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Frankly, at least a Villain fight outside the front windows makes a boring shift interesting. Ever since the morning rush finished and he prepped for the lunch rush, Tommy's been he'd been losing his mind with boredom. That is until a car got tossed through the air and XD and Siren started battling it out in the street.
Tommy leans on the counter, wiping the coffee machine again with a cloth mindlessly as he watches Siren, a tall and slender figure in a trench coat and mask covering his lower face, kick at a fire hydrant. It topples - while the villain isn’t known for strength, supers are slightly stronger than normal people like Tommy - water shooting into the air. It arcs over him and hits the floor, the sunlight refracting through it. Siren tips his head back and Tommy can hear him laugh under the spray, even from behind the counter.
“Kneel!” Siren commands, arms thrown wide and back to the coffee shop window. Tommy sees how XD collapses to the ground instinctively and wants to laugh, even as his own knees buckle. The ‘number 1 hero’ went against Siren without earplugs like an idiot. Tommy leans heavily on the counter, refusing to come under Siren’s thrall completely by accident. He clenches his hand around the cloth, breathing through the instinct, staring at the fake wood grain. He knows that if he’d been on the street he’d be in the same place that XD is.
Which is why he doesn’t notice the form of Siren being hurtled backward until the window crashes. The thrall snaps and his head jerks up. Mid-morning sunlight sparkles off the shattered glass, momentarily blinding him.
He blinks and there’s a villain in the coffeeshop. Siren is sprawled, groaning, against a fallen table, coat flipped up around his head. Tommy flinches as Siren groans, voice made louder by his mask, and struggles to his feet.
“Fucking prick.” Siren grumbles, brushing glass off himself. XD can be seen prowling across the street towards them. Is he going to slaughter Siren in the shop? What a mess! He’d for sure have to clean it up. The floor would never be the same.
“Hmm.” Tommy replies, affirmatively, still in customer service mode. His eyes close briefly with disappointment, he can’t believe being a slave to capitalism has reduced him to catching a villain’s attention. One of the top villains as well, just under the Blade and the Angel of Death but no ones seen them in ages.
Tommy needs to stop his mind wandering when there’s fucking Siren darting towards him through the small space, glass crunching under his boots. He rears back desperately, swinging the hand with the cloth to hit him, and knocking into the fridges behind him. Like shooting fish in a barrel, a hand clamps around his wrist, tugging Tommy forward. Pain shoots down his arm. Despite this, he tries to dig his heels in but that just makes him trip and bang into the counter, wheezing.
“Get off me you dick!” Tommy snarls, slightly winded, as Siren manhandles him to the other side and pulls him to his chest.
There’s a hissed command of ‘Don’t fight.’ that leaves Tommy trapped, Siren’s thrall leaching into his bones like warmth from a hot bath. Then he spins them and Tommy gets a face full of XD, an arm clamping around his chest. Siren ducks his head low and into Tommy’s shoulder, so XD doesn’t have a clear shot at his head since he’s taller than the teen.
Pro-hero XD’s whole schtick was the obnoxious, acidic green and porcelain mask. It was probably supposed to be fun and marketable but, with a villain plastered to his back, the sight of him picking his way through the window just makes Tommy queasy.
He’s a fucking meat shield. The question is whether XD cares more about taking down Siren or saving people. Siren’s high ranking and he’s seen the news. Seen the stories of ‘collateral damage for the greater good’, the clips of heroes crying to families of the people they didn’t care to save. Not that they care about anyone but the rich. Bitches.
“Let the kid go!” XD says, sword twirling dramatically in his hand. Tommy feels like rolling his eyes, then remembers that there’s at least a 70% chance of dying here, and does it anyway. XD
“I’m not a kid!” He’s 17, which at least warrants a ‘teen’ or even ‘young adult’ no matter his baby face.
Anyway Tommy doesn’t have a family they can go crying to and he sure as hell isn’t going to take the chance of whether XD is feeling merciful today.
Neither, from the way he’s dragged, toes scraping on the linoleum when he stumbles, to the side and back behind the counter, is Siren.
