I bring fic!
I believe this is my first JTHM/Squee fic evar, too. I've been lurking this place for forever, and I finally got inspired to write a fic of my own, due to the depressing lack of my favorite pairing, Johnny/Todd. At the moment it's gen for the most part, but later in the story it will develop into a romance between Older!Todd and Johnny. If that squicks you at all for any reason, please do not read.
Title: Still Underneath the Stars
Rating: R/Mature (like any JTHM fic should be...)
Pairing(s): Right now all I have planned definitely is Johnny/Older!Todd, but I may or may not add another in the future.
Summary: Todd escaped the asylum his parents locked him away in thanks to his friend, the antichrist, Pepito. But Todd is traumatized at his parent's betrayal, and grows to hate them more and more each day until he finally decides to kill them. But Pepito's been hiding a dark secret about Todd from Todd, a secret that connects him to a man from his past, Johnny C...
Todd Casil was no longer a boy. He was days away from legal adulthood, not that it did anything for him. He hadn’t attended a day of school since he was twelve, when his parents had signed away his freedom, future and innocence to an asylum doctor, a madman who always got a child-like thrill whenever he got a new test subject, and then a perverted rush when he conducted his hideous experiments on them. The things he’d done to Todd were so awful, the boy sometimes wished he’d let the doctor complete his final experiment on him, the lobotomy that he’d promised the weeping teenager would erase all of his memories. Not just the torture the doctor had caused him, but also the memories of his parent’s painful apathy and all the years he’d tried denying it to himself. And the abuse and humiliation he suffered at the hands of his peers from school, the demons that came to call him in the dead of night when he was supposed to finally be getting his rest… The doctor promised them they would all go away.
He almost gave in to the temptation, but for one memory. Still a horrifying memory, but recalling it that day had saved him from one fate, and delivered him to another. He remembered the night when a pedophile had tried to kidnap him, undoubtedly would have raped and killed him, had not one of the other demons of Todd’s past killed him first. He’d told him, “Just a man. Not a monster, not a demon, not worth devoting any nightmares to.”
Todd had scarcely known anything but monsters, demons and nightmares all his life. They no longer left the same impression they did when he was young. Of course they were still frightening, but the patients that walked about with black bruises underneath their eyes didn’t look any less disturbed for it. They didn’t remember the origins of their demons, but the monsters still followed them.
So that night, as the nurses prepared him, strapping him harshly against the surgical bed, Todd had prayed. But not to the father in heaven, for Todd was certain by that point that God did not and had never listened to his prayers. He prayed to the Prince of Darkness for help, and the demon appeared at his bedside before he’d uttered the closing word, “nema”.
Todd had thought he’d spent his whole life living in hell, and so was surprised to learn that the literal hell was actually much more comfortable. It was always warm, the basement was insulated so that he couldn’t hear the screams, and Pepito was always kind to him. But as much as Todd tried to be as good to his friend as he had been for him, there was a part of his soul that could not heal itself, and they could both see he was a shell of his former shell. The demons he expected to whisper threats and lies into his ears -- The monsters he knew would sell him for anything they could get for him. But his mother and father should have been the ones who had protected him from the darkness of the world. Instead the underworld reached out to help him when his parents had happily abandoned him to it. He rarely spoke, and never spoke without being spoken to. He barely ate, usually only at Pepito or his worried mother’s insistence. Pepito was a good friend, but as the antichrist he had a lot of work to do, too. He didn’t have the time to monitor Todd every hour of the day, and when he was alone Todd tended to brood. He would just sit silent in the silence, eyes wide but dull, reliving the horrors that he knew had occurred at the fault of his parent’s neglect.
Several years of this brooding changed him slowly every day. Denial of his parent’s cruelty and neglect was followed by depressive sadness, then into silent, seething anger. But it didn’t stop there. The anger grew every day until it had morphed itself into pure hatred. The mother and father he loved and who loved him never existed, and as far as his parents were concerned, neither had he.
Over the years he had given thought to killing them. The first time the thought had entered his head, the child still within his heart had screamed that it wasn’t right, and he had listened. He listened to that voice, a voice much more feminine than his was now, every time it reminded him that he would lose more than he would gain by doing it. But as the years passed the righteous scream turned into a gentle reminder, and then a mere whisper, until one day, as he imagined bludgeoning his father with a hammer, no voice warned him afterwards of the repercussions against the dark act.
