Module 4 - Part 4
Tommy doesn’t see Adam in the corridors or at lunch, and he thinks for a panicky second that maybe Adam got caught sneaking back in and like, freaking expelled, before he reminds himself that there was no way he would have missed the rumors. Instead he asks Freddie, the guy Adam has Physics with third period, and Freddie says Adam has an appointment with his guidance counselor.
Which, man. Adam hates his guidance counselor, or maybe the counselor hates Adam. Either way Adam’s always a wreck afterwards. Tommy seriously couldn’t have picked a shittier time to blow up at him.
He twitches his fingers against his desk all the way through his last period and disappears before anybody can give him shit, heading straight for the dorms. He knocks on Adam’s door but nobody answers, which could mean something or it could not, so he goes back to his room and grabs a pen and a piece of paper. He slides a note under Adam’s door that just reads music room 3 and heads out to go exactly there, and get his hands on it if it’s free. The last thing he needs is Adam waltzing in on some picture-perfect Clarkenwell pair practicing Beethoven’s Duet with Two Obligato Eyeglasses, or something equally ridiculous and likely.
It’s free, though, and not even locked, and Tommy slips inside and pokes through the cabinets until he finds a guitar that he can fiddle with, tightening the tuning keys and running his fingers over the strings like Frank has taught him. He sits on the window sill and strums most of Our Lady of Sorrows, making up part of chorus when he forgets the chord progressions, but that’s the only part he fucks up. If Adam were here, he thinks idly, he’d totally join in, and it’d sound fucking badass.
Of course it’s not actually Adam that finds him, though. When somebody finally sticks his head in the door, it’s a head that’s too small, too curly-haired, too dark, and Tommy tries not to roll his eyes at the way Ryan Ross hovers in the doorway like some sort of freaky daylight apparition.
“Are we allowed in here?” Ryan asks, eyes wide.
Tommy shrugs, going back to fiddling with the keys.
Ryan takes a shuffling step closer. “Seriously. I thought the music teachers come and yell at you if you’re here after hours.”
“Nobody’s come to kick me out yet,” Tommy says. He manages a chord that sounds mostly right. “So.” He forces an expectant smile onto his face. “Anything I can help you with?” he asks, clearly meaning Get the fuck out.
Ryan shuffles a tiny bit closer. “Can you play that?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at the instrument in Tommy’s hands.
“Little bit.” The smile comes easier this time. “A friend of mine taught me a couple things, and I’ve been practicing.”
“Um.” Ryan’s gaze darts around the room before landing on Tommy’s eyes again. “Can you - teach me?”
Tommy feels his eyebrows twitch up. “You wanna learn to play the guitar?”
“Um.” Ryan looks down, crosses his arms. His entire face just seems to shut down. It’s kind of impressive. “Never mind. Just wanted to know what you were doing here.”
“What are you doing here?” Tommy asks back, watching with interest when Ryan turns bright red.
“Uh, I write,” he mutters. “Like, I go sit in the North stairwell. ‘Cause, like, nobody’s ever up there after class is over, you know?”
“Sounds chill,” Tommy says idly.
“Yeah, it’s.” Ryan bites his lip. “I like it.”
“There’s something to be said for solitude,” Tommy says, half-quoting, he thinks, even if he doesn’t know what, and Ryan nods. His fingers twitch, too, like maybe he wants to run along and write that down. Which, guitar-related bonding aside, would actually be kind of awesome, so Tommy really wishes he’d give in to temptation and get the hell out already.
Ryan, though. Ryan just takes a step closer.
“Tommy?” Adam asks from the doorway. He’s curled up into himself, and he looks stupid, like a giant trying to hide behind a house or something. But he’s here, and even smiling carefully at Tommy and Ryan, and that’s the only thing that counts.
Tommy tilts his head meaningfully at the exit and Ryan scrams, shuffling around Adam as quickly as he can while Adam’s still taking up the entire doorway.
Once he’s gone, Adam takes a tiny step forward. “I got your message,” he tells the floor.
Tommy nods, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He plucks at a string and then stares down at his hands, because this is ridiculous, but he can’t help it. It just figures that now Adam’s here, Tommy can’t come up with a single thing to say.
“Hey,” he finally settles on.
“Hi,” Adam says slowly.
Tommy pats the open space next to him in invitation, and then shuffles away a little bit when Adam comes and sits down. Their knees brush and Tommy jerks, and Adam frowns, and this. This just isn’t going like Tommy planned at all.
He takes a deep breath, all geared up for some big apology, and then deflates again. He can’t think of anything to say that would explain away how big of a douchebag he can be. He’s been thinking about how to say it all day, and had always comforted his idea-free brain with the thought that it’d all come to him in the moment, but now the moment’s here and he’s as clueless as ever. Class act, Tommy. Fucking A.
Adam keeps fidgeting, unimpressed by Tommy’s mental rollercoaster. “You wanted to see me?” he finally says, like Tommy’s his damn teacher or something.
“I wanted to apologize,” Tommy corrects/explains.
“It’s okay,” Adam shrugs.
But Tommy shakes his head. “It’s not,” he says. “I shouldn’t ever do that to you, and you shouldn’t let me.”
“So now it’s my fault?” Adam asks, but he’s smiling a little.
Tommy shakes his head again, violently this time. “It’s never your fault,” he says. “Shit like that’s not ever your fault.”
“Okay,” Adam says quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy says. Because sorry’s not enough, not by a long shot, but it’s the best he can do and Adam seems to get that, because he shakes his head gently and holds out his hand. Tommy folds his fingers between Adam’s, and Adam gives him his sweetest smile, and Tommy knows he’s forgiven.
They sit in silence for a while. Tommy has no idea what’s going on in Adam’s head, beyond the fact that Adam probably doesn’t hate him, so he nudges Adam’s side, and Adam smiles again but still doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Does Ryan like you or something?” he finally asks.
“Seriously?” Tommy twists around to look at Adam’s pinking face. “First Daisy, now Ryan? Who’s next, Frank?”
Adam manages to smile through his embarrassment. “You have to admit that Frank has a pretty big soft spot for you. Like, the size of California.”
“Shut up,” Tommy mutters, feeling his own face heat up.
“And like, Ryan does spend half his time sort of creepily hovering around wherever you are, you’ve gotta admit that.”
“He does?”
Adam stares at him for a minute. Then he bursts out laughing. “Man, Tommy,” he says, shaking his head in a fond, you’re-such-an-idiot kind of way. “I really have nothing to worry about with you, do I?”
“I keep telling you that,” Tommy mutters.
“I think I’m starting to get it,” Adam murmurs, hushed, and kisses the side of Tommy’s head.
Tommy turns red. Which is stupid, because it’s just Adam, and Tommy reaches for his guitar again to keep both of their minds off it. “Hey, so. I think I figured out how to play Born to be Wild on this. Wanna sing it for me so I can check?”
Frank’s at it again when Tommy gets out of English.
Tommy doesn’t even notice him at first, preoccupied with digging for his Spanish workbook and simultaneously keeping an eye out for Adam, and it’s not until he hears some girl say “What are you doing at my locker?” that he looks up.
She’s taller than Frank is, glaring down at him, but from what Tommy can see, Frank’s still grinning happily when he offers her a flyer.
“The Mythology Club is having a recruitment meeting,” he says cheerfully.
She huffs. “Just… stay away from my locker, okay?” she says and stalks away.
“Bye now,” Frank calls after her. He rolls his eyes and digs a handful of crumpled folded up notes out of the pocket of the uniform slacks he’s wearing, pulling them apart and shaking his head after each one.
