Gabriel & Johnny - Roomies

[x-velocidad.livejournal.com]

New roommates Gabriel and Johnny meet for the first time.

The benefit of fleeing his parents' home and moving across the country to a city renowned for its lack of personal space was that Gabriel never really accumulated that much stuff. Other than clothes (way too many clothes, many of which were questionably acquired), a few wrongfully-obtained personal effects, his laptop and a guitar, there wasn't much he had to drag from his New York shoebox to his new mansion abode.

And even with so little stuff, he was still leaving half of it in New York, at least for a week or two. Things were moving at a breakneck pace, and Gabriel didn't want to have to schlep all his stuff back into the city of this whole country makeover thing didn't work out. And he had no reason to expect it would work out.

So with just a large red duffel and a backpack slung across his shoulders and his guitar case in one hand, Gabriel pushed open the door to his new lodgings, wondering ever-so-briefly if someone had bothered to tell his new roommate that he'd soon be sharing his space.

A year of underemployment and babying his danger sense along had taught Johnny several life lessons. The most important of these was that, actually, daytime TV sucked donkey balls. Sure, he helped in the kitchen and worked for Catseye and squeezed a few hours of school in around the edges but really, there was a lot of daytime TV. It worked with his schedule and the part where he didn't have to put pants on till 4pm some days.

He had a bowl of cereal resting on one knee and was sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching Macguyver reruns, wearing a t-shirt and boxers when the door opened. His danger sense didn't warn him, either, as he turned and stared in confusion at the guy with all the luggage standing there. "Uh... hi?"

Nope, Jean had definitely not warned him, or he wouldn't be looking nearly so stupified. Or half-dressed, probably. Not that it was Gabriel's business to judge, really. But he did need to diffuse the sudden weirdness that just arrived in the room. "Oh, pants optional? Cool." He nodded. "I can get down with that."

Maybe that was too much, but whatever. He trudged into the room and tried not to give his surprised new roommate the once-over he so badly needed. Dropping his bags next to the door, he moved toward the other guy's spot on the floor. "So, I'm Gabriel." He rubbed the spot where the bags' straps dug into his shoulder, then extended his hand. "I, uh, live here now..."

"Uh. Hi. I'm Johnny. I'm uh... pants." Johnny muttered and stood, shuffling a few steps over to pick up a pair of jeans and pulled them on. "Shit. Today is - what day is it today? I think Jean emailed me about a roommmate." This was awkward. Very awkward.

"Monday." Gabriel scratched the back of his head while Johnny got dressed. "Yeah, I - it all happened pretty quickly, so maybe she didn't? I'm not really sure." He glanced around the suite, taking stock of the space as a way of assessing his new roommate. It was fairly spacious, at least compared to what he had become used to.

"This is uncomfortable, right?" He said, not bothering to mince words as he turned back to a now-clothed Johnny. "How do we make this not uncomfortable?"

"Yeah, she said you were moving in on Monday afternoon... I figured that it would be later." Johnny sighed and leaned back against the wall and finished his cereal. "So. Dude. Your new roommate is kinda flakey." He looked around the suite, taking in what a new occupant would see. It was a bit messy, but not too bad, thankfully. The door to Johnny's room was open but the other room was currently closed. "I. Uh." He shrugged. "So, what's your thing?"

"Dude, don't sweat it. I didn't mean to disturb your zen or whatever." Gabriel glanced at the TV. "I worked nights. Still work 'em, I guess. Unclear." That was probably a discussion for another day, with another person. "But yeah. I get the whole... Judge Judy marathon and no-pants-before-its-necessary routine." It wasn't like Gabriel was so put together himself. "And my thing is — which thing? I have a lot of things? The powers thing? I'm super-fast. Speeding around, that sort of stuff."

"Me and zen, we're like this these days," Johnny said and made kissy gestures with two fingers before drawing his arms as far apart as possible, empty bowl still clutched in his left hand. "And you're a speedster? Sweet. I have, like, gymnastics powers. And a danger sense. That part is overrated." He wondered briefly if all speedsters were as neurotic as Jean-Paul had been. This was probably not the time to ask.

"That is not something I have, clearly." Gabriel said wryly. He glanced around the room again, then plopped down on the couch. "What do you mean gymnastics powers?"

Johnny grinned. "Think... Human, 2.0. Better, stronger, faster and I can do awesome flippy shit. Think... olympic gymnast, but better."

"Dude. That's awesome." Gabriel tried to imagine what he'd do with that mutation. Probably pull off some crazy museum heist or something, like in all those caper movies where some guy had to backflip over a bunch of lasers. "I just... run. A lot. And with annoying limitations. But I guess it's better that then, like, having fins for feet or something." He blinked. "There isn't one of those here, is there? Dolphin-girl or something?"

