Chapter Text
Alex was woken up from their nap by someone knocking on the door of their office.
“Give me a minute please!" they said, rushing to make themself look presentable. They put their glasses back on their face, and they smoothed their ginger hair back into place. When they finally looked like they hadn't been sleeping in a very uncomfortable position on their desk for the last hour or so instead of working, they called out to the person knocking.
"Come in!"
Ashley, their assistant, entered the office holding some papers.
"Good afternoon boss!" She said smiling while Alex smiled "Afternoon Ash, is there something you need?" they asked as they fidgeted with their pen.
"These need a few signatures, also the head of PMC wanted to arrange a meeting with you in a few weeks to talk about the new medicine we released!" she said, handing Alex the papers.
Dr. Alex V. Morico was the 22 year old CEO of their family company, Morico Medicines. Admittedly, they were maybe a bit too young to be handling such a huge company by themself, but their parents wanted to retire, and they had plenty of people helping them out, including their secretary, Ashley.
While Alex went through the papers and signed them, they asked Ashley for details about the meeting.
Finally, they got through signing the papers, and when Ashley left with the signed papers, they sighed and looked at the time.
" 2:30 in the afternoon, huh " Alex thought and stood up to stretch a little. They were still a little tired, even though they just took a nap. Paperwork really drained them, but they could sit through it because they knew it was necessary. They stood there for a few minutes and decided that they’d really like a nice pick-me-up cup of coffee. Alex dialled a number on their phone, and waited for them to answer.
“Hey Toby? Are you up to get some coffee?”
Long story short, Toby was having a bad day. Well, the last few days were bad too, but this one was probably the worst so far. After forcing himself to try and apply for several jobs, he just got refused from a job for the 5th time this week.
Well, it wasn’t his fault that he had to skip the last 2 years of highschool and college to prepare his body to undergo thousands of years of evolution at once. Yeah, it wasn’t like he could casually tell the people at the job interview that he was an Inhuman, because he swore not to in order to keep his fellow Inhumans safe.
Toby slouched up the stairs to his apartment, unlocked the door, and then flopped onto his bed. His savings were going to be running out soon, and he decided to choose New York of all places to live in. New fucking York. With its ridiculously high rent. In hindsight, Toby wasn’t good at making decisions. Then his phone started ringing. For a moment he debated just letting it go to voicemail, but then the reasonable voice in his head said that it might be one of those jobs he applied for online. He scrambled to pick it up. The Caller ID said it was Dr. A. Morico. He wondered for a second why one of the most influential figures in the modern age was calling him, then he remembered.
“Hey Toby? Are you up to get some coffee?”
Alex and Toby met a few months ago, on an online forum. They met through a mutual friend of theirs, MJ. The three were avid fans of this book, which was about angels and demons, but that was a story for another time. It was only recently that Alex revealed to Toby that they were Dr. Morico, AKA the billionaire CEO of Morico Medicines, rich enough to rival Tony Stark. It was hard to get used to.
“Oh umm,” he said, getting up and pretending he had his life together. “Yeah, totally! Where are we getting coffee?”
"There's a new coffee shop that opened last week that’s ‘round the block.”
“The one at Bell Street?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you there!”
Unlike Tony Stark, Alex was thankfully less of a public figure than he was. But they made sure to at least try to cover up their face with a black face mask and sunglasses as they took a limousine to Brew & Chew Café. It only took one experience of really stalker-y paparazzi to make them anxious about going out and about. The world, for some reason, really wanted to know about the first genderfluid billionaire. It made them feel weird about being seen as an eccentric celebrity of some kind, even though they just wanted to live their life while being loud and proud about their identity. It was 2012, for fuck’s sake, not the Middle Ages.
Toby was already there, sitting at a table. He waved at them from inside the coffee shop. They smiled behind their mask and waved back. That was one thing the two had in common, they were both transgender. Toby wasn’t that open about it though.
“Heyyo, how’s my super rich friend?” Toby asked as they sat across from him. He didn’t bother to dress up, this was just a casual hangout. He had his large red jacket that he always wore every time they met, Alex swore he was born in that thing.
"Good, but I still hate it when paparazzi appear out of nowhere when I just want some peace."
“Is it about the billionaire thing or is it about the genderfluid thing?”
"A mix of both," they answered while taking a look at the menu. Toby frowned sympathetically. The café had the usual stuff you’d expect at a café, but there were more options for snacks and pastries.
“Yeah, if I were you, I wouldn’t check social media. Twitter has been on fire since you came out.”
“And I don’t regret it nor do I feel any shame about it,” they said proudly.
