Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Johnny doesn’t really understand it when it first happens, but it doesn’t take him long to find out. He’s seven, after all — he should be big enough to know. That’s what he thinks, anyways.

When the steady “beep, beep, beep” of the heart monitor isn’t so steady anymore and starts to “beep” off rhythm, and when his dad shoves him hard out of the hospital room (he gets a strong whiff of smoke and cologne), he can’t wrap his head around what’s happening. All that he knows is that his own “badum, badum, badum” of his heart isn’t as steady as it’s supposed to be.

When his dad finally comes out of the room, Johnny can see hunched shoulders over his massive frame, and his face is stone. “What about mum?” He asks, clutching his stuffed gorilla in his hands, a bit of cotton sticking out from loosened, threaded ends. “Can I see her now?”

His dad almost looks angry at him for asking; and for a moment, Johnny maybe thinks that he’s going to yell, tell him to man up, grow up. But instead he spits out, like venom, the three words that freeze his bones and muscles and suffocate him — and would do so for the rest of his life.

“Your mum’s dead.”

Johnny cries. He cries for hours and days and he doesn’t know how to stop. He lies down to sleep but he just can’t, because it hurts way too much and he misses her lullabies — so he holds onto his stuffed gorilla and squeezes his eyes shut, prays and begs for it to share its courage. He feels like it would have more of it than he does.

His mum used to tell his dad her chest hurt. Johnny remembers asking her, “why does your chest hurt, mum?” All she gave him was a smile and he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t answer him when she knew all the answers to every question in the world.

But now Johnny thinks he knows what she meant — because now, his chest feels like someone is ripping it open, ripping it into shreds like sheets of colored paper. Colored paper of reds and blacks and purples and blues, bits and pieces scattered inside his empty heart. It feels like fingers being torn into his chest and clawing at his insides and ripping everything out and he hates it. He sits and prays and begs and cries for it to go away but it just won’t. He’s not good at finding solutions to his problems; usually, his mum is the one who knows what to do.

His mum isn’t here, though.

His dad doesn’t cry at all, doesn’t seem sad, doesn’t seem to mourn or have any remorse. He doesn’t shed tears at her funeral nor her burial, and he’s silent during the entirety of the drive back home. The radio plays in the background, a song Johnny knows is by Elton John — his dad eventually shuts it off and all that can be heard in the truck are Johnny’s own fruitless stifles of cries and sniffles.

From that day on, his dad starts drinking more often.

His dad has always drunk — sometimes it would be wine with his mum, other times it would be a can of beer from the corner grocery store. But now it’s a different kind of drinking: empty bottles and glass containers fill the empty table from left to right, litter the floors and the rubbish bin, and the air reeks of vodka. Johnny knows not to like the smell, because it pinches his nose and makes his insides churn and it just makes him sick.

The first time Johnny sees his dad cry is exactly four days after his mum is buried and said goodbye to.

His dad doesn’t say anything to him unless needed to or when he wants him to go buy something from the store — sometimes his dad asks him to go buy a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of vodka. Johnny then notices that sometimes his dad forgets that he’s not really old enough to buy him that kind of stuff.

And Johnny feels quite desperate at this point because he really needs someone to talk to about his mummy. He misses her so, so much, and it hurts to think of her, like needles poking at his chest and his shoulders and his back and it stings. But Johnny needs to talk about her, wants to hear someone talk about her, because something feels like doing so would make him feel better. He doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t understand — he just does.

So he goes to his dad.

Johnny finds his dad, like always, perched upon the stool at the kitchen counter, but his face isn’t the mask of stone that he had been seeing for the past several days. His dad is crying, sobbing with his hands over his face, a half-drunk bottle of vodka forgotten on the chiseled, stained wood, shoulders lurching heavily. Johnny has never seen his dad cry like this, never seen him look so… so sad. It scares him to think that someone like his dad — someone who used to be his superhero, someone who is always strong and big and invincible — can be reduced into such a sobbing, crying mess.

