal argument Johnny was suffering through. He felt something stir in the recesses of his mind, shake off the dust of disuse, and a wave of comfort washed over him.
Why is he here?
"Hey, Shmee," he whispered, hands clutching the pillow close to his chest. "Sure has been a while."
Accidentally stole the hate funnel thing from Zarla, so cred goes out to her. And the key thing seems to be a canon concept in the fandom (just look at the PepSquee club over on dA), so I don't really think I stole that from Lady-Yatexel, which is where I first saw the idea in action. If you don't get the memory chip thing, it made an appearance in Diet, one of my PepSquee oneshots.
I love when I accidentally write in some lyrics from a song I was listening to at the time. Who can spot the Ladytron, lol.
I've decided that rather than swamp my dA watchers with journal posts, I'll start using my LJ tonight, beginning with my decision on updates and all. There will be a link in my profile if I can figure out how to do that. Otherwise, go to my dA account and the link will be there.
Oh, keep forgetting to do this. Hi Mom! Everybody say hi to the woman what spawned my brain, m'kay?
See you in a week. A.N.