"They mentioned the swimming pool and the lake, right? When they gave you the tour?" Johnny perched on one arm of the couch. "They don't tell you right away, but there's this boy, called Tom. He can't talk and he mostly lives in the lake in good weather, but the pool is off limits all through winter because he lives out there. He can't spend much time on land yet, because we just don't know how to make like, a fish equivalent of a scuba set. But mostly the teachers wear scuba gear and work with him under water. They like, use flash cards, because mostly he's doing kindergarten sort of work."

Gabriel's jaw dropped slightly, and he stared at Johnny dumbly. "No. Way." He finally said. "You're fucking with me." He shook his head.

"You want to go down there right now and tell that poor kid that you don't he's real? He's like eleven. He'll cry. You'll make an elementary school kid cry. That's way harsh."

"That'd be the first of many gaffes I will undoubtedly commit here," Gabriel said a little wearily. "I've got a foot-in-mouth problem. Or what would be a foot-in-mouth problem if I couldn't just run away from awkward situations." He shifted against the armrest opposite Johnny and eyed him warily. "You are fucking with me, right?"

"Dude. You'll be fine. Most of the people here these days are pretty awesome," Johnny said and leaned back off the couch to snag his bottle of water off the counter. "Seriously. Don't stress. It's just kinda freaky, being around all these mutants at first."

"Yeah, that's gonna take some getting used to." Gabriel drummed his fingers on the back of the couch. "Never really knew any mutants before this - not that I knew about anyway. I guess I wandered near District X a few times, but, like, I didn't see anything weird or freaky." There he went again, saying something borderline-offensive. "In the last 3 days, I've met a woman who looked like a cat, that purple nurse, and the blue guy who disappears and reappears." He gave Johnny an exaggerated once-over and grinned. "And now you," he joked. "Talk about adjustment."

Johnny was almost offended by that but he still remembered how overwhelmed he'd been on his first trip to the mansion, where only Jean-Paul and Lil had stopped him from picking up all his stuff, turning around and running away again. "Hell yeah. I'd never even seen a mutant other than my mom before and then... I wound up here. It's an adjustment."

"Well, yeah, and the only two other mutants I've really met - aside from Jean, I mean - both tried to kill me. I think. Still a little hazy. Long story, not really that important." He shrugged it off. "So, if you don't mind me asking, and since we might as well get better acquainted, how long have you been here?"

"Jeeze! You okay?" Johnny picked up a small rubber bouncy ball that had rolled over near the couch a day or so ago and began to toss it from hand to hand. "I was here for six months when I was um..." he counted on his fingers for a moment, "when I was sixteen and then my powers went all... weird, so I moved back in like a year and a half ago."

"Oh, yeah, fine." Gabriel rolled his eyes like it was no big deal, which it sort of was and sort of wasn't. "Whatever." He watched the ball move between Johnny's hands. Another kid with powers issues? There had to be more than fate controlling room assignments at Xavier's. "Happy to be back?"

Uhuh. Totally fine.. Johnny nodded. "Yeah. My danger sense got ... overloaded, so I was kinda jumpy - imagine that everything is about to kill you. Tress, parked cars, the microwave going 'ding!' and the toaster. So I lost my job, because of the jumpiness and... well." Here's to a year spent mostly hiding in his room. Where things didn't jump out at him, ever and his powers weren't an issue. "I got it under control again now. No more jumpiness."

"Sorry to hear that, man." Gabriel scratched his own shoulder awkwardly, struggling the resist to speed up and grab the ball from Johnny's hand just because he could. "Glad that they can fix things like that here, though. Sometimes I get kinda stuck at full-speed, which is just exhausting."

"Whoa. That's ... weird. How do you even do stuff?" Are you gonna be vibrating away at full speed so hard that you miss the toilet? Johnny tossed the ball again, this time sending it bouncing off the corner of the architrave over the door and caught it. Tossed it again, going for the opposite corner. It bounced off, hit the fridge and he stuck out a hand and caught it without looking and repeated it.

"Well, it's not exactly like that. I mean, I move faster, but the world kind of stays the same? It's... it's more like I try to go back to normal-speed, but I keep moving faster than everything else?" Gabriel bit his lip. "I'm not explaining it very well - you kinda have to be there." He watched as Johnny tossed the ball again. Fuck it. Using his powers, he hopped off the couch, intercepted the ball mid-air, and returned to his seat.

"I'm still kind of figuring that whole thing out." Back at normal velocity, he lobbed the ball to Johnny.

Johnny's danger sense pinged and he caught the ball again, sending it back at Gabriel and shook his head. "Sounds weird."

"You live in a mansion full of mutants with a fish-boy living in a lake." Gabriel tossed the ball back. "Somehow, I think I'm the least of your worries."