Chapter Text
The average advertisement in Times Square runs a couple of hundred times in fifteen to thirty second intervals. This one in particular, however, seems to play every time Johnny passes by. Taunting him. The video goes like this. Across a beige-gray background with heavy film grain, scratches, light leaks, and a slight jitter to the frame, block letters read, PICTURE START. Then, in thick black-and-white numbers that start at nine, the countdown begins, invoking vintage movies and the most horrific incident of his life in one fell swoop.
Three, two, one…
Shuddering, he adjusts the strap of his backpack. Dark red and a little worn at the edges, filled with new notebooks and an introduction engineering textbook. It feels heavy on his shoulders, or maybe that's just his dread. Shaking his head, Johnny moves on. He never watches that advertisement to its end. He doesn't know what exactly it's trying to get him to buy, but he sure as hell doesn't want to find out. All he knows is that he hates countdowns now.
He steps into the crowd. In Chicago, a crowd meant a game or rush hour on the L. Here in New York, it's just the city's constant state of being. He busies himself people-watching as he starts walking to NYU for his first Physics II class. A taxi would be quicker, but he isn't in the mood for small talk, and every time he gets on the subway, he makes a small mistake that leaves him stinging all over with frustration. Walking's easier. Besides, he'll never give up some extra time to listen to music. His iPod's all loaded up with his favorite songs.
The warm, September air makes his t-shirt stick to his back a little bit, exacerbated by the density of the bodies around him. 8:00 AM is the worst, here. People jostle into his shoulders roughly, and when somebody trips over his Nike Cherrywoods, she doesn't even slow down before forging violently onwards. Man. This city. He's been here for a week, now, and the novelty hasn't worn off. He doesn't think it ever will. Though apprehensive at first, now that he's here, he knows for a fact that moving was the right thing to do. And Johnny's never been much for book learning— he's all about doing things the real way, with his hands— but he's smart enough to cruise, and besides, more than anything, he had needed a distraction. A new purpose in life. If he wasn't going to be an astronaut, well, he could at least do what he and Sue used to dream about, and open his very own garage.
He technically has the money to do that this second. But there's a virtue in doing things the right way. The slow way. And there's something so goddamn appealing about getting to pretend, for the next three years, to be a normal college student. He lets Rihanna's voice carry him to campus, where the sun seems even brighter. It sprawls across the blocks, a physically intimidating space of Gothic stone facades mixed with newer glass buildings. Copying the student handbooks, it seems, kids sprawl across the rare patches of grass, creating minty clouds of cig-a-like smoke, wearing graphic t-shirts and slim-fit jeans. He passes by a cute girl applying lip gloss, and, feeling a little bold, smiles at her. When she doesn't notice, her friend besides her elbows her, hard, in the rib, and when she notices Johnny, breaks out into a smile so big he's worried she'll chip a tooth.
Good to see that he's still got it.
Johnny finds the physics building without too much trouble, glad that the map on his blue iPhone 4 actually works here, and climbs the concrete steps. Inside, it smells like coffee and sweat, an unattractive combination. Some of the other students, especially the ones in his course, he noticed, have yet to discover what Old Spice is. The hallways are serene, and, unusually, empty. He checks his phone, and swears. He's late. He hastens along, following the signs to Room 307. To his credit, he only gets lost twice.
Physics II is on the third floor in a lecture hall that seats maybe two hundred, tiered rows descending toward a podium and a whiteboard that's already covered in equations. He notices, suddenly, that this cohort is almost entirely guys. He draws some attention as he enters, and smiles aggressively at whoever shoots him a dirty look. So what if he's a little late?
He's lucky to find an empty seat at the very edge of the middle row, and shoots a hopeful smile to the guy next to him, who returns it warily. He's made a few friends, here and there, joined a study group, but he's yet to find anybody he actually likes. The professor, a woman in her fifties with dark hair pulled back and glasses on a pearl chain, is droning on. Not a good sign that it's the first class and he's already confused. Dr. Reeves, the whiteboard behind her announces. The lecture hall is filled with the sound of pens on paper, fingers on keyboards. Johnny opens his notebook. The pages are still crisp, unmarked. He's never felt more terrified of a blank page.
