"Oh, no." Jimmy started; hand on the door leading outside his and Johnny's apartment. "Oh hell no. No, no, NO. No. Seriously, this is place has an NC-17 rating, sorry, no kids allowed-"
"Oh, hey Will! Stopping by for a visit?" Johnny moved into the doorway, Jimmy scowling behind him.
"Shit," Jimmy muttered.
Will, feeling the infamous St. Jimmy's anger rolling off of him in metaphorical waves, forced himself to not take a step back. 'They can smell your fear,' his mind told him. At that point he gestured to the tiny child that was patiently dangling from under his arm, much like a sleepy football. "I need to ask you guys a favor." He said.
"Oh boy," Jimmy let his head land on the door with a hollow sounding thud!
Johnny, however, remained easily oblivious or possibly had just stopped caring, rather he was distracted by the cuteness of Will's child. "Mason. His name is Mason, right?" Will nodded. Then Johnny furrowed his eyebrows, and his look got stormy. "Hey," he muttered, straightening up to look his friend in the eye. "Did Heather... I mean, again? Did she do it again?"
Will gave a solemn nod.
Jimmy decided now was an appropriate time to be a mood-killing dick. "What, are you guys gonna hug now, or-"
"I just miss her so much!" Will let out a small sob, which may have been a bit more explosive if Johnny hadn't pressed his friend's head into his own shoulder. Jimmy slapped a hand to his forehead, only making his hangover twice as potent.
"Damnit, you guys..." He let out a growl of frustration and left the scene of a supportive and loving environment where personal growth was likely to occur, to do what he always did: Give the world the finger and drink another beer on his couch.
Except instead of that, he was only welcomed to a scene of a very hyper, very fast, and very... kid like being darting around the room. On most days he might be able to ignore Johnny doing something similar if he had gotten some hard snorts of cocaine, but that typically ended in them having sex somewhere nondescript but probably flat surfaced in the apartment. (Hopefully their apartment, there had been times where Jimmy wasn't so sure.) But at any rate, this was a... a toddler, he guessed, and he wasn't going to have sex with a toddler, and he definitely wasn't going to let the toddler get into their drug stash.
Oh God, he heard something shattering. He moved to the cramped kitchenette. "Maybe the kid has a glass leg and broke it," he thought out loud. Well, he could dream couldn't he?
He saw a lot of amber liquid, a lot of brown glass, and a slightly damp and sniffling child right there in the middle of it. Before Jimmy even began to interrogate, he peeked his head back into the living room.
There was no beer there. There had only been one beer left in the house, and the kid smashed it to a billion little non-drinkable goddamn pieces!
"I thought Daddy was kinda thirsty..." the kid muttered, trying to move away from the scary man in eyeliner.
"Don't move you dumbass, not unless you want glass in your feet." The kid didn't seem to register this warning, stepping back again until his heel touched a large shard of beer bottle. "Ow!" He jolted forward again, back into Jimmy's very angry, slightly twitchy hands, and he was placed on the counter, and told not to move unless he wanted glass shoved in his face.
Mason started sniveling.
"And if you even think about crying, I am pushing you in it myself."
Mason, young as he was, had comprehended this fact, and began to cry relentlessly because he understood what Jimmy was saying so well.
"Oh God," The screaming wasn't really doing much for his hangover. "Okay, okay, calm down... kid. Um, I was joking I won't uh... shit." He gingerly placed the kid on the couch. "See? You're away from the glass. Actually, there is no glass. At all. Ever. So just... please. Stop. Crying." Mason glared at this scary newcomer but had mostly gone down to dry hiccupping and wet cheeks. Jimmy took this as all the improvement he could ask for, and started back to the kitchen to clean up the mess of booze, hoping that, when he got back to the living room, Johnny would just be there, sans friend and friend's annoying kid who enjoyed smashing up his alcohol.
He came back, and there was a Johnny, and there was no Will, but there was that kid. Just sitting there, drinking juice out of a little plastic cup that he knew didn't belong in their apartment. The TV was on, and the two were engrossed in little multi-colored characters running about until Jimmy opened his mouth.
"The kid's staying with us?"
Johnny looked up. "Will needs to talk with Heather. I'm sitting Mason for him."
"How long?"
"Just the day." Just the day. That's like the doctor saying we have to amputate, "But only one of your arms." Jimmy rubbed his hands against his face, making his eyes resemble raccoons from the smudged eyeliner. Mason took notice of this and giggled a little bit, tugging Johnny by the sleeve of his shirt to pull him closer to him.
"He looks funny," Mason said, the previous fear he held for Jimmy no longer sticking if he looked like a depraved kitten.
