Chapter Text
Tommy had trained lots of people in his time working at the little Cafe. All kinds of people of all ages. Some learned faster than others. Some slower. Some.... slower . But in all his time at the tiny little coffee shop, he'd never run into someone this... goddamn terrible .
Every shift he worked with the new hire seemed to raise his cholesterol by several degrees. He felt a constant tension headache ready to rear its ugly head. He feared he was becoming an old man before his time with all the gray hairs he swore were popping up at the back of his scalp.
Tommy couldn't wrap his mind around it. The job really wasn't that difficult. If a teenager like him could pick it up with ease, surely a grown adult man could pick up the basics. Surely this was the case? Right? Right?
This, however, was simply not true. Not in this case. Just the other day Tommy had been working a morning shift with the tiresome brunette. He'd left him alone for two seconds. Two fucking seconds . Then the brunette gallivanted towards Tommy to show him the airpot he'd just brewed all by himself (displaying far too much pride, Tommy might add.) Tommy, unfortunately, thought nothing of it. Who could fuck up a Prime forsaken airpot?
They served the drip coffee all that morning. Tommy had been slightly out of it since his roommate Tubbo had kept him up half the night muttering to himself as he worked on his computer in the room adjacent to Tommy's. They had thin walls . Tommy had sulkily wrote a note and posted it on Tubbo's door that morning. Well, when he said note, he actually meant notes. Fifteen in total.... Don't judge ! Sticky notes are fucking tiny and he had a lot to say on the matter!
Well. Yeah. Tommy was tired, so all the strange looks that customers had given him had slipped past his notice as he tried to keep up with the onslaught of drink orders while simultaneously teaching the fucking rookie. He didn't realize until about noon, when he needed to refill the espresso grinder with beans, that something was off.
The espresso bag, he swore hadn't been open the night before, was missing quite a lot of its contents. Hmm. Hhmmmmm. Yeah no, he was drawing a blank as to why that could possibly be.
"Hey Wilbur." He called the man who'd been busying himself by thoroughly cleaning one of the blenders. He'd been working on it for the past five minutes. Tommy sighed internally. Nothing needed to be that clean, especially when you're only being paid minimum wage. "Wilbur!" He called again to the clearly distracted older boy.
Wilbur's face shot up in surprise. "Uh yeah?" He looked somewhat worried, as if he already knew he'd fucked up... again.
"Come over here a sec." Tommy waved him over. Prime, he hoped he was wrong about this. But Tommy was a big man whose hypothesis tended to be correct. He was just too fucking smart. It was a curse, really. "Did you touch the coffee beans this morning?"
"Um," Wilbur looked nervously at the younger blonde, "Yeah, the drip coffee was low so I refilled it? I told you about it. Was that... wrong?"
Fuck. "What beans?"
Wilbur pointed an uncertain finger to one of the brown bags under the counter. "Just that one. Jack told me that's the one we use for drip last week."
Jack Mannifold... that fucker . When Tommy got his hands on him- His voice was deadly calm. "Wilbur, read the label of the bag please."
"Um, its- Espresso beans?"
"Mmmm." Tommy brought his hand to his temple and pinched, trying to defend against the migraine brewing in the back of his head. "What's the difference between espresso beans and regular coffee beans Wilbur."
The man's face scrunched in confusion, but Tommy watched as the cogs began to tick in the older boy's brain, as he slowly, very slowly , put the pieces together, Tommy also watched as Wilbur's face went white, "Oh shit."
"Oh shit indeed," Tommy agreed, nodding his head sagely. "Wilbur, you know that nice old granny you just served a couple of minutes ago." He nodded wordlessly, his eye wide and his adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he struggled to swallow. "Well she just walked out of here with a beverage containing about, hhhmmm, lemme think..... seven hundred, sixty something milligrams of caffeine. And Wilbur," He leaned closer to the other boy in a coconspirital type of way. "She got the smallest size."
"OH SHIT!"
A bunch of heads flew up in surprise from all around the room. College students stared at Wilbur in concern, taking a minute break from writing essays. Older ladies paused gossip sessions. Old men gave the stink eye from behind their crisp newspapers.
"We're fine." Tommy plastered on a fake smile for the customers. "My buddy just stubbed his toe." Their attention quickly flitted back to their previous tasks, some with a trace of slight annoyance on their faces.
"Well, are we going to tell anybody about it. Maybe get them some new coffee?" Wilbur asked, looking rather panicky.
"Only if you want Sam to find out."
Wilbur raised an eyebrow. "Why did that sound so ominous?"
"Because," Tommy said with a wicked grin, "He's fired people for less." And this is why, even though Tommy had only been working at the cafe for about six months, he'd trained dozens of people. They often didn't measure up to Sam's high standards. And Wilbur was the worst by far. He'd probably be fired within the week, if not within the day, and Tommy would have one less pain in his ass.