He tries to take notes, and focuses for about fifty percent of the time, pretty good for him. The other half, he doodles. That sick Ferrari 458 Speciale he had seen parked in front of the Mandarin Oriental. The modifications he would make to it, if he had the chance. The pretty barista wearing the chunky sweater who told him how much to tip for your coffee order. Johnny's far from an artist, but he thinks he captures the spirit of the homeless man feeding the pigeons pretty well, even if they're all stick figures.
After an hour and a short break in which several students go for a cigarette (Johnny grits his teeth— he quit smoking before the mission, for the mission, and he sure as hell isn't going to start again just because some pimply nerds are doing it), they're filing into the lab across the hall, thirty students to a room. Various equipment lines the benches, and a TA surveys them all, and says the worst thing you could tell a group of students on the first week of college: "Get into pairs, please."
There's an immediate scramble of movement as everybody lunges for each other. Johnny tries a smile at the guy he was sitting next to in the lecture, but he glances at his page of drawings and raises an eyebrow like, yeah, right. Irritated, Johnny steps behind the bench closest to him. On it, there's a mess of components laid out. Wires, a breadboard, resistors in a little plastic baggie. He tries to look perfectly nonchalant. He flips the page of his notebook so that anybody that wants to work with him won't think he's some artistic, stupid pretty boy that wandered into the wrong room.
Of course, just that moment, the door at the back of the lab swings open with a soft thwump of the pneumatic hinge, and an artistic, stupid, pretty boy wanders into the room. Well. Maybe wander is the wrong word. He more like flies in, moving with a restless uncoordination. He's tall, lanky, and with a mess of dark brown curls that look like he's been driving the Ferrari Johnny drew with the top down at about four-hundred miles an hour. His jaw is sharp, cheekbones even sharper, and his eyes are a frantic brown behind the wire-rimmed glasses that keep sliding down his nose. Around his neck is a camera case.
He’s wearing a faded Yes, We Can! t-shirt under an unzipped grey hoodie, jeans that are just this side of too tight, and a pair of Converse so beaten-up they’re more grey than their original off-white. A red backpack irritatingly similar to Johnnny's is slung over his shoulder, half the zips open, and he scans the room with a panicked, parting gaze. He approaches the TA, and as she talks, his eyes land on the only other solo person in the room. Johnny, leaning against the bench, trying to look like he prefers working alone. Relief flashes across his features, followed a resigned awkwardness as he makes his way over, weaving between benches and tripping over his feet, once.
He shuffles apologetically in the bench next to Johnny, bag set down with a heavy thunk next to Johnny's own. It really is similar to Johnny's. Same brand, same shade.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is a little higher than Johnny expected, a little breathless. He pushes his glasses up. “Uh. You need a partner? Or- I mean, I need a partner. Obviously. That’s why I’m here. At this bench. With you. Not that you’re a last resort, I just- I was getting coffee, or I had a question about the junction rule, and then I realized I was supposed to be here, so I-” He stops himself, letting out a short, self-conscious laugh. “Hi. I’m Peter.”
He sticks out his hand, a smear of ink at the side of the thumb, nails bitten to the quick. In doing so, he reveals a small, moth-eaten hole in his shirt at the crook of his elbow. The handshake is brief, a little too firm, and Peter’s palm is slightly calloused in a way that doesn’t quite match the scatterbrained exterior.
“Johnny,” he says, leaning his hip against the bench and crossing his arms. “You always this composed on the first day, or am I getting a special show?”
Peter’s eyes widen a fraction, and a flush creeps up his neck, disappearing into the collar of his t-shirt. “Oh, uh. No. I mean, yes? I’m usually- I’m not usually this, uh. Okay, that’s a lie, I’m usually exactly this.” He laughs again, a quick, nervous exhale, and starts pulling things out of his bag with a kind of manic energy. A spiral notebook, its cover curling at the edges. Three pens, all black, which he lines up in a neat row on the bench. He tenses, and then zips the bag up firmly, hiding the blue and red hoodie within.
