Note – Thank you to everyone who leaves me feedback. I don't think readers know how truly wonderful it feels to get feedback sometimes, especially when you're testing the waters a bit. This Johnny and Nadine fic is the first thing I've written outside of Jason/Liz (and now House, but that's experimental, too) and I love hearing about what I'm getting right and what I'm not doing so well. Thanks to all who read and reply.
The Right Girl 12
"Sonnybucks?"
Nadine looked up at the brick building and then over at him. "Is that what this place is called? I thought it was The Coffee Shop. You know, for all the brilliance Mister Corinthos and Jason are supposed to possess when it comes to business, they have no idea how to name their commercial joints. They call their restaurant The No Name, for crying out loud. Half the time I can't decide if that's cute or just lazy. Ooh. I hope none of their men were around to hear me say that."
Johnny cleared his throat awkwardly as she looked around just to be sure. He was more than familiar with her rambling, but it wasn't setting him at ease this time like it normally did. "You, uh, wanna go in? After you."
He held the door for her, catching a waft of her perfume – vanilla and soap with just a touch of coconut, he ascertained – as she moved past him into the brightly lit and aptly named coffee shop.
"I like this place," she announced to no one in particular, smiling when the cute server from the other day winked at her. He held up a bottle of syrup, letting her know he knew her order and would get it going right away. "I have an excellent chance of running into Spinelli here, and he's so busy all the time – either with Jason or with Maxie – that it's the only spot we can actually sit and catch up."
"Yeah."
"He's such a cool kid," she continued, leading him to her favorite table. "Most people don't see it, you know. They just see the weird and they don't take him seriously. It's like my Aunt Rayleen used to say: better a flawed diamond than a flawless pebble. That's Spinelli: a flawed diamond. Easily the smartest boy I've ever met. You should get to know him – I think you'd really like him."
Johnny shrugged and took a seat across from her, his dark eyes nervously darting toward the doorway that led to the private offices of Jason Morgan and Sonny Corinthos. "I know him. Kind of. Through Lulu," he elaborated when she shot him a look. "Because she's friends with him. Hey, can I just get a medium coffee, black, two sugars?"
"Sure thing," one of the servers replied as he set Nadine's concoction in front of her. "Give me two seconds, I'll get it right to you."
He nodded jerkily as the young man moved away, prompting Nadine to give him another strange look. "You all right?"
Johnny's eyes flicked instantly to hers. "Yeah, fine. Why?"
"You seem a little on edge, that's all." Concern made her brows furrow; it was her most frequent expression, he noticed. "You sure everything's okay?"
He shrugged weakly, not particularly liking being put on the spot like that, but then again, this was Nadine and she never did anything to make him feel awkward or like he had to offer up something to her. "I'm not really that comfortable with Sonny Corinthos so close. Aside from the fact that the man's a rabid sociopath, I think…I think he might have been somehow behind the hit on me at the docks. Jason denies it, but I get the feeling that Sonny doesn't clear everything by Jason."
Her lips tightened into a little frown, and she waited until the server set Johnny's coffee down in front of him before she spoke. "Do you want to go somewhere else, then? Maybe to the park? It's no big thing, really. I totally get why you're uncomfortable. We should probably go."
"The park sounds fine," he shrugged. "Let's do that."
As soon as she'd requested a few pieces of stale, day-old bread from one of the servers, who'd gladly handed it over, they were on their way. Johnny had to laugh at how carefully Nadine held her drink and the bag of bread in his car, terrified of getting whipped cream on his leather seats or dusting crumbs into the plush floor mats.
"You come here often?"
"Often enough," she shrugged as they walked along the river. Johnny had spotted a bench and was leading her toward it, and the ducks were dipping in and out of the water as the sun continued to set over the town. It was cold, but they at least had their coffee to keep warm. "I like the ducks."
He watched as she tore off a piece of bread and tossed it at the ducks, several of which dove for it almost before it hit the water. "Most people would say they like the quiet, or the soothing sound of the water, or people-watching."
Nadine spared him an arch look. "I'm not most people."
"Trust me, I know."
She grinned at his beleaguered reply and tossed the birds another chunk of the stale bread. "How often do you get your oil checked?"
Johnny blinked, surprised by the drastic change in subject. Although, he supposed, he was with a woman so he shouldn't have been. "I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about ducks and your singular personality."
He could see her shrug when she moved a pace ahead of him, tossing another piece to the ducks. "It's just that you drive back and forth between downtown Port Charles and Crimson Point pretty frequently, especially now that everything's been cleared for your new board position. You want a piece?"
He took the bread she offered and, setting his coffee down on the cement ledge separating the walkway from the water, began tearing it into small chunks like hers. "I get it checked often enough. We have a mechanical team that comes by weekly to inspect all of our cars for gas, oil, steering fluid, tires, wear and tear, that sort of thing."
