Annihilate

Tommy breathes in.

He’s standing on top of their apartment building, hood of a brand new sweatshirt pulled deep into his face. The January cold barely grazes him even though he’s definitely not dressed for the weather, another new thing.

Alright. Now, what’s all this supposed to be?

He stretches while pondering what he actually wants to do. It might be insane. He might be insane. But you can’t die in dreams, and he’s pretty certain that if this is a dream, it’ll wake him the hell up if he jumps off this building.

Okay, no, that was a joke plan he made. He wants to jump off this building and all the way to the building across from it. Seems reasonable to do, right? It’s only what, sixty-five feet?

No point in chickening out now. That’s not something he does, generally. He wants to know what he can actually do.

He breathes out.

This is nerve-wracking on multiple levels. Obviously, it is. He’s about to take a gigantic, daunting leap of faith across four lanes of traffic. There’s a chance that he’ll go splash on the ground. But his gut feeling is telling him he won’t.

He dug out a bandana Tubbo gifted him ages ago, just in case someone records him; actually, he made the entire outfit he’s wearing from fabric scraps he still had lying around, spent eight hours on it, because he really doesn’t want his family to find out he jumped from the roof of their apartment building. And he also put on skating protectors over his knees and elbows and palms. So he’ll be fine, logically. Even though he’s not wearing shoes. For a very particular reason.

Tommy breathes in.

He’s trembling with anticipation. No point in thinking about it longer than he has to.  He breathes out and takes his run-up.

The wind whips snow into his face as he pulls the green bandana over his ears and nose, and jumps with both legs, pulling his knees up.

His momentum catapults him across one, two, three, four lanes, the tree in the middle. Tommy is soaring, and he very barely manages not to scream in pure joy as he makes the jump and lands on the roof of the building across their apartment, rolling into a clumsy landing. He flips onto his back and laughs, adrenaline pumping in his veins, and then gets up as long as it still lasts.

He knows Queens well, and from the rooftops at one in the afternoon, he starts testing out how fast he can get across the city. He lets his body go on autopilot as he jumps from building to building, figuring out that his joints can take the strain easily, that his balance doesn’t waver anymore, that his bare feet are just as strong as the rest of him. He feels good, for the first time since he got into this predicament – it feels good to actually do something that feels extraordinary and not also freaky as all hell.

Up here, he can forget what Tubbo told him about Oscorp looking to question him – he forgets about everything except the wind howling in his ears and the view of the city, so much better when he’s midair.

He takes another leap and jumps onto a building’s windows, world tilting into horizontal. His feet stick, and he runs across the glass surface, pushing off at the edge and twisting in the air.

He’s in free fall, and another laugh escapes him, an incredulous one – the world feels like it moves in slow motion for a moment, and he looks out over the skyline of the city and feels free. Free like he’s never felt before.

Then he twists and hits the building’s wall, sticking to it. He pauses for a moment, chest heaving, and turns back to the view, heart pounding in his chest. Setting his feet down on the wall, he lets go with his fingers, stands horizontally and just stares at everything around him for a bit. He’s on a skyscraper, so far up the people below him are the size of pinheads. He’s on top of the world.

Tommy laughs again, wild and breathless. He walks up the building and reaches for the roof, fixing his hands on it and swinging into an effortless handstand. He feels in control of his body in a way he literally never has before. He was never really athletic, but now he balances himself so easily it feels kind of laughable. He leverages his weight onto one hand, then lets himself tip forward and stand upright on the roof.

He braces himself on his knees and tries to get air, a wide smile on his face. Holy fucking shit.

Holy goddamn fuckshit, he’s a fucking superhero.

“Spider-Man,” he says to himself, and then he promptly bursts out laughing.