Tommy gets to his side just in time to catch the notes when they start to slip from his fingers. “Hey, Frank,” he says. “I see you still haven’t grown a brain.”
Frank unfolds another piece of paper, grin, refolds it and slips it through the slits into the huffy girl’s locker. “Come on,” he says airily. “Who needs a brain when you can have fun instead?”
Tommy unfolds one of the notes. It says Jenny thinks you’re a slut in messy cursive. The next says I know what test you cheated on, the one after that he’s lying to you ~your secret friend.
“You’re ridiculous,” Tommy says, even though he’s maybe, kind of impressed by the sheer size of Frank’s balls. “What if they haven’t cheated on a test, or don’t know any Jenny’s?”
“Then they won’t believe it,” Frank says, waving a dismissive hand. “But a couple of people will believe it, or at least become paranoid enough that they’ll start to see evidence for it everywhere, and then there’ll be drama to end all dramas.” He grins. “People love drama, Tommy,” he says. “Seriously, give them an inch of a reason for it, and they’ll happily go the mile themselves, and drag all their friends along with them.”
“You’re crazy,” Tommy says. “Seriously fucking crazy.”
“I know,” Frank says happily. “Here, check out this flyer. Gerard drew it, isn’t it sick?”
It is, in more than one way - all it says is Mythology Club Recruitment Meeting today! and the rest of the paper is covered in monsters tearing apart screaming men in old-fashioned armor and women in flowey dresses. Lovely.
“Gerard approves of your hobby?” Tommy asks.
“He doesn’t disapprove,” Frank says. “Keep one, though. I kind of want to start a Mythology Club just so we can use this as our poster.”
“I think you kind of have to go here to start a club,” Tommy says absently. It really is a kick-ass picture.
“Yeah, yeah, spoilsport,” Frank says. “Wanna help?” He hands Tommy a couple of flyers and a handful of notes and starts across the hall, almost colliding with Marc who has to pull his gym bag out of the way at the last second to avoid bashing it into Frank’s head.
“Watch it, faggot,” he growls.
“You watch it, dickhead,” Frank says cheerfully, and when Marc turns, incredulous expression half-formed on his face, Frank’s fist flies forward and catches him right in the nose.
Marc doesn’t go down, exactly, but he bends nearly in half with both hands on his face, and Frank grins. He throws a quick wink in Tommy’s direction before he strolls away, all casual-like, and Tommy could have gone on staring forever if Adam hadn’t suddenly appeared next to him and tugged on his arm, whispering, “Come on, Tommy, we gotta go,” with the widest grin spreading over his face.
On the twenty-ninth, Tommy calls his mom from the phone in the common room after classes, patiently waiting while she congratulates him and gets all teary-eyed over his he’s eighteen now, all grown up, she can still remember when he was just- and so on. She asks him about his day, about his plans, and he can’t really tell her how Adam showed up at his door early in the morning, grin mischievous and a little shy, and how they ended up making out for so long they barely made it to their classrooms on time. He can’t tell her about how Frank and the guys put them on the guest list for their gig at Desecration Row tonight, which doesn’t mean a whole lot considering there’s not even an entry fee but it still feels kind of awesome. So he makes vague noises about hanging out with some friends, about the Depeche Mode shirt Adam had his family buy and mail over, and asks how things are in LA instead.
“Well, you know,” she says, without really saying anything. “Mrs. Thompson brought over a pie the other day, that was nice. And it’s nice to have your sister around more, now. It was a little bit lonely with the both of you gone, you know.”
“Lisa moved back home?’ Tommy asks, and he can tell by his mother’s silence that she hadn’t meant to let that slip. “Why? She was all over that apartment the last time I talked to her.”
“Well, yes,” his mother says. He can hear her shifting in her seat. “It was just getting a little expensive, you know. There’s no real reason for her to pay all that rent when she can just live here with me.”
“But what about her job at the kindergarten?” Tommy asks. “Mom? What about her job at the kindergarten.”
His mother sighs. “I don’t want you to worry about all that, Tommy. It’s your birthday, you should be enjoying yourself.”
“Did they fire her?” Tommy asks. His voice is probably getting uncomfortably loud, and he drops it when a couple of people wander down the hall, turns away from them to face the window. “Seriously, what the Hell, Mom? She loves it there. They love her there. That’s fucking ridiculous.”
“Don’t swear, Tommy,” his mother says, sighs. She sounds tired. “There’s nothing you can do, so don’t worry about it, okay?”
“Something happened, Mom,” Tommy insists. “Come on, tell me what happened.”
“Tommy,” she says, probably going for stern, but Tommy’s stubborn “Mom,” just has her sighing again.
“Tommy, just let it go, please?”
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Tommy asks. It’s all frighteningly clear all of a sudden. “They found out I’m a wolf, so they fired her.”
“Oh, honey, it’s not your fault.”
“Damn straight it’s not my fault,” Tommy bursts out. “They can’t do that, Mom, that’s illegal.”
Except it kind of is his fault, isn’t it? If he hadn’t been such an idiot at fifteen, his sister would still have her dream job and he wouldn’t be at this damn school and his mother wouldn’t sound like she’s forty-six going on ancient, God.
She’s quiet for a moment, long enough that he’s think they lost the connection if it weren’t for the sound of her breathing. Finally she takes a breath and says, “I just want you to have a good birthday, honey.”
And Tommy wants to say something snappy, something mean, something like, ‘how am I supposed to have a good birthday now,’ but she sounds so tired, and he’s so tired, so he just says “Yeah” and then doesn’t say anything for a while.
He’s still not exactly in a talkative mood when he meets up with Adam in the basement with Adam so they can head to the club together. Adam seems to pick up on that though, thankfully, and he stays mostly quiet, although he keeps darting quick glances over at Tommy when he thinks Tommy isn’t looking.
It’s not until they’re in the alley leading down to Desecration Row that he pulls Tommy aside and asks, voice hushed, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Tommy says, with a wrangled smile he gives up on halfway through, and completely ignores Adam’s answering frown.
The guys are all waiting for them when they get into the supply closet posing as a dressing room, bursting into a surprisingly terrible rendition of the Birthday Song, and it’s enough to startle a laugh out of Tommy.
“Happy birthday, man,” they say, voices overlapping, and present him with a beer can with a burning candle stuck to the top.
“Thanks, guys,” Tommy says, managing a genuine smile. “This is awesome.”
Gerard immediately starts to tell him about all the difficulties they went through, finding an unopened can and then not drinking it until he got here, and Tommy nods along but he’s completely tuning him out. His mind keeps drifting back to Lisa, who he didn’t get to talk to because she’s working insane hours as a waitress to make a fraction of what she used to. Who had to leave her apartment to go back to living with their mother because she can’t afford her own rent. It makes him scowl, which makes Gerard falter in his story, so Tommy shows him his teeth and quickly says, “Uh-huh.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Frank pull Adam aside, frowning, and turns away before he has to see anything else. Okay, so he’s not exactly bad-ass company right now, but it’s his birthday, okay, his eighteenth birthday, and Clarkenwell maybe doesn’t set the bar particularly high when it comes to that, but he really could have done without the free-of-charge reminders of how his one big moment of stupidity fucked up his entire life and the lives of just about everyone he cares about.
He can’t resist a second glance though, just in time to catch Frank sending Adam shuffling away with a hand smacked to his back before he comes over, pushes Gerard aside and slings his arm over Tommy’s shoulders. He has to push up onto the balls of his feet to do it.
“Why are you so fucking pissy?” he asks. No foreplay, just gets right down to it. “You’re like, eighteen now. You can get tattoos! Buy your own damn cigarettes and not steal mine. It’ll be great.”
