The morning after is... problematic, to put it mildly.
When he wakes up, he's alone. Thomas blinks through the dim light.
He's curled up in an empty spot. Space is cold, but he remembers something else entirely. Something warm, molten in his veins. The memory hunts through his body, leaving a warm feeling in his guts and an uncertain quickening of his pulse. It's like he's dreamed it all along, dreamed about hands searching in the darkness, desperately holding onto something, and a mouth hot and demanding.
He's not really sure what to make of it, now that it has happened. There's no way to undo it. No way to get rid of the fever flowing through him when he thinks about the way they touched.
It's like he decided to jump off the plane and is still falling, not sure how to open the parachute.
Unwillingly he gets up, finding a tangled pile of clothes and just dresses lazy. His body hurts but there's also some weird satisfaction, something smooth and easy in the way his body moves.
He's almost shocked to find Maven in the kitchen.
He still looks deranged in the small space, just sitting on one of the chairs. Thomas takes a moment to study his frame, the hair curling around his neck, the sharp line of his cheek. He sits hunched over his phone and it reminds him of all the times he watched him study or read. But he also remembers the way his teeth dragged along that neck and his hands slipped over the smooth skin, feeling muscles tense.
There are pain and something guilty shooting through Thomas, and he's not sure how or what to say, and how to act.
He doesn't seem to be the only one, by the looks of it. Their eyes brush along each other before they look away.
The night has broken whatever they couldn't rebuild and pierced it together to something else.
It's not like he hadn't hoped there could be a time when they'd come around to nights like this. He hadn't anticipated it to happen now, and sure as hell not with all that damage and weight slumped over their shoulders.
He isn't even sure it has the same meaning for them.
"Morning, stranger," he jokes, half-hearted. It sounds weird and too loud.
Mavens lips are a thin line. "Good morning."
Is it really good, though? He can't say for sure.
Not yet.
He turns his back, avoiding any more words for now. His sister left a text, at least, so there's that reason to worry off the list. He's glad she's at home and his family isn't hurt. His hands slide over the screen to write back but he's not getting much out of his head.
He doesn't check the news or the feed of images. He doesn't care right now. It's selfish and stupid but he can't deal with a burning world when there's a boy kindling unkind flames in his soul.
For a while, Thomas rummages through the shelves, and that's the only sound filling the hollow emptiness. He isn't even that hungry. He still tries to function like a normal person, grabbing a bowl out of the mismatched mess of the dishes.
The silence is electric, rippling static and uncomfortable.
The poor box of cereal is not deserving to be slumped down and throwing on the sink like that.
"Is this what's it going to be?" He holds his spoon like a lance, ready to joust with the invisible contesters of his fears. "Like, we hooked up in regret and now we just wait for the other to leave?"
"Do you?" Maven asks, and to Thomas distaste, he's putting on his blank face. He thought they'd gotten over that. It pisses him off to no extent. But that's just how it is. "Regret?"
Thomas braces himself. "I regret a bunch of things, pretty boy, but it's done now. So we either forget this ever happened or get around."
"I am not sure what this means. But forgetting isn't a possibility."
When Thomas glances over he sees a pale finger tracing over a bruised spot, just above the rim of a shirt, as if the touch could erase the mark. Milk spills over the sink, but Thomas doesn't really care. There's something hoping in him. Because if forgetting isn't an option what is?
There's still a lot of hurt and unspoken things hanging in the air.
There's a very elaborate silence vibrating from the table. Thomas saw it coming. They were always bad to communicate their feelings properly. Nothing much has changed. It's just gotten more complicated.
The hand is still covering the mark Thomas' mouth left. There are cracks in the blank face. For only a second he's the anxious boy Thomas remembers. Before everything fell apart and he fucked it up.
The spoon clunks against the bowl, and the contents shake dangerously when he makes his way to the empty chair and sits down.
"I am not the big price," Thomas says, looking at his hands. "And. I know you're into Barrow. I was an asshole. I kinda brought that on when I ditched you." That's the wrong words. They taste wrong. They sound like some foreign language. "But tell you what. It's ok. Can't change it. If you need someone to stay, you call me."
Maven looks at Thomas as if he's a rare obscure anomaly. Like a flying pig. "You mean it."
"Course I do. You let me stay when I had nowhere to go. Time to return the favor." The cereal slings down his throat like spiky pebbles. Swallowing hurts.
"You'll not tell me why you were freaked out yesterday, right?" Thomas smiles. Master of rhetoric questions.
