Work Text:
Grian was getting a little tired of urgent texts from Jimmy that just ended up being another ‘Extra-Spicy-Ificator’ or ‘Universal-Bike-Helmet-Ificator.’ He’d rather this than Jimmy being in real danger, of course, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t annoying. Grian had better things to do than babysit Jimmy and Dr. Blaze.
What better things? Well, that wasn’t really the point. Anything, really. Learning to play flute. Painting his walls one shade darker. Putting hair dye in Jimmy’s showerhead.
Well, maybe he’d do that after he helped Jimmy out today. Grian checked his phone again, hoping maybe the notification would be gone and he didn’t have to worry about being late to work again.
dr blaze is doing something big, meet me above the bagel shop
“There’s a lot of bagel shops in this city, Jimmy,” Grian complained to himself. He did know exactly what Jimmy was talking about, but that wasn’t the point.
He sighed and pulled on his superhero outfit, one of his nails snagging on his sleeve and making an ominous ripping noise when he pushed his hand through. His eye twitched.
Yeah, Jimmy was going to have purple hair soon.
At least it wasn’t rush hour. It took Grian about half an hour to drive to the bagel shop, and then another 10 minutes to find parking, and another 15 to walk to the bagel shop.
He was definitely going to be late for work.
Jogging up the stairs, he saw the balcony that Jimmy was already leaning out on. It still gave him a little bit of a panicked jolt to see Jimmy near any sort of fall, even all this time later.
He supposed that was one thing to appreciate about Blaze. He didn’t send people flying off buildings for Jimmy to follow.
“Timmy!” Grian called out, clapping his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and making him jump and drop the last of his bagel off the edge of the balcony.
“Grian! You-you made me drop my—”
“Where we headed today, Tim?”
“You really shouldn’t be using names right now, we’re in costume,” Jimmy grumbled, still looking mournfully after his bagel. Down below, it was being swarmed by pigeons.
“Look, Canary, it’s okay, your brothers of a feather are enjoying it more than you were anyways!” Grian grinned, slapping Jimmy’s shoulder again.
“Canaries and pigeons aren’t even—you’d be—parrots are—”
“Stunning argument you make.”
“Whatever!” He threw his hands up and rolled his eyes, stepping away from the balcony’s edge and pacing back and forth. “Dr. Blaze is going to be—somewhere around here. I think.”
“Alright, well, let’s get him, yeah?” Grian said, heading back inside. “Forever thankless warriors of justice against the horrors of the great Dr. Blaze’s machines.”
“Oh, be quiet,” Jimmy grumbled, following Grian inside. “Just because nothing he’s done has done damage yet doesn’t mean it can’t! I mean, if he can make a—a machine that will change the makeup of bricks all across the city, he could sure make something worse!”
“Okay, but he… hasn’t… and I don’t think he’s going to. Doesn’t matter right now, let’s go take this guy down again, I’ll get you another bagel afterwards.”
“You better!”
Grian rolled his eyes, a smile on his face as he and Jimmy headed out the door.
—
“Canary, I’m missing work for this,” Grian complained, a little out of breath from walking up so many flights of stairs. “I may owe you a bagel, but you owe me—writing cover letters for me when I get fired!”
“Oh, you won’t get fired,” Jimmy scoffed. “You didn’t get fired when you had to take a whole two days off last week when you got hurt!”
“It’s a lot easier to get time off when you have hospital papers, Canary,” Grian said.
“You didn’t go to the hospital, you literally just—”
“Sh-sh-sh, that’s not the point.”
Jimmy sighed loudly. “Sure.”
Grian laughed. “You’d better be practicing your cover letter skills, anyways.”
“You chose to be a superhero! I’m not forcing you to be here!”
I’m a superhero to keep you from doing something stupid, Grian didn’t say. “Sure, but a man needs to eat, Canary.”
“A man sure does, Parrot, a man needs to eat breakfast and not have it picked off by pigeons-”
“Still the bagel? I’ll get you another one, I already said so!”
“But I’m hungry now, what if I pass out from hunger and die by one of Dr. Blaze’s contraptions? What then?”
“Then I’ll make sure to bring a bagel to your grave.”
