Johnny Watches

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Gangs of New York and I'm not making money off this. That's what "fanfic" means.
Note: Rated R for violence as much as sex.


JOHNNY WATCHES


The music is noise in Johnny's ears as he makes his way to the edge of the dance floor. The doors have been opened to the night down on the ground level but the stench still wafts up and mixes in with the sweat and breath of the dancers, the whores and robbers and gangs come together under the benevolent sign of the missionaries' crucifix. Johnny's more than used to it; he's bred on it, the smell of grease and dirt and dung and puke and drool and skin and blood and Five Points.

There are no lights on the ground level, save for a couple of torches that drown in the blackness, the glare behind Johnny blinding him to the slighter lights down below. The night below, the yellow light above - and the sound, and the stench binding them all together. Johnny's hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia. This moment seemed lifted out of time and important somehow, something he would want to remember.

He turns to look at the swirling crowd, bright and sinful colours flashing by to the deafening band, the cackle and gabbing and laughter mixing in with it, running around it like a ring around a rosy, enclosing the crowd. The sense lingers with him; he still stands outside time as his eyes search out Jenny's gown among all the others.

There she is. She's moving slowly, dancing slowly, hardly even dancing: stepping around Amsterdam.

Amsterdam can't twirl her around like Johnny could. Johnny could float her across the floor, make her laugh and spin until she fell on his arms, breathless and happy, and she knew he could, too. It wasn't just once he'd taken her slim waist under his arm and made her bend and sigh. But she was dancing with Amsterdam now.

Jenny and Johnny hadn't needed music to dance, on those quiet middays on the rooftops of the Points, when early snow had begun to fall on their hair, messy and loose and soiled by the mud and the rust. They hadn't needed a gown or a tux to move together in the quiet corners, or bows in her hair or a shine on his shoes to declare each other a fine sight indeed.

He misses her laugh. He hurts for it like for a part of himself suddenly gone, or more, because he can imagine getting on without an eye, like old Geg, or a finger or even an arm, but right then and there he can't well imagine there being anything beyond Jenny's pretty laugh that was worth having.

Jenny and Amsterdam dance away from the crowd, to one of the bridges, and are lost in the shadows soon enough. Lost in the shadows, there, Jenny will take him to the waterfront. Johnny can see it in his mind. He knew it when he saw Jenny's small hand on the back of Amsterdam's coat, the way their eyes locked, the way he leaned forward a little, lips parted.

He will push her gown up. She will open his shirt and kiss his neck. Amsterdam's chest is covered with little cuts. She'll touch them with her fingertips. He will...

It feels tight and warm and metallic in Johnny's chest, the jealousy. The longing. A girl talks to him. Emmy. She has the clap. He looks at her. There is lipstick on her teeth. He is mad, as if he needs another dose of the clap, but he grabs her thin arm and pulls her with him, down the stairs into the night below.

Someone turns in his sleep in the shadows as they clamber down the staircase. Johnny chooses a corner, behind barrels, where no-one is camping at the moment. She is talking. He pushes her against the wall and tells her to be quiet. She obeys, stops blithering her supposedly seductive lines. Johnny pushes her skirts up. Anger and sex. He grabs her hair and her hip and doesn't stop pulling at the red hair until he comes. He feels like biting her. He resists. He resists.

He falls asleep early that night, crawled tight around himself in his bunk. He rarely sleeps like that anymore, but he feels the chill tonight, down to his bones. Even so the sleep takes him almost immediately, dark and welcome.

There are shafts of sunlight around him, from somewhere high above. He can feel the walls, in the shadows, standing between himself and Five Points. He knows it's out there, the triangle, looming on the back of his mind, though he can't see it.

Dust dances in the air. Then from beyond their ballet, from the dark into the golden light walks a woman in a tan dress, lips curled slightly in a smile, eyes steady on him, as if there's a private joke they are sharing, or a secret she knows about him. Jenny. No. Yes. Amsterdam.

It is Amsterdam, it dawns on him, can't be Jenny - he has stubble on his chin, and sharp tufts of hair around his forehead, and that is his brown jacket, that Jenny's hand held onto. He is holding a rabbit. A live one.

"A hundred times before you've had your cry," says a voice from the air, a boy's voice, but Johnny knows it was Amsterdam. "Kill it."

He was told to, so he had to, and it was his first time, and he was four years old.

He remembers the young boy's face, smooth and dirty and round, and the light behind him like a halo. His agemate, but touched with grace - Priest Vallon's son. He's never forgotten. He couldn't have forgotten.

Then the Amsterdam who is present kneels down next to him but he isn't holding a rabbit anymore, or wearing a jacket, or anything else besides, and he takes Johnny's head between his hands and his eyes are blue and bright and he is smiling like Jenny (woman) smiled before, as she walked from the sunlight. And Amsterdam kisses Johnny, and it seemes the most natural thing in the world. He tastes like Jenny, but he feels like Amsterdam, and Johnny knows he is nude as well and it doesn't matter. His fingertips feel the scars on Amsterdam's chest for a moment before he slides his hands on Amsterdam's lean back, and Amsterdam's mouth on his neck feels like Jenny's.

And then Jenny is there also, slim familiar figure pressed against his side. Her hands wander down between Johnny and Amsterdam, and feels like sweet honey and milk on Johnny's skin. Her lips and his lips both on him. He's bathed in the glow of them, between them, with them, and then he feels all three of them lift from the ground. Floating - they should fall, but they don't - if he holds onto this, the glow, they won't - they'd...

"Don't be silly."

It's Jenny's voice, but younger, much younger. Suddenly he can see her before him, and she's squinting against the sun, wearing a bright white summer hat. They are in a garden, a green one, like Johnny has seen in a painting once, only it's GREEN like reality, not exactly like any place he'd ever seen before. She is a child, and her dress is white as well, with a pale yellow sash, and a collection of flowers sprayed in her lap as she sits on the grass (stains). "Everybody knows ducks can't fly," she says matter of factly.

"They're like Johnny," she adds suddenly, and he looks at her, and her face is twisted in a malicious grin. "Johnny can't walk or write or talk or do anything right. Everybody knows THAT."

Johnny suddenly knows he's young, really young, younger than her. "I thought you liked me," he says, and bursts into tears.

"Just kill the fucking rabbit!" says Amsterdam's harsh adult voice.

Johnny snaps awake.

He forgets most of the dream soon, as things get too exciting to dwell on dreams. But it comes back to him again, suddenly, when he watches the hot iron press into Amsterdam's face.