ax_main | Tommy and Shen

Tommy decides that Shen and her uncle need someone to watch out for them, and Shen and her uncle decide that someone shouldn't be staying outside.

Tommy had wanted to go to the protest -- anything to raise a little hell, honest to God -- but image inducers weren't his thing and he had Billy's face on. They weren't his family to worry about, but the Kaplans were all right. The last thing they needed was for someone to go after them the way Nick's parents had gone down, because someone mistook his face for Billy's. So he'd stayed away. She'd probably be pissed at him for that, but whatever. Tommy didn't need Shen's approval for how he lived his life.

He certainly didn't need her permission to go into Salem Center that night either, even if the tree was technically on the corner of private property. The Kaplans might be safe for the moment, but all it would take would be one sharp-eyed asshole putting two and two together, and the evening could end very badly for someone else entirely. He was only going to stay for a while, just to keep a lookout.

That was what he told himself as he boosted himself easily into the pine tree, setting down on one of the thicker branches about eight feet up. He could see the front of the house from there and once it got dark no-one would be able to see him. Not in the dark hoodie and black jeans, anyway, the new goggles from Kitty settled on his nose. Maybe he should have asked her for the night vision after all. (Didn't matter; if anyone came looking for trouble, Tommy would see them long before they could do damage.)

Line of sight established, his back against the tree trunk and arms folded across his chest, Tommy took his position outside Shen's uncle's home and he waited.

The house was tiny, but it was the biggest home Shen had ever known. The day had been a long one, and by the time she made it back to Salem Center with her uncle, she was an odd mix of exhausted and wired. They ate dinner, then hung out for a while on the couch downstairs. It was difficult to curl up against Yang Tian's side like she used to when she was younger, with her wings out, but she gave it her best try as he put on one of her favorite feel-good movies, since she was forbidden from watching the news, or checking them online, for the night. She hadn't fought his decision; much as she wanted to check how everything was spun by various media, she wasn't sure that she could have handled it tonight.

It was eventually time for bed, and Yang Tian was closing the shutters that gave onto the street when he called Shen over. "Your eyesight is much better than mine," he stated, sounding concerned, "but it looks like there is something in that tree." Shen frowned, expecting a paparazzi, then gaped. "Close your mouth, you'll catch flies," her uncle told her, and she did.

"Tommy," she told him. "I... It's Tommy, from school."

"Then I think you'd better invite him in," Yang Tian replied, as if nothing was odd about the fact that Tommy was in the tree outside their home. What did he think he was doing? The idiot.

Shen sighed. "I guess I'd better."

"I'll put some tea on."

Shen walked out and took off, landing on a branch beside the one Tommy was on, her talons making it easy to crouch on it, wings huddled to her back. She reached out with a hand, resisted the urge to flick Tommy's forehead, and shook his shoulder gently instead. "Wake up, you idiot."

He'd been watching the dumb door in silence for hours and had only just closed his eyes for a second - honest - when something attacked and jolted him awake. "Hey!" Tommy flung himself away from whatever had grabbed him, arms coming up to block a hit- and toppled off the other side of the narrow branch. Slowing time down would only make him hit the ground faster, and he grabbed for purchase somewhere - anywhere! - that he could.

One hand wrapped around the branch, rough bark cutting into his fingers as he dangled there, the smell of pine thick in his nose. And that was when his brain caught up with him and he recognized the dark shape perching in the tree above. Shit.

"Uh. Hi."

Shen's heart was thudding hard in her chest, scared as she'd been he'd fall and hurt himself - but he was good. "...hi." He was fine. He was dangling from the tree. She leaned a now taloned hand on the tree branch he'd just vacated, and held a normal-looking hand out to him to help him back up onto it. Superstrength was a good thing to have when it meant you could pull your friend up one-handed. "Shit, you scared me. Sorry I scared you."