“Whoop-di-doo,” Tommy says.
Frank pauses, grows still in that weird way of his that always makes Tommy feel like he’s being subjected to Superman’s X-ray vision. “Okay,” he says. “This isn’t just your regular old turning-ancient blues. What’s up?”
Tommy looks away, and Frank squeezes his shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “Tell Uncle Frankie what’s wrong.”
“My sister lost her job because of me,” Tommy says. Quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but it really doesn’t hurt any less.
Frank quiets again, but it’s an angry quiet this time, tense and furious. “Because you’re a wolf?” he asks.
Tommy doesn’t even bother to nod.
“Fuck ‘em,” Frank says after a moment. “Seriously, fuck ‘em. I can’t wait for the revolution to mow those bastards down.”
“What fucking revolution?” Tommy asks bitterly, and then Ray’s pulling on Frank’s arm, saying, “We were due in stage thirty seconds ago, Frankie, Jesus Christ.”
They launch right into their first song as soon as Frank and Ray are in position, the kids in the front screaming in delight, and while Frank’s shredding with his usual enthusiasm, he keeps glancing Tommy’s way. When the last chords fade out, he takes off his guitar and leans it against an amp, ignoring the what-the-fuck looks the others are sending his way. The others minus Gerard, that is, who’s running through his usual welcome speech at the center mike.
He’s gotten as far as, “Hey everybody, we’re My Chem-“ when Frank’s suddenly right next to him, raising his voice to drown out the cheers.
“’Scuse me,” he says, ignoring Gerard’s wide-eyed look. “This is an unscheduled service announcement interrupting your current broadcast, because there’s somebody who needs to hear it.”
Somebody yells “I love you, Frankie!” but Frank just makes shushing gestures with his hands. A hush falls over the crowd eventually, and Frank pushes Gerard away from the mike before he plants his feet in front of it.
“I know you’re hopeless right now,” he says. “You’re so fucking terrified, trust me, I know. I can’t say I’ve been there, but I know where you’re coming from. I know how angry you are. I know how badly you want to hurt someone, just so you yourself will stop hurting.” He flicks his gaze downwards, at the rapt faces of the kids pushing against the stage, before he looks straight into the blinding lights. Tommy feels like he can see every single sweat drop bead along the line of Frank’s hair, even though he knows it’s just an illusion, but he’s so sure that he can almost taste the salty sting on his lips.
“You’re angry, and you’re scared,” Frank goes on. He fiddles with the stand for a moment. “But there’s one thing you’re not, and that’s alone.
“The world is full of kids like you.” He grabs the mike with both hands, and his words echo around the room, but the gaze he slants offstage is all for Tommy. “Kids just like you. Kids as lost and fucked up and angry as you. You’re angry, and you’re hurt, and you think you’re the only person in the world to feel that way, but guess what?”
The crowd roars at that, already anticipating what comes next, but Frank yells it out anyway. “You’re not!”
The yells only get louder, and Tommy feels his heart thump painfully in his chest.
“You’re not alone, you hear me? We know what you’re going through. We get it. We get it, and we’re here for you, and we’re going to change the fucking world for you.”
He turns, then, away from the audience to give Tommy his full attention and his biggest smirk. “Happy birthday, kid,” he says. “We got your back.”
When Tommy finally finds Frankie, he’s sitting on the roof of the van, drumming his heels against the rear doors and puffing smoke at the stars.
“Tommy!” he says, delighted. “Come on up, man.”
Tommy has to climb up over the hood and then balance across the slippery roof, which isn’t hard exactly but unfamiliar enough that it’s definitely out of his comfort zone, and he gratefully reaches for the cigarette when Frank hands it over.
Frank shoots him a look now and then, clearly pleased with himself, but he doesn’t say anything until Tommy’s smoked Frank’s cigarette down to the butt. Frank takes it from him and tosses it down onto the asphalt. Tommy shakes his head when Frank offers him another one, but when Frank sticks two between his lips, lights both, and then hands one off to Tommy, he takes it anyway.
“Fuck, man,” Tommy says eventually.
Frank grins, idly punches his shoulder. “I meant it, you know,” he says.
Tommy flops backwards, onto the van’s night-chilled roof, and stares up at the stars, so distant, so bright. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
The next night, Tommy sneaks out again, but he doesn’t sneak far. He finds their row of lockers, pausing to let his palm rest on the cool metal of the first one, and stares down the dark hallway. Then he digs the screw he liberated from the frame of his bed out of his pocket and sets to work.
Adam finds him in the boys’ washroom the next morning. Adam’s running late, as per usual - Tommy’s already showered and standing in front of the row of mirrors in his slacks and undershirt, shaving. He doesn’t startle when Adam practically bounces up next to him, though; he’s too used to watching for jocks that think it’s funny to make him cut himself by jumping out at him suddenly.
“Dude, it’s crazy!” Adam whisper-yells at him. “Have you heard yet?”
“Have I heard what.” Tommy lifts his chin, dragging the razor along the skin there, and meets Adam’s wide eyes in the mirror.
“Oh shit, you haven’t?” Adam makes bug eyes at him in the mirror.
“You gonna tell me what it is I’m supposed to have heard?” Tommy asks him.
“Like, with the lockers? Man, you’ve gotta see this, come on.” He pulls on Tommy’s arm. Tommy just barely manages to get the razor away from his skin.
“We should go to the guys’ tonight,” Adam declares, impatiently bouncing around while Tommy wipes cream from his half-shaved face. “They’ve so gotta hear about this.”
Tommy blinks at him, but Adam doesn’t seem to notice, and he barely gives Tommy time to snag his blazer and tie from the hook on the wall before he’s dragging him out the door.
“You guys are not gonna believe what happened,” Adam says before they’re even all the way into the basement.
Frank actually pauses his game. “What happened?” he asks. He twists around. “Dude, Tommy. What’s with the half-stubble?”
“Oh man.” Adam throws himself onto one of the couches. “Like, you know how you were pulling all of those pranks at school? Was that you? With the lockers?”
Frank blinks at him, and Adam shakes his head.
“Anyway, so, I guess last night somebody decided to copy you, or something, because-”
Tommy tunes out, here, digging around under the couch until he finds an unopened can of Coke that must have rolled there at some point in the last couple of days. He’d really rather have beer, but he also doesn’t want to draw to much attention to himself, and so he forces his attention back on Adam and a faint smile onto his face when it sounds like the story’s winding down.
“…and now, like, all the lockers have L’s on them and everybody’s freaking out, man, it’s crazy.”
“Fucking insane,” Ray agrees.
Gerard hums in reply, resting his chin on his fist, and then Frank gets Tommy a beer from the mini fridge, but neither of them actually says anything.
Tommy’s mom calls him one day and admits in a really roundabout way that they don’t have the money to fly Tommy home for Thanksgiving, and Tommy says it’s fine and not to worry, because what is he supposed to say, really? He manages to convince her he can go home with some friends of his, because he’s pretty sure Frank’s offer still stands, and by the time they hang up she no longer sounds like she’s about to cry.
“’Course,” is all Frank has to say on the matter.
Tommy grins, somewhat stupidly, and hides behind his beer. It’s not like it fixes anything - Frank’s awesome, and Tommy assumes his family is, too, but they’re not Tommy’s family. They won’t pretend to stab the turkey with manic grins before they start cutting it up, and they won’t hold a contest to see who can hang a spoon off the end of their nose the longest, and they won’t fight for the remote before the game starts. The thought of not being home for the holidays turns his stomach, especially because Adam’s going back, and sometimes he forgets that Tommy isn’t and starts to wax poetic about his mom and dad and brother and best friend back home and how amazing everything’s going to be.