“That was counterproductive. You could have just jumped the counter, but no!” Tommy complains as they make their way to the back room. Siren doesn’t seem to be paying attention to what he says. He fumbles with the door, trying to open it without looking and keep Tommy flush against his chest. When he finally grabs the handle, Siren pressed down on it. Then pulls on it, desperately trying to open the door.
XD leaps onto the counter, towering over them, not needing to hunch from the tall ceilings. He levels his sword at the pair and Tommy flinches back. Siren’s arm lowers to wrap around his waist, still frantically moving the handle up and down. XD’s mask tilts and Tommy’s struck with the very real possibility that he’s actually going to die. He bites down on the rising panic and spins in the circle of Siren’s arm, frantically saying,
“There’s a code, idiot.” Tommy reaches behind Siren, chest to chest with brown curls tickling his face, and punches the code into the keypad on instinct. There’s a noise of the door being unlocked. Siren throws it backward, pulling them into the back room and slamming the door shut. It audibly locks.
Siren doesn’t even give him a moment, yanking him backwards by his wrist. Tommy stumbles after him, still unable to pull away, but turns his head at the loud scraping sound that follows them. XD’s sword protrudes from the middle of the metal door. The hysterical thought of ‘My manager’s gonna kill me’ passes through his mind that he doesn’t even notice his feet moving. The sword’s just being pulled back through as Siren slams his hand into the door to the alley behind the shop.
They stumble into the alley, large bins lining the walls. Siren keeps moving, not even looking back while fishing a phone out of his trench coat. He taps at it, their feet pounding on the pavement as they emerge onto another street.
They take a left, then another. He doesn’t dare to look behind them, the yelling behind them muffled by the thundering of his heart. Tommy knows this part of L’manberg, the towering, run down apartment blocks that become sparser as they make their way toward the district of warehouses near the docks. He lives in one of them, not this street though. Water splashes around his ankles as he runs even though he could swear it hasn’t been raining.
They leave the apartments aside, salt in the air. Tommy keeps his eyes on his feet, his dirty trainers soaked through, so he doesn’t slip. Siren pulls him between two abandoned warehouses, grey steel on either side of them as high as the eye can see. He skids to a stop, Tommy only just catching himself from falling into his side, throwing aside a door.
Siren closes the door after them. Finally he lets go of Tommy’s wrist, who brings it to his chest instinctively. The skin is red and slightly tender. sure to bruise. He gives it a harsh rub, watches how the red skin turns white before settling back to the flushed state.
Siren seems to be doing something, and when Tommy looks up it makes him roll his eyes in his face. For a second he looks offended that Tommy would do that, before slightly kicking the chair he’d brought over.
“Sit down.” Tommy just crosses his arms over his chest.
“Am I still a hostage, bitch? Can’t I just go?” Siren looks off into the middle distance exasperated before he grabs Tommy’s shoulder and pulls him into the chair, not even bothering to use thrall on him. He crouches down behind the chair, and Tommy cranes his neck, groaning as duck tape makes an awful ripping sound. At least Siren tapes over his sleeves, tying him to the chair. Once it’s done, however, and Siren stands, coming around to stand in front of Tommy, silence sets in.
Tommy takes the time to take in Siren’s appearance. He’s tall, but slim. Someone might call him lanky or slender, if they were feeling generous. Weedy comes to Tommy’s mind. Black turtleneck under a dark brown trench coat. He forces his eyes not to stray to the leather pants stretched over his thighs and slightly platformed boots, because what Siren definitely needs is more height. Not.
Eyes safely focused on Siren’s top half, Tommy laughs at the beanie he sees - what a nerd! - from which chocolate curls escape from. The mask, made from a chunky metal, covers his lower face to the bridge of his nose. It makes him look almost inhuman, piercing eyes above it, and any lesser man would be terrified. Tommy just scoffs. The eyes narrow at him.
“What?”
“You’re not intimidating,” Tommy tilts his head back, letting his legs sprawl casually, “Fuckin’ tall is all, ain’t it?”
Siren’s eyes go wide. He’s probably flaring his nostrils or baring his teeth.