He makes sure his worn sneakers don’t make much noise against the floors (because they sometimes make these squeaking noises if he drags them too much) as he carefully makes his way into the kitchen. His dad doesn’t seem to notice, and the closer Johnny gets, the more it hurts to see his dad crying.

“... dad?” Johnny calls out quietly, not forgetting to give his stuffed gorilla one last squeeze for courage. His dad either ignores him or doesn’t hear him, because he hasn’t moved his big hands away from his face and the loud sobs haven’t stopped quite yet. The wood on the table underneath his dad’s chin is stained and wet.

He doesn’t know what to do, so he moves back and forth on his shoes for a while, deciding to count the tiles on the kitchen floor for what seems like the hundredth time in his life — he doesn’t need to count again to know the number, because he knows it’s fifty-three. When his dad doesn’t show any sign of stopping, Johnny tries again, because he knows maybe the second time will be worth it.

“Dad?”

His dad’s breath violently hitches and his hands are immediately removed from his face. Johnny sees splotchy red eyes and tear tracks all over his daddy’s face, a sight that seems too unfamiliar to him. The fur over his face is damp, and Johnny can see that his dad is also feeling those chest pains that his mummy talked about. He doesn’t know how, but he just does. He understands that much.

His dad doesn’t say anything, so Johnny gives his stuffed gorilla a squeeze and tries to be brave.

“Dad… i-if you need someone to talk to… I’m always here.”

He doesn’t know if it’s the best choice of words, but he’s old enough to know that talking to someone makes you feel better, makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside when they comfort you and you just let it all go. It makes you feel safe and it lets you know that you have someone to depend on when they listen to you and tell you good things. Johnny assumes that that’s what his dad wants. What his dad needs.

But apparently it isn’t, because the look on his dad’s face twists and morphs into something awful, something so full of rage and anger and Johnny’s never felt so scared of him his whole life. Before Johnny can apologize his dad’s huge fists slam against the counter and he hears something crack and split. The glass bottle falls off the table and smashes on the ground into pieces, making Johnny want to cover his ears with his hands and just hide in his bed. He wants to scream but there’s no sound coming out of his mouth. There’s something choking him and he doesn’t know what. The “badum, badum, badum” of his heart is getting faster and faster and faster at each passing second.

Johnny is terrified.

“You think a lil' talk, a bit of therapy is gunna solve everythin’?” His dad growls and bares his teeth and Johnny almost trips on his own ankle. “You thin’ I need somethin’ as fuckin’ stupid as a pep talk, do ya? Wha’ am I not doin’ right here? You tell me, huh, if you think you’re such a bloody genius?”

“Dad —”

“You thin’ I’d waste this many years of my goddamn life tryin’ to raise ya if I didn’t know wha’ I was doin’?”

“B-but dad —”

“So why don’t ya just man up an’ tell me what makes ya so right? I’m doin’ nothin’ wrong ‘ere, so why am I hearing fuckin’ complaints from ya, ya ungrateful little —”

“— I know you’re sad because of mum —”

“SHUT UP.” His dad roars and it’s monstrous enough to rattle and shake him to the core. Johnny can feel his dad’s voice ricochet off the walls and hit hard against his own head like he just got slammed into solid ice. He flinches and obeys. Badum, badum, badum.

The only sound that fills the room is his dad’s heavy breathing, almost as if he’s feral and getting ready to pounce and attack Johnny at any moment — but he knows better than to run and lock himself in his room. His dad wouldn’t like that. So Johnny keeps his feet planted against the floor, praying to anybody, begging to anybody. What was he begging for again? Johnny isn’t sure.

Johnny wishes his mum was here. He wishes she would pick him up and ask him if he wanted a warm hug or some hot cocoa. He wishes she would snuggle with him on the couch and ask him what movie he wanted to watch. He wishes she would tuck him into bed and sing him his favorite song, kiss his forehead goodnight.