"You seem happy about that." Wilbur said, giving him a puzzled expression.
"That's because I am."
-
When Tommy got home from work, he threw his coat onto the floor in the coat closet. You see, if he lived inside a house with a woman, this behavior might be deemed unexceptable, especially since said closet was stocked plentifully with coat hangers. However, Tommy lived with no woman, in fact, he lived with two other boys. This was a house of MEN. And men saw no need of doing silly things like hanging coats in closets. Well... Ranboo might disagree. But Ranboo was at least one eighth woman anyhow.
Tommy's head was pounding, the stress head ache from earlier was pounding its way to the front of his head. Tommy's head was starting to feel like this a lot recently. Like some one was trying to crack it open with a sledge hammer and a nail. So, like the responsible big man he was, he didn't go to the doctor. No. No, that was something people with large quantities of cash and health insurance did. No. Instead Tommy went to the medicine cupboard in the kitchen and pulled out a couple of baby aspirins and tossed them down the hatch without water like a badass. He did not choke . Bad asses didn't choke on baby aspirins.
He then proceeded to throw himself on the couch next to his roommate Tubbo who was currently hogging the Television by playing animal crossing. His avatar was wearing a sweater with a bee on it. Classic Tubbo. "Where's Ranboob?" Tommy asked, yawning and tossing his feet onto Tubbo's lap. The other boy scowled but didn't verbalize a complaint.
"He got called in to work a night shift." Tubbo said, focusing intently on the television. "And he asked you to stop calling him that."
Tommy rolled his eyes, "It's not like he's here to hear it." Tommy nudged the boy with his foot, "And stop being all protective of your platonic husband, it makes me sick ." Tommy fake gagged at his roommate.
Tubbo rolled his eyes with a huff, " You make a joke one time ..."
The blonde boy giggled before laying his head back down on the couch and rubbing at his temples. Tubbo looked over at him worryingly. "Headaches again?"
"Yeah," The boy groaned, "Hurts like a bitch today. I blame it on the dumbass new hire."
"mmm" Tubbo hummed noncomitally as he continued playing his videogame. "It seems like they're coming more frequently now. You sure you don't want to go get it checked out?"
"Yes. I'm sure ." He rolled over so that his head was buried in the cushions. "It's just a stress headache, plus we don't have the funds-"
"I'm sure Sam would help, plus, me and Ranboo are more than willing to-"
"I already said no ." Tommy cut Tubbo off. Tubbo sighed. Loudly , he might add. But he didn't push the conversation further and let the subject drop. Tommy didn't like feeling like a burden, especially to his friends, so no matter how many times his friends offered to lend him the money, he always refused. This was Tommy's problem, not theirs. He would deal with it. Somehow. And it wasn't worrying him one bit. Not at all.
After a couple minutes, Tubbo turned off the game, and not so gently, pushed Tommy's legs off his lap. "Gonna take a piss." Tommy heard the steady patter of his friend's feet walking to the bathroom over the hard floor and then the creak of a door opening and closing. Tubbo didn't come back.
The room started to get darker, a sign that the sun was beginning to set, so it was probably around nine. Ranboo wouldn't be back for at least eight more hours. Tommy was astonished the boy could function with the strange fluctuating sleep schedule. He switched between day and night shifts about every other day it seemed. Was he even allowed to work that much? If Tommy was doing the math right, he was working sixty hour weeks.
Tommy decided to get up off the couch, since Ranboo was gone and Tubbo had decided to go sulk, (something the boy seemed to do rather often.) He walked down the squat hallway and glanced through the crack in Tubbo and Ranboo's shared door on the way to his own room. The boy had his headset on sitting in front of his computer typing away, though Tommy wasn't sure if the boy was working or messing with one of his pet projects. Tubbo was remarkably smart, so he was able to get an online big man job no problem, though that may be due to the forged birth certificate, high school diploma and his major in mathematics, (That he'd also forged.) He made the largest income out of the trio, and was the main reason that they could even afford the damn shithole apartment. Tommy considered apologizing for snapping at him. But, no, Tubbo needed to learn to respect his boundaries. He didn't do anything wrong. So instead, he turned away and walked to his own bedroom without a word.
The walls of his bedroom were still fairly bare. He still had the same plain white walls, with maybe a dumb doodle taped up here or there. But his room wasn't as grand and dolled up as Tubbo and Ranboo's. With all the knick knacks and LED lights and decor. Tommy didn't quite know how to decorate it. He still didn't have many interests, and forget about photos. His room wasn't... cozy. It didn't feel like home, like the rest of the house did to him. He tended to avoid it, save to sleep or get dressed. Whenever he lingered there, he felt a weird sort of detachment that he couldn't really put into words. It left an empty feeling deep in his gut.