"I hate all of you," Jimmy muttered, stalking to his and Johnny's room and resolving to stay in his room for the rest of the day.
He was sleeping. He was having a pretty good time sleeping, actually. He forgot about Johnny and how he was entertaining that little demon child. He actually thought he could make it through the day without stabbing anyone if they just left him like this, but then there was a knock on the door.
"It's me," Johnny called. "Can I come in?"
"Is the kid gone?"
"...No."
"Do you have food?"
"...No."
Jimmy paused, considering if he desired anything else at the moment. He really didn't, maybe some socks because his feet were getting kind of cold, but that involved moving and he didn't really want to do that. "Then kindly fuck off," he answered.
"No!" Johnny yelled, defiantly. He opened the door. "Get up."
"Why?"
"I need the blankets."
"I'm using them."
"You're sleeping on them; you aren't using them - like, at all. Zero percent usage is going on right now!"
"Well, they're warm, and the mattress is gonna be cold, so I need them to be comfortable."
"You can be worse off than uncomfortable." He grabbed the edge of a sheet and the comforter, and pulled them off. Jimmy had tumbled in the opposite direction, and ended in an awkward almost sitting position on the edge of the blanket-less bed. Johnny trotted off, and after a moment will followed to give his roommate a well deserved punch in the mouth. Instead, he saw that the living room was in a state of destruction - moreso than usual.
The couch was moved to the middle of the room, its cushions splayed around it vertically to make 'walls' and there was a broom and a tipped coffee table standing nearby for tactical reasons Jimmy himself was not aware of. Mason poked his head out of the mess. He had a pot on his head, and eyeliner on his cheeks as a manner of war paint.
"Johnny!" He cried out, "Did you make it back from the Dangerous and Despicable Cave of St. Jimmy?"
Johnny dropped the blankets and striked a heroic pose, left leg leaning on an appropriately placed chair. "It was a trying journey, young warrior. For the beast had awoken, and said many hurtful things to me," He gave a backwards glance to where Jimmy loomed, in the shadows, where Mason couldn't see. "And he even wanted me to feed you to him!"
Mason slapped both hands to his cheeks. "No way!"
"Yes way. But I defeated him. I rolled his protected treasure right out from under him," he gestured to the blankets. "And now we can complete our fortress of solitude!"
"Yeah! What, what did that last word mean. The solid word. Solly-mood, or um..."
"Solitude. It means... uh, what does that mean?" He turned his head. "Hey, Jimmy, what does solitude mean?"
"Being alone?" Jimmy's voice came from the dark hallway.
Johnny turned back. "Eh, I don't like that word. This is now the Castle of Awesomeness!"
"Yeah!" Mason ducked into the pillows and pulled out a little paper sign, again, written in what was probably Jimmy's eyeliner, which had "No Jimmies Allowed." Written in big, shaky letters. Mason did that, but Johnny probably told him what to write. Douche.
Will leaned against the doorway. His discussion with Heather hadn't really gone as well as he had hoped. She was crashing with a friend, and she said she needed "Time to figure a few things out." She asked where Mason was, and Will had said that Johnny was taking care of him, but conveniently left out the fact that Jimmy was now involved with Johnny in a lot of things. I mean she was already unsure if she wanted him in her life, and he was pretty sure that Jimmy was a good deal breaker in that respect.
He said he would take care of Mason. It was the least he could do for Heather, a way to prove himself.
Now he just hoped that Mason had made it through the day.
"AGGHH! GET OFF ME!" Well, that didn't sound good. He began pounding on the door frantically, and trying the locked doorknob. After two straight minutes the yells went silent, and he stepped back from the door, trying to hear anything else.
The door creaked open.
"Johnny?" Will said. "Is that you?... why are you wearing makeup... and a pasta-drainy thing on your head?"
"I am Jonathan, Rogue Warrior King, good Sir," he said, opening that door wider. "What do you seek?
"Uh, my son?" Johnny gave him a look.
"You don't even try, do you?"
Will gave a sheepish shrug and stepped through the threshold into the war area. "No, I guess not - Holy Shit, what the hell happened here?"
"WHO GOES THERE?" A high-pitched voice shrieked out from the couch. Johnny fell to his knee in a bow.
"It's Prince Mason the Dragon Slayer!" Johnny announced before pointing to a befuddled Will. "I brought you someone."
Through the eyeliner, pot, cape and warrior ferocity, a gleam went off in Mason's eyes. "DADDY!" He leaped over the cushions and nearly took out his Father in a tackling hug, wrapping his arms and legs around his calves. Will, used to it, only stumbled for a minute before prying the cute little urchin off of him, and getting him into a hug.
"I guess he had a good time, then," Will said, hiking Mason up higher in his arms. "Were you doing this all day?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"I'm surprised Jimmy hasn't thrown Mason out a window yet."