"Do you have good miles-per-gallon?"
"My car's a guzzler," he informed her, to which he received a frown. "But I found a great shortcut between my place and downtown, so it's all good. Takes me about half the time to get here than it normally would."
"That's good." She ticked off five in her head before tossing the birds another piece, then jiggled the next one around in her hand, counting to five again before tossing it out.
He added another piece to his growing pile and concentrated on the mangled bread in his hands. "I, uh, I've started to visit my father more."
Nadine glanced over at him but didn't lose her feeding rhythm. "Yeah, I figured there was something more drawing you to the hospital aside from the board."
"I don't know why I go," he murmured, staring futilely at the bread as if it held the answer, and Nadine was struck for a moment by how lost he looked. "I don't want to go. But I still do."
She tossed another piece of bread to the anxious ducks and considered her words, something she rarely took the time to do. "Your father reminds me of a Scooby Doo villain."
Okay, maybe she should have considered better words.
"He was so scary in the moment, you know?" Her words came faster now as Nadine tried, for the umpteenth time in her relatively short life, to dig herself out of the hole her mouth dug for her. "He would appear all over the castle, at every turn, usually with a sharp object. He was so scary that I couldn't breathe when I first looked into his eyes. But when I see him in his suite sometimes, he's so…affable, and almost sweet in a sadistic way."
His hands stilled in the process of tearing the bread. "You go to see my father?"
Nadine stiffened as well, and a few seconds passed before she was brave enough to turn around and face his stern glare. "Yeah, I do."
Johnny bit his lip, reminding himself to choose his words and breathe. "Why? What made you think you could go visit my father?"
"You mean, when even you don't?" She smiled sadly when he rocked back slightly, realizing she'd cut right through him with that incisive question. And just like that, his anger melted away into something a little less hot, a little more bitter and twice more dejected.
"I don't know why I visit him," she replied honestly. "I don't mean it as disrespect to you or your sister. I won't see him again if you don't want me to."
He shook his head absently. "You can do whatever you want – it's not my place to forbid you to do anything. Besides, you're a nurse. And you roam the hospital like a ghost, anyway."
Nadine counted to five in her head and tossed the ducks another piece. They were used to her schedule now and were waiting patiently. When she tossed the piece, they snapped for it before it hit the water because they knew exactly when she'd throw it.
"I really don't know why I go. It's not a lot. I've seen him maybe half a dozen times since he was admitted. Not a whole lot. Maybe…I don't know, it's weird. Sometimes I think I might be drawn to him because he was part of one of the scariest things that ever happened to me. I didn't think I'd make it off the island alive that night. You know, you never know how you'll handle yourself in those life-or-death situations, what you'll do, but I like to think that I did pretty good. I didn't freak out to the extent of being useless to everyone else, I got to help the people that were injured, and I was there for people like Spinelli and Elizabeth who really needed someone there."
She decided against telling him how his girlfriend had decidedly not handled herself well and turned into a raving, hysterical banshee.
"And I think that memory of just being petrified to my core…it just makes me want to see him sometimes. And every time I see him, I'm reminded of that night. Kinda perverse, huh?"
Johnny shrugged.
The corner of her mouth quirked up and she tossed another piece of bread at a five second interval. "Maybe I just like people that are different. Fundamentally different from the rest of us, people that do things that we never would."
"Damaged people," he murmured softly.
"I don't know about that." She licked her lips and tossed another piece as the sun's last rays lingered. "It's so surreal seeing him, you know? He was in control that night. We couldn't turn around without being terrified that we'd see him. And now, he's this tiny, thin, little man in this hospital bed that's too big for him. So surreal."
Johnny meticulously tore up the last of his bread and began adding it to his large pile. "That's the best word for my childhood with my father, actually. Surreal."
He could see her count to five in her head before she spoke. "Do you ever doubt that your father loves you? Or loved you?"
"All the time." He jiggled a few pieces of bread around in his hand. "If my father loved me, he wouldn't have tried to kill Lulu at the Black and White Ball."
"I think it was because Anthony loved you that he tried to do that," Nadine replied slowly, making the ducks wait two additional counts before they got their treat. "He didn't want you to get hurt by Lulu, and if there's one thing I've noticed about him, even now, is that he's…sharp. He's aware. Perceptive. He knows exactly what he's doing – or did – and why. And he believes in himself, believes he was right."
Johnny bristled, flinging the last pieces of bread down onto the pile on the ledge. "If my father loved me, he wouldn't have let me be caged up in that house, he wouldn't have taken my sister away from me, he wouldn't have let me be Trevor's little lab rat, and he wouldn't have put me in the position of having no choice but to run the family business and continue this cycle of bloodshed."