Jimmy spluttered and shoved Grian’s shoulder, stumbling when Grian shoved back.
It took another few minutes to get to the top of the building, and then another few for Grian to pick the lock on the door. It was a skill he was pretty proud of, something he’d picked up when he and Jimmy were young, and one that came in very useful as a superhero.
Grian wouldn’t have guessed so, but hey, there wasn’t always time to get into places officially.
Dr. Blaze, in all his overdramatic glory, stood on top of the roof, overlooking the city. He whirled around. On the roof behind him was a strange, sleek box about the size of a microwave. Presumably his contraption of the week.
“Ah! I was wondering when you’d get here!” he said. “Here to stop me?”
God, these two are so dramatic.
“Whatever you’ve got planned, Dr. Blaze, I’m not going to let you hurt this city!” Jimmy said, sharply gesturing at Blaze.
“Ah, but I don’t think you can stop me, Canary! It’s already in motion, too late to be shut off!”
Jimmy gasped. Grian wanted to lay down.
“You see, I realized that this city has far too little… wildlife. With my new Miceificator, I can send out a high-frequency signal that attracts mice, and all the mice in the city are going to come out from their hidey-holes and fill the streets! With so many mice covering the ground, no one will be able to drive where they need to go, and in the confusion, I can rain chaos on the city!”
“That’s—that’s horrible! What if someone needs to get to the hospital?! What about all the people who will lose their jobs?”
Dr. Blaze looked a little taken aback. “Well, I’m going to keep routes to the hospital clear. And I don’t care if people lose their jobs, the whole point is they’re going to have bigger problems anyways. I’m a supervillain, Canary.”
“Well—I’m not going to let you!”
“It’s too late, Canary! The Miceificator is already on! Any minute now, they’re going to come flooding out!”
Was Grian living a dream? This wasn’t where he thought he’d end up in life. Watching his brother fight an overdramatic, oddball self-proclaimed supervillain who wanted to use mice to take over their city.
Jimmy leapt forward and tried to tackle Blaze, who dodged out of the way and made Jimmy the one who ended up falling. “Go Canary,” Grian called out, monotone. Blaze looked at him and then back to the fight.
Grian was sure it seemed very intense to the fighting two, but from over here, it looked a lot like two five-year-olds play-fighting. He felt like he was bringing Jimmy out to be socialized, like a weird puppy, or maybe a pet bird. Did birds need to be socialized? He wasn’t sure.
Lost in thought, he didn’t realize that Jimmy had been flung in his direction until he was hit square on with a flying Jimmy. He yelped and grabbed at the wall to stay upright. “Rude!” Blaze didn’t even acknowledge him, too focused on Jimmy.
“And here’s your problem, Canary!” he said triumphantly. “You’re too—”
Without warning, Jimmy dashed forward towards the Miceificator, barrelling past Blaze and grabbing the machine tightly. He tried to do a dramatic little somersault and mostly just ended up looking ridiculous. Oh, god, Blaze was rubbing off on him.
The end result was the same, though: Jimmy got right up to the edge of the building (it was fine, it was fine, there was a railing, he wouldn’t fall, but what if Blaze pushed him) and threw the machine off.
“My—my—do you know how long it took to make that?” Blaze yelped. “You couldn’t have just hit the off button?!”
“You’re trying to take over the city! I’m not very inclined to feel bad for your loss of time!”
Those two were practically dating at this point. Grian was feeling like a real third wheel right about now.
“It’s called respect, you’d think a superhero would know that!”
“You get what you give, Dr. Blaze, and I wouldn’t call filling the streets with mice respect!” Jimmy said, puffing out his chest indignantly.
Grian fought the urge to cringe a bit. This was embarrassing, both of them were, and sometimes it was great to not be big-time superheroes so no one was recording their fights. They were both just so dramatic, not that Jimmy was even that bad normally, it seemed like Blaze brought it out in him. They would do numbers in community theater, Grian thought to himself, and then thought maybe he was spending too much time on Twitter.
Well, with the fight winding down, it was about time for Grian to step in. While Blaze was far from the scariest person he and Jimmy fought, and Grian didn’t really think he was doing much damage, he still needed to be stopped.