But it’s not like going home is an option, apparently, so there’s nothing for Tommy to do but smile and remind himself that the other option is staying at school over the break. Which is just slightly more pleasant a thought than vacationing in Hell.
Nope, Tommy’d take Thanksgiving at Frank’s over Hell any day.
“Alright,” Larkner says, tapping the stack of papers in his hand with his finger. “This is your second test on Lycanthrophia, and coincidentally also your midterm. I trust I don’t need to remind anybody that it’s worth twenty-five percent of your grade for this term, but I do hope you’ve all been studying hard.”
One seat back and to the right, Tommy can hear Jesse scoff.
“Yeah, right,” he mutters, and Marc next to Tommy chokes on a laugh, but they both fall quiet when Larkner glares at them.
“No talking, no peeking, no notes,” he says. “And definitely no cheating. Trust me, you really don’t want something like that on your academic record, not unless your ultimate goal is to attend community college.”
He separates the top copy from the stack and lets it thud down on one of the desks in the front row. “Turn around on my mark only,” he says. “Good luck.”
Tommy’s not really the type to get nervous before tests, and he’s not this time either, not really. But usually his lack of panic is due to that low-level thrum of desire to not prove all the condescending bastards right. He still wants to do well, of course, for his mom and because failing tests always means mandatory tutoring that cuts into his bullshit-free time, but whenever he doesn’t, there’s a part of him that gloats at the fact that the poor little underprivileged wolf isn’t flourishing under Clarkenwell’s charity.
Today, though, today is different. Because Tommy knows this shit, this time. He knows it, and he actually kind of cares.
“Begin,” Larkner says.
There’s a rustle of paper when everybody flips their tests over, so Tommy does the same, and by the time he’s scanned the first couple of questions, his usual Zen has returned. There aren’t a whole lot of questions asking for an opinion - there never are, at Clarkenwell. Instead, it’s names and dates and freaking legislature, and Tommy may not be the best at paying attention in class, but he’s spent hours talking this shit over with Frank and rereading the essays Mikey photocopied for him at the local library until the ink wore off at the creases. He’s got this.
Jesse, apparently, doesn’t take too long to catch onto the fact. They haven’t even been working for more than two minutes - so far, the questions have been the name of the first World War 1 battalion to include wolves, the number of human casualties in the first wolf riot in 1954, and the topic of the latest wolf-related bill that passed in congress; easy - when somebody hisses “Move your damn arm,” and when Tommy glances over his shoulder, Jesse’s glaring at him.
“Boys?” Larkner asks from the front. Tommy whips his head around, meets the teacher’s frown for a full second and then looks down at his paper. He knows Jesse well enough to know that he’s gonna get his ass kicked after class if he doesn’t comply, so he obediently slides his elbow off the table and into his lap.
He’ll be damned if he’s gonna make this easy on the bastard, though.
The next question could be a or b - probably a though - so he clearly marks c for that one. The answer to question 7 is 1916, but that one’s obvious, so he crosses off the right one for that. Behind him, Jesse makes a pleased little noise, and Tommy presses his smile into the cuff of his blazer. He gleefully answers Budapest as the location of the first properly documented wolf at the time of his capture, and then flips the page slow and careful, giving Jesse plenty of time to catch up.
He finishes the test, Jesse copying his every answer, with quite a bit of time to spare, checking off December 19, 1976 as the date of President Carter’s first address on lycanthrophic integration with a confident swoop of his pencil. Then he turns back to the first page and sets about diligently going over his name until the lines are so dark they’re barely legible anymore.
Jesse holds out another couple of minutes, but as soon as Carlotta in the first row - she’s refusing to apply to anything but Ivy League schools - turns in her paper and heads for the door, he does the same. The second the door swings shut, Tommy frantically starts erasing all his answers and starts replacing them with the right ones. He still cuts it close, handing in the stack of paper with only two people left in the room and the eraser on his pencil worn down to a sad little nub, but whatever. It sounds crazy, but he’s starting to maybe get why Jesse and all those idiots like torturing them so much. There’s a sort of rush, a sense of sickly satisfaction at having screwed someone over and then gotten away with it. And yes, most of that is pure fucking pleasure at being the screwer for once, not the screwee, but it’s kind of amazing beyond that, too. No wonder Frank’s so keen on wreaking havoc all the damn time, if this is the way it makes him feel.
“What’s with you today?” Adam asks him at lunch, shooting a sidelong glance at the grin Tommy can’t quite manage to wipe off his face. “You’re all… smiley.”
“Just in a good mood,” Tommy shrugs, and ignores Adam’s choked-off little squeak when Tommy slides his hand between Adam’s thighs under the table.
The nice thing about being a social pariah is that Tommy is always one of the last to get picked for a team in P.E. - usually even after Fat Mike, whose stomach hangs over the elastic waistband of his gym shorts in a truly spectacular fashion. It’s great. There’s twenty-six people in his section, including him, so whenever they play soccer, four people get to sit on the bleachers and watch while everybody scurries around after some dumb checkered ball. Tommy loves that part. He gets to chill out with his fellow wolf Joey, far, far away from Fat Mike who refuses to even look at them. There’s a fourth member of their little slacker league, usually, ever-changing people who sort of hover awkwardly between the fat end of the bench and the wolf end of the bench, trying hard to not be associated with either and looking stupidly relieved whenever somebody comes over to switch.
Technically, there’s a third wolf in the class with them, but the guy in question, Sebastian Slaymeyer, is so stupidly talented at soccer that people pick him for their teams just because playing against him usually means losing. Sebastian tries out for the soccer team every year but, for some oh-so-mysterious reason, never makes the cut. He’s got the flu today though, apparently, so it’s just Tommy and Joey and Fat Mike glowering at everybody, and Joey’s a sweet guy who comes up with the best lines about their hardworking classmates and always shares his water with Tommy.
The not so great part about P.E. is that it’s Jesse’s free period, so him and his little gang come and stand on the far side of the field and glare and make threatening gestures that the coach pretends not to see.
“We’re not even doing anything,” Joey says after a while. “What’s so fun about mocking somebody who’s not even doing anything worth mocking them for?”
Tommy shrugs, and then cheers obnoxiously loudly when Tony Michaels steals the ball and sprints for a goal. Tony startles and promptly loses the ball again, and turns to give Tommy the stink-eye.
Tommy smiles back beatifically.
“Is that even your team?” Joey asks after a minute.
Tommy shrugs. “I don’t think I’m actually on a team,” he says. “I’m pretty sure they’d rather play with one man down than with me.”
Mitchell Something-Hyphenated hits the goal post and gets some slaps on the back. Across the field, Jesse mimes idiotic cheering while his cronies laugh.
“They dare each other to go out during the moon, you know,” Joey says. He nods his chin at Jesse and his posse of sheep. “Sneak out into the woods and stay there.”
“Fucking dumb-asses,” Tommy mutters. It’s not that he gives a damn about the stupid shit they get up to, not when they don’t try to turn him into their entertainment, but he still wakes up at night, sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his skin, remembering the weight on his back and the sharp, stinging pain at the back of his neck. If Jesse’s really willing to risk that actually happening to him, he’s even more of an idiot than Tommy thought.
Joey raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, well,” he says. He carefully untwists the drawstring of his shorts.
“They’re not the only ones getting up to that kind of shit, are they?”
Tommy cuts a quick glance at him, but Joey’s not looking at him anymore. “Oh,” he says finally.
Joey chews on his lip for a moment. “It’s dangerous, you know? That game you’re playing.”
