Chapter Text
It’s barely 6 AM, and Arlo is staring at his ex-co-ruler-turned rogue, two-mask sporting law-breaking vigilantes (one of whom is clearly his current co-leader), the biggest gossip in the school, and his unofficial sworn enemy, all crowded around the door to his apartment. He has told none of them his address in recent memory.
He isn’t wearing shoes. Even worse, his aforementioned worst enemy is wearing a pink sleep shirt with a bunny on it.
Remi takes off her mask, which sort of defeats the purpose of wearing one, and waves at him.
Arlo resists the urge to scream.
“Come back in five minutes so I can get dressed and drink every caffeinated beverage in my fridge,” he half-commands, half-mumbles. He turns around and shuts the door behind him.
Arlo has lost count of the amount of times he’s met John Doe, but he knows he would have preferred a number significantly fewer. And he would especially like one of those times to be not right now.
He ends up letting them in after only three minutes, on the grounds that a) it takes him a minute and a half to chug two energy drinks from his fridge and b) he feels bad about leaving Remi outside. Given the choice, he would let her in and leave the rest of them, but he had a feeling his co-leader was too “kind hearted” and “optimistic” for that. Ew.
Now John Doe is in his dorm room, and he is pointedly trying to ignore this. Which is a difficult feat to accomplish, because they’re supposed to be “working together.”
Ew.
“You guys should be gone by Thursday, I think,” Remi is saying. “But we have to move Arlo out to John’s during school.”
“Out to John’s?” Arlo echoes. “I don’t think moving into the dorms will help much. I’m supposed to be getting away from campus.”
Sera shakes her head. “John doesn’t live on campus either. The school lets him live in an apartment a few blocks away. For now, we just need to get you to an address that isn’t, y’know, yours.”
“Isn’t he a third year?”
“‘He’ is right here, prick,” John snaps from his position as far across the room as possible, leaning against the wall as if ready to bolt at any moment. “I have accommodations.”
Arlo arches an eyebrow disbelievingly. “Why, pray tell, would anyone go through such a futile effort?”
John sneers right back at him. “Trust me, it’s for the benefit of the rest of you lot,” he replies. “Besides, imagine the sort of press would get if someone found out their teenage prodigy was sleeping in a dorm with the kid who has a criminal record.”
Isen looks up from idly sketching, interested. “Criminal record?” He repeats in his reporter voice.
“Not now, Isen,” everyone, bar John, choruses.
That draws a slightly less brooding expression from John, who reluctantly uncrosses his arms and begrudgingly takes a few steps closer to the group, hovering nearest to Sera. “Listen,” he sighs. “I’m not doing this for any of you. Especially not you.” Arlo rolls his eyes. “This is for Sera. And because I fucking hate this school. But mostly for Sera.”
“Heartfelt,” Sera replies dryly- but in the teasing, affectionate sort of way. He could see the tightness in her face as she surveyed him, like it might be the last time. For a while, at least. He waves his hand in front of her face.
“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” he says. “I’m just going to be slowly bored to death by the antithesis of every moral cause that I stand for in close proximity for an undetermined amount of time.”
Sera laughs.
“Traitor,” Arlo mutters from the couch.
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In the end (it took four hours, which was four more than John needed to be in that apartment), they decide to move Arlo in the next morning, John facilitating the beginning and then leaving for school so he and Arlo didn’t disappear on the same day. Arlo would stay there the rest of Wednesday and Thursday, and they would leave Friday afternoon- the weekend providing two days head start, hypothetically.
“Hypothetically,” Sera echos sceptically as they wait in the doorway, both still in their pyjamas. Her extension-less hair is stuck up in a dozen directions around her head, and her Pizza Shack logo-sporting shirt is wrinkled and has tea stains down one side. Still, she probably looks better than John, who has eyebags almost as dark as his hair and is swaying slightly, a third red bull in hand. He hasn’t slept since the morning before.
“Yeah, hypothetically,” John repeats. He yawns. “Murphy’s first law. Plus, we’re not exactly the most cohesive team.”
Sera starts to laugh before yawning herself and rubbing her eyes. “I have faith in you,” she shrugs.
“And my self constraint?”
“Eh. Less so.” She stares him down more seriously. “I mean it, though. I’m trusting you not to, like, get him killed for the bit.”
