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, 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?”

"It's my business. Don't see why I can't," Tommy points out. "You all deserve a break. You're still kids, and fun is part of growing up."

A part he didn't get a lot of. So he wanted to get them all that.

“I guess that’s true!” Tommy was the boss, and bosses could make those decisions as far as he could tell. “I bet everyone’ll really like that, then!” He added with a smile, even if he was still trying to figure out the whole ‘fun’ thing. Adults kept saying stuff like that, and other kids asked him what he did for fun… So it seemed like it was a pretty important thing he had been missing out on aside from a few weird circumstances.

Today had definitely helped with that, at least. He had another experience added to the list! Because of this? This had absolutely been fun.

Adults who used the service wouldn't like it as much, but TOmmy didn't care. He cared about his kids more than anything else. Let him just do what he can for them.

"You guys are my family, so I wanna help you."

They were? Like many things, family was an odd concept that he was also just figuring out more recently between moving and conversations with people… But from what Mono could tell, family was more complicated than just people who happened to be related. It seemed like a lot of people could be family, if they were close enough to each other… And there was something really nice about that. “Yeah…? Well, you already do a good job of helping everyone, the others even talk about it sometimes.”

He bounced the ball back again, tilting his head slightly. “And I know you helped me a lot since you got here? Even today!” Because getting to experience ‘fun’ things to decide if he liked it or not was something that wasn’t always easy for him to approach without feeling weird.

Of course they were. Geez. Just be his family, okay? He needs it.

"They do?"

The kids never did it to him, or around him, so he didn't know. It was good to know he was helping.

"I'm glad. I just want things to be easier for you all than it was for me."

Considering how much Mono looked up at Tommy? That wasn’t a hard thing for the kid to give, even if he didn’t always understand things like family as well as most kids did.

But he nodded on the subject of the others talking about Tommy, because of course they said things when he wasn’t around. Sometimes it was kind of awkward to come out and tell someone how much they helped by being there. Mono only did it as much as he did because he never really thought that was weird. Admitting he didn’t know things most kids did? Weird and hard. Telling someone they were pretty great? Not hard. “Yeah, they do! A lot of them say they’re really glad that you’re here, ya know? Like, they know they’d probably have to steal and stuff to get by but they don’t got to. And you always make sure we got what we need and stuff.”

So Tommy was definitely helping, and he certainly was making a lot of lives easier than they could have been. “Plus, you’re really cool for a boss, not that I got much to compare to.” He added with one of his clumsy, tilted grins that was getting a little more natural looking these days.

Well fuck. That gets right to his heart. He's not crying. At all. Don't bother commenting on it. It's just that he's been abandoned so many times so he'd resolved not to leave people behind here. And the kids appreciated that. Kids who, like he once had, needed people. Fuck.

Had he made a family of little kids that just needed an adult to care and help them?

"Thanks, kid. It's nice to hear this stuff sometimes."

It often struck Mono as odd how people reacted to things he said, especially when he was just telling them the truth as he knew it. “You’re welcome, Tommy!” But he smiled again, feeling kind of good for having said something that maybe Tommy needed to hear? Usually, it was the other way around when it came to the adults in his life.

Well, it wasn't common in society to actually say what they feel.

"Alright, just focus on the game now, okay? We should just enjoy the game."

Because he's just a bit messed up by all this honesty. He needs to move himself on from it. And fun sounds about right.

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