Tommy somehow manages to smile through the adrenaline rushing through his system. “What game?” he asks, voice mostly wobble-free.
Joey gives him a look. “The thing is, I can’t even say I mind. Because I get it, I do, and sometimes I wish I had the balls you do.” He shakes his head. “And then I think you’re fucking idiots and gonna get yourself killed, and fuck everything up for the rest of us while you’re at it.”
They watch the ball make almost the entire length of the field twice before Tommy finally says, “We’re not trying to make life harder for anybody.”
“I know that,” Joey says. He smiles a little bit. “You could never be that much of a dick.”
“I’m not trying to be,” Tommy says. “But I can’t stop now. I don’t know if you understand that, but I know what it’s like now, what it can be like, and I can’t give it up anymore.”
Joey nods slowly. “Did you know that rats don’t start biting until after they’ve tasted meat for the first time?”
“So you’re calling me a rat,” Tommy says. He takes a sip of Joey’s water. “That’s great. Thanks for that.”
Joey laughs a little, but he catches Tommy’s eyes and nods once, and Tommy thinks he gets it.
Larkner keeps the stack of graded quizzes sitting on his desk in plain view until everybody’s fidgeting too hard to pay attention to him anymore before he relents and starts handing them out. Tommy’s practically drumming his feet against the floorboards, but it’s more anticipation than nerves. Larkner certainly isn’t helping any. He’s got the best poker face in the world, no lie, utterly straight-faced when he says, “97 %, Tommy, good job,” without so much as a twitch in his expression
Tommy replies with a quiet “Thank you,” dropping his gaze while he takes the papers. He can practically feel Jesse gloating behind to him, and it takes a shitload of effort on Tommy’ part to not burst out laughing pre-emptively.
He still sneaks a look over when Larkner moves to Jesse’s desk, watches the smirk melt from his face when Larkner says, quietly, “Come see me after class, please.”
He presses his mouth into his shoulder to keep them from hearing him snicker. Not even the death glare Jesse shoots him when Larkner moves on can put a damper on his good mood. He can’t fucking wait to tell Frank.
Tommy gets his ass handed to him in a bathroom during break, alone with Jesse while two of his cronies guard the door. He’s still grinning when they leave him to spit blood into the sink.
So worth it.
Adam, unsurprisingly, doesn’t agree. His voice rises nearly a solid octave when he comes by Tommy’s room later in the day, like he’s never seen Tommy with a shiner, what the fuck.
“You should have seen his face,” Tommy says, batting at Adam’s hands. “Fucking amazing. You don’t even know.”
“I don’t wanna know,” Adam says. He barely gives Tommy’s hands a chance to drop away before he’s got his fingers on Tommy’s jaw again, turning his head sideways to inspect the damage. He bites his lip. “Maybe you should go see the nurse.”
Tommy draws back, moves his jaw a bit. It’s tender and puffy, and he definitely got some strange looks in his classes, but it doesn’t feel like it’s broken or anything. He’s fine.
“We should go see Frank,” he corrects. “Frank and the guys.”
“I’m sure Frank’ll be very proud,” Adam says tightly.
Tommy rolls his eyes. “What’s with the bitch face?” he asks. “I’m the one who got beat up, not you, remember?”
“Oh, I remember,” Adam says. “Doesn’t seem much like you do, though, is all.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Tommy asks. His jaw feels tight when he scowls.
Adam’s bitch face is beyond epic. “You need to lay off, Tommy,” he says, his lips pinched into a thin, pale line. “I’m serious. You’re going to get yourself killed if you don’t lay off.”
“Just because you’re scared,” Tommy says hotly, but Adam cuts him off with an angry movement.
“Yes, I’m scared,” he says. “And if you had any sense in your stupid head, you would be too.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Tommy says. His initial surge of anger’s mostly gone now, replaced by a cold, insistent rage. “You say smart, I say sheep.”
“Wanting to survive my high school years does not make me a sheep,” Adam full-on yells at him.
“No, letting douchebag strangers dictate your entire life makes you a sheep,” Tommy shouts back. Fuck this noise, seriously. Fuck it. “And it’s not even like you don’t fucking know they’re doing it. You’re just too fucking scared to admit it.”
“Oh, save it, Tommy,” Adam says, face dark. “You really think I can’t tell when you’re terrified?”
Tommy scoffs, but Adam keeps right on talking.
“You act like you’re so tough, like nothing can touch you, but deep down, you’re freaking out just as bad as the rest of us.”
“I’m not freaking out,” Tommy says. It’s stupid, is what it is, and he’s stupid, and he won’t let his stinging eyes turn into anything else, so he reaches up and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as hard as he can’t stand it. “I’m not.”
“Oh, Tommy,” Adam says, voice going soft. “Tommy, come here.”
Tommy doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t, but he doesn’t resist when Adam takes his wrist and pulls him over to the bed. Adam glances over his shoulder as he sits on the edge and then scoots backwards, forcing Tommy to straddle his legs or break his hold. Tommy resists for a second before he chooses the former, but he won’t relax, staying up on his knees. He’s refusing to make contact, too, and Adam gives him a second before he sighs.
“Tommy,” he says. He lets his hands rest lightly on the backs of Tommy’s thighs. “I worry, you know,” he says. “That’s all.”
The way they’re sitting (or not-sitting), Tommy’s almost a full head taller than Adam, and he’s fully prepared to exploit that when he’s avoiding Adam’s searching look.
“You don’t have to yell at me,” he says.
Adam hesitates. “I was scared.”
And that, finally, is enough for Tommy to look away from the branches of the sycamore tree outside his window and meet his earnest expression. “I got beat up in a bathroom,” he says. “Okay? Nobody even knew where I was.” He chews on his lip, because that’s the best way he knows to keep his face from scrunching up and his nose from running. “You really don’t have to yell at me right now.”
Adam’s hands move lightly over the fabric of Tommy’s slacks. “I shouldn’t have,” he says. “I know that. Okay?”
After a minute or two, Tommy lets his legs relax, settling into Adam’s lap and ducking his head into Adam’s neck when his arms come up around him.
“I’m sorry,” Adam whispers.
Tommy doesn’t nod, because that would look stupid, but he still manages a muffled ‘yeah.’ “I’m sorry, too,” he says, and Adam kisses his head and rocks him gently back and forth.
So it’s not like things are suddenly easy. But overall, yeah, life is pretty good.
And then one day Frankie peers at him, bleary-eyed and sweaty-haired, from where he’s huddled underneath a mountain of blankets on the couch, and says, “Hey, Tommy, you play guitar, right?” and all of a sudden Tommy’s playing a gig. He never actually agrees to play a gig - in fact, he says no quite a bit, but Frank runs his awesome idea of not cancelling the show they have on Friday night and just making Tommy play in Frank’s stead by the other guys, and they all seem to think it’s a brilliant idea.
Like, brilliantly stupid, but nobody really cares what Tommy has to say. Instead, they talk Adam into bugging him about practicing their songs every single minute until day of, which aren’t really a whole lot, and Tommy spends most of them locked up in the music room with Adam as a look-out because what Tommy really doesn’t need right now is for a teacher catching him playing non-approved music and giving him detention until the turn of the century.
And then they’re almost late to the gig itself because Tommy gets caught by a supervisor tiptoeing down the hall and has to lie about going to the bathroom and gets told off for his jeans and has to go skulk around his room for half an hour before the supervisor finally decides to wander away.
Tommy thinks it’s a sign, personally, but Adam just frog-marches him off school property and towards Desecration Row without mercy. Which, seriously. What the hell. Adam’s supposed to be the reluctant one.