“As you should!”
Toby didn’t check social media often, it wasn’t like he had anything to post about, or had that many friends. Well he did have friends of course, but they were functional adults who didn’t spend almost all their time awake scrolling on Twitter. But to be honest sometimes he would go on there and annoy bigoted and transphobic people. And oh boy, there were a lot of transphobic people.
One of the employees walked over and asked them what they would like to order. Toby decided to order hot chocolate and a coffee flavoured donut, while Alex ordered an Iced coffee and a chocolate covered croissant.
“So…I haven’t traveled in a while.”
Toby dipped his donut in the hot chocolate. “Yeah, I mean you do have a company to run.” He didn’t know exactly what being CEO entailed, but it was probably really hectic.
“I know, I know, but you know we need breaks too so I was wondering…would you like to travel with me?”
“Eh… I don’t think I can. I’m kinda busy at the moment…” By busy he meant he intended to lie down in his apartment and cry inside about the things out of his control for the next day or so. And watch cat videos. And rewatch Avatar: The Last Airbender. And reread Good Omens for the billionth time because he was sad and gay.
“You don’t need to worry about tickets, I’ll pay for it. My treat I promise.”
Toby thought of it. The responsible thing to do was refuse, and try to get his life back together. But since when has Toby ever been responsible? He took a large bite of his donut.
“Dhew yew have an idyea of hwere yew wanna go?” he said while chewing.
Alex beamed. “Yup, I was planning to go to LA and check it out.”
“Count me in! When are we leaving?”
“I’d like to say right now but I can’t ‘cause I have an important meeting that’ll be on Friday,” they said, taking a sip of their coffee.
“I’m basically free whenever.” That was, until he ran out of money to pay for the rent, electricity bill, water bill, the necessary stuff. But it was gonna be fine. He’d figure something out, he always does. At least hopefully he would.
“Alright, I’ll check if we can leave by Friday after the meeting and I can get Ashley to take care of the company while I’m gone.”
He didn’t know who Ashley was, but Alex seemed to trust them. “Don’t you have a private jet or something?” Toby said after taking a big gulp of his hot chocolate.
“Yeah, but I have to ask the crew if they are available by then.”
“Ohh, okay.”
Alex laughed. “You wanna know why I chose LA?”
“Yeah?”
“My parents have an old vacation house there in LA that we can stay at for a while. There’s also a guy there who owns a club and people say he claims himself to be ‘The Devil’,” Alex said, grinning.
Toby raised an eyebrow. “That’s probably a red flag, but okay.”
“Rumours say he’s charming and that meeting him is like a temptation from a devil,” they said, making a dramatic gesture with their hands. Toby looked at them incredulously.
“That’s even more of a red flag, to be honest. Is this because you still have a fictional crush on Crowley?”
"Well, I'm curious about what people say that they mean they can't 'resist' him and maybe, I mean Crowley's hot, you can't deny that."
He rolled his eyes and muttered, “Bet he can’t resist it when I punch him in the face.” Toby heard stories of weird rich guys from Los Angeles taking advantage of people, and frankly, he didn’t want that to happen to Alex.
“Fucking creepy, that’s what that is.”
"Well, as mom says, you never know until you try so…we'll go try it unless you don't want to go anymore?"
Toby sighed. “Fine, but I’m only coming so I can beat him up if he does anything.”
"Aw you do care about me! But don't worry, I can handle myself too."
Little did they know, a few blocks away, a demigod threw a billionaire out of a window. And little did they also know, a few blocks away, a giant, Infinity powered portal was being opened in the sky.
“Hey Alex, weird question, I know, but can I borrow some money-”
Then the explosions began.
Toby flinched and looked out of the window to see a large rift in the sky, and figures in the distance flying out of it.
“Oh please tell me I’m not the only one seeing this.”
“Nope, you’re not the only one.”
As the figures approached, they saw them clearer, humanoid creatures coated with strange armour, some of them with gun-like weapons attached to their arms, others holding a weird hybrid of a staff and a rifle. They descended from the air using flying machines, and the people in the café watched in horror.
“We should probably run,” Toby said, pointing out the obvious.
“That we should,” Alex nodded, before rushing out of their seat and out of the café, followed by everyone else inside. New York City was a wreck. There were people running everywhere being chased by those alien things, cars blowing up, things in the sky-
“WAS THAT IRON MAN?!?” someone yelled, before one of the aliens landed in front of them and shot a beam of energy in their chest. Toby tried not to look and kept running. It was a normal day, but then suddenly they were plunged into an action movie of some kind. It all felt so unreal.
