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vickyvicarious · 7 years

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max and the way after midnight visitor (bmw 1)

So last weekend I decided to check back in on Paranatural for the first time in years... such a good move. Still my favorite by far. And hey, I’m apparently back just in time for bullymagnet week, which wasn’t even a thing before. My timezones may be a little off, not quite sure, but this is for day one - night.

Max wakes up at 4:17 AM to the familiar sound of ol’ Hissin’ Pete freaking out. He groans, rolling over to put a pillow on top of his head, only to bolt upright when he rolls right onto his fractured arm.

“FLIPPIN’ HECK,” he screams through gritted teeth, curling over it.

“Mister Max! Are you okay?” PJ inquires, looming out of the darkness with a nightmare grin. Max means that literally. He’s had nightmares about that grin.

It does look a little more nervous than usual this time, though. He squints, honestly just to get a better look in the darkness, but PJ immediately quails before his face, admitting, “I’m sorryyyy, it was me that got Hissin’ Pete going but I only did it because a weird kid on your roof threatened to punch Lefty!”

“…What,” Max starts, only to be interrupted by none other than Johnny Jhonny swinging in through his window roaring a battlecry. PJ squeaks and vanishes through the floor. Hissin’ Pete hisses louder, before PJ reaches an arm up through the floor and yanks him away too.

“IS THAT BLOB ON YOU AGAIN MAX I SWEAR I’LL PUNCH IT REEEEEEAL GOOD BOI,” Johnny – threatens? Promises? …Consoles?

“Guess my clock’s three minutes slow,” Max mutters to himself, too worn out at this point to even bother with being shocked. Honestly, Johnny swinging through his window at four in the morning threatening to punch stuff is perfectly in character. The real question is how he even knows where Max lives.

“How do you even know where I live?” Max asks. Johnny blinks, and stops punching at the air in favor of approaching the bed to look down at him.

“Yeah so after hitball this girl comes up all wantin’ me to break in and steal your secrets or whatever so she can double-blackmail ya. Said she’d pay me with three stars. So I said sure an’ she showed me your ack-e-dem-ick files, son.” Johnny grins, bright and manic even in the darkness. “You got an A in three classes last year? NERRRRD.”

There’s only one girl who would ever offer to pay the school bully to break into his house and steal double-blackmail on him in the dead of night when he’s just been injured. Suzy, you monster.

“Oh yeah, I’m real lame. I can do basic math and everything: breaking in plus stealing plus phone call to the cops equals juvie.” Max whips out his cell phone with, dare he say, a good bit of flair. It’s totally a bluff, and honestly a pretty weak retort regardless, but he’s not at the top of his game tonight, okay. Spectral hitball really takes it outta a guy.

“Oi oi oi, gimme that,” Johnny hisses though, and leaps on the bed to snatch the phone out of Max’s hand and hurl it across the room. It crashes into the wall with an audible CRACK.

Max stares in utter disbelief.

“WHAT WAS THAT FOR,” he yells indignantly, attempting to sit up further.

Johnny smacks a hand across his mouth, shoving him all the way back down into his pillow with embarrassing ease.

“SHHHHH,” he shushes, extremely loudly. “Don’t wanna wake yer folks, man.”

“Muh dah whlld mmfp frh uh nuhclr uhfalt,” Max complains through the fingers over his face.

“Don’t believe ya,” Johnny grins (of course he would speak perfect muffled-ese), and then just sits down so he’s straddling Max’s stomach, making it a little hard to breathe and also bringing back war flashbacks to their fight in the hallway a few days ago. His other hand swings down to hold Johnny’s right arm down as well with, again, embarrassing ease. “Anyway, you were gonna sell me out to the swine. Backstabber.”

Fed up with not being able to retort (finally, his brain’s kicking back into gear, and he’s got a real good one about bacon up a plan), Max licks Johnny’s hand.

Far from being phased, Johnny just leans in closer, grins the kind of grin that should come with its own tire-screech soundtrack, and licks the back of his own hand.

“WH TH FLPP,” Max protests, because what. Johnny’s nose was almost touching his, their eyes were meeting, for a moment he honestly just can’t breathe because what was that?!

“Little spittle never scared m-e…” Johnny brags, losing steam about halfway through and just staring at Max with wide eyes. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but his cheeks look red. Could he really… be realizing what a dumbass he’s being?

“Uh here talk,” Johnny yelps, sitting up and yanking his hand back like it’s been burned. He’s even flapping it in the air, there’s spit flying off, it’s just. It’s gross.

“It’s kinda hard to stab someone in the back when they broke into your house to steal from you, dude,” Max says, choosing to just let that whole licking thing go. Never mention it again. “Also, that makes two of my most treasured belongings you’ve stolen and destroyed forever.”

“I. Uh. Sh-shut up, you’re too beholden to the Man! I just saved you from yourself!”

“What does that even mean?”

“I dunno. Stephen always says it and sounds mega turbo cool though. Don’t get all beholden to the Man, man. ‘S bad for the liver.”

Max is sleep-deprived, his arm aches, he’s pretty sure there’s some spit on his face, plus Johnny is sitting on his gut telling him not to trust the government – he just. He can’t help it.

At first it’s just a huff. And then… really, it stays just a huff, because Johnny’s heavy and it hurts to breathe too much, but he’s grinning and laugh-huffing and up above him Johnny’s eyes get really wide and that makes Max laugh even more.