"I'd rather not." The eyes evade him again.
"Yeah, that's what I thought."
"It wouldn't change a thing. And it's not like I can stop it anymore."
Who are you lying to, pretty boy? Thomas thinks. Me or you?
"Sometimes we can at least keep the damage small," Thomas says. Like he knows anything about it.
Maven frowns. "Maybe."
Somewhere along the morning, though some strained talk and silence, it's time to part ways for now.
"See you later?" Thomas asks. Is he hoping for too much?
"I'd like to," Glued hands in pockets, the smallest of breaths. "But I can't."
"Forgot about the fancy party. Stay safe." The plan is a very little kiss, not even necessary to that mouth. Some farewell, a lucky charm like the strips of paper street rat Thomas used to keep in his pocket because a very elegant hand had written his name on it. It turns into something else again, like their bodies are separated beings, striving forward and to each other.
Intentions, it seems, are worthless when actions prove them wrong.
It tastes bitter, but that's only because Thomas knows this isn't real and will probably never be.
Two hours later Thomas is alone and forces himself to move up and around like a human being. That's when his phone rings. No number he knows.
An unknown voice says his last name and him wonders. No one ever uses that. It's ordinary and a million people share it. But oh well, his parents had an ordinary day when they chose to name him Thomas too. As a child, he'd wanted a cool name, something obscure like one of the characters in the cartoons. In the end, Thomas does sound slightly better than a mix of sentient car robots and aliens.
"Yes?" he answers.
" I am calling on behalf of Miss Cole and her brother."
His heart stops in his chest. Like a dead battery.
"Are they alright?" he forces himself to ask.
The voice on the other side of the call does things like this as their job and so there's not the slightest pause before it says words that are probably imprinted in their brain.
"Miss Cole has stated she had no close kin next to her brother but named you her emergency contact."
He just listens, unable to move. He remembers the way he yelled at her and how tired she was.
"Are they alright? " he repeats like a scratched record. "I mean, is it bad?"
She sits on a chair in the white corridor.
When she turns her head there's a row of stitches running along her brow and barely missing her eye. A little to the left and whatever hit her could have made her blind.
He sees the bruises and bandages and thinks of his fight last night. How stupid and lucky he was.
"Hey, asshat." She says as if he had just caught her lounging and loitering in her usual corner.
Thomas snorts. "Hey, muffin."
"Got glassed." She says, and Thomas stares at the stitches on her face in anger and shock.
The next he knows he's hugging her as tight as he can. She doesn't hug him back but she's not hitting him either.
"You freaking mule." He whispers in her hair. There's a very distinct and sharp smell from disinfection and hospital clinging to her, cloaking sweat and smoke. "Shoulda moved in with me."
"And hear you ugly cry yourself to sleep over a guy?"
"You missed A LOT, " he sighs but can't let go of her yet. "And you'll call me names when I tell you."
She doesn't answer.
"How's your brother?" Thomas whispers.
Suddenly one of her arms gives his side a squeeze before she pushes him off, and he knows it's not just stitches.
"What happened?"
"Got in a fight with some asshole and his friends," she answers shrugging, barely scowling. He's very worried. "Glassed me and got him too. Stabbed him with the fucking thing after it splattered over my face."
Thomas stares at her in horror. "He'll be ok tho, won't he?"
"Yeah, but it'll take some time. He's high as a kite and asleep."
"Need me to do something? Talk to someone?"
"Can talk to the doctor if you wanna." She looks like she bit a lemon.
"Okay. Gonna find him, what's the name?"
The doctor is a woman. She's the same age as Thomas' mother, with blond hair pulled into a knot, and when he approaches her , her eyes take in his worry and nervous twitching with patience.
Skonos
Her tag reads.
Her voice is low and friendly. She doesn't say much, mostly listening to his rambling questions and filling the gaps.
" Do we need to do paperwork?" he asks. He fucking hates paperwork. His writing only shows he missed out on education.
She shakes her head. He's a little relieved.
"Make sure Miss Cole has a place to stay. " She says when they part ways, and it's nothing judging in her words. Only some concern. "The street is not safe."
"Yeah, you tell me, Doc," he answers, shivering.
They stay in the hospital because Cameron is not willing to leave. Thomas hates hospitals with all his might but he isn't going to abandon her.
For once he's the shield and spear and if there are twenty hospitals with their stench and the white walls he'll endure.
With enough nagging and shoving he gets her to eat something.
