Chapter Text
Tommy was at the police station again. It wasn't his fault that there was a security guard outside of the shop when he snatched some guy's wallet!
It might've been his fault, actually. He was the one who frequented that particular street whenever he needed some quick cash.
Why wouldn't he? It was right along the edge of the only good park in the city, so all the upper class and snobs would hit the clothing outlets and cafés that lined the streets outside of the park.
If someone was waltzing around with enough cash to let him crash in a decent motel for at least a week, that was on them. It was probably also the reason why they were so quick to report him.
In his defense, it was his first time snatching a wallet. He was mostly into petty theft. Most of the stores he grabbed things from had workers that were so underpaid that they didn't seem to mind even when they did catch him.
Or maybe that was just because of how much of a people person he was. He could talk his way out of pretty much any conversation. If the other person didn't suck, that was.
The officer that was speaking to him seemed desperate enough for human contact that the half-assed eye contact and occasional noise from Tommy was enough for him to go off about his dark past. If the blond didn't know any better, he would bet that Jamison was trying to get him to consider a career in law enforcement.
But he did know better, and that was exactly what the guy was getting at. The guy was obnoxiously yellow, even as he watched a teenage boy nurse the bruise on his face with a popsicle.
He heard about all the funding the police got, and none of it went to proper ice packs? It was a load of shit. Especially since it was watermelon, and clearly the only decent flavor was red.
Tommy liked red. It was a good flavor, a good color, and a good type of person to interact with. Red people were easy to read and agitate. The reaction from them was always predictable. Red meant pain, which usually gave him a minimum of three seconds to tense up.
Speaking of red, he could feel the spite pooling off of Mariah far before she entered the kitchen area. Jamison said something about him needing breakfast, which had been an absolute bounty of buttered toast and a pudding cup he watched the brunette steal out of someone else's lunch. He put a five dollar bill in its place, so Tommy was pretty sure it was fine to eat.
Oh! And his lovely styrofoam cup of chunky orange juice. It smelled and looked as expired as it tasted. The only reason he had been sipping at it was to see if it would graciously end him before Mariah got the chance to.
He wasn't nearly as blessed as the Jehovah's witnesses that harassed the resident every Wednesday seemed to think, considering it didn't work.
" Tommy ."
Her voice was steady, without a sliver of fury to it. It was impressive, actually. If her standing behind him didn't give him a headache from the miasma of grotesque anger and dissatisfaction, he would've assumed that she was as calm as she presented.
The grip on his shoulder was chilling despite how warm she was. The woman put off heat like a fire, but always managed to make him feel like he had hypothermia with how empty her words were. With how empty she was.
“Seems my ride got here. See ya’ round, James.” Tommy gave a curt nod to the man who was looking between him and the woman who he would bet money was looming over him. He didn’t hear whatever sheepish reply the poor guy got out because of how he was being led out of the building by the shoulder.
He felt like he was a disobedient puppy being dragged to whatever piddle he left on the carpet, barely seconds between where he was and having his nose shoved in his piss. He took another sip from the cup, hoping desperately that the abominable sludge of orange juice that was probably a year old would hurry up and kill him. To spare him from the fate that awaited him in the car.
As his footsteps started to thud against the concrete of the sidewalk instead of the sickeningly pale tile of the station lobby, he began internally begging every god he could think of for mercy. Even if there weren’t a lot of them that he actually remembered. The green one was named Locket, wasn’t he? Locket would surely help him, right?
His pleas to Locket seemed to fall on deaf ears, since he was strapping himself into the passenger seat of Mariah’s old beater. Tommy didn’t know much about cars, but he could tell the symbol on the front meant it was a Toyota. That, and the horrible stench of artificial lavender that was trying (and failing) to cover up the smell of burning fluid meant that Mariah’s car was a piece of shit.
He focused his gaze into the line of Febreze clips she had in her car vent, trying to decipher the serial numbers that seemed to have been bleached from the cheap plastic under the wear of the sun.
Maybe her car wouldn’t smell like shit if she didn’t use a bunch of empty ones.
The driver’s side door finally opened, and he watched her settle into the seat before slamming it shut with too much force. He would’ve flinched from the sharp noise if he wasn’t actively holding his breath in fear of what she was about to say.
The drop hit him square in the chest, forcing the wind out of him and making him shudder. The broiling rage was replaced by a bone chilling disappointment and apathetic loathing that made him sick to his stomach. It felt like everything was spinning, his fingers shaking as he tried to keep from dropping the cup on himself.
The visceral abhorrence from her reminded him of what she really thought of him. No matter what mask she put on to try and connect with him, these were her true feelings.
The sound of her weeping was the only sound he could hear over the blood rushing in his ears as the world seemed to close in around him.
---
Mariah apologized to him, the bitter gray that consumed her words making them sound as hollow as her cheap air fresheners. Tommy just nodded and kept silent. He hated her, and he knew that she felt the same goddamn way. The sound of the engine was at least a decent enough background noise for him to block out the sound of her residual sniffles.
He hated the pity that came from whenever Mariah blew up, even if she only ever internalized it. It didn’t make her feelings about him any less real. She despised him, and he knew she was the reason she was looking to be transferred to a different district.