"Reflexes are on kind of a hair trigger here," he muttered, looking up at her silhouetted against the starlit sky. Tommy considered not taking her hand and boosting himself back up on his own, but what was worse -- admitting that he could use the help, or flailing around like a dingbat and then accepting the same help anyway? Dropping to the ground and running back to school was another seriously tempting option, but Shen would only track him down tomorrow and then there'd be witnesses. With an inward sigh he grabbed her hand with his free one and hung on.

Shen pulled him up easily, shifting back fully onto her branch before the proximity could make things awkward. "Maybe don't fall asleep in trees when spying on people, then?" she offered, although there was no actual bite to her words. Not tonight. The day had been so long that she didn't think she could work up enough energy to be mad at Tommy, right now - she didn't want to, anyway. Thinking about it was enough to make her want to cry, and neither one of them wanted that.

"I wasn't asleep," Tommy lied, settling himself back on the branch he'd just toppled from. This was exactly why he'd tried to hide himself in the tree, the awkward settling down between them like a fucking wall. "And I wasn't spying. I was standing watch. Sitting watch. Whatever."

"Yeah, 'cause I'm totally fast enough to sneak up on you when you're awake," Shen pointed out, unimpressed by the obvious, blatant lie. "Come on, then. Yang Tian's making tea. You can sit watch from inside."

"Parental figures and I don't get along so well." And then he'd be trapped while she yelled at him. No thanks. Plead his case and make an exit, that was the better choice. "The whole point of watching is to make sure no-one gets close enough to do anything in the first place, not reacting once it's already happened. Some jackass decides to firebomb you like Nick's folks, I can't be any good to anyone in there."

"Are you gonna be camping in that tree every night?" Shen asked, curling her fingers against the bark of the branch she was perched on.

"You planning to put yourself on TV every day?" He fired right back, dragging his fingers through his hair to push it back off his face. He looked away so he didn't have to meet her eyes. Caring was weak, and she didn't want his caring. He knew that already. "Kurt's folks are in Germany, I can't do jack shit there. But at least here-"

I can be useful. I can do something that matters. He didn't say either of those things.

"Haters aren't going to suddenly forget about me," Shen pointed out with a frown, then realized how tense she was. How did Tommy always rile her up like that? Her wings drooped a little, and she softened her voice. "Seriously, come in. Have some tea to warm you up. Yang Tian will leave us be if I ask him." Honestly, he might leave them be even if she didn't, knowing him. "Please?"

His shoulders sagged. He was going to do it, he realized sadly. Walk right into the goddamn lion's den, because she'd asked him to. Fuck all of this. "Dying to get me alone again, hunh?" he asked, because she'd expect that sort of thing. He couldn't summon up the right kind of smile for that joke, though. Not right now.

The joke fell flat, and made something painful twist in her heart, and for a second Shen couldn't decide if he'd said that to be cruel. But did it really matter? If he had, she wasn't going to let him make her take her invitation back, and if he hadn't... "That's gotta be it," she answered, and jumped from the tree, spreading her wings to land softly.

He could take the chance she'd given him and just... bail out. He'd tried to do something right and it hadn't worked, there was no sense at all in sticking around to get misunderstood. But because he was dumb and a glutton for punishment, apparently, he grabbed the branch and swung down, dropping lightly to his feet. He did steal a couple of minutes of time to get his head back together and find his swagger, shake off the shock and adrenaline that were getting him all muddled up. Think natural. A deep breath and Tommy snapped time back into place, waiting for Shen to make the next move.

Shen nodded for him to follow and walked into the house first, closing the door behind Tommy. "Mind taking your shoes off?" She edged past him in the narrow hallway, and into the small living room, going to intercept Yang Tian in the kitchen. She gave him the low-down in a couple of hushed sentences, and they walked back into the living room together, one steaming mug of tea in her uncle's hand, and one in each of hers. She held one out to Tommy with a hopeful little smile. She really wanted him to stay a bit, what could she say? It was probably super selfish of her, but here she was anyway.