The TA, a wiry woman with a perpetual frown, claps his hands twice. The sound echoes off the cinderblock walls. “Okay, settle. Here’s the deal. You’re going to build a simple circuit. Power source, resistors, the whole deal. I need voltage measurements at three points. Diagram’s on the board. You have forty minutes," he points a stern finger at a pair near the window already reaching for one. "The soldering irons stay off until I’ve checked your layout.”
Peter’s head swivels from the TA to the whiteboard, then back to the components between them. His brow furrows, and he bites his bottom lip, a focused intensity replacing the earlier fluster. Johnny picks up a resistor, turning it over in his fingers. Okay. This might work. An engine, after all, is just a bigger, louder circuit. As he's trying to fit everything together in his head, Peter pulls the diagram closer, taking his glasses off. “Okay. So, power source here. Then we need to branch it for the parallel section. We’ll need three… no, four jumpers.”
He starts laying out the components on the breadboard, his movements decisive now, all the earlier clumsiness forgotten. Johnny watches, content to be the assistant for the moment.
"So, you're into photography?" He says, gesturing to the camera slung around his neck.
Peter’s hand instinctively goes to the camera, a reflexive touch. “Oh, this? Yeah. I mean, sort of. It’s for the school paper. Arts section, mostly. Concert photography, that kind of thing. I'm not serious serious about it."
"What are you serious serious about?" He asks. "What's your major?"
"Biophysics," he says, exhaling the word more than saying it. "Second year. And before you start, yes, it's a real thing. Real if you want to understand how protein folding affects cellular mechanics, anyways.”
Peter leans in close to look, and Johnny catches the smell of laundry detergent. Up close, he can see the faint shadows under Peter’s eyes, the way his fingers twitch slightly even when they’re still.
"A very specific thing to want to understand," he comments. Changing the subject, he asks, handing Peter the resistors, "So, how's your first week of classes going?"
"No complaints. I've got to stop being late, though," he says, a wire halfway into a terminal. "And I need to start doing the extended reading, before this major really starts kicking my ass. You?"
"About the same," he laughs. "I'm always resisting the urge to skip classes."
Peter smiles. "So… so were you here, last year? I don't feel like you were."
"No," he admits. "I transferred from Grainger."
It doesn't feel good, lying to everybody about this, but it's better than telling everybody that through a combination of donations and proving through various projects he built that he was actually good at engineering, he was able to get direct entry into the second year of the Mechanical Engineering course. He wanted to be around people his own age— wanted to blend in as much as he possibly could.
“Grainger? In Illinois?” His eyes go wide. That telltale admiration. “The Grainger College of Engineering?”
“The one and only,” Johnny confirms, suppressing a wince.
“Wow,” Peter breathes. He’s abandoned the circuit entirely now, leaning in close, his knee brushing Johnny’s under the bench. “What made you leave? Their engineering program is insane. My best friend Ned goes there for aerospace, he says there's nothing like it.”
Didn’t work out,” he says, his voice coming out a little flatter than he intended. “Decided I wanted to be closer to the city. More… opportunities.”
Another lie. The real reason is sitting in a lockbox in his new apartment, next to a hoodie he can’t bring himself to wear.
"Still, you look familliar," Peter hums. "I swear I've seen you before."
“I used to do modelling,” Johnny lies again. Isn't he off to a great start? He leans forward on his elbows. It's not technically a lie— he was on a billboard for the garage back in Chicago, once. "But I've been told I have one of those faces."
"Oh," he nods, looking up at him before immediately refocusing, the lights giving his face a flushed appearance. "Yeah, um. That makes sense."
They concentrate on their work after that, an amicable air between them. Peter explains the theory, tracing the flow of current with his finger, and Johnny finds it actually makes sense. Better yet, he's the one who connects the multimeter, hands steady, reading the numbers out loud while Peter scribbles them down in his battered notebook. When a connection is loose and the reading goes haywire, Johnny finds the problem instantly, tightening the jumper with a precision that makes Peter let out a low whistle.
