“What are you doing out here?” Dom asked, turning towards them with raised eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be staying inside like everybody else is, after the news about Rhys came out?”
"Could ask you the same." Tommy procures a box of cigarettes from his pocket and extends the offer to his company before rummaging for a lighter. Manners and all. "And give them exactly what they want? Pretty sure fear is the point."
Sometimes Nightrest feels too small with a population too big and the number of places Charlotte can have some peace and quiet apart from her own place are limited. Maybe she shouldn’t be here, but if Ghostface were to come for her right now, at least it’d be somewhere pretty. She’s walking by the shore, shoes in her hand and humming to herself when she spots someone. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to creep up on you or something. I was just taking a walk,” she says, tone quiet. “I didn’t think anyone would be here so early.”
Recent events included, it's potentially unwise to meander through the streets of Nightrest with its extensive and bloody track record. Always hanging in the air, a perpetual weight in the atmosphere. The beach is kinder in some ways, its waves provide the sort of comforting lull that can only be achieved by nature and Tommy eventually drops into the sand. Let it blank his mind some. Eventually the melodic noise is joined by a voice and he angles his features to meet it, discerning a face in the blue-grey morning light. "Great minds," he comments idly, his voice lacking venom yet full of rasp. Blame the early hour. "It's fine, feel free to ignore me. I'm just part of the decor."
Jesse walks out of the parlor, turning around to lock up behind him. He shoves the key into his pocket and as he turns around... comes face to face with Tommy. At the sight of someone he had considered his best friend at one point, he is taken back to that night. He found out the parlor was his after three years of busting his ass to show the owner he could handle the responsibility. He came home to find his friend and his girlfriend in an uncompromising position. After that, he walked out and avoided the both of them.
Now it had be some sort of a joke both of them would pop back up in the matter of weeks.
An exhale leaves him as he side steps to walk around the other. "I'm not fucking interested in anything you gotta say, Tommy."
Almost instantly, Tommy regrets taking this particular route to Spirits tonight. What began as a semi-well intentioned meet up with Fletcher has already devolved and he's barely a third of the way to his final destination. The moment his former friend dips out of the establishment practically gifted to him on a silver platter by yours truly, the muscles in his jaw visibly set. "Good thing then, 'cause I'm not here for you."
Some malfunctioning sector of Jesse's brain must immediately assume the worst upon seeing him now. And he cares, honest. "Streets are public domain. All of us get to walk here." Regardless of the animosity between them, like hell would Tommy be excommunicated from his hometown.
[ peter gadiot, cis male, he/him ] - was that tommy perez i saw by the lighthouse today? i heard that the thirty-five year old who has been in nightrest for his entire life and works as the owner at mike’s auto service has a reputation of being protective, but also sardonic. they reside in low point & people in town usually associate them with t-shirt sleeves rolled up, looking completely unimpressed, and the quiet static of an old radio. let’s hope the killer doesn’t go after them next.
tw: car accident, death, infidelity
Born and raised in Nightrest as the eldest of three children, the Perez family were always tight knit growing up. Their parents worked exceptionally hard to provide a good life for their kids, which ended up in a latch key situation where the trio were left home alone fairly often.
Tommy absorbed the third parent role early on and excelled at it, straight up would’ve fallen on a grenade for his younger siblings if given the chance. Especially his middle brother, Antonio. Thick as thieves from the jump, it was near impossible to find one without the other following behind in close succession.
However once they hit adolescence, their dynamic shifted. Though he made various attempts to keep his brother out of trouble as best he could, Antonio fell down the wrong path and struggled for a long time. Late night calls from jail, subsidizing rent, his life spiraled pretty quickly until not even Tommy could rescue him from himself.
The car accident brought everything to a screeching halt, quite literally. Whether Antonio walked into that street knowingly or otherwise, the end result was still a closed casket funeral and a lifetime of unspoken words. Caretaker until the end, Tommy blamed himself for not doing more and the guilt gnawed relentlessly at him.
Eventually he found solace in his friends, and unfortunately, their partners as well. Grief blinds like a smoke cloud and he hadn’t realized the depths of his own haze until Jesse walked in on Tommy finding comfort in his girlfriend. Naked. Kaboom on that friendship.
Already prone to isolation, the compounded misery of both losses made him pull away from his friends and family entirely. Although he's way less self destructive than his brother, Tommy does struggle to process the complexity of his own emotions so perhaps that’s just as bad.
Anyway, he's kind of a dick and has made a couple Bad Choices™️, but he's also incredibly protective, generous, and a solid guy beneath all the gruff.