“K-kid, stop. Stoppit,” Johnny protests weakly. His mouth is moving kinda slow and his face looks all red again, and Max physically couldn’t stop if you paid him three Starchman stars, oh geez.

Then Johnny smacks him swiftly (yet somehow gently?) in the face.

“I SAID STOP, BOYO,” he roars. “D-don’t you be mirthin’ at me!”

“I’ll mirth wherever I please,” Max scowls. A bit of a grin’s still fighting its way out of his mouth, though. “It’s my bedroom.”

“I – I am gonna lick your face next time,” Johnny threatens. “Right all up on your forehead. Don’t test me.”

“…Well, I believe that,” Max concludes after a disturbed moment. “Fine. I’ll be mad at you again, happy?”

“NO.”

“Well then whaddaya want?! I don’t just keep blackmail lying around my room, okay?” (Max is very pointedly not thinking about the open drawer full of days-of-the-week underwear his dad bought to torture him but which he actually wears sometimes because Laundry Days suck and yet are still too far and few between. At least he wears them on the wrong days, but still.)

“Huh?” Johnny blinks down at him in complete bafflement for a minute, before his expression clears. “Psht, nah man, you think I care about that? I just wanted to know where ya rest yer noggin.”

“…so you don’t want to blackmail me for Suzy?”

“Why would I do that when I can just punch you in your face if I feel like it?” Johnny asks, with apparently genuine interest in the answer.

“I – I guess no reason,” Max admits, torn between basking in someone not trying to blackmail him, or sweating at the implication Johnny’s about to punch him in his face.

“Nah man, I’m just here to sign your cast,” Johnny continues nonchalantly, reaching into a pocket and emerging with a full rainbow of sharpies splayed between his fingers. “Gotta come quick. Early squirrel gets the birdseed, an’ all.”

“I. What – why?”

“Cuz.”

There’s really no arguing with that kind of logic.

“Okay, fine, I guess,” Max agrees, and shoves at Johnny with his good arm until the guy’s scooched off him enough that he can sit up and grab his lamp. It turns on with a cheery, ‘I’ll brighten up your day!’ and reveals Johnny’s eyes gleaming at his arm with a disturbing amount of focus.

“………this snow’s already trode on, yo,” he mutters with clear disappointment.

Max peers down at his arm. On it is a love heart with a doodle of his dad’s face inside, and the word lame from Zoey.

“Yeah, my family are pretty, uh, squirrely,” he agrees. “Feel free to cover them up. Especially the heart one. Please cover up the heart one.”

Somewhat cheered by this, Johnny whistles. Twirling the sharpies between his fingers, he bites at a sparkly orange one to yank the cap off with his teeth.

“Yer about to see a master at work, so listen close,” he says nonsensically, then goes to town.

Max wakes up in the morning to sunlight in his eyes, Johnny’s feet on his neck, and his dad beaming down at him from the doorway.

“Aww, sonbeam, you don’t have to sneak your friends over for sleepovers,” he coos.

“Rghrrmffo ‘way,” Max retorts, wittily.

He squirms loose from the death-cuddle Johnny has on his ankles after about seven minutes of mortal combat, then climbs over the bully and leaves the room to get dressed, all without interrupting Johnny’s snores once. In the bathroom, Max does his business, gets dressed, brushes his teeth and his hair and basically just avoids looking at his arm a lot until PJ peers over his shoulder like a total creep and makes excited noises.

“That looks s-so cool, Maxeus!” he exclaims, so fired up that he appears to be testing out weird nicknames and everything. Lefty, rising through the sink, gives a thumbs up.

Finally he looks down at his cast. Max slowly smiles.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at the brightly colored picture of him and Johnny riding on the back of what he assumes is a Burnhound, since it’s on fire and appears to be eating some kind of electric lizard. Johnny’s name is in big, bold letters above this, along with the letters MVP, but there’s also a bunch of random doodles too, of fists and explosions and a can of soup and his baseball hat, and even something that kinda looks like a doctopus if he squints a little to the left. Johnny has also, for no apparent reason, drawn himself with his gang of friends on the back of Max’s cast, in what looks like one of their friendship fusion moves.

The art is not great. The colors are garish. There’s basically no space left on the cast for anyone else to write anything, unless their handwriting is really tiny, and Max had been kinda planning on letting Isaac sign it first to show they were still cool, if he asked. That’s sort of a pointless idea now.

Still…

“Yeah, it’s pretty neat,” Max agrees with PJ, before filling a glass of cold water to go throw at Johnny’s face. He tries to contain his smile at the way the guy leaps into instant murderous alertness, but he can’t completely stop it and, weirdly enough, Johnny stops choking blankets to grin back at him once he notices.

“Not bad,” Max admits, lifting his cast.

“Yer welcome, birdseed,” Johnny replies, before climbing back out the window and vanishing into the woods instead of staying for cereal like a normal person.

#paranatural #bullymagnet week #bullymagnet #my fic #fingers crossed my johnny voice is okay #i've written for day 2 as well already and have a plan for 3 and maaaaybe 4 #the rest get tricky because so far they're all sorta connected and that gets harder in aus #i'll have to think if i can swing it #and i mean hopefully i'll get that far i have a bad track record with this stuff #but there's so little out there i wanna do my part #they're so cute #sorry i'm a major tag rambler

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