Chapter Text
" A little left…Tommy, that’s the wrong direction.”
Tommy took another confident step to the right and felt his chest collide with the wall. Rough, a bit like the concrete when he gets his face slammed into the ground by a hero, distinctly rectangular. Must be a brick wall.
“OW!”
“I told you it was the wrong direction!”
“Shut up, Tubbo!”
“HEY,” Tommy’s big-man-in-the-chair said firmly, “no civilian names in the field.”
“But it doesn’t matter because I’m outside the building!”
“And you’re still in your fucking suit. It’s Nuke while you’re in the suit.”
“Nuke, where’s the fucking ladder?”
“TO YOUR LEFT, LIKE I TOLD YOU!”
Tommy took a confident step to the left and to be greeted with a dull metallic bang.
“OWWWW!”
“Did he find it?” asked the deeper, foreign voice of Tommy’s other roommate, Boob Boy.
“Yeah, he did. Was it on your left, Anateus?”
Tommy rubbed his forehead with the back of his palm. It would probably bruise, just like the rest of him. “Fuck off, Tubbo.”
“That’s not my name!” Tubbo sing-songed in his ear.
“Fuck off, bitch.”
Tubbo hummed, satisfied. “Close enough. Hey, aren’t you invulnerable? How did that hurt?”
Tommy paused his climbing at the second-floor landing. “I..I actually don’t know. It shouldn’t have hurt.”
“Hm. Come on up and we’ll talk then.”
He hung his head. Maybe he should have just gone through the lobby. Nevertheless, he kept climbing, counting landings until he reached the landing outside of his, Tubbo, and Ranboo’s apartment. Drawn toward warm circles of light coming from what he presumed to be a window, he walked toes-forward until he hit something solid. He made a fist and put his hand out, rapping on the window.
It opened with a woosh. “Fucking hell, Tom, do you have to knock so loud?”
“Help me in, Tubbo.”
“Gimme your foot. I mean elbow. I mean hand.”
Tommy paused and tilted his head towards Tubbo’s voice, grinning ear to ear. “You good, Tubbs? Almost sounds like you were the one out there instead of me.”
Tubbo grabbed one of Tommy’s wrists and tugged him through the window with a laugh. “Get in the house, Tommy. No injuries?”
“‘Course not.” He brushed the imaginary dust off of his thighs. He may try to Gaslight-Gatekeep-Girlboss his way out of a lot of things, but not his safety to Tubbo.
And Ranboo on every other Tuesday, he guesses, but mostly Tubbo.
Speaking of, Ranboo addressed him from somewhere on the right. “Welcome back, Tom. Find anything interesting?”
He sent a shrug…somewhere. All of his everything ached, so he didn’t give too much of a shit as to where it went. He’s invulnerable, not un-achy-able…? Is that a word?
He decided it was.
“Not really, just the usual.” He pulled a ring from his pocket. “I got the ring for the Las Nevadas job.”
“Oh, nice.” Shuffling of clothes, then a few steps in his direction as Tubbo closed the window with a woosh and a thud. He turned his head in that direction and looked up as a gentle hand landed on his shoulder. Naturally, this had to be Ranboo because Tubbo was anything but gentle. Another hand took the ring from his fingers, just as gentle as the first. “I’ll message Ace and set up a drop off time for tomorrow. I’m hoping that we can all sleep tonight.”
“Wait, Boo.” Tubbo crossed in front of Tommy. “It’s the first of the month. We need to talk about rent.”
Tommy groaned. “Can we do that after I’ve showered? I can smell dirt beneath my manly musk.”
Ranboo laughed and removed his hand from Tommy’s shoulder. “Leave enough hot water for me!”
“No, bitch.”
His taller friend pushed him slightly with their hand in the direction of the bathroom. Tired, Tommy didn’t put up a half-hearted fight and used his hand to guide himself towards the bathroom.
Comfortable in pjs with mugs of hot tea in their hands, the three teenagers sat on the couch with a spring that always managed to tangle in the couch’s fabric. (“It’s called upholstery,” Tubbo corrected him one day.) Tommy leant back against the stiff arm with his knees pulled to his chest, Tubbo using his shins to lean on and probably forcing Ranboo to accept his feet across his lap. A lamp was turned on nearby, casting the warm glow across the room in circles as it hit Tommy, his friends, and their surroundings.
Tubbo shuffled paper in front of him. “It–”
“I don’t want to know,” Tommy interrupted.
