Chapter Text
This city was not for the faint of heart.
It was a miracle town for most. For others, it was a death trap. And for some it was just simply there, existing somewhere beyond the forest, not to be seen unless you were guided, and not to be visited unless you were one of their own.
Well, Tommy was none of those things. He, in fact, was probably the most normal person alive. He’d been living in his one-bedroom apartment on the south side of the city he grew up in, a normal city, he might add. Not this one. In this city, you were either a monster or you were their prey, and that was why no one found it, and no one looked for it.
Tommy… had a photography assignment. And now that he was here, he realized that this was a bad fucking idea. What was he doing? Yes , he’d win an award or something if he lived. If .
It was an online college too. Like, he could take a picture of a flower that grew in between the sidewalk and pass with flying colors. But no. He had to be an overachiever.
He’d be honest, though, the pieces had kind of fallen into his lap. He’d been friends with a satyr his entire life, which was one of the types of monsters that were actively encouraged to live in the city among humans. They were peaceful, and loving, and they didn’t really have any magic unless they could talk to trees or heal people.
Tubbo had said he was going on a trip, just a short one, and then he had talked about the Miracle City. Where werewolves interacted with vampires, and fae lived with sirens. Phantoms could crawl the streets and witches wouldn’t give them a second glance.
It was beautiful, with skyscrapers and twinkling lights that hung between alleys. They functioned as people without the people part of it.
Tubbo had gone to the Miracle City, and Tommy knew he had to see it.
The one problem was, of course, that he was a normal fucking human being.
People had done it before, at least. There were stories of professional reporters dressing up as the monsters to walk the streets with them, living among them, and returning home to relay the story. So Tommy wasn’t completely out of his mind.
Well, until he got there.
He’d decided that he’d go with the easy costumes, ones he couldn’t mess up if he tried. Werewolves were easy, their eyes were slitted, nothing some contacts couldn’t fix, and they usually walked barefoot so they didn’t hinder their changing. Tommy couldn’t do that , but he could look like one during the day.
If those failed, he had red contacts to let him look like a vampire and some glue on canines that could act as fangs. They wore high collars and were usually pale.
Tommy didn’t have to worry about the pale part. All of the blood drained from his body as soon as he got on the streets. Years of being told that humans didn’t have instincts like the monsters did seemed to be completely false because his head was screaming at him to run the other way. He wouldn’t, he’d paid Tubbo a fuck-ton of money for the location and the apartment lease, but… he walked right up to the sidewalk, his nose in his phone as he tried to find the way to his apartment, and ended up walking shoulder to shoulder with a harpy.
The woman just smiled at him as she turned another corner, baring her fangs in a way that probably should have been sweet, but just made Tommy’s heart pound stronger in his chest.
He spotted a witch and a fae before he’d even gotten to his apartment, and they weren’t the ones that usually feasted on humans, but they didn’t scare him any less.
Tommy pushed the door open to the complex, entering a rather grim-looking lobby. It made sense for the inexpensive rent, but it did little to ease his nerves.
“Can I help you?” The person at the desk didn’t even look up to greet him, just continued staring into his book, glasses perched on the end of his nose.
It would have been nice if his hair hadn’t been bright green and slightly steaming.
“I… I just got here…”
“Tommy Innet, I assume?” The creeper hybrid finally looked up, meeting his eyes as Tommy nodded. “You look a little shaken.”
“Not used to so many people in one place,” he breathed, hoping it sounded genuine. His chest loosened as the man chuckled, waving him over.
“It takes a while to get used to,” he smiled. “But you’re welcome in these parts, and there’s always accommodations that you can go searching for if you need something specific. Not like those human towns,” he spit in disgust. “I’m sure your neighbors will be more than happy to answer your questions, as long as you don’t live next to a vampire.”
The man glanced down at his paper, scanning for names before marking something down.
“Do you happen to have an ID on you?”
He nodded without thinking, pulling out his driver’s license and then freezing as he remembered a crucial detail.
“So… it, um, it says I’m human.”
The man chuckled again. “Not uncommon. You’ve probably been wearing contacts everywhere you go, right? To cover your eyes?”
Tommy visibly relaxed. He was, in fact, wearing contacts, but they weren’t exactly ones made to look human. No, he could do that completely fine on his own.
The man just looked at his ID briefly before handing it back. “You can get your license redone somewhere around here, I’m sure, but that will work for now. You’ll be in room 654. Neither of your neighbors is a vampire, so you’re good to go.”
