aterat | [Open] The Sun Is My Friend

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[Open] The Sun Is My Friend

Who; Tommy Shepherd, OTA
What; ~~the anime beach episode~~ Enjoying the Beach
Where; The Newly Uncovered Beach
When; Weekends Mid-July
Warnings; N/A

He hears the talk of a beach rather quickly. It wasn't that Tommy had more inroads to the gossip of the city than other people not native to this world that led to him finding out so fast. No, it was entirely just his business. Businesses reappearing and thus reopening around the shore meant goods needing delivered there for beach season. And urgent deliveries meant quick deliveries.

It meant Tommy's delivery service doing some seriously brisk business. Even if he wasn't the most fond of running on sand. But a beach was something he could get behind anyway, even if it wasn't normal to New Yorker life. No, he'd visited Kate a few times in California, which meant he'd gotten even more used to the idea of it, and the idea of something like home made Tommy act.

An ocean that he wasn't living under? Definitely worth visiting. Which was what Tommy found himself doing every weekend when he wasn't working. It hadn't taken much effort to find himself a big beach umbrella, a long blanket to lay upon on the sand, and of course, it was simple to gather snacks for himself too.

Was he wearing anything more than some short square-leg swim trunks in white and green? Nope. Was he absolutely laying there on the back sometimes, umbrella down, sunning so he could enrich his tan? Absolutely. Was there periods of time Tommy laid around, snacking and watching the waves? Totally.

Did Tommy seem likely to go into the water himself at all? Nope. Not without prompting.

But hey, good news: any time anyone at all walked nearby he smiled and offered a wave.

"Hey! Fucking beautiful, right?"

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“Yeah?? Okay!” He responded in a small, excited chirp at the idea that Tommy was up for trying it. This could actually be fun, without any weirdness or potential trouble involved! The boy had been trying to think of more stuff like that, normal stuff that he could learn to play to share with his friend Luna, too.

At the request, though, Mono nodded. “Sure! I’ll make sure nothing goes missing or anything.” He responded, moving to sit a little closer to Tommy’s things. It was clear the boy was serious about guarding the items as best the boy could from anyone who might think to take them.

Tommy was gone in a flash and a burst of sand. And it actually took him three whole minutes to return with an appropriate ball.

"Well that took forever," he said, bouncing the light ball easily over his fingers. It wasn't quite a beach ball as he knew it, but it would work.

"Come on, let's move a little bit closer to the surf."

Mono would never stop being impressed by that, especially in the sand! Sand was all weird to walk on, and super easy to fall over without how it shifted and stuff.

While three minutes was a long time for Tommy, it was still a lot shorter than Mono would have guessed when he was asked to watch Tommy’s stuff. His expression lit up with a little more excitement than usual when the guy reappeared with a ball. It wasn’t as though Mono really knew what a beach ball was anyway, so he wouldn’t have questioned it. “Wow, you found one!” He got to his feet and adjusted his hat slightly to make sure it stayed on while they were running around.

“Okay, that’s gonna be fun!” He responded, trusting Tommy to show him how it went. He did understand tossing a ball back and forth at least, but since he’d never played catch with a person, he wasn’t about to assume he knew exactly how the game was played. He hurried after him, heading down the beach closer to the water.

"That's the intention," Tommy said with a shrug. Fun was something you had to make for yourself because it wasn't like the world was going to provide it for you.

He guided them down to a stretch of the beach that was right for what he was imagining, put himself closer to the surf, and tossed the ball gently for the kid.

Mono wasn’t as used to doing things for fun as he was for necessity, so it was something he’d been learning about more since he got to this world. As Tommy tossed the ball to him, he darted forward to catch it before it hit the ground. The kid actually wasn’t too bad at it, since it was an easy game and he had decent reflexes. He even threw the ball back with perhaps a little more energy than expected.

Not like the energy was going to stop Tommy. He was happy to catch the ball and quickly toss it back.

“You can hit it with your hands too, if you want.”

Mono darted back as the ball sailed through the air and jumped to catch it. “Hit it??” He blinked as he looked at the ball in his hands. Turning it slightly with a curious spin and trying to imagine at least how that would work. Maybe if he batted it with a hand while it was still in the air? “You mean like this or??” Giving it a smaller toss up and whacking it in Tommy’s direction, he waited eagerly for it to A. be returned, and B. for Tommy to confirm if he’d done good or not.

“Yeah, but you hit it sorta upwards. It’s called a bump.”

The whack was a bad choice, because it sank, but Tommy rushed to where it was landing, laced his hands together for the bump, and hit it upwards and forward.

“Like that.”

Mono was slightly disappointed when the ball fell to the ground before it made it back to Tommy, but he paid pretty close attention as the guy demonstrated the what he meant. “Ohhh… I think I got what you mean now!” He responded as he hopped up to catch the ball before it passed over his head. This time he copied what Tommy had done, watching with an excited half laugh as he managed to make it sail through the air back again.

