Chapter Text
The rent is much cheaper here purely because the area’s crime rate is so much higher, but honestly? With all the stick-ups at work per week, it’s not a huge change to his evening regime.
“Good luck,” his new landlord had said, tossing him the key to his new apartment on move-in day. He was on the fourth floor of six; there was a bed, kitchen appliances, and a couch, and it was ten minutes from the pizza joint he had a delivery gig at instead of thirty minutes. Even better—significantly less damp behind the sink. And best—no more crappy roommates.
A couple more guns was not gonna make a difference to Tommy’s already shitty lifestyle.
Shifting his shit into B4-31 doesn’t take too long. It’s mostly workout stuff he hasn’t got the heart to sell, and the few sets of clothes he owns. A couple books, some kitchenware, a set of starchy bedsheets.
He’s not expecting to meet his neighbors, and frankly, he doesn’t care to. Tommy can do without awkward encounters with drug-addled junkies, and the flip-side of the kind of folk who sell drugs to drug-addled junkies. He spots a used syringe in the corner of the elevator whilst he’s moving his last bag of linens in and really hopes that there aren’t any kids living in this place.
Surprisingly, it takes a week for the first jarring event to take place.
Tommy’s gone down to check his mail in the lobby, when he notices a mail carrier looking annoyed through the glass doors. She’s holding an enormous box in one arm, and looks like she’s buckling with the strain of it.
He pushes the release catch. “You okay?” he asks her.
“Yeah,” the mail carrier says, holding down the buzzer on the apartment list, “I just can’t get through to this address and I have a parcel for them.”
She’s jabbing at the button labelled B4-32.
“Oh, hey,” he says, “I’ll take it if you like, I’m B4-31.”
“Really? That would make my life so much easier.”
“It’s not like you can leave it under the mat,” he points out. “Or in those tiny mailboxes. I’ll just give it to them upstairs.”
“You’re a doll,” she sighs, and he signs for it. “Thanks so much.”
“No worries,” Tommy says. He’s already swearing at himself on the inside. It wasn’t really his problem, but he could help, and…
Damnit. Guess it was time to meet the neighbors.
He heads back up in the elevator, holding someone else’s package and precisely zero letters addressed to himself, and approaches B4-32.
“Hello?”
He calls through the door when his knocks go answered. Huh. Guess there really wasn’t anyone in.
Tommy spends the morning working out, browsing the internet on his crappy laptop, and practicing his art. If he could start to make a couple bucks on the side with thatWell, it’d at least help him out a little. He’s halfway through a still life practice after lunch when he hears 32’s front door bang shut.
Tommy leaps to his feet and grabs the box by his own door, heading out into the hall. There’s no name on the address, and therefore no indication whatsoever of who this person might be. Who knows? The unexpected can be interesting.
Three knocks in quick succession, like he always does. He really hopes his neighbors in, because he doesn’t wanna be saddled with this fuckin’ box.
The light from under the door is blocked - someone’s looking through the peephole. “Hey,” he calls out, “I’m from next door, you weren’t in earlier so I signed for a package for you—“
He fully expects the door to crack open, still on the chain, like pretty much every customer he delivers pizza to. It does not. It’s pulled wide open, to reveal a six-foot-something heartthrob with long, loose bubblegum pink hair, dark red eyes, glasses falling off his nose, and features which wouldn’t be out of place on a Roman marble bust.
Oh, no.
“Hi,” he breathes.
“Hey,” says the man, looking suitably befuddled.
“I’m Tommy, I just moved into the apartment next door,” Tommy says, trying not to stare at the man’s arms, wrapped in a tight black t-shirt that did him a lot of favors. C’mon, Simons. Get it together.
“Techno,” the man says slowly.
“Here’s your mail. You’ve ordered some super heavy stuff, big man.”
Techno takes the box from his outstretched arms and nods politely: “thanks. I owe you one.”
“Ah, it’s no trouble,” Tommy says awkwardly, because fuck, the man’s got a seriously low, beautiful voice, and it’s doing things to him. “Just glad I caught you before work. Nice to meet you, dude.”
“Nice to meet you too, Tommy. Have a good shift,” Techno says.
Tommy’s already halfway back into his own apartment before he hears Techno’s door finally click shut.
Oh, no. No, no no no. No more meeting neighbors. No more picking up mail. This is definitely the dumbest decision Tommy’s made all week, and yes, that included accidentally leaving his bike outside for anyone to steal the other evening, which could have been truly terrible.
He heads to work that afternoon, and tries his best to focus on the traffic instead of the smokin’ hot guy he apparently shares a building with.
‘A Pizza My Mind’ is a pretty good place to work, all things considered, because not only does Tommy have an excuse to answer the phone with the worst puns he can think of, they also have corporate guidelines in the event of a stickup. It’s a lot easier to put cash into a bag and have a gun thrust into your general face area when there’s steps to follow.
“Hey, Tom.”
“Hi, Vikk . You want me on calls?”