Nadine watched him quietly, knowing there was nothing she could say to help him work through this, much less make him feel any better about it.
"I'm saying this in complete confidence," he continued in a low, strained voice without meeting her gaze. "I'm not saying it to scare you, I'm not saying it to disgust you, but if you're going to speak so frankly with me, I don't want you to have any delusions or misconceptions about who I am or what I do. And I don't want you to breathe a word of it to anyone, ever."
"I'll sit on it," she agreed quietly. "Whatever you need."
"Right now, our organization has to attack the Corinthos organization before they attack us, and that's how it'll always be until we're wiped out or they are."
He heaved a heavy sigh and stared dully at the ducks. They were loyally waiting the remaining three seconds for Nadine's next piece of bread. "You know, I have absolutely no respect for a man like Sonny Corinthos."
Nadine smiled wryly. "Somehow, I never got the impression that you were commissioning a statue of him."
"I don't mean that as a business rival or someone he wants dead, or someone that wants him dead. I mean I don't respect him as a person. He's got, like, billions of kids." He kicked at the ledge, then studiously regarded the scuff on his shoe. "Michael Corinthos III, Morgan Corinthos, Kristina Davis, and a couple he lost along the way. He plays this guy who's all about his kids, but do you know, he hasn't even visited Kristina for a month. Father of the Year, huh?"
She held onto her next piece, making the ducks wait for it. "What's this about, Johnny?"
"But then I look at a man like Jason Morgan," he continued as if she hadn't even spoken, "and I think, he's got it right. He loves…he loves his unborn kids the most that any man can because he wouldn't let them come into a world where all he could offer them was darkness before they even saw the first ray of light."
Nadine stared at him in silence, her jaw slack. Though her mouth was open, not a single sound came out.
"That was awful." He licked his lips and looked at the ducks. They didn't appear to judge him. "I needed to get it out, and it was awful, but I still needed to."
She remembered the birds and tossed them another piece, and her expression when she turned back to him was soft. "Everyone needs to say awful things sometimes. We can't be nice all the time, after all. That would be boring. And contrary to what you think, you're not boring."
"It's why I play and compose music, you know." He ran a hand through his hair, and the cold was starting to make his cheeks red. "To get it all out of me in a form that's not awful, but sometimes even that doesn't help and I have to find other ways to let it loose. I keep so much bottled inside that it makes me actually, physically ill sometimes. It makes me crazy."
"You're not crazy," Nadine told him, and if he looked at her just then he would have seen that her eyes practically threw off sparks. "You're not. And – and surely you can confide in Lulu about everything that's bothering you like this."
Johnny shook his head. "I don't like to bring it up around her."
She pursed her lips together in a tight line and ducked her chin. She couldn't say anything to that. She couldn't tell him he was wrong, she couldn't tell him he was stupid, and she couldn't tell him that that wasn't how things were supposed to be in relationships. So instead, she turned and tossed the ducks another piece of bread.
He watched her with a small frown. "Why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Toss the birds a piece one by one."
She shrugged and tossed another one after a five second count. "It's neat. Orderly."
He shot her an exasperated look. "Not exactly the two words I'd associate with you."
That got a sad little smile out of her. "That's because you're one of very few people that actually talks to me more than to just scratch the surface and exchange pleasantries."
"Meaning?"
"You know I can be quirky," she shrugged, and he wondered if she'd ever look him in the eyes. "You know I can say weird, stupid things sometimes. But I have to be neat and orderly in all other things – I have to live my life that way. It's disciplined. I mean, I know what I have to do and I do it on schedule. No time left for distractions, no time left to feel sorry for myself. No time for anything but sleeping, eating, and working at the hospital."
"And that's healthy?"
"That's how it has to be. I have to take my job seriously, and I do. I have to help people, I have to fix people. Even more so because my sister did the opposite. All that negative energy…it has to be countered by something. Negated by something. And I'm doing a good job, I think. There's a time for everything, and an order to everything, otherwise your life can derail before you even realize it. Like my Aunt Rayleen used to say: fish don't get caught in deep water. You have to balance everything and be cautious."
She tossed another piece out to the ducks, who had been waiting almost mournfully after being trained to a pitiful schedule. "Every five seconds, they get a piece of bread. No sooner, no later. They get used to the rhythm. No surprises, but also no being short-changed. Everyone that knows me – even a little – knows that's how I work."
Johnny smirked and picked up his pile of bread scraps, cupping both hands to hold all of it. "Yeah…"
He trailed off and, leaning forward, tossed all of the pieces into the water. The ducks squawked and clucked, their wings beating as they dove and splashed, rejoicing in the abundance of bread.
When he looked over at her, she was directing the cutest little frown directly at him. He winked and gave her a saucy grin in reply.
"But everyone that knows me knows I throw the craziest parties."