“... your mum is dead. She's dead and she sure as hell ain't comin' back. I’ve gotten over her — it’s time you grew up and did the same.”

That night, his dad leaves him standing in the kitchen, telling him not to step on or touch the broken glass on the floor — Johnny doesn’t mention his mum to his dad from that day on.

Chapter Text

At most times, Johnny couldn’t tell if he was doing anything right.

According to his own logic, doing something right was treating people the way you wanted to be treated, taking care of your own responsibilities, maintaining good grades at school, keeping your room clean, respecting your parents, and the works.

According to his dad’s logic, however, doing something right was being able to keep a good lookout, keeping a low profile, being nifty when it came to lockpicking a door or pickpocketing an old lady’s purse, and filching for a few extra bucks.

He couldn’t remember the last time anything had felt “right” in their household since moving to the American state of Calatonia — to be frank, nothing had felt “right” after the night his beloved mum had been announced dead. Johnny felt like he had mourned quite enough, and that he should probably stop at this point… but that felt wrong.

Maybe he really wasn’t doing anything right.

Maybe despite all those A’s he got at school and all the work he got done at the old car garage he had barely started to call “home”, he was just really thick in the skull.

It had been quite a while since his dad had started talking to him again (which he was grateful for), and the drinking had reduced to a considerably less amount. But the little conversations they had never really consisted of any casual small talk or what he wanted to be when he grew up, nor was it ever about how his school day was — it would usually be something like his dad going on and on about any heists that he was planning and how it would work out, or some deal he had going on with some other gangsters around their local town.

Either that, or it was about what Johnny wanted for dinner.

So without much company to talk to in his life (besides several of his friends in secondary school), Johnny would spend most of his time trying to busy himself with schoolwork or lie on his bed staring up at the ceiling, spending his thirteen-year-old life the dullest, most boring way possible.

That night, Johnny tried to ignore the sounds of his dad and his “boys” laughing obnoxiously loud downstairs in the living area of the garage, probably drinking or playing poker — either one of those. He hunched over his small desk, dusty lamp by his side as he tried to focus on finding the hypotenuse of the goddamn right triangle.

“What is x, what is x…” He mumbled to himself as he tapped the end of his pencil against his temple in rhythm, slightly grinding his teeth as he once again heard a booming laughter downstairs. “Find the x, what is x —”

“Oi, tha’s a good one, Barry —”

Johnny dropped his pencil on top of the desk and winced when he saw the lead break off.

Johnny was no longer too intimidated or frightened by his dad’s outbursts or curt snaps. They were quite frequent, to be honest, and it was safe to say that, well, he had gotten used to them. It would usually be his dad finding something trivial that didn’t suit his comfort, he’d just “throw a fit” over it before minding his own business again. That was always just the way it was.

He took hold of his box cutter knife placed on top of his textbook and picked up his pencil, starting to shave the end to find that sharp lead again. He groaned in frustration when the blade kept slipping off the wood, cutting the areas that he preferred not to have cut, such as —

“Ha, Marcus, that was one helluva —”

“Oi, fuck —” Johnny hissed as the blade swiftly moved off his pencil and over the side of his thumb. He dropped both the box cutter and the pencil back onto his worksheet and took hold of his finger, watching as blood slowly began to flow over the cut and he grimaced. He popped the digit into his mouth and sucked, feeling the slight sting over the small injury and the metallic taste on his tongue.

This stupid cut was the least of his problems, though.

He got to his feet while pushing his chair back before making his way to his door — he opened it and through the dim lights of the garage, saw his dad and his gang members playing at the poker table.

“Dad, would you keep it down? I’m busy doin’ things!”

His dad barely looked up at him from the table, too focused on the ball. “Yeah, yeah — wha’ever.”

Johnny couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes and letting out a huff of frustration, slamming his door shut as hard as he could before throwing himself onto his bed that was slowly becoming way too small for him.

