xp_logs | Rush: Invitation

Johnny gets an invitation that may or may not have an ulterior motive behind it. Vic offers to go with.

Johnny was sprawled on his bed, looking up into the birthday card that had once again found its way into his hands. His eyes traced the ink curves of his father's signature and the promise to do things properly next year and the hope that he would enjoy the thirty dollars that had been tucked inside and which now occupied a small corner of his desk. It had meant a lot more before the phone call. Before Darren had invited him down for his birthday...and to meet the woman he was seeing. Audrey. Aubrey. Something. He didn't really care. The teenager exhaled until his chest felt almost concave and dropped his hands loosely against the comforter of his bed. He felt like an idiot.

She really wants to meet you, Johnny. Not that his father's sudden interest in him had anything to do with this, no roots in anything but the fact that he loved his son and it had simply slipped his mind for the past eight years until this month. It was just one big mistake, really. He looked at the card again. He wanted to rip it in half and throw it in the trash, but something in the idea made his chest tight and he couldn't. He hadn't been able to say no either. "...Jerk," he muttered weakly to nobody but himself.

"Um. Me?" Victor asked, perplexed, from his place in the doorway. He had a stack of books in his arms--books for class, as well as some he'd picked up in the library to read in his spare time, assuming he had any. He frowned in concern at his clearly distressed roommate as he crossed over to his desk and placed the stack on his desk next to his laptop. Once the precarious pile was balanced properly, he sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at Johnny, noticing but not saying anything about the card in the boy's hand. "Did I leave a bowl of Easy Mac out or something?"

Victor's voice broke the focus that the sound of the opening door had not and Johnny's light eyes jerked thoughtlessly in his companion's direction, staying trained on him as he made the short trip to his desk to set down his books and turn back again. The white-haired teen's face wore his distress and his exhaustion plainly and he sat up, curving the card anxiously in his hands. He shook his head and clarified as evenly as he could manage, "No...Not you. Sorry." He added, forcing a grin, "...we have Easy Mac?"

Vic looked sheepish. "Um. We did?" he said apologetically. "I might've been kind of hungry earlier." He wasn't doing a very good job of hiding the concern on his face, he knew, but that was probably okay. "So if you didn't know that I ate all of the Easy Mac because you didn't know there was Easy Mac, who were you calling a jerk? It's okay if it's me. I probably had it coming. Especially now that I've eaten all of the Easy Mac." He smiled gently to show that it was a joke, although there was an underlying sincerity to his words.

The smile became briefly genuine and then started to wilt and Johnny shook his head, "Not you, Vic. Promise." He hesitated and looked down at the card again, bent with a distinct curve from the movements of his anxious hands, then held it up flippantly. "From...Darren. He called too."

Vic looked dubious. "Okay. That makes him a jerk?"

"No," Johnny conceded, moving to drop the card upon the bed yet again, "But calling me for the first time in five months, sending me this stupid card...just so he can convince me to come home and make nice with some lady he's dating...that makes him a jerk." There should have been more anger in the accusation, but his tone was pained and disheartened instead. Somehow, he had really expected more of the man.

"Oh." Vic looked at his hands, not quite sure how to respond. "That sucks. But maybe it's a good thing?" he tried, feeling fairly helpless. "Maybe she's, I don't know, a good influence on him or something. Maybe she reminded him what he's been missing."

"You sound like an after school special," Johnny informed him, smiling weakly and disingenuously. He looked at Victor, determined to prevent himself from staring at the closed card with its bright design and foreign notions. "...Do you really think so?"

Johnny's hope was heartbreaking, if only because it was so utterly transparent, even to Vic. "I think that he's talking to you again," Vic said quietly, treading over incredibly unfamiliar ground. "And that should count for something, yeah. It doesn't have to mean that things are great between you guys, but that doesn't mean it has to be a bad sign either, right?"

"But if he's only talking to me because he has to or for somebody else's sake...how does that change anything between us? How does that make our relationship anything but what it was with some fake civility glossed over it?" Johnny's features sank and he shook his head. He didn't want it to be that way and Darren had sounded sincere, but that was how it felt under the revelation of this ulterior inspiration which only reminded him that he wasn't enough. After his mother died, he just hadn't been enough.

Victor shrugged helplessly. "You said he called, right? Did he sound like he was being fake?"