He settles down on the rooftop and pulls out what he brought along with him; his backpack, and in that, his notebook. He started up a theory on his stickiness when he was still at home, and he thinks his horizontal experiments proved it – he has the properties of the spider that bit him, and he guesses that he has fine hairs on the soles of his feet and all over his hands that allow him to use the van der Waals force the same way some spiders do, allowing him to stick even to the smoothest surfaces. He still has to shake off his notebook after jotting down his confirmation, because he still has no idea how to stop sticking, but he’ll figure it out.

For now, he just lies down and closes his eyes, dozing a little. What’s he going to do now? Keep trying to figure this out and just chill? He wants to keep doing this, for sure. He already wants to go for another round of parkour. Which leads him back around to thinking–

Fuck. Wait.

He shoots upright and digs through his backpack, fishing out his phone. Oh, fuck. He was out here for too long; he meant to be back by three. It’s almost four in the afternoon, and he has no less than six missed calls by Wilbur. Jesus fuck.

Tommy bites his lip and calls him back, flopping back down. This is about to be bad.

Wilbur sounds pissed when he picks up. “Where the fuck are you?” is all he asks.

“Out with– uh, Deo,” Tommy lies through his teeth and instantly wants to smack himself. Deo and Wilbur know each other, for fuck’s sake.

Lo and behold, Wilbur instantly calls bullshit. “I called Deo. And Tubbo, so don’t even think of lying twice. Where are you really?”

Tommy sighs. “I’m just hanging out. Alone. I needed some air.”

“Tommy, you’re not supposed to go out alone. We live in New York, what if something happens and you’re out there all alone–”

“Yeah,” he interrupts, getting annoyed. “I know. Phil holds me the same tirade on a daily basis. I can take care of myself, you know.”

“You’re sixteen fucking years old! I’m supposed to be taking care of you! You’re sick, for God’s sake, you can’t just leave without a word and–”

“I feel better,” Tommy cuts him off again, anger deep in his chest, “and I’m sixteen, not six. I’ve been out alone in much worse parts of this city and I lived.”

“That doesn’t matter!” Wilbur sounds really angry. It fails to alarm him. “You’re still just a kid, and it doesn’t matter that your foster families before us didn’t give a shit about what you did with who in the city, you’re with us now and we care! You can’t just disappear on a whim! Do you know how worried I was?”

“You’re not my brother, Wilbur,” Tommy says, and he wants it to hurt. “Stop acting like you are.”

He hangs up and resists the urge to throw his phone off the skyscraper.

Fuck. He fucked up.

Sighing, he lies back down and closes his eyes. God damn it, it’s been all but a day since the field trip – literally, it was yesterday. His entire life feels like it’s upside down. Now he’s suddenly fighting with Wilbur, his camera is still fried, and he’s half bug or some shit.

Tommy was never made to stay in one place for a long time. For as long as he can think back, he’s always been in constant motion, always moving, always doing something. Mostly to distract him from how depressing his life was.

Now, his nervous energy seems to have transformed into this prickling feeling beneath his skin – a quieter urge to move, almost unnoticeable if he doesn’t pay attention to it.

He finds himself wishing he really was hanging out with Deo – he misses him loads, the last time they’ve seen each other was shortly before Christmas. He sighs again and picks up his phone once more, opening his contact list and scrolling to Wilbur.

He hasn’t called him back, seemingly done with Tommy’s attitude; he does that when he’s pissed at him, gives him this silent treatment like he’s five years old. His anger suddenly flares back up, and he closes the contact field again, searching for Deo instead.

It rings, once, twice, thrice, then it goes to voicemail. “Hey, it’s Deo. I’m out of town for a while. I’ll call you back.”

Tommy hangs up and goes to the last person who can always save him from bursting into tears: He calls Ranboo Beloved.

His friend picks up pretty instantly. “Hey, Tom! How’re you feeling?”

“Physically? Never been better,” he honestly says, getting up and stuffing his notebook and pens back into his backpack. He has a change of clothes and shoes with him that he originally planned to change into before going home. “Mentally? Like complete shit. Are you and Tubbo still doing illegal things?”

“I prefer the term frowned upon by legal, but yeah. We’re at the old 91st Street station in Manhattan. What’s going on?”