His manager grins. “Yeah, we’ve only had a few people eating in tonight so far, so no deliveries yet. Just man the phone until we get something in.”
“Will do.”
He takes a couple of calls, watches Connor do his thing with the pizza dough in the kitchen, and heads out for some deliveries. Man, Esempi is a real shit hole when you get just past the downtown area. The tips are light in his pocket, but at least he got some tips.
He returns to the restaurant halfway through his rounds to pick up some more deliveries. As soon as he parks his bike up, though…
He knows something’s not quite right.
Slowly, and very, very quietly, he makes his way inside the building. Vikk’s standing at the register, trying not to look bored as he packs bills into a bag—some scrawny kid wearing a hoodie and a mask is pointing a gun-shaped paper bag at the front desk, shaking and screeching. The only customers in the place, a couple in the corner, are cowering under the table.
It’s immediately obvious what’s going on, so Tommy creeps up behind the guy and taps him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me?”
The kid whirls around, flailing his gun wildly, eyes all frantic and searching. He’s full of antsy rage and a lust for cash.
Tommy doesn’t wait for a response. As soon as the heat’s off Vikk, he punches him square in the face.
“Fucking hell, Tommy!” Vikk shouts, as their robber goes down like a sack of shit.
Tommy walks up to the counter and shakes off his knuckles: “are these ready to go out?” he asks Connor, who’s emerged from the back and is staring at him in shock.
“Y…yeah.”
“Tom!” Vikk shouts again, “what the fuck did you do that for? You’re an idiot! You could have been killed!”
“Oh, come on, Vikk, it’s not a real gun,” he says exasperatedly, collecting the pizza boxes from beside the register. “You can put the cash back now.”
“How could you possibly know that?!”
“Calm down,” he says, rolling his eyes. Stepping over the unconscious robber, he reaches for the gun shaped paper bag, and tears it open to reveal…a water gun.
“Jesus Christ,” Vikk mutters.
“If you’ve got a real gun, then showing it scares people more than hiding it,” he points out. “Plus, he’s robbing the store at nine at night, when we don’t close til one, so he’s obviously an idiot who’s never done this before. There’s more cash at the end of the shift. Connor, can you call the cops on this fuckin’ idiot?”
“You got it,” says Connor, darting out into the open to use the phone.
“And that’s the other thing,” Tommy adds, before he pushes open the glass doors, “he’s clearly not a professional, wearing something like that. You don’t wear a mask in that line of work unless you’ve got somewhere else to be.”
As he heads back to secure the pizzas in his bike compartment, he swears he hears Connor say something along the lines of: “Tommy scares me so bad sometimes.”
The speakerphone by his front door buzzes one morning.
“Hello?”
“I’ve got a package for a ‘Tom Simons’?”
“That’s me,” he says, recalling the cheap mousepad he’d decided to treat himself to. “I’ll be right down.”
When he steps out of the elevator and into the lobby, he sees the same frustrated mail worker poking the button for Techno’s apartment.
“Hey,” he says, hitting the door release, “still no luck with 32?”
“Nope,” she says irritably. “It’s been like this for a few months now, they’re just never in.”
“I’ll take it again,” he accidentally says, like an idiot.
“Oh, brilliant!” she says, perking up, “that would save me a redelivery! I have your Amazon parcel, too, Mr. Simons, here—”
He signs the e-signature pad. “It’s Tommy...And don’t worry about it, it must be, like, an early morning shift arrangement or something. I barely hear a sound from the place.”
“Well, thanks again, Tommy. You have a great day, now.”
Shit. Another box. Tommy is a fuckin’ tool sometimes.
It’s way past midnight when he hears noises from next door again. He briefly contemplates the fact that it’s quite late, and that he’s already in pajama pants, but ultimately Techno must already be awake. How rude could it be?
Tommy lugs the box into the corridor. “Hey, Techno? You got a parcel again,” he calls out. “Sorry it’s so late—”
There’s a bumping sound from inside the apartment.
“Uh—”
“I can leave it here if you like?” Tommy offers, unnerved.
“That’d be great,” Techno shouts back. “I had…kinda...a situation at work and I look like a mess right now.”
“I’m sure you look fine,” he replies, before he can stop himself. “You have a great night, big man.”
And then he returns to his apartment and hits his head against the wall connecting him to B4-30. You look fine? Dumbass Simons, entering stage left and giving the performance of a lifetime. What a fuckin’ moron.
There’s a lot of knocking about and rattling from next door that evening, right into the early hours. It’s not the best way to spend his night off, but he manages to drown it out with sketching and some quiet music. He tries to drown out thoughts of Techno’s ‘situation’, too, but his head gets flooded with questions and it doesn’t work out.
What job did he do? What kind of situation could he have gotten into?
Maybe he was a security guard. Dude was built enough.
He could just as easily be a model, though, with a face like that. Even that crooked nose gave him character. It was very charming.
Whilst he clears up his drawings and gets ready to go to sleep, he opens up a news broadcast on his laptop. Immediately, it looks like something big’s occurred in Downtown Esempi tonight.
