Bad Reading

Who: Porter and Jesse
When: lunchtime
Where: MSHS

Another day, another dollar, another notch in the belt of life -- or was it a bedpost? 'Cause in the end, everybody got screwed -- another block of time wasted not-learning things that they'd never use. Jesse wasn't in the best of moods, but he was dealing. Another night of the 'geist, this one louder and worse. He'd gone into his parents' bedroom after a while, and found his mom crying and their bathroom worse than a meat-locker, and didn't like that. No, not one bit. Knowing what was up with something did not make it more fun to deal with. They'd all ended up camping out in the living room, and it had stopped eventually. But not before one of his Dylan posters had been fuckered.

He was taking lunch in the hallway yet again, only half-heartedly out of the way as he hunched over some tarot cards laid out in front of him. Advice, he was looking for guidance from the cosmos. They were being stubbornly silent, and his agitation showed in the speed at which the drumstick in his left hand was beating on the bottom of his sneaker. "Fuckin' empress, eat my cornhole," he muttered as he flipped another card down from the deck in his lap.

Walking through the halls with his earbuds in, Porter's mood was far better than Jesse's, though with the even expression he guarded himself with, it was hard to tell. He was still glowing over last night, mind bubbling with ideas for the sketches he'd done, and the only thing that would've been more appealing than working on those ideas was seeing Medea again. Of course, that wasn't happening today, so the plan was to just find somewhere quiet to pick at his lunch.

Porter's plans rarely worked out though, and today was no different. He slipped his mp3 player out of his sweatshirt, starting to thumb through tracks as he walked when a meaty hand swung in and tried to slap it away. Porter missed whatever the guy who'd tried it had said, but the motion yanked his earbuds free in time for him to catch the mutter of Jesse's curse as he passed by, hanging onto the mp3 player precariously. "What?" he asked sideways at Jesse, glaring and turning to watch the other people in the hallway snicker, "Talking to me, dude?" Not that Porter could do much if Jesse was telling him to suck his cornhole, but he felt bolder at least. "Is it still mess with the new kid day?"

Jesse looked up with a scowl at the brief commotion and jock-guffawing. It was unmistakable, and he wasn't surprised to gather that they'd found yet another hapless victim to annoy. He had the thought that at least it wasn't him getting his glasses knocked off his face or something, then chided himself. Better he than the baby-faced boy, yes? Maybe? Bueller? "Huh? No, not talking to you, talking to the threads of the cosmos, my man," he answered the guy's question. The spread in front of him was kind of Not Great. "It's Mess With The New Kid Day every day, hate to be the one to tell you, Frank. It's also Mess With The Old Kid Day, though that one happens a bit less often now that it's senior year." He flipped another card down and pushed his specs up his nose.

"Frank?" Porter murmured, eyes narrowing as he watched the jerk who'd slapped at his hand move away. He wasn't looking Jesse's way yet, one hand stretching out as Porter imagined just blasting the guy and how satisfying it'd feel. He looked Jesse's way finally, leaving his fantasy just that as he frowned. "And, um, threads of the cosmos?" he went on, stepping over a little to glance down at the tarot cards. "Uh, dude? Are you... y'know. Tripping?" Porter asked, just a flicker of a smile on his features. He'd tried a joint once, but otherwise his experience with drugs was limited to what he saw in movies, and Jesse definitely matched that both in appearance and what he'd said thusfar.

Jesse shot an annoyed glance upward. "If I was tripping, I would be having a lot more fun," he stated, and scooted back a little bit, giving his drumstick a couple of raps on the hard floor. It wasn't like he was even out of the way, so the gesture was useless, but he didn't often question his own motivations for doing things. "Yes, the threads of the cosmos, what else would I be asking?" He flipped another card down to cross one of those already in place. It was a sword. making a disgusted noise, Jesse tucked the stick between his crossed legs to sweep all the cards together again. "If I were you, I'd avoid the English and history wing," he said, hoping to impart something sage upon the newbie. "They all like to hang out there around lunch, a lot of the coaches are teachers."

"Good to know," Porter said, tucking the information away in his head for future reference. He generally sat outside of the theater, but just in case he ever moved it'd be good to avoid a wedgie. Porter blinked at the little sound of contempt, crouching down a little as he scooted clear of traffic and squinted at the most recent card. "Uh, what's so bad about that?" he asked, recognizing the tarot cards but not having a clue what they meant.

"It means struggle and strife are ahead, and I've about had my fill for the year," Jesse explained, shuffling all the cards together and tapping them on the floor into a neat stack. He looked over at the kid next to him, got a flash of him with a different face plowing a field. Then yet another with football gear on. And ... moving through the dark. With that face. Huh. "What's your name?" he asked, halfway curious.