"Hello, Tommy," her uncle greeted him with a small smile as he came close. He was a short man, maybe just a foot taller than Shen. His face was slightly wrinkled, and kind, and his hair peppered with gray, but the family resemblance with Shen was still striking. He was dressed in a simple green sweater and a pair of black pants. "I'm Tian, Li-Men's uncle. She tells me you've been looking out for us?"

Tommy straightened up from removing his shoes, taking the cup more in reflex than anything else. He was on high alert, couldn't help it, the tension shooting jolts up and down his spine. Shen's uncle didn't feel like danger, though, and that helped some. At least if he took a swing, Tommy was pretty damn sure he could get away long before anything connected. He curled his fingers around the warm mug, the heat something to focus on.

"Um. Yeah. There was a thing a few months back. One of the guys at school with a really visible mutation -- assholes saw him and firebombed his parents' house. After the protest today, I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a pair of eyes on the place just in case someone who saw Shen put two and two together. You weren't supposed to find out," Tommy finished simply, not looking at Shen, his lips quirking up -- just for a moment -- in a flash of a rueful smile.

Yang Tian and Shen shared a quick look, before her uncle smiled at Tommy again. She had told him all about what had happened to Nick and his parents, of course, so this wasn't news to him. If it had been, if she'd done all this without mentioning it, without the both of them thoroughly talking things through, she doubted that even Yang Tian would have remained calm. But as it was, he only told Tommy, "Well, as a word of warning. If I see you out here again, I will bring you tea." He glanced at Shen again, then added, "Speaking of, I'll take mine in my room. Thank you for keeping an eye out for us, Tommy."

"Yeah. Sure. No problem." Tommy kept his eyes on Shen's uncle without really realizing that he was tracking him, unable to shake the tightness and the tension despite the guy's calm. He hadn't been shot at or told to go blow, so that had to be a sign of something, right?

Shen's gaze also clung to her uncle as he walked out of the room, but it was more out of an instinctive desire not to look at Tommy right then. Which was stupid. She'd invited him in. She'd told him she'd get Yang Tian to leave them be. But having him standing there in her living room now, with so much that still felt unresolved between them... It was stupid. She was being stupid. Her feathers ruffled slightly as she straightened her shoulders, and then she took a seat on the arm of the couch, bare feet on its seat, wings dropping off the edge of it. She had both hands cradled around her mug, as if for warmth, despite the fact that her leggings and slightly too large long-sleeved tee were more than enough to keep her warm, given her mutation.

"So you watched it on tv?" she asked, lifting her gaze to meet Tommy's. Hey, she'd promised her uncle she wouldn't go and watch any footage herself, today, but she hadn't said anything about not asking people about it.

Tommy's tension ebbed visibly once Shen's uncle was gone, and he heard the footsteps receding into the house. The urge to run didn't go away completely, but then, did it ever? He zipped across the room to take up position by the window, so he was at least sort of following his original mission plan. "Livestream, but yeah. 'course I did." The stream delay had only been a second or two, so if something had gone wrong he could have been there in one or two more. At least he hadn't had to hide in a tree for that one.

"What did you think?" she asked, trying not to sound as eager to know as she felt. It betrayed how nervous she was about the entire thing. What if it had all come off horrible, from an outside perspective, and nobody had dared tell her yet?

"Looked like it went okay," he answered, with some hesitation. Why was she asking him? She was the one who'd been there. "It's not going to change anyone's mind about us but no-one started a riot, so that's one better than last time." He shrugged, unrepentant.

Shen frowned as he went on, and took a sip of tea before looking back at him and asking. "How do you know? It won't change anyone's mind." The hope was that it would. The fact that they had managed to pull this off without a riot was a point in their favor. Why wouldn't it change some people's minds?

Tommy shrugged, ignoring the mug in his hands. "For this one specifically? Given that it's Easter weekend and the first day of Passover, more than half the state is going to be focused on how to keep Grandma out of the booze and stopping weird Uncle Jim from getting handsy with the in-laws, not on some kids being noisy in Central Park.