John downed the last of his drink. “Fair enough,” he conceded. “Come on, let’s go sit down before I pass out from the effort of standing up.”
“Let’s.”
He slammed the door behind them harder than was necessary, which drew him a confused look, especially when it made a dull thunking noise and another thumping sound came from the floor a second later. The door swung back open to reveal a very annoyed-looking Arlo, now tangled on the floor with his bags, and a bewildered looking Remi standing behind him.
Leaning against the doorframe, John smirked and his eyes flashed gold. “Oops,” he said innocently.
Sera sighed. “John, you can’t just take Isen’s ability and use it for bodily harm,” she scolded under her breath. “You literally just promised you wouldn’t hurt him for the bit.”
“Objection,” John replied. “Asslo wasn’t here when we did it, so he doesn’t count.”
From the ground, Arlo blew hair out of his face and slowly stood up, dusting off his uniform. He was taller than everyone else there, except John, who was equipped with several extra inches of boots and was thus elevated to the same height. “So,” he grumbled. “I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?”
“You’re stuck with me?” John objected. “I’m about to go on the roadtrip of a fucking lifetime and I have to lug your sorry ass with me the whole way.”
Arlo glared at him. “This is not a road trip. We are on the run from the government.”
“Same difference.”
“It is most certainly not-”
“Boys.” Remi interrupted sternly. They both went quiet, glaring pointedly away from each other. The girls shared a look and Sera sighed.
“I’ll go make us some tea,” she decided. “Everyone go sit down and refrain from hurting each other.”
They do, luckily, at least until Sera comes back with three cups of tea and a glass of water for John, who doesn’t like tea and will also probably explode if he has any more caffeine. She knows that he only keeps it in his house for when she’s around, like she keeps chocolatte in her backpack because John has a chocolate ADDICTION. Which is valid.
She sits down on the couch next to Remi, Arlo perched uncomfortably on the only other chair and John cross legged on the coffee table. She once asked him why, to which he responded something along the lines of unconventional habits being the best ones.
Both boys look to her and Remi to start the conversation, which Remi is having none of. “You two. Talk to each other,” she orders, sipping her tea. “We’re just here so you don’t preemptively kill each other before you even leave. Set some ground rules, or whatever.” It’s impressive how serious she can get people to take her, even with her hair in rollers and her uniform button up paired with pink pyjama pants.
“No superiority complex,” John says immediately.
Arlo narrows his eyes. “No unnecessary law breaking.”
John scoffs. “No complaining about the lack of five star services.”
“No public disturbances.”
“No dressing like a bourgeois asshole.”
“No dressing like a hobo.”
“Hey,” John protests. “Some of my best friends are hobos. I’ll have you know they have a good taste in clothes.”
“You must be joking.”
“Dry clean suits will do you no favours in the real world, prick.”
“Maybe not in your world,” Arlo snapped.
John paused to glare at him. “We’re in my world now,” he pointed out, “actually. So.”
Arlo pursed his lips and crossed his arms. His tea sat untouched on the floor next to him. “And what exactly is your world?” He asked, lifting one poised eyebrow. “Stealing, graffiti, and bothering reasonable people? Does it even consider personal responsibility?”
“I’m about to be personally responsible for gutting you with the stick up your ass,” John answered, completely serious.
“If you so much as get within three feet of me-”
“Woah!” John raised his hands in mock surrender. “Aren’t you already on the run from the law? What, you want to add physical assault to your list of charges?”
“Boys,” Sera interjects. Both of them look away and deflate almost immediately, because Sera.
John stands. “I have to go to school,” he declares. “If you touch anything,” he warns Arlo, “I will personally take the moral failing and turn you over to the police myself.”
“Duly noted,” Arlo snaps at his retreating back. Remi punches him in the arm.
Sera sighs. “It’ll be fine. I’ll talk to him.” It sounds more resigned than reassuring, but Arlo nods anyway. Because at the end of the day, he doesn’t exactly have much choice. She smiles back tightly. “There’s food in the fridge. Bathroom down the hall. Just text me if you need anything.”
And if Arlo spends the afternoon unmoving on the couch, struck by a delayed but altogether paralysing sense of unfamiliarity, listening to himself breathe in an otherwise silent and entirely unfamiliar house, that’s none of anyone's business.