So finally one day, seven days short of the birthday he no longer remembered, Todd left the antichrist’s house for the first time since he‘d come to call it home. The sun was hot on his pale skin, but he could hardly feel it. The only thing he could feel in it’s entirety was the hatred that had consumed him, that led him down streets he hadn’t treaded since he was a child, until he arrived at the street his childhood home had been on. He walked down the sidewalk, every step vibrating throughout his body, matching the beat of his heart and pounding like a war drum in his head. With every step closer he got, the more rage filled him, the louder the murderous drums played. But then, just one house away from his destination, he abruptly stopped, and looked. It was the house next door to his, number 777. He stared for several minutes at the run-down house, peering into the darkness behind the boards across it’s broken windows. For those few minutes he forgot his murderous intent, instead trying to remember something he knew he’d forgotten about that place. But then, abruptly, as if waking from a dream, Todd reminded himself that he’d forgotten a lot about his past across the years. He remembered being taunted by cruel children, but he did not remember their faces. He remembered having nightmares most nights as a child, but he could thankfully only recall remnants of their contents. He remembered a weird, frightening neighbor man who had once saved him from a weirder, more frightening man, but he could not remember why he cared enough about him to stop what he was doing now.
So he continued on, walking past the driveway, in which was a shiny new car, and into the backyard, where he found an unlocked window and quietly entered the home, into a kitchen. And though he barely remembered it, it was much different than his childhood home. Almost all the appliances were new, as well as the furniture. Part of him had just started wondering if his parents still lived there, when he heard a voice coming from the next room over. His father’s voice.
He was speaking on the phone. “Sid, I don’t care how you do it, but you’ve got to convince Nancy to get the abortion. Trust me, kids are nothing but a burden, a complete pain in the ass. You’re gonna be spending every dime you make on that kid, you’re never gonna have time to do anything for yourself, and forget about your sex life, man. That kid will ruin your whole life. The best thing Mary and I ever did for ourselves was get rid of that kid…”
Todd was sure there had been no more room in his heart for any more hatred. And he was right. The hatred spilled out of his heart and filled his entire body, leaving him shaking with sorrow and rage. He grabbed a large new knife from a set. He tested it on himself, finding it was more than satisfactorily sharp. Then he quietly opened a drawer, and procured from it a meat tenderizer. With one in each hand, he waited in the kitchen until his father hung up the phone. He didn’t want anyone to hear what he was going to do, and risk having them call the police. He wouldn’t go back to another prison cell on account of that man.
As he opened the door to the living room where his father sat, anxiety and fear began to mesh with the anger that filled him, but it was far too late for that, because his father had already seen him. His eyes went wide, “H-Hey! Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you doing in my house?!” The man rose from his recliner, also new, just like the television he’d been watching. He picked up a lamp and held it out defensively in front of him.
Todd seethed. The bastard didn’t even recognize him? Had he really only ever seen Todd as a financial burden? Did he never look at his child’s face, had he never listened when his son had told him he loved him? No. All he’d ever seen was his outdated car, his Goodwill working desk that gave him splinters, the wallpaper peeling off the wall. All he ever heard was the dripping of leaky pipes and his son’s annoying screams when something terrified him yet again in the night, screams that could have gone away if only his father had loved him and assured him that the monsters weren’t real!
But Todd knew better now. Monsters did exist. His father was a monster, and he was about to become one too...
Using the meat tenderizer, he knocked the lamp out of his father’s hands, then swung back and hit him hard in the head. He fell to the ground, screaming and scrambling to get back up, though his newly-acquired head injury had made his balance less than perfect. Todd didn’t waste the chance, he hit him again in the head, and this time the man stayed down.
“…I ruined your life, huh?” He seethed, picking up his father’s head by the hair so that their identical eyes met. “I told you I wished you were never born, did I? I locked you away in an asylum and let a stranger FUCK with your mind, and then forgot you without ever regretting a damn thing?!” Todd threw the head he was holding back down on the ground, and kicked the man several times in the chest and stomach for good measure.