The guys don’t seem to be particularly surprised that they’re late, which is insulting but at least they’re not yelling at him, which is reassuring until Ray pushes a guitar into Tommy’s hands and tells him to warm up while Adam goes to check out the crowd. Which he does, because he’s totally a professional, or whatever. It’s not like he wants to fuck this up. But then he’s all done with his exercises and with running through the songs at twice their usual speed and he paces around the dressing room until Mikey and Ray both excuse themselves with some bullshit reason about checking the stage set-up or getting something from somebody or some shit like that.
It’s not like Tommy doesn’t know he’s freaking everybody out, but it’s not like he can help it.
“Dude,” Gerard finally says, peering at him over the top of some Superman comic. “Will you chill out, please? It’s gonna be fine.”
“You don’t know that.” Tommy swerves around and starts pacing the other way. “What if somebody recognizes me?” he protests, not for the first time.
“Then they’d actually have to admit to being here before they can get you in trouble,” Gerard says. It actually is the first time Gerard has deemed Tommy’s plaintive objections worthy of a reply. Maybe that means Tommy actually looks like he’s freaking out now, instead of just feeling like it.
Apparently he does, because Gerard leans over to give him a lazy push towards the bathroom. “Seriously,” he says. “Go splash some water on your face or puke or whatever. You’re paler than me, right now.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tommy croaks and stumbles away. He rubs his forehead and the back of his neck down with a wet paper towel and spits into the sink a couple of time, and then he clutches the porcelain with a white-knuckled grip and meets his own wide eyes in the mirror.
“I can’t do this,” Tommy whispers at his reflection. He hadn’t meant to say it - had meant to say, I can do this, but now the words are out of his mouth once he can’t not say them anymore.
I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this.
He almost jumps out of his skin when the door swings open, and Adam only takes one look at him before he’s by the sink, dropping the bag he’s carrying at his feet and running his hands over Tommy’s shoulders.
“Jesus, Tommy,” he mutters. “You look like you’re about to have a panic attack.”
Tommy shrugs, because he’s not so sure he isn’t.
Adam shakes his head. “Man, Tommy,” he says. “What are we going to do with you?”
“Not let me go on stage?” Tommy suggests, but the look Adam gives him suggests that that’s a completely ridiculous idea.
“Don’t be stupid,” Adam says. He bends down to pick up the bag. “You’re dying to go out there, and you know it.”
“Dying, yeah,” Tommy mutters. He nods at the bag. “What’s that?”
“What? Oh.” Adam puts it down on the counter and starts fumbling with the zipper. “Gerard actually suggested this to me,” he says. “’Cause you like his make-up, right, and you know how I’m always playing around with it.”
It still takes Tommy seeing the eyeliner in Adam’s hand for him to get it. “You wanna put make-up on me?” he asks.
Adam’s expression soothes into a smile. “Think of it as war paint,” he says. He pats the counter. “Come up here,” he says, “and let me work some magic.”
Tommy lets him, tries to follow Adam’s directions of “look up,” “mouth open,” “eyes closed” best he can. He twists his hands in the hem of his shirt to keep the rest of him still and Adam works quietly and doesn’t say anything when Tommy jumps at every bang and yell and crash coming from outside.
Finally he drags a thumb over Tommy’s cheekbone and eyes him critically, tilting his head to the side. After a moment, he grins. “I think I’m done,” he says. He drops the eyeliner into the case. “Go on, check it out.”
He takes a couple of steps back while Tommy slides off the counter and turns to face whatever Adam’s done to his face.
“So?” Adam asks after a while, when Tommy’s still staring. And he can’t quite seem to be able to stop staring, because holy shit. It’s pretty subtle overall, probably, not like, crazy swirls and color all over, but still. There’s dark eye shadow on his lids and thick liner around his eyes, and just a hint of gloss on his lips. It’s not much, really, but he still looks kind of. Otherwordly. Fey, if Tommy were the kind of person to describe himself like that.
“It’s okay?” Adam asks, shifting from one foot onto the other.
Tommy turns back around, away from his own reflection, and nods.
Adam clears his throat. “You’re gonna be fine,” he says. “You’ll see.”
Before he can think better of it, Tommy catches Adam’s wrist with his hand. “You’ll be there, right?” he asks.
Adam smiles, softly, letting Tommy draw him back in. “Front and center,” he promises. His lips on Tommy’s are soft and certain, utterly sure, and Tommy draws a deep breath into his lungs and thinks, This is happening.
The gig itself passes in a blur of oh shit oh shit oh shit and this is actually happening, what the fuck. He thinks he does okay, though, because Gerard and Mikey and Ray give him encouraging smiles every couple of verses and the crowd’s cheering rises in pitch when Tommy finally gets his bearing during the second-to-last song and dares to bang his head a little bit.
And then they’re walking off, and Mikey heads straight for the payphone backstage to tell Frank to chill the fuck out and everything’s fine, and Tommy stands there for a second, dazed and disoriented, and he has no idea if Adam was even there because he couldn’t see anything beyond his own two feet.
It doesn’t matter though, because Adam is right in front of him, catching his elbows and drawing him in for a hug. “That was amazing,” he crows right in Tommy’s ear. “You’re so fucking amazing.”
Somebody claps a hand down on Tommy’s shoulder and he turns and it’s Gerard, grinning at him. Telling him he did really well, but Tommy’s still half-deaf from the crowd and the speakers and can barely hear him, everything cotton-wrapped and unreal.
Gerard grins bigger still and says something to Adam, who tightens his hold on Tommy and says something that might sound like, “Maybe I should just take him home,” but then somebody they don’t even know crashes into them and yells, “After-par-tay!” and slings one arm over Tommy’s shoulder and hands him a bottle of vodka.
Tommy wakes up face down on somebody’s carpet, the short bristles leaving uncomfortable imprints in his cheek, with birds sitting outside. He finds a bathroom and retches for a bit, not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that everything stays down. There’s a sliver of grey-blue dawn visible through the milk glass window, and it takes Tommy a couple of minutes of staring out at it before he remembers that while it’s a Saturday and he doesn’t have a class to get to, it’ll still be impossible to sneak back onto school grounds once everybody starts wandering around, and there’s probably some game in the afternoon that they’re all morally obligated to attend.
Maybe he can find Joey and him and Tommy and Adam can all kick around at the top of the bleachers, looking just interested enough to keep the jocks and teachers off their backs.
He splashes cold water onto his face and rubs away the worst of the raccoon eyes his makeup has turned into, and then he goes to wake Adam who’s crashed out on the couch above Tommy’s make-shift bed, one hand hanging over the edge like he was reaching for Tommy in his sleep.
“Hey, Adam,” Tommy says oh-so-quietly. He curls his fingers around Adam’s shoulder. “Adam, wake up.”
Adam does, jerking upright with a quick intake of breath. He gets it faster than Tommy did, sleep-swollen eyes finding the window and the brightening sky behind it immediately before he falls back into the cushions with a heartfelt “Oh shit.”
They have to step over several conked out bodies in their search of the front door, and somebody even bats at Tommy’s ankle when he stumbles past, but they find a back porch eventually, and once they’ve picked their way past the rose bushes lining the side of the house, they even vaguely know where they are. There’s nobody around except for an overzealous kid delivering newspapers who gives them a suspicious look when he zooms by on his bike, and lots and lots of birds eager to express themselves.
After a minute, Adam finds Tommy’s hand with his. “I still can’t get over how kick-ass you are,” he says, grinning over at him.
It makes something warm blossom in Tommy’s chest, warm and comfortable, and he squeezes the fingers intertwined with his and lets that feeling carry him home.