“…our correspondent reporting that the Kinoko Building was on lockdown for several hours after the heist had taken place, by which point the gang members had made their escape…”
“Damn,” Tommy says, through a mouthful of toothpaste. He watches the footage intently—he recognized those blurry faces from the recovered CCTV tapes. That was Perses and Lethe from the Syndicate. Christ, that must have been a break-in and a half.
“…it’s currently undetermined how much data was breached, and what exactly the gang’s primary target was…”
“I’ll fuckin’ say.”
Tommy spits and rinses. Those guys did everything. It was like they’d tried every type of heist under the sun, just for the hell of it. There was almost something admirable in it.
It certainly distracted him from his hot neighbor, in any case.
After work one night, he and Vikk close up and hit a bar to unwind. Las Nevadas is actually quite pretty in the early hours, despite the rampant drunkenness and shady characters. If Tommy were to avoid places simply because of that, though, he’d just about have the Badlands to visit, and the Badlands alone.
“I just don’t understand why you of all people are working in this shitty joint,” Vikk says. “You’re a quick learner, you know the basics of basically every skill I can think of, and if you don’t, it’s not hard to teach you. Remember when Connor showed you how to do the pizza dough properly? You were a pro!”
“It’s money,” Tommy says, swigging from his bottle, “it’s always money. I’m lucky I can still afford rent.”
Vikk shakes his head in disbelief. “That’s crazy. I wish I had the power to give you a damn raise.”
“It’s okay, really. I’m doing fine right now.”
“Still doesn’t seem fair. You’d fuckin’ thrive in a college environment, you’ve got so much potential.”
Tommy shrugs and picks at the label of his drink. He gets uncomfortable when people bring this up, and especially when Vikk or Connor bring this up, because honestly? He’s not sure he is, or was ever, good enough for college. Sure, learning’s great and all. But he can’t utilize the skills he’s got right now in an effective way, let alone market any new, shiny, expensive ones.
“I’m doing just fine,” he repeats, and the bar grows quiet.
Well, fuck. That’s unsettling.
He peers over his shoulder, and Vikk mirrors him. Two people have made their presences known in the entranceway. One has immaculately tousled hair, wire frame glasses, and a shit-eating smirk; the other has an absolutely terrifying boar skull on.
Tommy feels his heart stop.
It’s two of the Syndicate. There’s no telling what they’re here for, but he’s not keen on being a bystander or a hostage.
Themis surveys the room with disinterest—clearly no one here is what they came to see—and it’s impossible to tell where Protesilaus’ eyes are landing, but he leans over to say something to his counterpart.
The shit-eating smirk widens.
“Hey! Golden Boy!”
Vikk discreetly punches him in the arm with fear, because, holy shit, Tommy’s the only blond guy in the bar and the light makes his hair shine. He spares his manager an annoyed glance and tries to keep a level head.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you, sunshine,” Themis calls, approaching the bar. All eyes are on him: “come on, guys, don’t let us interrupt you all. Keep talking.”
The patrons restart their conversations hastily, because who the fuck wants to get on the wrong side of the wildcard of the Syndicate?
Themis reaches him, and leans down to mutter in Tommy’s ear. The voice get him bristling. “My friend here,” he says, jabbing a finger at the Protesilaus, “reckons you should clear off. Our Leading Lady quite likes the way you deliver pizza, y’know…”
There’s a moment where Vikk looks at him, and Tommy just knows he’s thinking about how Keres likes their joint’s pizza, instead of shit, we’re about to get really lucky and run away.
“Thanks,” he says. He looks the fucking horrifying skull right in its hollow sockets, and nods.
Protesilaus nods politely back.
All the hairs on Tommy’s arms stand up on end, so he decides that it’s time to hightail it outta there. Grabbing Vikk by the arm, he yanks him out of the bar: “we’re not going in there for at least a month,” he says firmly, “or at least until we know what they were doing in there was safer than a hit.”
“Than a hit?” Vikk says, in a very strained voice, “I never wanna go in there again. Fucking hell.”
Tommy makes a discontented noise, and suggests that maybe they should head home. He’s almost hesitant to part ways, but Vikk lives on the other side of Esempi, so it’s not as though they can walk each other back in the dark.
Later, in his room, he wonders what Protesilaus’ facial expression had looked like when he recalled the pizza delivery boy’s appearance, and has a hysterical little laughing fit. This was surreal. Spared because he gave them food. What a fuckin’ thought that was. He must have delivered to one of the strange customers who leave their payment in the mailbox out front and tell him to drop the pizza on the porch.
That usually suits him fine, because it’s less talking and more time for tips, but…
Oh, god, he’s been to a Syndicate safe house before. That’s crazy.
Tommy’s restless that night, trying to recall every interaction he’d had with the unseen pizza patrons; every regular location, every name that popped up bi-monthly. To his frustration–and somewhat to his relief—he fails to come up with a single one that’s viable.