Tommy turned off the light and faceplanted into his mattress. He was bone tired, and his head... Prime, it was getting worse. His head felt like it had a heart beat of its own now. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump . He felt nausea growing too and he prayed he wasn't coming down with a fever. He had another shift in the morning, and he needed the money so maybe they could actually buy some produce with their groceries. He shut his eyes tighter together and tried to focus on his breathing. In for eight seconds. Out for eight seconds. His head panged again, this time it hurt worse and his hands flew up to his skull. He clutched at his hair as he took another ragged breath. All attempts at controlling his breathing forgotten.
" Fuck ." He whispered to himself.
Then something odd happened. brief snippets, of, things... flickered through his mind's eye. Familiar things that didn't have much substance to them. A small red room with super hero posters on the wall. A boy with blonde hair like his, who always covered his eyes with cloth. Scrapes and bruises up both his legs and the taste of blood in his mouth. Mocking laughter, and a splotch of white hair. And a boy. A boy that wore a ram's mask and was prone to crying. Then like a door being slammed in his face they stopped. Disappeared and gone.
Tommy's body shook feebly as he opened his eyes. The thrumming behind his eyes had dulled but the nausea was running its course. Fuck , he was going to hurl. He stood up on wobbly feet and all but ran to the bathroom, kneeling next to the toilet. His body made quick work of it, emptying the contents of his stomach into the porcelain bowl. Afterwards, he felt the strings of spit and bile still dripping from his chin. Tommy grimaced before he wiped it off with the back of his sleeve and sat back against the wall catching his breath on the cool tile of the dark bathroom.
What the fuck was that just now? Already the brief glimpses were fading, sinking back into the murky waters of his mind. They were obscuring themselves from him, as if they'd never been there to begin with. And maybe he would've believed it. That it had just been a bad dream, if not for the fact his body was soaked in a cold sweat, his mouth tasted like bile, and he was still struggling to fucking breathe . His throat wasn't allowing him enough air, and his clothes felt too tight and he felt like he was Prime near suffocating.
He shucked off his shirt and pants and curled into a ball on the ground, his own hands pulling at the roots of his hair. He needed to calm down. He needed to- he needed to- He focused on the cold floor pressing into his skin. The way it made his skin bristle with goosebumps. He listened for sounds of traffic, the unceasing sound of wheels against asphalt that was always playing in the background of the apartment. He smelled the musty scent of the beginnings of mold in the dumpy little bathroom. He opened his eyes slowly, and saw chipped paint on the plaster wall, and he took a long deep breath. He was okay. He was fine , he reminded himself.
He stood up off the ground trying to keep himself grounded. He hated the way panic attacks seemed to linger, like if he wasn't careful he would get swept back under into the senseless dread. He saw the outline of his body in the bathroom mirror, illuminated by the dull glow of the moon. He saw a map of scars, trailing from his toes to his chest. It was astounding, the fact that his entire body was marked, but his face was left whole and unblemished. Unblemished except for the small slit through his eyebrow, so insignificant compared to the rest of his body.
He wondered what a person would have to go through, to have a body like his at such a young age. I mean- he saw a babyish blonde face staring back at him through the mirror- he was a teenager. If he did the math right... he was sixteen and a half. Fucking sixteen and a half years old with the body of a war veteran. And that is why he was fucking terrified of asking someone for help. A doctor. A therapist. Anyone. Tommy didn't remember who the fuck he was, and that terrified him.
Six months. He'd woken up six months ago missing about six years worth of memories. And even the memories he still had were a bit fuzzy around the edges. Things just didn't add up. He had just been an average boy in the foster care system. A mundane. A nobody. So how had he gotten involved in whatever the fuck had left his body so heavily marred?
Answers- as always- evaded him, leaving him frustrated and angry. And-
In heavy need of a shower.
Tommy wasted no time in shucking off his boxers and turning on the shower as hot as it could go, stepping under the steady stream and letting it scald his skin. It calmed him down, making him feel groggy. The steam took up the space pushing away the cold air. He could feel himself receiving less and less oxygen as his lungs worked double time against the steam. It always made him feel sleepy. Maybe even relaxed... calm.
A knock sounded on the door. "That water better be ice cold." Tubbo's muffled voice whined from behind the door. "We can not afford another water bill like last month’s."
Maybe if he was quiet enough the other boy would go away...
"Tommy! I'm so serious right now."
Yeah that would've been too good to be true. "I'm freezing my nuts off in here man. I'll be out in a moment." Both statements were false. but Tubbo didn't need to know that. Whatever they didn't know couldn't hurt them. Or at least that's what he kept telling himself.