Which, man. Adam hates his guidance counselor, or maybe the counselor hates Adam. Either way Adam’s always a wreck afterwards. Tommy seriously couldn’t have picked a shittier time to blow up at him.
He twitches his fingers against his desk all the way through his last period and disappears before anybody can give him shit, heading straight for the dorms. He knocks on Adam’s door but nobody answers, which could mean something or it could not, so he goes back to his room and grabs a pen and a piece of paper. He slides a note under Adam’s door that just reads music room 3 and heads out to go exactly there, and get his hands on it if it’s free. The last thing he needs is Adam waltzing in on some picture-perfect Clarkenwell pair practicing Beethoven’s Duet with Two Obligato Eyeglasses, or something equally ridiculous and likely.
It’s free, though, and not even locked, and Tommy slips inside and pokes through the cabinets until he finds a guitar that he can fiddle with, tightening the tuning keys and running his fingers over the strings like Frank has taught him. He sits on the window sill and strums most of Our Lady of Sorrows, making up part of chorus when he forgets the chord progressions, but that’s the only part he fucks up. If Adam were here, he thinks idly, he’d totally join in, and it’d sound fucking badass.
Of course it’s not actually Adam that finds him, though. When somebody finally sticks his head in the door, it’s a head that’s too small, too curly-haired, too dark, and Tommy tries not to roll his eyes at the way Ryan Ross hovers in the doorway like some sort of freaky daylight apparition.
“Are we allowed in here?” Ryan asks, eyes wide.
Tommy shrugs, going back to fiddling with the keys.
Ryan takes a shuffling step closer. “Seriously. I thought the music teachers come and yell at you if you’re here after hours.”
“Nobody’s come to kick me out yet,” Tommy says. He manages a chord that sounds mostly right. “So.” He forces an expectant smile onto his face. “Anything I can help you with?” he asks, clearly meaning Get the fuck out.
Ryan shuffles a tiny bit closer. “Can you play that?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at the instrument in Tommy’s hands.
“Little bit.” The smile comes easier this time. “A friend of mine taught me a couple things, and I’ve been practicing.”
“Um.” Ryan’s gaze darts around the room before landing on Tommy’s eyes again. “Can you - teach me?”
Tommy feels his eyebrows twitch up. “You wanna learn to play the guitar?”
“Um.” Ryan looks down, crosses his arms. His entire face just seems to shut down. It’s kind of impressive. “Never mind. Just wanted to know what you were doing here.”
“What are you doing here?” Tommy asks back, watching with interest when Ryan turns bright red.
“Uh, I write,” he mutters. “Like, I go sit in the North stairwell. ‘Cause, like, nobody’s ever up there after class is over, you know?”
“Sounds chill,” Tommy says idly.
“Yeah, it’s.” Ryan bites his lip. “I like it.”
“There’s something to be said for solitude,” Tommy says, half-quoting, he thinks, even if he doesn’t know what, and Ryan nods. His fingers twitch, too, like maybe he wants to run along and write that down. Which, guitar-related bonding aside, would actually be kind of awesome, so Tommy really wishes he’d give in to temptation and get the hell out already.
Ryan, though. Ryan just takes a step closer.
“Tommy?” Adam asks from the doorway. He’s curled up into himself, and he looks stupid, like a giant trying to hide behind a house or something. But he’s here, and even smiling carefully at Tommy and Ryan, and that’s the only thing that counts.
Tommy tilts his head meaningfully at the exit and Ryan scrams, shuffling around Adam as quickly as he can while Adam’s still taking up the entire doorway.
Once he’s gone, Adam takes a tiny step forward. “I got your message,” he tells the floor.
Tommy nods, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He plucks at a string and then stares down at his hands, because this is ridiculous, but he can’t help it. It just figures that now Adam’s here, Tommy can’t come up with a single thing to say.
“Hey,” he finally settles on.
“Hi,” Adam says slowly.
Tommy pats the open space next to him in invitation, and then shuffles away a little bit when Adam comes and sits down. Their knees brush and Tommy jerks, and Adam frowns, and this. This just isn’t going like Tommy planned at all.
He takes a deep breath, all geared up for some big apology, and then deflates again. He can’t think of anything to say that would explain away how big of a douchebag he can be. He’s been thinking about how to say it all day, and had always comforted his idea-free brain with the thought that it’d all come to him in the moment, but now the moment’s here and he’s as clueless as ever. Class act, Tommy. Fucking A.
Adam keeps fidgeting, unimpressed by Tommy’s mental rollercoaster. “You wanted to see me?” he finally says, like Tommy’s his damn teacher or something.
“I wanted to apologize,” Tommy corrects/explains.
“It’s okay,” Adam shrugs.
But Tommy shakes his head. “It’s not,” he says. “I shouldn’t ever do that to you, and you shouldn’t let me.”
“So now it’s my fault?” Adam asks, but he’s smiling a little.
Tommy shakes his head again, violently this time. “It’s never your fault,” he says. “Shit like that’s not ever your fault.”
“Okay,” Adam says quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy says. Because sorry’s not enough, not by a long shot, but it’s the best he can do and Adam seems to get that, because he shakes his head gently and holds out his hand. Tommy folds his fingers between Adam’s, and Adam gives him his sweetest smile, and Tommy knows he’s forgiven.
They sit in silence for a while. Tommy has no idea what’s going on in Adam’s head, beyond the fact that Adam probably doesn’t hate him, so he nudges Adam’s side, and Adam smiles again but still doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Does Ryan like you or something?” he finally asks.
“Seriously?” Tommy twists around to look at Adam’s pinking face. “First Daisy, now Ryan? Who’s next, Frank?”
Adam manages to smile through his embarrassment. “You have to admit that Frank has a pretty big soft spot for you. Like, the size of California.”
“Shut up,” Tommy mutters, feeling his own face heat up.
“And like, Ryan does spend half his time sort of creepily hovering around wherever you are, you’ve gotta admit that.”
“He does?”
Adam stares at him for a minute. Then he bursts out laughing. “Man, Tommy,” he says, shaking his head in a fond, you’re-such-an-idiot kind of way. “I really have nothing to worry about with you, do I?”
“I keep telling you that,” Tommy mutters.
“I think I’m starting to get it,” Adam murmurs, hushed, and kisses the side of Tommy’s head.
Tommy turns red. Which is stupid, because it’s just Adam, and Tommy reaches for his guitar again to keep both of their minds off it. “Hey, so. I think I figured out how to play Born to be Wild on this. Wanna sing it for me so I can check?”
Frank’s at it again when Tommy gets out of English.
Tommy doesn’t even notice him at first, preoccupied with digging for his Spanish workbook and simultaneously keeping an eye out for Adam, and it’s not until he hears some girl say “What are you doing at my locker?” that he looks up.
She’s taller than Frank is, glaring down at him, but from what Tommy can see, Frank’s still grinning happily when he offers her a flyer.
“The Mythology Club is having a recruitment meeting,” he says cheerfully.
She huffs. “Just… stay away from my locker, okay?” she says and stalks away.
“Bye now,” Frank calls after her. He rolls his eyes and digs a handful of crumpled folded up notes out of the pocket of the uniform slacks he’s wearing, pulling them apart and shaking his head after each one.
Tommy gets to his side just in time to catch the notes when they start to slip from his fingers. “Hey, Frank,” he says. “I see you still haven’t grown a brain.”
Frank unfolds another piece of paper, grin, refolds it and slips it through the slits into the huffy girl’s locker. “Come on,” he says airily. “Who needs a brain when you can have fun instead?”