A small voice in the back of Grian’s mind said that maybe Blaze was better off being left alone, so long as he kept Jimmy distracted,away from more dangerous people, and having, god forbid, fun.
Grian told that part of his mind to be quiet. There wasn’t much feeling behind it.
He sighed and pulled out some handcuffs, trying to sneak behind Blaze and, somehow, succeeding. The two of them had started arguing more heatedly while Grian was lost in thought.
In a single motion, Grian grabbed for Blaze’s hands and snapped one of them into the handcuffs before Blaze tore away from him and whipped around, glaring.
“I’ll be back!” he snarled, and kicked off with his boots, shooting into the air.
What a shame that Grian hadn’t been able to stop him, he’d sure tried his hardest.
“I’ll be back, too, Dr. Blaze! And I’ll stop you as many times as I need to!” Jimmy shouted after Blaze.
If it wouldn’t end badly for Grian, he’d tease Jimmy that that sounded almost like something from a terrible Hallmark movie.
“Well, that’s alright, Tim. Next time! For now, how about that bagel?” Grian said, clapping Jimmy on the shoulder.
“Can’t believe he got away again,” Jimmy was muttering, flexing his fist. “Almost got through with his mouse plan, too, I need to step up my game, I need to figure out where he’s based out of—”
“Okay, but for now, how about that bagel?” Grian said, pushing his brother towards the stairwell door.
Jimmy grumbled, but went through, and Grian counted that as a victory.
—
Grian had ended up having to get two bagels for Jimmy at his demand, and had bought one for himself as well.
He could tell Jimmy was suspicious of how easily he’d given in when asked for two, and he was trying to ignore the look Jimmy was giving him.
He wasn’t sure how to approach this. But what he was doing with Blaze, it wasn’t sustainable, not for such a relatively low-risk enemy.
Grian hadn’t been joking about his job. He’d gotten in trouble last week, and he was on thin ice, and he really might lose his job. He didn’t want Jimmy to know that, because then Jimmy would blame himself for it, and he wouldn’t ask for help, and then who would catch him when he fell, so Grian joked about it.
“Sooo… Dr. Blaze, huh?” Grian blurted out, and immediately wished he could steal someone’s time-travel powers. He could’ve said anything but that, but here they were.
“...Yep. What about him?” Jimmy said curiously.
“Taking over the city via mouse, is he? Wireless mouse, bluetooth mouse if you will—”
“Well, I stopped him, we stopped him, so he isn’t actually,” Jimmy said with pride in his voice. This was going to hurt Grian to say.
“So the bit that we need to talk about… is, I guess, the we of that. I can’t… this is too much, right now, for someone who’s really not that much of a threat. I have to take basically an entire day every week or two to help you.”
“Hang—hang on, what do you mean, not that much of a threat? He’s, I mean, look at him, Grian!” Jimmy said sharply, gesturing vaguely.
“Yeah. Look at him. He’s not in this to hurt people, Tim, I think that’s pretty obvious by now. He’s in it for, I guess… fun? Chaos?”
“How can you say that? Surely not, surely you can see how dangerous he is?” Jimmy said, looking hurt.
“I mean. You’re right that he could be. I don’t think he’s going to be. You can handle him. You’re strong enough, good enough at this to handle him.”
“But… but we’re a team, Grian. We’re meant to be a team,” Jimmy said, his voice small.
“We’ll always be a team. Just… some things don’t need to be… both of us? Right? I’ll do some things myself, take care of some people myself, and you take care of some your self.”
Jimmy wouldn’t meet his eyes. “...Fine. But don’t blame me for getting hurt when something goes wrong!”
“That’s not… If he starts being more dangerous, if you need help, just talk to me, I’m just saying that what we’ve got here, now, isn’t something I can keep doing.”
“Fine. Fine!”
They sat in silence for a minute, awkward. “...Want to watch a movie, or something?”
Jimmy cracked half a smile. “Sure. We can watch a movie.”
Grian breathed a little sigh of relief. “Sounds good. I drove over, you?”
“Uh, I took the bus.”
“Great! Come on, then, I have a better TV than you anyways, we’ll go to my place.”
“Your place it is, then, parrot man.”
Jimmy fell asleep and drooled all over his couch, and Grian reminded himself to buy some purple hair dye.