The TA makes her rounds, pausing at their bench to examine their handiwork. She grunts, checks a few connections with his own multimeter, and scribbles something on her clipboard. “Good work.”
Johnny starts gathering the wires, but Peter is already carefully pulling them out, organizing them by length, a small, satisfied smile on his face. They exchange a smile, and Johnny thinks, maybe, that he did find a friend.
The TA waits until the last component is put away, until the class is buzzing with the low hum of conversation and the screech of stool legs on linoleum. She leans against the front bench, arms crossed.
“Alright, listen up,” she calls out, and the noise subsides. He thinks about the public school in Chicago he used to go to, where the teachers would hoot and holler for attention, and only recieve a modicum of it in return. “Before you go, a few things. Your first lab report is due next week. Format’s on the class website. And I sure as hell hope you like your partner, because you'll be working together for the rest of the semester."
A collective groan rises from a few groups. Peter’s head whips toward Johnny, his eyes wide. Johnny looks back at him, and can't help but smile again. "Looks like you're stuck with me."
"Looks like," Peter says, with an answering grin.
The lab lets out in a slow, disorganized wave. Johnny’s already halfway down the hall, about to put his notebook away and fish his headphones out of his bag, when he hears a frantic, scrabbling sound behind him, like an overeager mutt on a hardwood floor.
“Wait- wait, hold on!”
He turns just as Peter skids to a stop in front of him, nearly colliding with a girl carrying a precarious stack of textbooks. He mumbles an apology so fast it comes out as one syllable, then rounds on Johnny with wild eyes.
“What’s up?” Johnny asks, furrowing his brow.
Peter opens his mouth. Closes it. His gaze darts down to the backpack slung over Johnny’s shoulder, and something in his expression flickers. Panic. He reaches behind himself to pull off his own back, and holds it up. "Uh, we swapped bags. The stuff in here isn't mine. I didn’t even realize until I was halfway down the stairs, and I opened it to get my phone, and I saw your notebook, and-”
He’s talking faster now, the words tumbling over each other, and his fingers are tight around the straps of Johnny’s bag. His eyes keep flicking to the bag on Johnny’s shoulder, then away, then back again.
“-I swear I didn’t go through anything, I just saw the notebook and closed it right away, I wasn’t trying to snoop or anything, I just-”
“Peter,” Johnny cuts in, holding up a hand. “It’s fine. Relax.” He swings the bag off his shoulder— Peter’s bag, apparently— and holds it out. “Here. No harm done.”
Peter exhales sharply, a sound that’s almost a laugh. He swaps their bags with a speed that borders on frantic, slinging his own over his shoulder and immediately cinching the top strap closed. His hands linger on the zippers for a moment, like he’s making sure everything’s secure.
“Thanks,” he says, and the word comes out a little breathless. “I just- uh, yeah. Thanks."
"Good you noticed," Johnny says, shrugging his own bag back on. "I was too busy trying to remember what the hell the lecturer was talking about."
That gets another smile out of Peter, some of the tension bleeding from his frame. “Considering how well you handled the lab part, I think you'd understand it just fine. I can explain it to you, sometime. If you'd like.”
“Sometime,” Johnny repeats. “Yeah. I’ll hold you to that, Peter.”
Peter ducks his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Cool. Yeah. I mean- yeah. Alright. I'll see you around."
Peter gives him one last nod, a small, almost shy smile, and then he’s off. Johnny watches him go for a moment, then shakes his head, finding his headphones and slipping them on. The Beach Boys, this time. Ben used to like this song.
The gym is only a few blocks away, a facility NYU shares with a few other programs. Johnny makes the walk on autopilot, letting the music wash over him, but something feels off. A small itch beneath his skin that's impossible to ignore. The result of too much coffee and not enough sleep, maybe. Or even just the inevitable stress of starting a new life in a new city. He pushes through the gym doors, and flashes his student ID at the front desk (a nice picture, too, if he says so himself— the way they edited it actually worked in his favor, making his teeth whiter and his eyes boyish and bright), and heads for the locker room.