"In general? Because people are idiots and believe whatever the media repeats often enough. And they can frame anything we do, however they want. A protest becomes an assault, or illegal assembly, or bored kids making trouble. That won't change until there's a voice loud enough to tell them to shut the fuck up. A mutant 'Ellen' show or whatever. And there aren't enough of us, old enough, for that." And there wouldn't be, as long as the Right kept getting to them before anyone had the chance to grow up.

Shen looked down at her mug, blinking rapidly, the second she felt the prickle of tears threatening at the back of his eyes. She hadn't spent all this time putting this together with Kurt, giving it everything she had, for it to be dismissed so easily. Tommy couldn't know that it hadn't made a difference, even a small one. He couldn't, and she wouldn't let herself believe it.

She took a sip of tea to help with the small lump in her throat, wishing her nerves weren't so frayed. Then she looked up at Tommy, her eyes dry, or close enough that he probably couldn't tell. "Did you watch the media coverage at all?" Since he was talking about that.

Looking out the window, Tommy didn't catch any shifts in Shen's expression. He wouldn't want to anyway; the whole point of coming had been to keep her and her uncle safe, without getting in her face. So much for that big idea. "Not much. I don't actively go out of my way to be annoyed by the world." It was plenty irritating on its own.

So he did not know, could not say, how it might have been spun by any of them. Well, for some of them, Shen had no doubt that the answer was, terribly. Trish Trilby was at the top of that list. But she hoped that some of them had understood what the protest had all been about, beyond the specialized media they had reached out to. Those would have much less reach, anyway, and mostly preach to the choir.

Shen let out a quiet, controlled breath, then inhaled, and took another sip of tea. "Well, thank you." She wasn't sure she had even said it yet, although she rolled her eyes at what she was thanking him for. "You know. For being a weird stalker."

"Seriously? That's where we're going with this?" Tommy put the tea mug down on the closest flat surface before he did something stupid like break the cup, the tension of the last few days -- weeks, months? -- bubbling up at her jab. "I'm not stalking you. I've been staying out of your way, in case you hadn't noticed. I got the message, and I'm sure as hell not trying to push in somewhere I'm not wanted. Not like that."

Shen stared, feeling her temper bubble up just beneath the surface, but it deflated nearly immediately, for lack of energy to fuel it. "Sorry," she mumbled, instead, and looked down at her mug again. "Bad joke." Freaking terrible joke, but as long as she could keep that lump in her throat under control, things would be... well, less terrible than they might get. She looked up at him, though. "You don't have to - stay out of my way." She swallowed against that lump, then added, "Unless you want to."

"It's not about what I want." But what that even was -- things were a lot muddier now than they'd seemed back on New Year's Eve, and he didn't have the first clue what he'd say if she asked him. Tommy raked his hand through his hair to push it back off his face, and blew out a frustrated puff of air. "You're one of the lucky ones," he said simply. "You've got family who give a shit. A guy who looks out for you, even when things get shitty and weird. That's rare as fuck, and deserves protecting. That's all."

Adding on and I can't stand the thought of seeing you hurt seemed like a really bad call right then, no matter how true it might be.

"I know how lucky I am," Shen answered, wiping a hand over her eyes in an attempt to hold the tears back a little longer, never mind that her voice had cracked a little on that last word. Her other hand was getting tight around the mug, so she set it down before she risked shattering it. Her wings bristled behind her back as she tried to will herself to get a grip. Tommy was evading, and she didn't have the energy to call him out on it. Instead, she went where he led the conversation, and focused on Yang Tian. "I don't know what I'd do if something happened to him."

When was the point Tommy had first realized that he'd hung around Xavier's too long? That he'd gotten attached to people enough that the idea of being without them hurt? Sometime before last week, anyway, and seeing Pietro bandaged up the way Alex's arm had been before. "It won't happen," he said, too forcefully.

Shen huffed out a quiet laugh, because they both knew those words were empty. They couldn't protect him around the clock, and Yang Tian wouldn't want them to, anyway. This was their decision. She wiped a hand over her eyes. "Hopefully."