He liked his room, really — mostly because the top of the garage had an open window ceiling and whenever Johnny lay down, he could see the night sky and her stars shining above him. As if whatever god was up there had sprinkled her so sugar-sweet upon the most perfect of black birthday cakes.

Johnny reached for his phone sitting on his nightstand (it was a phone, really — just very, very old and very much a hand-me-down but still a phone) and plugged in his earbuds, slowly relaxing into the comfort of his pillow as he kept his eyes on the marble black and its millions of stars. He scrolled through his playlist and stopped at one point, thumb moving to tap the screen.

We go hide away in daylight
We go undercover, wait out the sun
Got a secret sight in plain sight
Where the streets are empty, that’s where we run

Six years. It had been six, long, grueling years of shutting himself out while trying to force himself back out of his comfort zone to be able to take care of his small family — years of watching his dad struggle to earn money and eventually resort to stealing and crime; which, for him, had now become something done not just for financial purposes… but for entertainment and the sheer fun of it all.

Johnny didn’t like his dad.

At first, when the notion came to him, he didn’t want to believe it — so he tried to look at his dad from a different angle, a possibly better one. Maybe an angle that wouldn’t make him seem so much like a crook or a thief.

But Johnny learned that whatever angle you tried to see a crook and a thief from, they were always, inevitably, going to be seen as a crook or a thief.

And when you were the son of one, you weren’t exactly normal. Well, you didn’t exactly feel normal. You felt like you were one too.

Everyday people do everyday things but I
Can’t be one of them
I know you hear me now, we are a different kind
We can do anything
We could be heroes
We could be heroes, me and you

He hated how his dad always acted as if things were alright, talked to Johnny as if things were alright — maybe they were alright for him, to be fair. But things couldn’t have been more of a mess than it ever could have been and it sometimes wanted to make him scream and just grab the nearest thing and break it into pieces.

He hated how his dad had made him try to just make Johnny move on from his mum’s death just because it hurt him — and it had worked, to an extent: to an extent where whenever Johnny thought of his mum, he’d have to hide somewhere his dad wouldn’t be able to see him and just let it all out, crying out for her and just continuously asking her why she had to leave, why she had to leave, why she had to leave. Why she had to leave him alone, with his dad, all to fend for himself and fight against what he never imagined having to fight.

We could be heroes
We could be heroes, me and you
We could be

His dad had never been there for him, and he hated that most of all.

Johnny’s door opened and he turned his head, pulling out one of his earbuds, the music stopping abruptly. At the doorway stood his dad, dressed in just a linen shirt and trousers, the shirt way too tight on his broad shoulders and chest, completely hugging his form.

“Dad, I’m busy.”

“Ya sure as hell don’t seem busy.”

“Well, I am.”

His dad shook his head with a low grumble, muttering something about “kids” and their “puberty”. Johnny pretended he hadn’t heard. “Get outta bed, we needa talk.”

“For what?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself, Johnny.”

“If this is gunna be one of your attempts to tell me about one of your latest planned heists or somethin’ —”

“Ya listen to your father, Jonathan.”

Suppressing a yell of frustration, he slowly pushed himself upright in his bed, removing the earbud from his other ear as well and setting it down on the far side of his comforter. He brought one of his legs up onto the bed and underneath his other, swinging his foot back and forth. “Well? Enlighten me.”

“We need to talk about… this.” His dad gestured his hand from somewhere around Johnny’s head down to his feet, and then back up again. “Whatever this is that you’re tryna throw at me these days.”

“... but you just pointed at all of me.”

“Exactly. What’s it with your attitude?”

“My attitude?”

“Your disrespect towards me as your father, Johnny. Don’t ya act dumb.”

Johnny reached behind his head to rub the back of his neck. “I’m not bein’ disrespectful.” That was a lie — he knew that he had been acting sour towards his dad lately, and he couldn’t really control himself on that point. Whenever he saw his dad, he just found himself feeling a lot angrier than he was just a few seconds ago, and a lot more upset without much of a big reason that didn’t really occur to him. But then he’d lose his cool and say stuff that he wouldn’t have dared to say to his dad before.