“We have to,” Ranboo spoke up. “Go on, Tubbo.”
“The rates go up starting in…two months. It’ll cost all of Ranboo and I’s paychecks to keep us here.”
“Is that even legal?”
“They can raise the rent whenever they want, Tommy,” Ranboo informed him, “but they legally just have to let us know before they do it.”
“How much are we making from heists?” Tommy asked.
More shuffling. “A few hundred thousand a month, but we can’t use that money, Tommy.”
“Why not?”
“The bank will grow suspicious of how we suddenly have thousands of dollars in our accounts.”
“What if we paid rent in cash?” Ranboo shot out.
Tubbo didn’t immediately shoot down the idea, so Tommy added in his thoughts. “Our clients usually pay us in cash, right? And if not it’s Venmo and we move it over slowly?”
“Yeah, but–”
“Then we’ll just do that. We’ll use the heist money to pay rent, and I can go solo if you two are busy working or some shit.”
Tubbo got up and the papers he was holding made contact with Tommy’s toes. He moved them to get the tickly feeling off of them. “Tubbs?”
“We’re not sending you on more heists and we’re not using the heist money.”
“Why not?” Tommy asked as Tubbo’s footsteps filled the background. “It’s a good plan! We even have enough to get a new couch!”
“And if someone started asking questions? Big Q knows that we’re underage and he lets us live here without an adult anyway, but if we started paying him cash? Didn’t ask for more time? Showed up with a new couch out of nowhere when we should be struggling with our money? He could evict us.”
“Quackity wouldn’t do that, Tubbo,” Ranboo soothed their friend. “He’ll lower the cost for us if I take up his offer–”
“An illegal offer, and it isn’t even his say! It’s his boss’s decision.”
“Do we have any other options?”
There was a crash, and Tubbo yelped. “What happened?” Tommy asked.
“Fell through the floor, Tom. Boo, help me up.”
The couch shifted, and Tommy wished for the nth time that he could see. “I could get a job.”
He didn’t receive an immediate response. There were footsteps, the sound of struggling and then two footfalls. Palms against fabric, and a groan as Tubbo fell to the couch and leaned against Tommy’s knees. “That could work. Are you sure?”
He shrugged. “It wouldn’t draw attention to our bank accounts, and maybe we could get Big Q to lower the rates–”
“You’re not going to work for Quackity.”
“Why not?”
“He wants a bartender.” Ranboo reasoned. “Tommy, I don’t know if you can see enough for bartending.”
Truth be told, he didn’t know either. “Just…ask him if he can fix the apartment, or I will, but we need to figure something out.” The light of Tubbo’s phone hit him in the face and he shut his eyes. “Is the path to the piano clear of holes?”
“Yeah, you’re good.”
Tommy stood and made his way to the upright piano, the only thing that the three had allowed themselves to splurge on with the heist money as both he and Tubbo knew how to play, and Ranboo loved to sing with them. Tommy even learned how to tune it himself so that they didn’t have to spend money on it’s upkeep. The brown mass came into view, and Tommy pulled out the worn bench and sat and the upright piano. He found middle C and gave it a quick press, satisfied with it’s pitch.
C chord, E chord, G chord, E, back to middle C, low G, and then middle C again. He played through the C octave and stopped at the A. It was…it needed some Tommy Time.
Tommy let Tubbo and Ranboo’s conversation fade as he picked up the toolbag, always left on the left side of the piano on the floor against the wall, and opened the lid so he could tune the key. He grabbed the tuning hammar and used it to gently adjust the string, then tried the key again. The sound of the A key rang clear and right, and he smiled as he closed the lid and dropped the hammar on the left side of the piano.
“Any requests?”
“Megalovania,” Ranboo offered.
“No not Megalovania,” Tubbo objected, “you said that last time. Choose something else.”
“It’s Raining Somewhere Else.”
“Something not from Undertale.”
“Why? It’s a good game!”
“Because you literally request from that every goddamned time and I want to hear something else.”
As they argued, Tommy began to play a meme song he heard on Tubbo’s phone one day. Eventually Tubbo broke off his argument mid-sentence.
“Is that 12th Street Rag?”
Ranboo burst into laughter and Tommy continued playing. He switched to a song from his favorite band, Lovejoy, titled Perfume. Tubbo and Ranboo joined him in verse, their voices coming closer until they were right behind him as he played.
He let the last chord ring out, and Tubbo tapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah?”
“I think I know where you should apply.”