Johnny drops his bag on a bench, changes into joggers and an Adidas t-shirt, and starts his warm-up, which is a long, drawn-out stretching routine he purloined from a dancer he used to date in high school, and some light jogging. The place is relatively quiet at this hour, which he's deeply grateful for. There isn't anything worse than a crowded gym. Whenever he has to wait too long for a machine, he ends up losing all motivation. There are only a few people on the treadmills, a girl grunting through a set of deadlifts in the corner.
By the time he gets to the free weights, the feeling has intensified. A feeling adjacent to diziness, paired with a weird, whispery lightness in his limbs, like his bones are hollow. He grips the barbell and focuses on his form, frowning. He'll start with his usual. Bench press. Seventy kilograms. Four sets, ten reps. The first set goes fine. The second, easier than it should be. By the third, he’s flying through the reps like the bar weighs nothing, his heart hammering against his ribs. Experimentally, Johnny adds more weight— and then more. A hundred and twenty kilograms suddenly feels like a plastic straw. His heartbeat triples, and he has to stop, sitting up abruptly. The fluorescent lights buzz in his ears like a swarm of insects, and for a moment the floor seems to tilt beneath him.
Johnny blinks, and there he is, the inside of a spaceship doomed to crash. Their faces are bright, crackling with camaraderie and excitement. Oh, the first steps they're about to take— the contributions they'll make to humanity! Johnny never thought he'd be anything but a copy of his pops, a mechanic at a quiet garage, and here he is. A fucking rocket man. They launch into the cosmos, fast, super-sonic, and they're all laughing.
Just as suddenly, there's darkness. An insidious, vaccuum-like cold, so deep, so horrible, that it feels like he's burning from the inside out— because he is. His oxygen has run out, and now, he'll suffocate to death, watching the slow, dizzying rotation of the stars beyond from his cracked helmet. In front of him, spinning away from him, is his sister. Her voice in the comms is staticky and small. Johnny? Johnny, hold your breath. Hold your breath. Please. Just listen to the sound of my-
A violent, blue-purple explosion fills his vision.
Then he's back in the NYU gym, gasping and panting. A guy on the next bench gives him a weird look and goes back to his curls. He grips the edge of the bench, the metal is cool and solid under his palms. What- what's happening to him? Why is this happening to him? Why does it feel like his skin is on fire? He stands up, as though that'll extinguish this imaginary flame. He's hot, too hot, like the brimstones of hell themselves are burning beneath the surface, trying to get out. He can feel it pooling in his chest, his hands, his throat.
He's barely thinking as he walks to the water fountain and takes frantic gulps of frigid water, lapping it up like a desert castaway. Johnny's legs are trembling, and eventually, the heat recedes, reluctantly, like an animal backing into the shadows. He has the weirdest feeling that this isn't over. That it's going to happen again.
By the time he makes it back to his bench, his hands are steady again. His reflection in the nearby mirror is telling. It's like someone adjusted the contrast on him. His skin is a little pale, catching the gym lights with a subtle sheen, and his hair, longer than it's ever been, has slipped free from where he loosely pulled it back— the thick dreads have slipped free of the band, the ends brushing his shoulders and sticking slightly at his temples. His jaw is set, shoulders squared, every line of him tense. But to his relief, Johnny ultimately looks normal. Tired, sure. A little wan. But normal.
He finishes his session anyway, pushing through the remaining sets with gritted teeth. He wasn't put on this earth to run away from a couple of weights, even if he's still chased by the past. Who in this life isn't chased by the past? Sweating it out will do him good, so sweating it out is what he does. His strength is fine, better than fine, actually, but the heat simmers under his skin the whole time. When he finally heads for the showers, he catches his reflection again. For a split second, he swears he sees something flicker in his own eyes. A spark.
Then, it’s gone.
He towels off, gets dressed. His CAD class is boring, but he throws himself into it, desperate for a distraction, and finds that when he forces his attention into something, a Herculean task, it actually clicks quite easily. He's definitely not relaxed, but at least he's satisfied. A day well spent. On the way back home, he passes Times Square. This time, he doesn't even look in its direction. If he can't see it, it isn't happening, right?
Right?