Johnny laughed, patting a smiling Mason on the back. "Oh, Jimmy isn't that bad. He even played with us, near the end."
Before Will could go on to ask an unbelieving, "Really?" They heard a muffled - really muffled - cry from inside the couch fort.
"What was that?" Johnny moved casually over to the source of noise, Will following, much more scared, behind.
"It's the dragon!" Mason cried out. "It's alive!" One disgruntled Jimmy sat in the middle of the fort, his arms tied behind his back, and his ankles tied so he sat in a constricted Indian style. His eyeliner was completely smudged away by now, and he had a big fat piece of silver duck tap over his mouth. He could only let out muffled grumbles. Very angry muffled grumbles, though. Angry enough Will made a shocked face and took a small step back.
"Well, it woke up from a Nyquil induced coma, yes. He was sleeping in our room, we got bored and I took him out here. Didn't notice."
"I helped!" Mason cried from Will's shoulder.
"Yeah, he dropped him a few times. He needs to lift some weights or something man, get him to a YMCA or something."
"...He's three."
"Oh, that's no excuse." They stared at one another for a moment before Johnny asked, "Got anything worked out with Heather?"
"No, not... yet. But I'm gonna go back and talk to her in a few weeks." He took survey of the destroyed room, the captured Jimmy, and his best friend and his kid were the ones who caused it. And they knew that - they reveled in it; they wore the day like a fucking badge of pride, so forget St. Jimmy, seeing his friend and his kid this happy made him have to ask: "So, do you want to be Uncle Johnny and babysit then?"
Johnny nodded. "Yes. I think that can be arranged. Right Mason?" He pumped his small arms into the air.
"YES!" Will winced from the explosion in his ear, but he set Mason down, took the pot off of his son's head, and hugged Johnny for a solid two minutes, just for being the best friend any self respecting dude could wish for.
"Thanks man," he said. Will could hear Jimmy's eye roll and sarcastic comment through the duck tape, but he didn't care.
"No problem. Take care of your Dad, Prince Mason." Mason gave a salute before the two headed out. "All right, that looks clean enough, right?"
Jimmy gave him a look.
"What? I was just asking."
Jimmy kept giving him a look.
"Look, I'm sorry that you had to be near a cootie-infested kid, all right? But he had fun, and I've known Will so long, I owe him something, you know?"
Jimmy gave a huff through the muffler of tape.
Johnny gave a roll of his eyes. "Yeah, okay, fine. Just don't scream like a bitch, okay?" He grabbed a corner of the tape, and Jimmy started to wriggle against his bonds. "Calm down. One, two... THREE!"
"OW! Shit, piss, fuckin... OW!" Jimmy shied away for a moment, trying to get his bearings and not tear up. "What if I was trying to grow a mustache?"
"Facial hair's gross. Let it go." Johnny tossed the piece of tape somewhere onto the wood floor.
"Fine. Whatever. Untie the ropes so I can beat you to death."
He shook his head. "Nope, sorry."
"What, c'mon you can't just like, leave me here!"
Johnny started smiling one of those weird, off-balanced flashes of sharp teeth. The one that usually meant he was about to do some stupid or crazy. "Well, I didn't say I was leaving you or anything," He took a seat down next to Jimmy, throwing an arm around his shoulder. "You've just been so good the past day - not throwing Mason into the wall or anything. I guess it's an improvement for someone like you, you know?"
Jimmy didn't even have to think before tossing his glance towards the ceiling in a faux-annoyed roll of the eyes. "Yeah, do I get a cookie?"
"This all goes back to the 'I'm not untying you conversation.' Try to focus here, lover boy."
"What does tying me up have to do with a reward?" Jimmy let those words float in the air for a moment. Johnny waited patiently. "Oh. OH... okay." He gave Johnny a look. "You are such a bitch! You know that, right?"
At that point Johnny was getting tired of talking, and decided to just push his roommate down onto the couch. "Yeah well, right now, you're the bitch. So shut the hell up, kay?" Jimmy frowned, biting the inside of his cheek to prevent a little anticipatory smile from creeping up on him.
"You could at least say please," he said, before Johnny kissed him, and then he couldn't really say much after that.
A/N: I was over at StJimmysRebel's house - my Green Day obsessed Best Friend for Whenever, and through two sleep-over sessions she had me write this. Her idea was, "What if Jimmy and Johnny had a kid?" And my idea was, "Like hell they could have a kid - they're dudes. And, you know, I don't think they would call for responsibility on that." Well, Will has a kid, right? Well, Heather was pregnant. Eh, it's pretty much an AU anyway. Hope you've enjoyed.