The man slipped him two more pieces of paper, one that looked like legal shit, and the other that had a bunch of contact information. The man circled one of the names. “That’s me, Sam, and if you need something with the apartment you can call me. These other people are special consultants for different creatures and hybrids, as I’m sure you just got in. Werewolves are pretty common, though, so anyone you might find will probably work.” He then pointed to the bottom of the page. “There’s only one rule about this place, and it’s that you don’t tell humans where we are, who we are, or what we do.” He smiled something devilish. “It’s for their own safety, of course.”
Tommy swallowed something large stuck in his throat. “Thanks… for all that. I appreciate it.”
“No problem.” Sam dropped the keys on the desk, and Tommy picked them up, thankful that the room number was engraved on them. “Welcome home.”
Temporarily, Tommy thought to himself, just to ground his spinning mind. He had no problem with the monsters, they were nice when they wanted to be. The only problem was that they would only be nice to him as long as they didn’t think he was human.
And he was human, which was a very big problem.
He wouldn’t be interacting with anyone, though. He had enough savings from his parents to last him the two months he needed to stay. He would just be going out and taking pictures. That was it! He was going to be just fine.
Climbing the stairs to the sixth floor, his keys jingled the entire way. He knew it would probably hurt his ears if he was a real wolf, but he wasn’t exactly going to keep up the act in the safety of his own-
He was walking up to his door just as someone was walking out of the one next to his. They were freakishly tall, with long limbs that stretched out so much that he had to duck under his own doorway. Half of his face was shrouded in dark black, almost scaly-looking skin. The other half looked almost human.
Almost.
He had one glowing green eye and another glowing red.
Tommy shrunk back immediately, which wasn’t entirely out of character. He only knew of one type of creature that had red eyes, and that was the one that werewolves had an everlasting rivalry with. Having just gotten here, he would probably still be scared of them.
So it was all part of the act. Yep. All part of the act.
“Woah, hey, uh-” The guy stumbled back. “I’m- I’m not a vampire- I- yikes, this looks bad.”
Tommy screwed his eyes shut for just a moment. He was fine, the guy was acting completely normal, and even though they weren’t normal, not in the slightest, they were at least acting like someone normal.
“I’m Ranboo,” the guy greeted from a far enough distance. “Uh, he/they? Sorry, that’s-” they laughed, “That’s not a question. I’m gonna- wow, I’m bad at this.” Tommy breathed out a laugh, somewhat relaxing. “Ranboo, he/they, I’m not a vampire.”
Tommy gently nodded. “Tommy, he/him, I am also not a vampire.”
Ranboo laughed this time, smiling. He didn’t have fangs, thank god. “I’m half enderman, it’s why I look funny.”
Tommy understood the half-enderman in the context of the dark skin, but… “I thought endermen had purple eyes?”
“Yeah… they do. I don’t.” They laughed again. “Apparently being half endermen messes with the pigments in your extremely human eyes.”
Tommy snorted and then realized that probably wasn’t a very werewolf-like thing to do and promptly started coughing his lungs out, laughing as he tried to recover, which just made the scene longer.
“Sorry-” he coughed out again. “I’m- werewolf. And… your neighbor, apparently.”
Ranboo raised an eyebrow. “Welcome to the city.”
“Thanks- wait, how’d you know?”
“When you’ve lived here for a while, you tend to grow out of your fears about other creatures,” Ranboo shrugged. “So you’re obviously new since it looks like your fear of vampires is as apparent as ever.”
Tommy sighed, “Isn’t that the truth.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Ranboo began walking toward the stairs. “Niki lives on the side of your other wall, but she usually gets back late. Don’t fret if you hear her break down her own door at four a.m.”
“Will do,” Tommy ended up smiling. Ranboo waved a goodbye as they walked down the stairs and back to the lobby. Tommy turned around and attacked his door with the key, the hinges squeaking as it opened.
The apartment was bare, but he’d expected that much. He was grateful for the double set of locks on the door and the windows that locked. They were probably used to the monsters that were worried about the other monsters when they first arrived. He was more grateful than ever for the rivalries.
Tommy decided to set his camera to the side for the night and go to bed early. He would have plenty of time tomorrow to work on his photography. Right now, he needed to reset his mental state. He’d just interacted with both a creeper and an enderman, and he needed to just… uh, process .
Tommy brought out a few things from the small bag he brought, set up his bed, and promptly collapsed in it.