" Wait a second, asshat, " Cameron says and pulls down his jacket in her usual invading space. " That's no battle scar. Why you got so much fucking hickeys? " When he leans away she just pulls more and huffs at thin red lines crawling over his shoulder.
He sighs, prying her fingers away ."I told you, missed a lot. I kinda had my ex-boyfriend over last night."
"You still look mushy."
"We didn't exchange wedding vows," he mocks with only a little pain hiding behind it. " It's complicated, cookie dough."
She looks at his nose. "I'd punch you, but someone has done the job. Or are you into weird stuff? Cause I don't wanna know. "
They don't immediately go home. Instead, they sit down and talk. Well, he talks. Cameron offers her usual snarling and snapping, mixed with some creative insults and some punches. The sun's down and it's getting dangerously close to night when they decide to finally go home. Thomas stares at his phone for the first time in hours. No missed calls, no texts from Maven.
What did you expect? He said he's busy. His mother probably has put him in a fancy suit. Not like he could just say Sorry, need to call that red dude I hook up with.
But there's another long list of calls he missed.
Seems his whole family has flipped their shit. Even his father left a voicemail.
"Tommy," the voice says, not angry at all but almost suffocating. His father hasn't called him Tommy since he got into his first fight. "Wherever you are. Stay inside. Hear me?"
"The fuck?" he hears Cameron whisper.
When he turns around to see what makes her of all people speechless, he looks up and can't breath.
The sky is bathed in flickering lights.
It's on fire.
The next minutes are filled with howling sirens and they stand in the parking lot like frozen.
Phone service has died. No coming through.
That's when the first ambulance pulls in and more cars follow until everything is clogged.
Everything is panic and hasty moves and it feels wrong.
There's A LOT of injured people. There's a lot of blood. Some of it is red. Some is silver.
Some are just slightly shaking, a mess like Thomas was last winter. The hardest is the smell and the sounds the other make when they get rushed in. It smells scorched again. Suffocating. He breathes through his mouth.
Seems this whole thing has reached the peak and everything is turning into ruins.
"It's coming from the towers," Cameron says.
Press says It will be THE event of the year.
They camp in front of the skyscrapers and won't go. Police are going to remove them before that fancy party, but still.
Forgot about the fancy party. Stay safe.
He can't think straight anymore.
"Thomas?" Cameron nudges his arm.
Thomas stares at the smoke in the sky and can't move.
"Cookie. Go inside. Go to your brother," he whispers. "Stay there. If they bother you, just let Skonos tell them to fuck off. She's a good one, she'll let you stay."
"What are you...?!"
He turns around and moves away from her.
The fucking phone is useless. Nothing works.
The network keeps malfunctioning, the same as his heart.
Every siren and alarm all over the city must be blaring. It is a cacophony of screams, mismatched and strident.
It is only united by the feeling it leaves on his cold skin.
Despite the alarms, he doesn't encounter another person walking on the road.
Thomas body is unwilling to move any further. As the alarms outside are ringing and warning, it's just the same in his muslces, tense, and nerves tingling. There's cold sweat on his hands and goosebumps on his spine.
There's some sort of bubble. As soon as he gets inside , things change rapidly. A burning car blocks the way, smothering the night sky with mocking strikes.
The air is even hotter, even harder to breath and it speaks for itself it flares and tingles in his nostrils as he takes a needed deep breath.
If ever a smell told more about the state of the world it's the smell of flames, thick smoke mixed with the desperation.
There's shattered glass and loose stones.
A single dark shoe lies abandoned on the pavement.
And then there's the crowd. The thick stream of bodies is like the river itself. Waving forth and back in the breeze of anger and panic.
The smoke is so thick he can barely make out any face.
There's people with hoods and some have slung scars around their faces.
A bottle is send flying next to Thomas, crushing and shattering.
Red light shines through the fog of war.
Red.
Like blood.
Like the color of the banner someone is swinging around like the freedom flag.
A red sun.
Thomas remembers the symbol.
He wonder if there's anyone he knows hidden in those scarfs and hoods.
His eyes try to scan the crowd, but it is pushing and pulling and unforgiving. His lungs are a burning sensation.
The fighting is just an alley away. There a gun shots ringing through the screaming, the chanting , the shattering and exploding.
There's no getting through.
Someone is shoving him.
In the distance, blue and red lights blink. Another voice yelling through a megaphone.
The next thing he knows he's pressed between bodies , and an elbow hits him hard into the stomach.
There's no getting through.
No running and returning.
Farley warned him. Shade said he should stay home. His sister asked him not to go.
He didn't listen.