If the anger she let build up stung, the pity felt like a thousand needles pricking him in every goddamn nerve he had. It made his skin crawl, especially with how personal it always was. Pity being directed at him made him want to jump out of his flesh to escape the feeling of acid-tipped pins and needles shooting through him.
Trying to focus on the sight of a smaller car trying to cut off a semi and almost paying for it was the only thing keeping him from jumping out of the car. He seriously considered it, but then a truck that was much too big for being in the city whizzed past at not the speed limit. It lost its appeal of being a quick and easy death.
He didn’t want to be splattered like roadkill. If he was pitied for being a fuck-up while alive, he was sure the pity that followed at him being a smear across the interstate might just be enough to stir him from the dead. If he did become a ghost from that, he would haunt the shit out of so many people.
He suppressed the snort that came up from the idea of that, not wanting to break the tense silence between him and Mariah. The sharp beige of whatever mix of annoyance and stress she was feeling kept jabbing him whenever she would glance at him out of the corner of her eye.
He didn’t want her to know he noticed. She surely would’ve said something if she thought he was ready to talk. He hated how patient she was with him. It usually just ended with silence between them as her disgust for him only flourished.
He made the mistake of glancing over, her stress sending sharp stabs of discomfort into his shoulder every time she directed it to him. He could tell she was opening her mouth even after he focused back on his window.
Shit .
“We have the phone call with Phillip today. He reached out to us about you. It’s a rare opportunity.” Her voice was almost robotic from how empty it was. He hated how blank she kept herself when interacting with him. He knew she was just bottling it up.
He wished some days that Pat was still working with him. Getting smacked whenever she thought no one was looking was a lot more pleasant than this fake bullshit Mariah had going on. It was his fault for mentioning it, anyways. He couldn’t go back and fix it.
“When?” It was just a pissing match of who could be the fakest at this point. If she was short with him, he didn’t have a reason not to do it to her.
Tommy could understand why Mariah hated him, honestly.
“Two. I need you in my office ten minutes before.” She stopped peaking over at him, so that was an improvement. If only she took her eyes off the road long enough to crash. With his shitty luck, he was sure that he would end up surviving it with horrible injuries.
He didn’t need to be more of a fuck up than he already was.
---
“You’re late.” It was only a quarter past when Mariah told him the actual phone call was supposed to be, so he didn’t know what she was so pissed about. Even if her tone only had the slightest inclination of how she was feeling, there was a disproportionate amount of disgust coming from her as he took a seat across from her.
The panic that shot through her was funny, the phone pressed to her ear almost being dropped as she looked back at the paper in front of her.
“Not you! I’m so sorry, Mr. Watson.” She wasn’t sorry. She was just more pissed off at Tommy now. Which felt like the opposite of being sorry, actually.
“No it’s- My apologies. He’s just-” Mariah cut herself off, her gaze and hatred for him stinging as their eyes met. The brown pools held enough hostility behind them that he could feel a headache starting.
Tommy settled back in the shitty leather chair that was probably older than he was, picking at the frayed outer layer as he half-assed listened to her. He knew what she was going to say about him. It’s what everyone said.
Because it was true.
“He’s a problem child.”
He choked back a scoff, instead tearing a larger hole in the terrible upholstery.
“Yes, but ple- Of course! Here he is.” Mariah held the phone out to him, her knuckles white from how hard she was gripping the plastic. He was surprised it didn’t snap.
“‘ello?” Tommy didn’t bother introducing himself. If Phil asked for him to be put on the phone, then he would know it was him on the phone. That, and he also didn’t want to be talking to this guy. It was almost time for his afternoon nap.
“Whose this?” The voice on the other end did not sound like it came from a thirty year old man. Was Mariah seriously stupid enough to fall for a prank like this?
He couldn’t decipher what the asshat was feeling since the invasive amount of information he got about people’s feelings seemed to only work face to face. Which was part of the reason he loved movies and TV shows so much. The only time he had been to a play had been a shit show.
“Whose this?” He spat back, ignoring the dagger of apprehensive distaste that he got in his gut from Mariah. She would’ve preferred that he was more cordial, as she had told him multiple times before.
But he would’ve preferred if she didn’t suck, so they both wouldn’t get what they wanted.
“I asked you first, you gremlin .” The insult was thrown at him in a way that caught him off guard, especially since it was such a stupid thing to call someone. It wasn’t even a real insult, and yet here he was. Getting offended.
“Piss off, man!” Tommy was considering handing the phone back to Mariah to get away from the asshole on the phone and to help sate the migraine she was giving him before there was suddenly shouting on the other end.
Followed by the sound of something shattering, and then by what was probably the phone dropping.
“Hello?” The voice that followed was noticeably out of breath, but considerably older. Probably around thirty, if he had to make an educated guess.
“Hi? What the fuck ?” Tommy was tired and his temple was starting to throb, so he really didn’t want to deal with whatever bullshit was happening on the other side of the phone. The sooner he could make this guy hang up, the better.
“Sorry, Wilbur’s just pissed that we told him to clean the spare room out.” The guy on the other end chuckled, his airy laugh not doing much to cushion the pit in Tommy’s stomach.
“Whose ‘we’.” He tried to keep it casual, but he felt like he was about to puke on himself. It was a horrid mix of anxiety and the expired orange juice coming back to haunt him.
“You weren’t told about my sons?”