“What the hell was that?” Alex shouted while running and trying to dodge some debris that was falling.
They ran through the city with no real destination. After all, where was a safe place to hide, anyway? The creatures fired blasts and throw bombs everywhere, at buildings, cars, people, it was total chaos. In action movies it didn’t seem that bad, but when you were experiencing it in person, it was borderline sensory overload. If your ears weren’t already ruined by all the explosions, there was still smoke everywhere getting in your eyes, the horrid, horrid smell of burning flesh, and of course, the aliens shooting laser beams at you.
A building near them crumbled to dust, and concrete and glass were crashing down upon them. Toby tried to shield his face from the smoke by pulling up the hood on his jacket, and he held his arm out over Alex, as if his arm could stop a giant piece of concrete from killing them both. “Quick, get into that car!”
Alex nodded and ran to the car with Toby to avoid the onslaught of debris. Something fell on the car, making a dent that almost hit Toby. He looked out of the window to see a man in a navy blue suit jumping off the car.
“Hopefully this car works so we can try driving out of here,” said Alex, getting into the driver’s seat.
The key was still in the ignition, so Alex grabbed the steering wheel and stomped on the gas. Miraculously, the car still worked, even though Toby saw it partly explode a few moments ago.
“WHERE ARE WE EVEN GONNA GO?”
“SOMEWHERE THAT WE WON’T GET HIT BY A FALLING BUILDING!”
He sighed and got into the passenger seat, putting on the seatbelt. They drove through the streets, somehow not hitting any of the overturned and broken cars and not getting blown up by one of the alien things. In the distance, Alex saw one of the aliens on the road, about to throw a glowing blue object at a bus full of people.
“Hey Toby, watch thiiiis!” they said, speeding up, as Toby held on for dear life, and crashed the car into the alien thing. “HOLY SHIT!”
Toby unbuckled his seatbelt and looked at the bus of people, and saw that they were stuck inside. Some people were trying to get out through the windows, but the main door was stuck closed. He tried opening it through brute force, but he wasn’t strong enough. He tried again, this time using his Inhuman ability to force open the metal door. He knows he promised the Inhumans to not use his abilities in front of people, but it was a dire situation. The people in the bus got out and started running.
“Dude, that was so cool!” Alex said as he got back in the car. Toby looked at his arm that he used to shield Alex with earlier, which was bleeding from some glass shards impaling it.
“Uh, thanks,” he said, wincing.
"Want some help with that?" Alex said, noticing his injury.
“Sorry, what?”
They gently took his arm and put their wrist above it, where Toby noticed that they were wearing a sleek wristband. It scanned his arm, and then tiny robotic arms came out of it and took the splinters out. It then sprayed a fine mist on his arm, which was probably a disinfectant of some kind. Alex then took some gauze out of their bag and wrapped up his arm.
“I keep forgetting about how crazy technology is nowadays. When are you releasing a product like that to the public?”
“We’re trying to make it cheaper to mass-produce, but when we do, we definitely will.”
The two drove away, and as much as Toby wanted to go out there and be like a superhero of some kind, this was real life, and he could definitely possibly die, metalbending abilities or not. Alex kept their eyes on the road, while he kept his eyes glued to the window. There were now giant worms emerging from the portal. Toby felt sick. He hoped that someone, anyone, would be able to put a stop to the madness. They saw some tanks and army people driving by, so there was some hope. But what were they gonna do against flying aliens with explosives?
Now that they were a safe distance from the portal, and barely any aliens were there, Toby pulled out his phone and checked the news.
“The World Security Council is sending a nuclear bomb in order to stop the threat. Citizens are encouraged to evacuate, but authorities may not be able to get everyone to safety,” the news anchor said. Toby couldn’t believe it. They were just going to carelessly drop a nuke and kill millions, just to keep the aliens from being a bigger threat? Well, to be fair, it would probably work, but the end doesn’t justify the means.
The car abruptly broke down a few blocks away from the disaster, and Alex and Toby stepped out of it. Something zoomed past their heads, something vaguely nuke-shaped. No use running now. It wasn’t like they could outrun a nuclear bomb, anyway.
“What now?” Alex asked. Toby couldn’t find himself to speak. He couldn’t even cry, or scream. He just watched, and waited.
“We can’t just let this happen!”
But then nothing happened. There was no explosion, no incineration, no nuclear fallout. The two watched in shock as the portal closed, and the large aliens came crashing down.
“I think I need to lie down,” Toby said, his mouth dry. Alex found themself agreeing with him.