Yeah, it came all the way back and Tommy laughed, moving to hit the ball lightly back.

"On my world there's a game called volleyball. People hit the ball back and forth over a tall net."

Mono let out a gleeful little whisper of a laugh as the ball made it all the way to Tommy, delighted as he sent it right back Tommy’s way. This was actually a lot more fun with a person compared to the last time he tried something like this. Probably because they both knew it was a game, and they were both having fun. “Really? So there’s like a whole thing with rules and other stuff to it?”

It was fun, regardless of if they were just playing catch or something else, though. Which was honestly a bit of a victory, since people kept asking what he liked to do for fun and a lot of the time he wasn’t sure how to answer. At least if asked about the beach, he could come up with an honest answer now.

"Yeah, lots of rules," Tommy laughs, happy to bounce the ball right back to the kid. "And you can do it in the water too, with floating nets. But that's better in a pool so everyone can be safe."

Mono didn’t quite manage to catch it this time, but ran after the ball as it rolled a bit before turning and bouncing it back Tommy’s way again. “Yeah, I dunno if I wanna go in the water. There might be weird stuff there, right?” He wasn’t sure what a pool was like, but if it wasn’t like the ocean, then maybe that would’ve been more fun to go in. His experiences thus far with large bodies of water were with a really gross swamp, and riding across a really wide river on a door. Who knew what was in the ocean?

Tommy laughed at the kid failing to get the ball. Less a 'laughing at you' and more a laugh of delight. This? This was better than tanning.

"There might be, yeah. But I'd save you. I'm fast enough to run on top of water."

Mono would agree, if only because he thought tanning looked pretty boring and he wasn’t really concerned with how he looked yet. As long as people weren’t freaking out, that was good enough in his books. The kid was having way more fun, though, than he would have thought when he started wandering the beach in an attempt to see what the big deal was. “Whoa, you can? I always sink unless I can walk through it, or if there’s stuff to float on.” Bumping the ball back in Tommy’s direction, he glanced at the water again as he tried to imagine how going fast might stop you from sinking.

Well, young people were a thing. They didn't get it. And Tommy didn't have a reason to do it because he had no one to show off for.

"I run so fast, that the water doesn't have a chance to swallow me."

“Wow…! So nothing can catch ya, even the ocean! That’s really neat, Tommy.” He responded with an obviously impressed tone. There was something that always awed the boy about people with powers that they knew how to use and could do such interesting things with them. And that the people he met here always seemed to use them to help people.

Things COULD catch him. But he's not correcting the kid.

"I'm a super hero. The idea is that I catch the bad things instead."

Mono doesn’t need to know that, anyway. It would just lead them down a long, winding game of questions. “Super hero sounds like a neat job, even if I bet it’s really hard sometimes since there’s a lotta scary things you gotta worry about.” But he liked the idea that an adult was there to stop the bad things if it happened. Not like in his world where all the adults were the bad things.

"Yeah, it is," Tommy agrees. "It's hard to do alone. But I'm glad to do it. I want to help people."

And so he keeps doing it even though it's hard. Even when he's alone.

"Sometimes you do what you need to do so you can help others.

“Yeah, that’s true. I hope I can do that for my friend when I get home…” Not that he thought he could be a hero or anything. It was his fault she was in trouble to begin with, as far as Mono was concerned.

“You’re a good person, though. ‘Cause you do it even if it’s hard instead of giving stuff up.” He added with a more serious nod. Tommy didn’t have to do any of the things he did as far as Mono could tell. But he did and that mattered, especially to the kid. Tommy definitely didn’t have to play with him at the beach, but he was doing that too!

"I hope so too," Tommy says, mostly for the kid's sake. Who knows what home is even like.

But getting called a good person means Tommy freezes, and thus misses the ball. He'll need to go fetch that.

"I... thanks. Thanks Mono."

Mono blinked in surprise when Tommy missed the ball, and clearly didn’t quite get why he was being thanked. “You’re welcome?” He responded with a small tilt of his head, watching as Tommy went to get the ball back. Did Tommy not know he was a good person? Did people not tell him that??? That seemed kinda sad, when there were so many bad people or people who chose to not help when they could…

No, people didn't tell him that. Not enough for him to believe it. So Tommy just took the ball up and hit it back to Mono.

"So, you think the teams would be happy if I gave them a day off? Like, still pay them. But they deserve some rest, right?"

Well, Mono certainly would want him to know that. The guy had come to mean a lot to the boy. He just understood things in a way that Mono found not everyone did. It was… Helpful, and he looked up to him as much as he did a few other people.

But he darted to bounce the ball back as he responded. “A day off, but everyone still gets paid? Is that a thing you can do? I bet they’d think that was pretty neat, especially when it’s nice out. I heard some of them talking about how they wanna go to the beach like this and other stuff?”

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