He closes his eyes, feeling his anger dissipating at the worry in Ranboo’s voice. He’s such a fucking nuisance. Making all his loved ones worry about him and then complaining about it. “Had a nasty fight with Wilbur just now. I need you-time. Can I come?”

“Yeah, of course. Do you know the way?”

“I’ll find it. Thanks, Ran.”

“Always, man.”

Tommy hangs up and finishes packing up his shit. He texts Ranboo be there in 30, and scopes out the best route. He’s deep in Brooklyn, but he knows the layout of the subway well enough. He turns away from where he came from and looks over the edge of the building. Alright. Time to go Brooklyn skyscraper hopping.

Admittedly, Tommy scares the shit out of quite a few office workers as he takes a nice horizontal walk on their windows and then just leaps onto the next tower, working towards normal buildings. He jumps down into an alley and pulls socks and shoes out of his backpack, putting both on before doing a quick change into his other set of clothes and walking out of the alley with his hands in his pockets and Tubbo’s bandana around his wrist.

He stops on Brooklyn Branch to buy some spray paint. Ranboo lives around here, and he swears on this one store Deo also likes a lot. He’s surprised at how cheap the paint is.

The subway station Tubbo and Ranboo are currently vandalizing is on the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line, and Tommy gets onto the line at the Borough Hall, sticking with the 2-subs, as he calls the Line 2 trains. It’s half an hour of riding the metro, but again, he loves the metro. He passes 91st street, where he true to their word spots Ranboo and Tubbo throwing up graffiti. He smiles to himself and gets out at the next stop, 96th street, from where he can comfortably wait for all the people to get into the next subway and in the commotion of the push and pull of them entering and exiting, simply slip behind the train.

There are four tracks for four different lines; he whistles to himself as he speed-walks over the rails, switching to the side when a train whizzes past. It’s dark in here, and he can hear a leaky pipe somewhere dripping. There’s loads of graffiti on the walls here, too. Crazy shit.

“Queens!” he yells into the silence, giggling when it echoes.

“Brooklyn!” comes back – oh hey, Ranboo is here.

“Queens!”

“Brooklyn!”

It turns into Marco Polo until Tommy hops onto a side platform and wanders into the station, where Tubbo is sitting on the ground and watching Ranboo paint. Tommy stops short at the sight of the mural, because well, that’s the fucking Vulture – the vigilante has his wings spread high in the air, on a running background of abstract shapes and neon colors that make a city skyline. Oblivious to the fact that he is the reason Tommy’s dad is so afraid of him going out alone. Dickhead.

He whistles. “That’s one hell of a magic trick you got there, mate.”

Ranboo laughs. “Shut up. Tubbo did the background.”

Tubbo grins widely when Tommy high-fives him. He traces the lines of the black silhouette against the bright background and nods towards a smaller figure the Vulture is carrying. “Who’s that?”

“Haven’t been watching the news lately?” Tubbo asks. “Guy calls himself the Shocker. He and Vulture are like… something of a duo now.”

Tommy’s spider-sense goes off, but he doesn’t know why. His focus isn’t shifting to anything. He just feels uneasy all of the sudden, jumpy for no reason. The feeling bugs him, but he tries to shake it off, showing his friends the bag he’s holding. “Run out of paint yet? Cause I bought some.”

Ranboo whoops and makes him forget about the weird feeling. “Attaboy! I need bright yellow, have you got neon yellow?”

Tommy throws them the bottle and frowns at the mural. He knows Vulture is somewhat of a personal hero to Tubbo and Ranboo – he gets why, he’s like a winged modern Robin Hood. Wanted as a criminal by the police even though all he does is steal from the rich and subtly give to the poor. His spiky metal wings and glowing green goggles do make him look like a straight-up boogeyman, though. The new guy – the… Shocker? – has weird gauntlets that Ranboo is accentuating with neon yellow right now. His mask is in the same boogeyman vein of the Vulture, and the hand that isn’t grasped by his fellow vigilante is thrust outwards in a fist, sending out… an electric wave, or something to the likes of it.

