Log: Johnny and Frank

[x-dangersense.livejournal.com]

Johnny and Frank meet for a movie



Johnny headed into the rec room, a six pack of soda under each arm - one of coke and one of plain old orange soda and he had a bowl of popcorn with a packet of sour cream and onion chips balanced on top. "Yo, new dude, where are you?"

"Here." Frank waved, not looking at Johnny as he scoured the DVD collection. "Frank, by the way. Nice to meet you. Your opinion, crazy epic battle sequences or badass cars and explosions?"

"Johnny." He put the food down on the coffee table and settled on the couch with a coke. "Cars and explosions!"

"Awesome." Frank pulled one of the DVDs out of the shelf, slapped it into the machine, and flopped onto the couch next to Johnny. "Dude, you are the king of snacks," he said, eyeing up the food in front of him. After a moment, he cracked open an orange soda.

"I haven't had lunch yet," Johnny muttered. It was only the crack of 4pm on a Wednesday.

"Wasn't knocking it. I got junk food, I'm not bitching." He supped on his soda again, watching the opening credits. "So what do you do?"

"Powers wise or life wise?" Johnny asked around a handful of chips. He swallowed and continued, "because powers wise, super agility, super reflexes and a danger sense."

"...Dude. Sweet." Frank snagged some of the popcorn. "I turn into a tree." He glanced sideways for a reaction; it'd always been a talking point before, but then again his mutation was practically bland by mansion standards.

"An actual facts tree? Dude. That's freaking awesome!"

Frank grinned a little at the compliment. "Kinda, yeah. Well. Not, like... a total tree. I turn into wood. Hang on." He closed his eyes for a moment. There was a flicker as his body went through a moment of morphic indecision, and then Frank was made out of wood. "Ta da."

Johnny jumped back, rolling over the arm of the couch as his danger sense flared. Only his reflexes kept his coke from spilling. "Jesus! Warn me before you pull a stunt like that," he snapped, heart pounding.

Frank stood immediately, a little surprised by the extreme reaction. "Hey, relax!" He said, hands up in a conciliatory fashion. "Just a little woody here!" He paused. Winced at the gag. "Okay, you know what I mean."

Johnny snickered and straightened from his crouch. "That was really bad. Like, criminally bad." He jumped back over the arm and onto the couch. "It's all good. I just ... kind of lied to you, before? When I said I had a danger sense? Because mostly right now, it's stuck on 'on'. Anything surprising is like 'whoa! Death! Doom! Run for your freaking life!' and then I'm like, jumping halfway across the room." He ate another handful of chips, feigning a calmness he still didn't feel.

"...Huh." Frank, hands still up, sat down on the arm of the couch. "Okay. That... has to suck. Can I revise I my assessment? 'Cause that'd SO get in the way of... well, sleeping for one." He caught Johnny's eye. "Okay. Turning back now, cool? Need to be made of meat to actually eat anything."

"Yeah. It's a bit bad. Working on fixing it, though. And yeah, sure. Turn back." Johnny looked over at Frank quizzically. "So, you can't eat like that? What happens if you do?"

"Hang on." He closed his eyes again, flickered back into his normal form, and sighed. "Okay. When I turn, I can still kind of eat. It just sits in my stomach and doesn't digest or anything. Then, when I turn back? It hits my stomach all at once. I... usually don't react well. And this is a nice couch."

"...ew." Johnny tossed his empty coke can into the trash can across the room, almost without looking. "Yeah, don't do that when I'm in the room. Hey, can you photosynthesize?"

"Nope. No leaves." He gestured vaguely at his head as he said that. "My hair doesn't even change with me, you know? It's weird. I get really tired some times, too."

"No! You turn into like, a giant wood creature and then you get tired? Amazing! Or, is it more that you get more tired in that form when you do things?"

"Nah. I'm fine for a while, you know? But if I stay shifted too long, I just get beat, you know? Like, mind-numbingly tired." He snagged a chip, and sipped at his soda again.

"Huh." Johnny cracked open one of the orange sodas. "I wonder what would happen if you fell asleep like that?" The cars on the screen spun out into a spectacular crash. "Dude. Bro. Dude. Did you see that? That was good. Probably really expensive to film, though."

Frank shrugged. "I don't know, man. I never have. Probably it'd be bad." He was going to continue, but then cars exploded. "Dude! Okay, that was worth the price of admission right there." He grinned. "There are more of these, right? Didn't they release a new one last year?"

"Yeah. New one's coming out soon, too."

"Damn. Fast turn around for that many explosions." He smirked as he said it, settling back into the couch. They watched the film in silence for a while, enjoying the over-the-top violence and ridiculous storyline. "...That's gotta be an awesome way to make a living," said Frank, as the lead began flirting with the love interest. "Or really, really awkward. Not sure which."

"Awesome. She's really hot and you'd get to drive those cars." Johnny shifted so that he was perched on the back of the couch as he struggled to remain still for too long.

"Yeah, but you wouldn't actually get to do anything. Then you have to do a sex scene, and that's gotta just be REALLY awkward." Frank shot Johnny a sidelong glance at Johnny, watching him squirm around the couch. "...You okay, there?"

"Yeah, actually, that would probably suck. Heh. Suck." Johnny dropped back onto the couch seat and grabbed some more chips. "Yeah, I'm fine. Super fast reflexes, you know? Means my attention span kind of matches. I drive Callie nuts fidgeting like this."

"Callie?" Seriously, how many god-damned people was Frank going to have to get to know? "That must be really rough in class, actually."

"She's the pink chick - you might have seen her around. Does stuff with plants and she used to date Fred? I think she's gay now," which was, in Johnny's opinion, the saddest thing ever. "And yeah, it totally sucked. But I graduated a year and a half ago. I haven't decided if I want to go to college yet, so..."

"I could see how maybe it would suck too. Three more years of trying to hold still." There was a moment of peace as they watched the movie in companionable silence. Then Frank's brain realised what it had just heard and started waving at him. "Wait. Plants? There's a girl who can do stuff with plants around here?"

"Yeah, and my grades were made of ass after I left here the first time, too, so... I mean, most colleges wouldn't take me, so why spend all that money on a bit of paper that won't do anything much for me?" Johnny replied and then said "Yeah. Callie's power involves making plants grow and move and heeeeey, if you go all woody on her, I wonder if she could make you move?"

Frank winced. "Okay, I need some new terminology for my powers. Like, right the fuck now." He considered what Johnny had said for a moment. "It's an idea, though," he said slowly. "I mean, it'd be useful, wouldn't it?" His tone was more uneasy then his words would suggest, however. Frank wasn't quite sure why, but the whole topic made him uncomfortable.

Johnny recognised that discomfort. His powers left him feeling so nervous and jumpy most of the time and as a result, he had intimate knowledge of that sort of discomfort around new things. "Or we could stay away from her for now, till you get more used to being here and then get to know her, since she spends most of her time hermitting in her room anyhow."

"I'm not scared," said Frank abruptly, then wondered why he'd said it. "But... yeah. Maybe walk before I can run." He grabbed a handful of popcorn and stuffed it into his mouth before he could say anything else that might embarrass him. After a few moments of concentrated chewing and swallowing, he turned back to the movie- safer ground. "So. More explosions! Cerebral plot and that."

Of course you're not. "Explosions are cool."