"Yeah, well." Tommy shrugged. "Given the things that have gone down the last few months, sometimes hope is all there is. I'll get out of your hair," he offered, pulling his eyes from the street outside for the first time since he'd started watching the darkness again. "You've been up for days planning this thing, you don't need me hanging around and keeping you up." The irony, considering he'd been dumb enough to fall asleep on watch in the first place, was not lost on him at all. And he sure as hell didn't plan to go far, either. Her spotting him didn't change the fact that the Friends of Humanity were out for blood and Shen had just made herself a big fat target.

Shen didn't want him to go, but she also didn't want to keep him - or for him to see her cry. She looked up to meet his gaze. "Please tell me you're not going back to that tree. Yang Tian won't let me hear the end of it if you are."

He hesitated half a beat, caught off guard, the lie not coming as glibly as it usually would. "What, and get accused of being a weird stalker again?" he snorted. "I've got too much invested in my reputation now for that."

Shen could've questioned what reputation he was referring to exactly, and who he had it with. Ordinarily, she would have. But she was all out of energy for banter, and all out of energy for trying to talk him out of it. "I'm just saying. If you want to keep watch or whatever, you might as well do it from here." At least when he fell asleep, he would be more comfortable, and less cold.

She wasn't biting at any of the lines he was throwing, and Shen being that subdued was finally setting off all kinds of alarm bells. No big surprise, if he'd stopped to think about anything long enough -- even if there hadn't been any molotov cocktails thrown today, it sure as hell hadn't been a holiday picnic in the park. He had the urge to hug her, lie and say that she'd done the right thing and everything was gonna be golden from here in, but that would just piss both of them off. "You're not kicking me out?" he asked instead, voicing his confusion.

"I didn't invite you in just to kick you out," she pointed out, standing up and reaching down for her mug. Her wings bristled slightly as a shiver went through them, then settled down again before she took a sip of tea. It was her turn to avoid his gaze, because she felt too small, too exhausted for it right then, although she did gesture at his mug. "You're not gonna drink that?"

He glanced down at the mug and shook his head. "No offense, I'm sure it's good, if you like that sort of thing. But tea tastes like leaves and doesn't have enough caffeine to make life interesting. You should've seen it the first time I got my hands on a double espresso," he added with a flash of a grin, one that faded away soon after. "Go to bed. I've got this." He nodded out at the darkness again.

Shen walked over to pick up his mug, and took it into the kitchen with hers. Mugs emptied and left in the sink to wash in the morning, she walked back into the living room, and stopped by Tommy's side to lay a hand on his arm. "I meant it." Terrible joke aside. "Thank you."

Tommy didn't want the ache inside him, the weird feeling of loss that didn't have anything to attach itself to. It was the recent stupid catching up to him all at once, that was all. Her hand was warm where he was still a little chilled from outside and he didn't shake her off. "Any time." And on impulse, because he could only keep control over so much at once, Tommy reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear. "Get some rest, ok? The world will still need an ass-kicking tomorrow."

Shen huffed out a laugh. "And the day after that, and the day after that..." She pressed a kiss to his cheek, before she could think better of it - you're being cruel, came the immediate thought, followed by the question, who to? - and stepped away towards her room. She turned back to him once she reached the hallway, and pointed behind her. "Bathroom's the first door on the right here, if you need it." She hesitated, and then, "I get it if you're gone before breakfast tomorrow - but I wouldn't mind if you weren't. Good night." And she turned to walk into her room, to save them both from him having to answer that.

He watched her go and then he was alone -- for all intents and purposes -- in a strange house, the entire evening feeling like some kind of strange dream. Honest to God, Shepherd, how do you get yourself into these messes? Because he was an idiot, that's how. But he'd said he'd stand watch, so he turned out the light and settled himself on the windowsill, his eyes on the street below.

For about twenty minutes, Shen tossed and turned - as much as her wings allowed - and resisted the urge to go back out there and stay up with Tommy. But exhaustion ended up claiming her.

When she woke up in the morning, she was unsurprised to find her uncle already up, and Tommy nowhere to be seen.