He tossed aside the mallet, kneeling down next to the softly groaning man, gripping the knife so tight his hand shook. He raised the blade, about to bring it down upon him, when a soft, sad, feminine voice whispered, “Todd, honey? Please don’t do it…”
He turned his head towards the voice. His mother stood in the doorway, looking terrified, but there was something else in her expression too. Remorse. Guilt. Todd’s hand stopped, though he didn’t release the knife. “Todd, sweetie…” The woman began to slowly approach him, her voice soothing and filled with more concern than her son had ever remembered of her. “My handsome boy… I’m so sorry, son. I’m so sorry we had to put you in that place. You were sick. You were scared, you saw things that weren’t real. We didn’t know what else to do for you. We were just trying to help you, Todd…” She was nearly in front of him now. Her words and her rare show of concern and love had touched Todd‘s weak, tortured heart, and swayed his mind. What if he was wrong? What if his parents really were just trying to help him? Was it possible, was he really the crazy one? “I’m so glad you’re home, baby boy…” She kneeled down in front of him and opened her arms. “Everything’s going to be okay now, Todd. I’ll make sure of it. Come give Mommy a hug. I’ll make everything better again…”
The scared little child within him took over. His mother loved him again. She wanted to help him. He dropped the knife out of his shaking hands, and flung himself into her arms. He wept softly, “I’m sorry Mommy… I love you… I--”
He stopped talking abruptly, pain shooting through his left shoulder as the blade he’d dropped stabbed into his flesh. He looked up at his mother. Her face was no longer concerned or loving. She looked down on him as if he were a nasty little bug. “You fucking little idiot.” She growled, “I should have had the abortion… Well you know what they say, darling,” She spit the word out with sarcasm. “Better late than never!”
She wrenched the knife out of her son’s shoulder, grinning hatefully at him. Blood immediately began to spurt and then flow openly from the deep wound, and she raised the knife again to make the killing blow. Weak already from the heavy blood loss, but even more so from the horrid betrayal, Todd didn’t raise a finger in self-defense. He welcomed death in his mother’s arms, his last sight her beautiful face contorted in ugly hatred.
But just as the knife was about to plunge into his heart, and just before he passed out into the darkness, he saw a tall, thin figure appear behind his mother, grabbing her hand with one of his, and settling the blade of a knife against her throat with the other…
Title: Still Underneath the Stars
Rating: R/Mature (like any JTHM fic should be...)
Pairing(s): Right now all I have planned definitely is Johnny/Older!Todd, but I may or may not add another in the future.
Summary: Todd escaped the asylum his parents locked him away in thanks to his friend, the antichrist, Pepito. But Todd is traumatized at his parent's betrayal, and grows to hate them more and more each day until he finally decides to kill them. But Pepito's been hiding a dark secret about Todd from Todd, a secret that connects him to a man from his past, Johnny C...
Todd Casil was no longer a boy. He was days away from legal adulthood, not that it did anything for him. He hadn’t attended a day of school since he was twelve, when his parents had signed away his freedom, future and innocence to an asylum doctor, a madman who always got a child-like thrill whenever he got a new test subject, and then a perverted rush when he conducted his hideous experiments on them. The things he’d done to Todd were so awful, the boy sometimes wished he’d let the doctor complete his final experiment on him, the lobotomy that he’d promised the weeping teenager would erase all of his memories. Not just the torture the doctor had caused him, but also the memories of his parent’s painful apathy and all the years he’d tried denying it to himself. And the abuse and humiliation he suffered at the hands of his peers from school, the demons that came to call him in the dead of night when he was supposed to finally be getting his rest… The doctor promised them they would all go away.
He almost gave in to the temptation, but for one memory. Still a horrifying memory, but recalling it that day had saved him from one fate, and delivered him to another. He remembered the night when a pedophile had tried to kidnap him, undoubtedly would have raped and killed him, had not one of the other demons of Todd’s past killed him first. He’d told him, “Just a man. Not a monster, not a demon, not worth devoting any nightmares to.”
Todd had scarcely known anything but monsters, demons and nightmares all his life. They no longer left the same impression they did when he was young. Of course they were still frightening, but the patients that walked about with black bruises underneath their eyes didn’t look any less disturbed for it. They didn’t remember the origins of their demons, but the monsters still followed them.
