Chapter Text
The cafe was busier than usual today although not by much yet still all Grian wanted to do was get home and fall into bed. But it seemed evil waited for no one and so he found himself perched on a dark wet cold rooftop on the opposite side of the city to his apartment. The only sound was the rats on the ground fighting over an empty bag of chips and the occasional car passing by. The dark was so dark that the reflection of headlights hit the man’s eyes with the strength of a thousand suns but he still sat in wait. The infamous supervillain Hotguy was rumoured to have been spotted nearby and as his self professed arch-enemy, who better to keep a watch out than Cuteguy. The same Cuteguy that was seriously regretting this decision as he fired off a quick message to his roommate letting him know that he had to miss their preplanned movie night that they were both looking forward to all week but Grian hoped he could make it up to him later in the week. Maybe a proper movie night at the cinema would work or trip somewhere. Grian shook those plans out of his head for now though, there was a time for planning and sadly now was not it. He put his phone away just as it buzzed, most likely with his roommate’s disappointed reply but Grian didn’t check, it would be too tempting to get lost in it and not be alert enough to combat any attacks.
Despite all his efforts Grian did get distracted and it was no one's fault but his when he was startled a few minutes later.
“So we meet again, Cuteguy!” Grian swore under his breath, he hoped tonight would pass without any difficulties but alas. He turned to see, as expected,
“Hotgguy,” hissed Grian, jumping up and taking a fighting stance with his knife drawn. The man must have seen him up on the rooftop and decided to sneak up on him rather than his usual method of just shooting arrows at Grian until he either lands a hit or the hero came down to fight hand to hand. Almost mockingly Hotguy raised his hands in surrender at the sight of the blade obviously unbothered.
“Relax cutie, I’m not here to annoy you, can’t a man just catch up with his friends every once in a while?” Grian visibly bristled at both the nickname and being referred to as Hotguy’s friend but either the villain didn’t notice or just ignored the reaction. “Now knowing you I’m sure you want to have an epic battle or something but I’m rather busy tonight so how about we just fast forward through all that hassle?”
“What?”
“You know, all our battles are a bit samey. I punch, you punch, I run and you give chase in the air, I narrowly miss you with an arrow, you dodge quickly but as you look away for a split second I escape and you spend the next hour looking for me to arrest me and so on.” Hotguy looked over to the stunned Cuteguy, “What? You haven’t noticed that? It’s the same like every time.”
“Yeah well maybe this time would have been different, I could have caught you” Grian didn’t know if he was more annoyed that he was so predictable or that Hotguy noticed before him.
“Cutiepie, that's not very nice, do you not have faith in me to escape for you.” Hotguy bowed his head in fake sadness and disappointment, “I’m hurt that you could think such a thing about me, I thought we were friends and I feel betrayed Cutie, betrayed.” And with that Hotguy jumped off the roof and disappeared just as fast as he appeared leaving Grian alone on the roof yelling after him about nicknames and not being friends but it was soon obvious that no one was around to hear his yells. He sighed and spread his wings, preparing to return home. There was no point in sticking around if he wasn’t going to find Hotguy anytime soon he thought. It was cold out anyway and honestly he just wanted to go back to his original evening plans involving popcorn and a shitty romcom. Checking his watch he took off, noting that there was still time to make it home so their movie night wouldn’t be too disrupted.
When Grian returned to their shared apartment he called out to his roommate to no answer. He walked into the kitchen-living room area half expecting his roommate to be sat on the sofa before realising that if there was anyone in the apartment he would have heard them especially if it was his roommate. He checked his phone to see a message saying his roommate was out for a run which calmed him down. He knew he was careful about keeping the hero business away from his everyday life but he wouldn’t put it past some villains to stalk him home and target his loved ones, especially Hotguy. He was tricky and hard to predict and ruthless and was one of the main reasons why Grian was terrified every time any of his friends were more than a few minutes late to meet or come home. It annoyed him just how far Hotguy would stoop to gain a slight upper hand, unlike other more respectable villains such as The Goat. Now that was a villain that, despite his horrific death and torture machines, was not that bad of a person. He could leave his work at work and wouldn’t try find out anyone’s civilian identities to target their families. Technically he knew Grian’s identity but in his words he “didn’t really care” as the theatrics of his plots and plans would be “boring” and “uninspired” if he was to target non-superheroes.
By the time his roommate returned home Grian had mostly cleaned off all the grime that came from sitting on a dirty roof and was about to get into bed.
“Grian? You home?” his roommate called out.
“Yeah! Sorry about the movie night Scar, there was a villain sighting alert so I had to take the long way home!” Grian called back, “Night!”
“Night!”