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Like most teenage delinquents, John spends most of his time when he is alone doing generally unobtrusive, non-delinquent-ish things. This becomes an issue when he has another person in his house.
It’s not as if everything he does is for show. He really, empathetically and passionately, hates the government. Also the school board, the police, and most forms of authority. He really does think the school system is fucked up and needs to be fixed. Etcetera. But he also likes angry pigs, and facetiming Sera, and ordering pizza for dinner on Wednesdays instead of making his own because Wednesdays are hard. He likes to watch stupid TV shows, and read old poetry. He likes to play cards. All of this feels entirely too private to do with Arlo in his house. No one told him having a mortal enemy came with so many expectations.
On Thursday, he doesn’t even stop at home, leaving his school bag on the roof and changing in the bathroom and going straight into a long run through the city. On the way, he stops by every shop and library and hideout in the city, pretty much, mingling with friends before taking off again before they can ask about his weekend plans. He successfully avoids setting foot back in his house until 6:45, by which point he’s picked his way through almost nine miles, and the sun is going down.
“Hello, John,” Arlo greets him offhandedly when he walks in, breathing hard.
John rolls his eyes. He would be the type to say hello. The bitch.
Looking away pointedly, he stumbles into the kitchen for a glass of water and does his best to ignore the stupid lanky fuck sitting on his couch. Ethically, he muses, he could get over turning Arlo in to the police just because it’s Arlo. But more importantly, it’s probably not worth Sera getting mad at him for.
He finishes off his water, pours himself more, and attempts to go about his normal after-school routine without stepping into the living room: texting Sera the picture of the dog he saw on his run, setting up his laptop and various supplies on the dining table, turning on the heat and the lights in his room, and running the dishwasher- which was an every other Tuesday and Thursday sort of thing. It isn’t until he automatically moves to go flip on the news for background noise that he actually remembers Arlo is there.
The prick looks up from his laptop as John approaches and scowls. John scowls right back, snatching the remote from the side table and ignoring him to turn on the TV. Normally, it always flicks back to the same news channel that he always watches- so his face contorts with disgust when it instead displays a different one.
NXGen Facility Shares New Breakthrough In Ability Detecting Technology, reads the headline. Above it, a placidly smiling woman sitting at a smooth metal desk informs them that “yesterday in Helio, the company currently at the forefront of ability-based innovative technologies approved a new procedure that will help move towards the ability to detect a child’s ability before it manifests. Let’s hear more from-”
Muting the anchor, John rounds on Arlo. “Did you touch my fucking TV?”
Arlo sighs, because he would be the type of bitch to sigh. “I haven’t been able to leave this house in the past twenty nine hours. You’ve been gone for the last eight. What exactly was I supposed to do? Wait for you to come back with news of what’s going on in my absence? Hope that the authorities aren’t going to come breaking down your door?” He doesn’t look up from his laptop. Because he’s a bitch. “Shockingly, I was not eagerly awaiting your return, nor am I dependent on you to function.”
“Whatever,” John replies, very generously restraining himself from saying you are dependent on me for a place to stay out of jail, though, because he’s being the better person or something. He flicks back through the channels to find his own and gestures to it. “It was already on the news, you know.”
Arlo shrugs. “I always watch channel 5 news. My aunt Valerie-”
“Rule number one,” John interrupts, “of this- whatever this is- rule number one is you are banned from starting any sentences with ‘my aunt Valerie.’” Fine, he has to be around Arlo. But that doesn’t mean he has to put up with a police propaganda spewing machine yapping away 24/7.
The bitch has the nerve to look affronted. “I thought you were supposed to be all about freedom of speech,” he snaps. “What, do I not have my rights while I’m on house arrest?”
John resists- barely- the urge to ask him if the people his mother arrests get to keep their rights. Instead, he turns back to the TV and flips through the channels until he finds one of his own usual news channels. “That protects you from the government, asshole, not me.” He turns away and hears Arlo make his annoying self righteous noise behind him.
“As if I would ever need protection from you,” he hears the bitch scoff.
Oh, yeah. This is going to take exponentially more than his usual quota of tolerance. John stuffs his earbuds back in and pulls up his maths homework. “Right,” is all he replies. “As if.”