So that night, as the nurses prepared him, strapping him harshly against the surgical bed, Todd had prayed. But not to the father in heaven, for Todd was certain by that point that God did not and had never listened to his prayers. He prayed to the Prince of Darkness for help, and the demon appeared at his bedside before he’d uttered the closing word, “nema”.
Todd had thought he’d spent his whole life living in hell, and so was surprised to learn that the literal hell was actually much more comfortable. It was always warm, the basement was insulated so that he couldn’t hear the screams, and Pepito was always kind to him. But as much as Todd tried to be as good to his friend as he had been for him, there was a part of his soul that could not heal itself, and they could both see he was a shell of his former shell. The demons he expected to whisper threats and lies into his ears -- The monsters he knew would sell him for anything they could get for him. But his mother and father should have been the ones who had protected him from the darkness of the world. Instead the underworld reached out to help him when his parents had happily abandoned him to it. He rarely spoke, and never spoke without being spoken to. He barely ate, usually only at Pepito or his worried mother’s insistence. Pepito was a good friend, but as the antichrist he had a lot of work to do, too. He didn’t have the time to monitor Todd every hour of the day, and when he was alone Todd tended to brood. He would just sit silent in the silence, eyes wide but dull, reliving the horrors that he knew had occurred at the fault of his parent’s neglect.
Several years of this brooding changed him slowly every day. Denial of his parent’s cruelty and neglect was followed by depressive sadness, then into silent, seething anger. But it didn’t stop there. The anger grew every day until it had morphed itself into pure hatred. The mother and father he loved and who loved him never existed, and as far as his parents were concerned, neither had he.
Over the years he had given thought to killing them. The first time the thought had entered his head, the child still within his heart had screamed that it wasn’t right, and he had listened. He listened to that voice, a voice much more feminine than his was now, every time it reminded him that he would lose more than he would gain by doing it. But as the years passed the righteous scream turned into a gentle reminder, and then a mere whisper, until one day, as he imagined bludgeoning his father with a hammer, no voice warned him afterwards of the repercussions against the dark act.
So finally one day, seven days short of the birthday he no longer remembered, Todd left the antichrist’s house for the first time since he‘d come to call it home. The sun was hot on his pale skin, but he could hardly feel it. The only thing he could feel in it’s entirety was the hatred that had consumed him, that led him down streets he hadn’t treaded since he was a child, until he arrived at the street his childhood home had been on. He walked down the sidewalk, every step vibrating throughout his body, matching the beat of his heart and pounding like a war drum in his head. With every step closer he got, the more rage filled him, the louder the murderous drums played. But then, just one house away from his destination, he abruptly stopped, and looked. It was the house next door to his, number 777. He stared for several minutes at the run-down house, peering into the darkness behind the boards across it’s broken windows. For those few minutes he forgot his murderous intent, instead trying to remember something he knew he’d forgotten about that place. But then, abruptly, as if waking from a dream, Todd reminded himself that he’d forgotten a lot about his past across the years. He remembered being taunted by cruel children, but he did not remember their faces. He remembered having nightmares most nights as a child, but he could thankfully only recall remnants of their contents. He remembered a weird, frightening neighbor man who had once saved him from a weirder, more frightening man, but he could not remember why he cared enough about him to stop what he was doing now.
So he continued on, walking past the driveway, in which was a shiny new car, and into the backyard, where he found an unlocked window and quietly entered the home, into a kitchen. And though he barely remembered it, it was much different than his childhood home. Almost all the appliances were new, as well as the furniture. Part of him had just started wondering if his parents still lived there, when he heard a voice coming from the next room over. His father’s voice.
He was speaking on the phone. “Sid, I don’t care how you do it, but you’ve got to convince Nancy to get the abortion. Trust me, kids are nothing but a burden, a complete pain in the ass. You’re gonna be spending every dime you make on that kid, you’re never gonna have time to do anything for yourself, and forget about your sex life, man. That kid will ruin your whole life. The best thing Mary and I ever did for ourselves was get rid of that kid…”
Todd was sure there had been no more room in his heart for any more hatred. And he was right. The hatred spilled out of his heart and filled his entire body, leaving him shaking with sorrow and rage. He grabbed a large new knife from a set. He tested it on himself, finding it was more than satisfactorily sharp. Then he quietly opened a drawer, and procured from it a meat tenderizer. With one in each hand, he waited in the kitchen until his father hung up the phone. He didn’t want anyone to hear what he was going to do, and risk having them call the police. He wouldn’t go back to another prison cell on account of that man.