“What are those?” he asks, running his fingers over the blue-framed white circles.

“Shock waves,” Tubbo says from behind him. “He’s got weird gauntlets. I’m thinking they’re like, high-pressure air blasts.”

“Hm.” Tommy trails the line work of the shocker’s figure up to the harness of the Vulture. “Think he knows who the Vulture is?” he absently asks. “Can’t be easy, having this whole life as a hero of the people and still having everyone see you as a villain. Dealing with all that on your own.”

Ranboo stops spraying. There’s a moment of silence.

“Tommy?” they ask. “Do you know–”

Tubbo’s phone starts ringing and interrupts whatever Ranboo was going to ask. He picks it up with a quick glance towards the painter that Tommy doesn’t know what to make of – it’s sort of… warning? His spider-sense suddenly goes off again, and he wants to jump out of his own skin. It fucking hurts to ignore it.

“Yeah?” Tubbo answers his phone, distracting him nicely. “Yeah, I’m… what? What do you mean? Hold up, wait– talk slower. What happened?” He listens for a bit, then his eyes widen. “No– no, I’m–” He flinches and looks at his phone. “Damn it.”

“Something wrong?” Tommy asks, brows drawing together as he tries to get his instinctual danger-warning to calm the fuck down. A subway passes them. He flinches at the noise.

“There’s been a break-in at Oscorp,” Tubbo comes into motion, picking up his backpack. “My dad’s pinging my phone if I’m not home in ten minutes. If he finds out I was here–” He cuts himself off, cursing wildly.

Ranboo drops the spray paint. “I gotcha. Tommy, I’m sorry, man, you know we gotta go.”

Tommy shakes his head, frenzied. “It’s fine. Go now, I can pick up your stuff and take it home. We can hang out tomorrow?”

“Nah, I have, uh, band practice.” “No, my dad’s gonna want me home,” comes back at the same time.

He deflates a little, internally. “Oh. Okay, I’ll see you at school then?”

“Yep! Thanks, Tommy, love ya!”

“Bye, big man!”

Off his friends go, breaking into a sprint towards the exit. Tommy sighs and starts picking up the paints Ranboo left standing around. It seems like the universe really just doesn’t want them to hang around each other today, huh? Now he has no Ranboo and Tubbo-time, a fight with Wilbur he doesn’t know how to recover from, and absolutely zero desire to go home.

Well, if he’s here already…

Tommy looks at the mural and finds a spot next to it that looks old and unused. The tiles that once made up the decoration of the walls of 91st Street are cracked and decrepit. He searches his backpack for his signature color red – he grabbed a bright neon one, and he shakes it before popping the cap off, staring at his empty canvas.

He goes with what he knows, geometrical forms, and stacks a small rhombus on top of a bigger rhombus – the paint drips, so he figures he’s moving too slow. Ranboo and Deo both make this shit look so effortless. He makes it bigger to cover up his fail and ends up with something that, with a bit of interpretation, could be a person. Just two rhombi. He gnaws on his lip for a bit before adding four lines, as symmetrical as possible – two on both sides of the point where the rhombi meet, two on both sides of the middle of the bigger one. If he adds another set of four lines, now vertically instead of diagonally, he ends up with a symbol that looks like a spider.

Tommy stares at his creation for a moment, then he breathes out. He has to go home and apologize to Wilbur. He fucking hates it when his family acts like he’s a baby – they don’t know shit about what he’s been through, at the end of the day. But at the end of the day, they’re still his family. Blood related or not, Wilbur is his brother, and he has all the right to worry about him.

His spider-sense goes off again.

This time, it’s so strong that Tommy drops the can of spray-paint and covers his ears – as though that will diminish the ringing in them. His instincts are screaming at him to move. Move, move, move move movemovemove dangerdangerdanger behind you–