"Porter," came the answer as he studied the cards, trying to see the dread in them. He figured it had to be a learned skill of some kind, just associating each card with meaning, but still. No sense to it he could see. "Strife? Like... worse than the animal attacks and ghosts? God, this town," Porter muttered, looking up to Jesse's eyes, "Uh, what's yours?" It seemed like he had popularity issues here too, based on what he'd said, and maybe that meant Porter could commiserate.

"Dunno," Jesse said in answer to his first question. Everything was relative, and the night before had been bad. He didn't like things that kept his mother up at night. She was getting more fragile as her treatments went on. So maybe worse was already there. They each had their own personal hells. He stuck his hand out to Porter. "Jesse Jericho," he answered the second part of the question, looking at the guy with some guarded curiosity. That one bit hadn't fit with the rest, and he was kind of hoping for more. "How new are you, new fish?"

Porter sighed wistfully, glancing up from the cards just long enough to see a couple of girls smirk his way fairly unpleasantly. Either Jesse wasn't the most popular kid in school, or it was common knowledge that Porter was low even in the geek hierarchy. "New enough that no one knows my name, but not so new that people don't notice me," he answered, shoulders bunching in a shrug. "Like... three weeks now? Maybe a little more. Uh, do you always talk like you're in a prison movie?" His voice dropped a touch in volume as Porter smirked. "No offense, but this school's bad enough without me feeling like I might get raped."

Jesse snerked. He'd never thought of it that way, prison talk. It was just the way his mind worked, and how things happened to come out of his mouth. "No worries about rapeage from me, promise," he said with a sideways grin. No, after the Failure that was The Bruce Endeavor, he was done with that for a while. Male or female, there was other shit going on. He glanced up in time to catch some pointing and just shook his head. "Hangin' round me ain't gonna win you any points, kid, see?" he said, low, dropping into a twenties-gangster sort of accent, just for Porter's benefit. If only he had a cigar to chomp on.

His smirk grew wider with a chuckle behind it as Porter shrugged again, wondering how it was that he kept finding people who seemed to be outcasts and pariahs of one sort or another. "You have no idea how often I hear that, dude," he told Jesse, "Seriously? It's often enough that I think it might be a polite way of ditching me or something." Except Kaysen was just like that naturally, Leija had warmed up once he'd made the effort to get in touch with her, and even Elsie seemed to ease off past the initial warning. "So, uh, unless I'm interrupting... tell my fortune?" Porter requested curiously, making the effort. Really, if there were enough of them? Hell, even misfits didn't get messed with in sufficient numbers.

He hesitated at the request, natural suspicion kicking up for a moment. Not many people actually asked him to read for them. At least not seriously. He'd gotten plenty of 'hey Jericho, want to hear a future prediction? You're a faggot, huh huh huh', but the real request was rare. "Okay," he said after a moment, curiosity getting the better of him. He could always focus so much better when he was divining, and maybe he could get something interesting from the baby-faced guy. The little snippet had piqued his interest. "Here," he said, handing the deck over. "Shuffle."

Taking the cards in hand, Porter began a slack shuffle, tossing them from one hand to another carefully. The deck was weighty in a way he wasn't used to, feeling more like a collectible card game than a supposed device for telling his future, but he wouldn't doubt until it was proven wrong. There was far too much recent evidence in his life to make him doubt based on old assumptions. He tossed the cards like that a few times before stopping and holding them out, giving Jesse an uncertain grin. "Should I keep going? Or..."

"Whenever you feel like stopping, man, there's no set way to do it," Jesse said with a faint smirk. He took the deck back as it was offered, handling it mostly by the edges. Then started to lay cards out. They were in an unusual cross-pattern, four straight down the middle, with two at either side of the base and two beside the third card up. He rose up on his knees to see better, pushing his glasses up his nose again, and hovered over the spread, one hand braced on the floor at his side. Blue eyes ticked here and there, putting the meanings together. He frowned a bit. "You're not in a good spot right now," he murmured. "The main shit going on in your life now ... distraction, seduction. There's a manipulator here, that might or might not be you ... a heartbreaker, gossiper ... you're motivated to seek comfort in apprehension, and to be rescued ... Your emotions, they're existing in fantasy, illusion, unrealistic hopes ... " he licked his lips and moved on down the line, more focused for a moment on the cards themselves than the rising influx of images he was getting from Porter's direction.