As he opened the door to the living room where his father sat, anxiety and fear began to mesh with the anger that filled him, but it was far too late for that, because his father had already seen him. His eyes went wide, “H-Hey! Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you doing in my house?!” The man rose from his recliner, also new, just like the television he’d been watching. He picked up a lamp and held it out defensively in front of him.
Todd seethed. The bastard didn’t even recognize him? Had he really only ever seen Todd as a financial burden? Did he never look at his child’s face, had he never listened when his son had told him he loved him? No. All he’d ever seen was his outdated car, his Goodwill working desk that gave him splinters, the wallpaper peeling off the wall. All he ever heard was the dripping of leaky pipes and his son’s annoying screams when something terrified him yet again in the night, screams that could have gone away if only his father had loved him and assured him that the monsters weren’t real!
But Todd knew better now. Monsters did exist. His father was a monster, and he was about to become one too...
Using the meat tenderizer, he knocked the lamp out of his father’s hands, then swung back and hit him hard in the head. He fell to the ground, screaming and scrambling to get back up, though his newly-acquired head injury had made his balance less than perfect. Todd didn’t waste the chance, he hit him again in the head, and this time the man stayed down.
“…I ruined your life, huh?” He seethed, picking up his father’s head by the hair so that their identical eyes met. “I told you I wished you were never born, did I? I locked you away in an asylum and let a stranger FUCK with your mind, and then forgot you without ever regretting a damn thing?!” Todd threw the head he was holding back down on the ground, and kicked the man several times in the chest and stomach for good measure.
He tossed aside the mallet, kneeling down next to the softly groaning man, gripping the knife so tight his hand shook. He raised the blade, about to bring it down upon him, when a soft, sad, feminine voice whispered, “Todd, honey? Please don’t do it…”
He turned his head towards the voice. His mother stood in the doorway, looking terrified, but there was something else in her expression too. Remorse. Guilt. Todd’s hand stopped, though he didn’t release the knife. “Todd, sweetie…” The woman began to slowly approach him, her voice soothing and filled with more concern than her son had ever remembered of her. “My handsome boy… I’m so sorry, son. I’m so sorry we had to put you in that place. You were sick. You were scared, you saw things that weren’t real. We didn’t know what else to do for you. We were just trying to help you, Todd…” She was nearly in front of him now. Her words and her rare show of concern and love had touched Todd‘s weak, tortured heart, and swayed his mind. What if he was wrong? What if his parents really were just trying to help him? Was it possible, was he really the crazy one? “I’m so glad you’re home, baby boy…” She kneeled down in front of him and opened her arms. “Everything’s going to be okay now, Todd. I’ll make sure of it. Come give Mommy a hug. I’ll make everything better again…”
The scared little child within him took over. His mother loved him again. She wanted to help him. He dropped the knife out of his shaking hands, and flung himself into her arms. He wept softly, “I’m sorry Mommy… I love you… I--”
He stopped talking abruptly, pain shooting through his left shoulder as the blade he’d dropped stabbed into his flesh. He looked up at his mother. Her face was no longer concerned or loving. She looked down on him as if he were a nasty little bug. “You fucking little idiot.” She growled, “I should have had the abortion… Well you know what they say, darling,” She spit the word out with sarcasm. “Better late than never!”
She wrenched the knife out of her son’s shoulder, grinning hatefully at him. Blood immediately began to spurt and then flow openly from the deep wound, and she raised the knife again to make the killing blow. Weak already from the heavy blood loss, but even more so from the horrid betrayal, Todd didn’t raise a finger in self-defense. He welcomed death in his mother’s arms, his last sight her beautiful face contorted in ugly hatred.
But just as the knife was about to plunge into his heart, and just before he passed out into the darkness, he saw a tall, thin figure appear behind his mother, grabbing her hand with one of his, and settling the blade of a knife against her throat with the other…