“You just look startled. Ain’t nobody tell you like it is before?”
“You,” Siren says, sounding slightly numb. Which makes Tommy incredibly victorious. “Are the most bewildering Civ I have ever met.”
Tommy rolls his eyes, pushing his chest out so his head can tip back even farther to belay his exasperation. He’s sick of Super’s calling him a Civ - short for Civilian like he isn’t even a person - and then not tipping him for their fucking mocha or frappechino or whatever they fucking ordered at an exuberant price that they needed in their hand’s 10 minutes ago.
“Ohhh I’m Siren!” Tommy mocks in a high, grating pitch, eyes closed with the back of his skull against the back of the chair, “And I’m so much better than the gutter rat Civ’s because I head the Syndicate now daddy left with his boyfriend! Mimimi I’m going to enthrall you!”
There’s a moment of stunned silence. Tommy would think he would be about to be shot, brains scattered on the warehouse floor, if Siren wasn’t so much of a pussy.
“I should have let XD run you through.”
“But che didn’t!” o7 vine he thinks, a little delirious.
“...Oh my God.”
Tommy rolls his eyes.
“Mimimi I would have died if the handsome and talented TommyInnit didn’t think fast about the,” Tommy lets his voice go natural again, “Obviously coded door.”
“It wasn’t obviously coded!” Siren shrieks, the mechanisms in his mask making the end distort. So much for him being level headed and charming.
“No!” Tommy drawls, opening his eyes. He sits back in the chair, letting his head come up, his curls bouncing as they frame his face. Siren’s eyes flick to them and back to his, “It’s just common policy and also the keypad on the wall at chest height.”
“We’re not talking about this.”
“Make me.” He spits out, churlish.
Siren’s head tilts, the motion suspended in the sudden, anticipatory silence. Awkwardly and suddenly aware of the amount of saliva that has accumulated in his mouth, Tommy swallows. It does nothing to alleviate the uncomfortableness, the unfamiliar electric feeling like he’s too close to a sparking outlet, where one wrong move will ruin him forever.
Siren takes a step forward, then another and another until Tommy has to tilt his chin all the way up to look at him. A hand rests over his Adam's Apple, fingers curling into the sides of it, the pressure gentle but promising more. An audibly shaky breath escapes Tommy’s parted lips, brushing over Siren’s wrist. Siren dips down, curls tumbling off his eyes, revealing the blown wide pupils. Tommy sees himself reflected in them, lips parted, and closes his eyes, ashamed.
He breathes, feeling Siren’s presence over him, all around him, his scent overwhelming his senses. Metallic and heady and settling over his tongue.
Tommy can’t bear to look as fingers slide up the back of his neck, threading through his curls. Siren cradles the back of his head. A quick flick of his wrist could kill Tommy, put him out of the shit game that is life permanently. But the nails that gently scratch at his scalp are soothing, and if he’s going to die he might as well have something nice, as Tommy tilts his head back into the hold with a quiet hum.
“Look at me.” Quietly said but with an underlying demand that sends a shiver down Tommy’s spine. But the words are not thrall soaked. Maybe Siren deems he doesn’t need it with Tommy?
Reluctantly, Tommy blinks his eyes open. Siren’s eyes have curved into half-moons with the expression that Tommy can’t see.
Siren curls over him further, the hand slipping from his hair - Tommy stoutly ignores the disappointed whine he makes, but Siren’s eyes flick to catch his - and stroking down his back.
Their faces are side to side and he tilts his head, not caring about the hand still curled around his throat like a necklace, rests his cheek against Siren’s, feeling both the warm skin and cold metal.
The bindings are cut and Siren steps back. Tommy closes his eyes, mourning the loss of the closeness, the heat and all encompassing presence.
When he opens them again, Siren is gone.
The warehouse stretches out dark and unforgiving around him, the light streaking in from the windows casting shadows onto the ground.
He takes a moment and then gathers his wits, exhaling in relief and something he can’t put a finger to.
Then, unsteady like a fawn, Tommy pushes himself to his feet and staggers home.
Fucking hell.