“A bunch of codswallop — ya though’ I was just gunna let this go, didn’t ya?”

“Dad, I don’t wanna talk abou’ this, you’re makin’ me tired —”

“Did I really raise ya like this? Wha’s wrong with ya, huh?”

“Well, maybe you did raise me like this, dad.”

“Wha’ did ya just say?”

“It makes me question if you’ve even bothered to raise me for the past several years.” Johnny retorted, feeling his teeth clench. He could feel the anger slowly starting to boil inside of him, like a volcano getting ready to burst and be done with it all.

His dad’s brows narrowed. “Don’t tell me this is abou’ all tha’ — ”

“You know exactly what I’m talkin’ about, dad.”

“Ya know what hell I had to go through to try and support ya for the past six years?” Johnny didn't miss the raise of tone in his dad's voice, but he wasn't afraid. “I had to rob banks and houses for money just to raise ya, and now you're sayin' that I haven't done anythin’ for ya? Are you off your —”

“I never asked for tha', dad! Do you think I wanted you to become a thief?” Johnny retorted, barely resisting biting down sharply on his tongue. “I never asked for... for any of this!” He gestured at the walls surrounding him, trapping him, exactly where his dad wanted him to be. “If anythin’, I would say that I’m more ashamed than grateful. I get to go around tellin’ my friends at school that my dad is a criminal, now how fun does that sound to you, dad?”

For a short moment, his dad actually seemed speechless.

“Whenever I try to tell you that somethin’ is wrong, it’s always, always my fault, isn’t it?” Johnny shook his head. “It’s because I was too immature to handle things on my own, too much of a stupid git to solve my own problems, because you had to financially support me, it’s always me.” He pounded his chest with his fist once for emphasis. “Why can’t it just be you for once, huh?”

“Oi, you don’t get to be so upset over all this, you weren’t the only one who was havin’ a difficult time —”

“No, you don’t get the right to tell me how I’m supposed to feel. I needed you, do you hear me?” He blurted out, almost yelling at this point — but he couldn’t care less. “I needed you, and what did you do? You shut me out of your life like I was some sort of additional burden you had to carry on your shoulders, and you left me to deal with something I couldn’t deal with on my own — I needed you, and yet you were never, there.” He was trying to catch his breath and the world and everyone else seemed behind fifty feet of glass. Every second he had cried alone, every second suffered on his own, stacked moment by moment inside of his chest just wanted to burst, to explode, to blow up. So he spat out the only words he could think of that he knew would truly hurt his dad:

“... Mum would have hated you for this.”

The moment was just a blur and nothing else but a split second that had passed by so quickly — Johnny watched as a look of pure rage and hurt overtook his dad’s facial features, eyebrows narrowing and baring his teeth and his canines; and also watched as his huge hand lifted… before backhanding Johnny across the face. Hard.

There was a loud smack as Johnny’s head snapped violently to the side, nearly knocking him completely off his feet and making him stumble a few feet back and lose his ground.

His dad had yelled at him, reprimanded him for the smallest of things, had insulted his “childish nature” countless times — but his dad, his father, had never hit him before.

Johnny wouldn’t have imagined it, couldn’t have imagined it at all… but here he was.

He didn’t dare turn his head to face back towards his dad, who was now heaving rather heavy breaths — Johnny slowly brought a shaking hand up to his stinging cheek, trying to process the fact that his dad had gone as far as to actually hit him across the face. He pulled his hand back to notice thin lines of blood on his palm — his dad had raked his nails across his skin, leaving scratches in their wake right underneath his eye. That much was clear.

Other things, not so clear.

His dad’s angered look slowly fell off his face as soon as he noticed what he had done to his own son. “... wait, Johnny, I-I didn't mean to —”

But it was too late as Johnny shoved his dad aside and hurried out through the door, grabbing his skateboard on the way as he choked out a broken sob, out into the dark of a cold Saturday night.