"No," Johnny admitted after a full pause, "Not really." He remembered his conversation with Jean-Paul shortly after this had all started and how the words had sounded to him then. His father had seemed strained and uncertain, even bordering upon fearful at times. But not fake. Or maybe he had just heard what he'd wanted to hear.

The bed next to Johnny dipped as his roommate sat down and nudged him with one elbow. "Okay. So, maybe he's being a giant jerk and just trying to impress some chick. And if that's the case, then yeah, he's probably not worth ever talking to again. But this is the first time he's tried, right? So maybe give him a shot at not totally sucking." Vic nudged him again. "Maybe he needs someone to tell him not to be an idiot, and that's what this lady's doing."

The first nudge drew almost no response, but the second left him leaning a little closer to Victor once he settled, resting shoulder to shoulder with the other teen. Johnny's gaze hung low as he silently considered his companion's words, finally offering, "Maybe." He sounded less than convinced, but at least willing to consider the notion and that was something. "He hasn't dated anybody since…my mom.”

"Maybe that's it, then," Vic said, although he didn't sound very certain himself. He was way, way, way out of his depth here. He was quiet for a moment, thinking. "So are you gonna go, do you think?"

Even if Victor was right, it didn't make Johnny any more accepting of the notion which, alone, still had his head reeling. Darren wasn't supposed to date. He pushed the thought away and tried with little success to coax his lips out of their involuntary frown, "...I don't know. I told him I'd have to look at my class schedule. He wants me to come this weekend."

Vic shrugged. "It's not a bad time for it. Unless one of our teachers is a total sadist, the homework shouldn't be too bad." The deepening frown on his friend's face told him he probably wasn't helping any. He sighed, at a loss. "Do you want company?" he asked finally.

This caught Johnny wholly off guard and he looked at Victor, dumbstruck. "You'd...really do that?" If nothing else, it seemed to help more than the joke about homework loads and sadist professors.

Green eyes blinked. "Um, yeah. If I wouldn't be in the way--I don't want to impose or anything," he added hastily.

Johnny, still surprised by the offer and the fact that it seemed to be draining at least some of the tension and the belligerent anxiety from him, took a long time to answer. He smiled a little and pushed his narrow fingers back through his hair, replying as lightly as he could manage, "You've done way too much for me since you got here, you know. By the end of the semester I'll owe you my firstborn." He hesitated, sobering. "But...if you're serious...I don't know. I think I might want to say 'yeah'."

"I have?" Vic seemed genuinely surprised by this.

Despite everything, the reptilian mutant's reaction coaxed a soft laugh out of his roommate. Johnny, at length, nudged him playfully, "...Duh."

"Well, I don't think I've done anything too crazy, so you can hold off on that firstborn. Although if you really want, I'll let you replenish our stock of Easy Mac," Vic said with his own playful nudge, grinning at him to show that he was kidding. The grin dropped away quickly, however. "But yeah, I'm serious. I'll go with if you want me to. Or if you don't, no problem." A thought struck him then. "We could go see a play or something--I mean, I don't want to interrupt anything if it turns out your dad's gonna be awesome, but you know, it could be a good excuse to get out of the house if you need to?"

"...I do. If you're sure."

A play? Johnny feigned enthusiasm as he bobbed his head for Victor's sake. He didn't have much experience or much interest in theatre, legitimate, musical or otherwise, but it was the least he could do for the classmate offering to accompany him into the trenches. Even if thirty dollars would buy a lot more Easy Mac than it would play tickets. "We could do that, definitely. I think NYU does that kind of thing pretty much year round. Student prices and all that...Have you ever been to New York City?"

"Not really?" Vic answered. "We went the day before we came up here, but only for the one day and night. So I didn't really get to see a whole lot--I hear it's kind of a big place," he joked, bolstered by the improvement in his roommate's mood.

"Not as big as it looks," Johnny teased back, "I'll give you a tour of the good parts." A weekend spent with Victor in the city almost sounded fun until he took a moment to remember the actual purpose. His dad. His dad's girlfriend and her son. He searched for a silver lining or some optimistic outcome, but could find neither and pushed it out of his head again. He needed to do this. If only to get his questions answered and to know where he stood. "...Thanks for doing this, Vic."

"I'm just a farm boy from Illinois," Vic drawled comically. "I might have to put down breadcrumbs so I don't get lost." He sobered and leaned against Johnny slightly, just enough to be reassuring. "No problem, Johnny. Seriously." And it really wasn't; he was quickly growing protective of his roommate.