"Your physical presence has lots of embarrassment and missed opportunities in it. Hesitation. These two, down here, are opposing forces. One is ... organized, efficient, a realistic person, but still with humor, the other ... stagnation and unwise choices. Those could be external or internal, impossible to tell. But the one in the middle reconciles. You're in for something big, my man, some barely-averted disaster. Which y'know, is like every day in Marquette, but hell. But the last one ... whatever the outcome, it's got feminine energy all over it," he said, pointing at the High Priestess at the very bottom of the line. "Balance will come," he settled on with a nod. Then looked up at Porter and saw something that gave him goosebumps. It was that same baby face, only with something completely different behind it. Something malicious. With his hand on a kid.

He hadn't ever considered this sort of thing to be so thorough, not with the bits Porter saw in movies or television. Really, he expected it to be more like a fortune cookie or just vague predictions. Porter might have preferred that, since he didn't like a lot of what he was hearing. A manipulator? That had to be his stepfather, twisting his mother, messing with his money and his ties to Medea. And with everything lately, Porter just didn't know how he could be the one wanting to be rescued. He was the hero, wasn't he? Or was that the unrealistic hope? Was he still the babyfaced loser? The freak and parasite?

The second part was more welcome, but still worrying. Maybe because it was on the mark in a lot of ways. He'd missed so much in his life thusfar from his illness, including the social skills to fit in once he could be a part of the world. But then? All of Porter's personal worries blew away. 'You're in for something big', he repeated silently, looking to Jesse in unspoken wonder. "Balance? Like... how?" he asked, figuring that if Jesse could glean that much, he'd have to know more.

Jesse, for his part, was busy flailing mentally. Because that wasn't all. The hand on the kid had been on his neck, and for a second Jesse felt his own throat close. He'd gotten uncannily good at schooling his face, even though he didn't bother most of the time, but it kicked in then, for sure. Because what he was seeing screamed Dangerous right into his face. There was a brief flash of fur and claws, and then a darkened taxicab and yet another neck-squeeze. "I don't know," he said through numb lips. The acts he was getting bits of did not match up to the guileless-looking guy in front of him. But if Jesse knew anything, it was that appearances could be deceiving. "How do you want to be balanced?" he heard himself asking. There was more, more flashes of banality in between the intensely-emotioned violent memories.

Of course the answer was obvious, but it wasn't one Porter could really share. He wanted an end to the hunger, a life free of his strange power, that would be his ideal balance. But that wasn't something he could say. "I don't know," he murmured, reaching out to turn the High Priestess card a bit and study it, "I guess just... getting clear of my folks? Living my own life? Y'know, not having to do what everyone else says I should." Which was the standard list of teenage wants, he knew, but the truth just wasn't something he could really share. "The... the disaster that's coming? No details there, I'm guessing," Porter pressed, switching the topic away from himself as much as he could.

He had the worse impulse to slap Porter's hand away. He was protective of his cards, and this kid ... well he had blood on his hands, to use an cliche'. But he knew that wouldn't make any sense, and might tip him off in a way that Jesse didn't want to do. "Dunno man, hard to figure out at this juncture," he said, and it came out as more of a mutter than he wanted it to. Jesse cleared his throat and started gathering the spread up and back into the deck in a calm and collected fashion. It was time to bail. Past time. When the fuck was he going to learn that he didn't want to know? "Could be years down the road, could be tomorrow, who knows? Best thing to do is just look at where you are now and see what you want to change. Fate helps those that help themselves, all that." He was rambling, but he couldn't really help it.

"I thought that was Jesus," Porter joked quietly, slipping back to let Jesse gather his stuff. He wasn't sold on the idea of the reading, though it definitely had his mind working in all kinds of weird ways. But he also knew that this was how 'psychics' made their livings, they showed you enough to let you make the connections. Torn between wanting to believe and wanting Jesse to be wrong, Porter just shrugged a little. "Good advice, anyway," he conceded, "It's what I'm working on, so hey, here's hoping." It was close to the end of lunch, maybe that was why Jesse was packing up. "And, um, despite your bad rep and my New Guy sticker? Cool meeting you, I'm nearly onto my second hand counting the people who haven't laughed at me or called me 'tyke'."

How 'bout people you've killed, Jack, how many hands you got goin' there? very nearly came out of his mouth, but Jesse bit it back. He was ... thoroughly disturbed, in a word. Finding out the skinny dude with the puppy eyes that was Bruce's friend ... Nate, finding out that Nate had hunted the supernatural was one thing, finding a murderer just wandering around the hallway, getting picked on ... was quite another. Maybe he didn't need to go to class for the rest of the day, maybe home was a better place for him just then. "Yeah, take it easy," he said, slipping his cards back in the box before tucking them into his messenger bag, along with the drum stick he'd set down. "Ah, I gotta ... hit the john, so ... remember what I said about the history hall." It was the best he could do. He stood up straight and started away, fighting that built-in urge to run.