Tommy unfolds one of the notes. It says Jenny thinks you’re a slut in messy cursive. The next says I know what test you cheated on, the one after that he’s lying to you ~your secret friend.
“You’re ridiculous,” Tommy says, even though he’s maybe, kind of impressed by the sheer size of Frank’s balls. “What if they haven’t cheated on a test, or don’t know any Jenny’s?”
“Then they won’t believe it,” Frank says, waving a dismissive hand. “But a couple of people will believe it, or at least become paranoid enough that they’ll start to see evidence for it everywhere, and then there’ll be drama to end all dramas.” He grins. “People love drama, Tommy,” he says. “Seriously, give them an inch of a reason for it, and they’ll happily go the mile themselves, and drag all their friends along with them.”
“You’re crazy,” Tommy says. “Seriously fucking crazy.”
“I know,” Frank says happily. “Here, check out this flyer. Gerard drew it, isn’t it sick?”
It is, in more than one way - all it says is Mythology Club Recruitment Meeting today! and the rest of the paper is covered in monsters tearing apart screaming men in old-fashioned armor and women in flowey dresses. Lovely.
“Gerard approves of your hobby?” Tommy asks.
“He doesn’t disapprove,” Frank says. “Keep one, though. I kind of want to start a Mythology Club just so we can use this as our poster.”
“I think you kind of have to go here to start a club,” Tommy says absently. It really is a kick-ass picture.
“Yeah, yeah, spoilsport,” Frank says. “Wanna help?” He hands Tommy a couple of flyers and a handful of notes and starts across the hall, almost colliding with Marc who has to pull his gym bag out of the way at the last second to avoid bashing it into Frank’s head.
“Watch it, faggot,” he growls.
“You watch it, dickhead,” Frank says cheerfully, and when Marc turns, incredulous expression half-formed on his face, Frank’s fist flies forward and catches him right in the nose.
Marc doesn’t go down, exactly, but he bends nearly in half with both hands on his face, and Frank grins. He throws a quick wink in Tommy’s direction before he strolls away, all casual-like, and Tommy could have gone on staring forever if Adam hadn’t suddenly appeared next to him and tugged on his arm, whispering, “Come on, Tommy, we gotta go,” with the widest grin spreading over his face.
On the twenty-ninth, Tommy calls his mom from the phone in the common room after classes, patiently waiting while she congratulates him and gets all teary-eyed over his he’s eighteen now, all grown up, she can still remember when he was just- and so on. She asks him about his day, about his plans, and he can’t really tell her how Adam showed up at his door early in the morning, grin mischievous and a little shy, and how they ended up making out for so long they barely made it to their classrooms on time. He can’t tell her about how Frank and the guys put them on the guest list for their gig at Desecration Row tonight, which doesn’t mean a whole lot considering there’s not even an entry fee but it still feels kind of awesome. So he makes vague noises about hanging out with some friends, about the Depeche Mode shirt Adam had his family buy and mail over, and asks how things are in LA instead.
“Well, you know,” she says, without really saying anything. “Mrs. Thompson brought over a pie the other day, that was nice. And it’s nice to have your sister around more, now. It was a little bit lonely with the both of you gone, you know.”
“Lisa moved back home?’ Tommy asks, and he can tell by his mother’s silence that she hadn’t meant to let that slip. “Why? She was all over that apartment the last time I talked to her.”
“Well, yes,” his mother says. He can hear her shifting in her seat. “It was just getting a little expensive, you know. There’s no real reason for her to pay all that rent when she can just live here with me.”
“But what about her job at the kindergarten?” Tommy asks. “Mom? What about her job at the kindergarten.”
His mother sighs. “I don’t want you to worry about all that, Tommy. It’s your birthday, you should be enjoying yourself.”
“Did they fire her?” Tommy asks. His voice is probably getting uncomfortably loud, and he drops it when a couple of people wander down the hall, turns away from them to face the window. “Seriously, what the Hell, Mom? She loves it there. They love her there. That’s fucking ridiculous.”
“Don’t swear, Tommy,” his mother says, sighs. She sounds tired. “There’s nothing you can do, so don’t worry about it, okay?”
“Something happened, Mom,” Tommy insists. “Come on, tell me what happened.”
“Tommy,” she says, probably going for stern, but Tommy’s stubborn “Mom,” just has her sighing again.
“Tommy, just let it go, please?”
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Tommy asks. It’s all frighteningly clear all of a sudden. “They found out I’m a wolf, so they fired her.”
“Oh, honey, it’s not your fault.”
“Damn straight it’s not my fault,” Tommy bursts out. “They can’t do that, Mom, that’s illegal.”
Except it kind of is his fault, isn’t it? If he hadn’t been such an idiot at fifteen, his sister would still have her dream job and he wouldn’t be at this damn school and his mother wouldn’t sound like she’s forty-six going on ancient, God.
She’s quiet for a moment, long enough that he’s think they lost the connection if it weren’t for the sound of her breathing. Finally she takes a breath and says, “I just want you to have a good birthday, honey.”
And Tommy wants to say something snappy, something mean, something like, ‘how am I supposed to have a good birthday now,’ but she sounds so tired, and he’s so tired, so he just says “Yeah” and then doesn’t say anything for a while.
He’s still not exactly in a talkative mood when he meets up with Adam in the basement with Adam so they can head to the club together. Adam seems to pick up on that though, thankfully, and he stays mostly quiet, although he keeps darting quick glances over at Tommy when he thinks Tommy isn’t looking.
It’s not until they’re in the alley leading down to Desecration Row that he pulls Tommy aside and asks, voice hushed, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Tommy says, with a wrangled smile he gives up on halfway through, and completely ignores Adam’s answering frown.
The guys are all waiting for them when they get into the supply closet posing as a dressing room, bursting into a surprisingly terrible rendition of the Birthday Song, and it’s enough to startle a laugh out of Tommy.
“Happy birthday, man,” they say, voices overlapping, and present him with a beer can with a burning candle stuck to the top.
“Thanks, guys,” Tommy says, managing a genuine smile. “This is awesome.”
Gerard immediately starts to tell him about all the difficulties they went through, finding an unopened can and then not drinking it until he got here, and Tommy nods along but he’s completely tuning him out. His mind keeps drifting back to Lisa, who he didn’t get to talk to because she’s working insane hours as a waitress to make a fraction of what she used to. Who had to leave her apartment to go back to living with their mother because she can’t afford her own rent. It makes him scowl, which makes Gerard falter in his story, so Tommy shows him his teeth and quickly says, “Uh-huh.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Frank pull Adam aside, frowning, and turns away before he has to see anything else. Okay, so he’s not exactly bad-ass company right now, but it’s his birthday, okay, his eighteenth birthday, and Clarkenwell maybe doesn’t set the bar particularly high when it comes to that, but he really could have done without the free-of-charge reminders of how his one big moment of stupidity fucked up his entire life and the lives of just about everyone he cares about.
He can’t resist a second glance though, just in time to catch Frank sending Adam shuffling away with a hand smacked to his back before he comes over, pushes Gerard aside and slings his arm over Tommy’s shoulders. He has to push up onto the balls of his feet to do it.
“Why are you so fucking pissy?” he asks. No foreplay, just gets right down to it. “You’re like, eighteen now. You can get tattoos! Buy your own damn cigarettes and not steal mine. It’ll be great.”
“Whoop-di-doo,” Tommy says.
Frank pauses, grows still in that weird way of his that always makes Tommy feel like he’s being subjected to Superman’s X-ray vision. “Okay,” he says. “This isn’t just your regular old turning-ancient blues. What’s up?”
Tommy looks away, and Frank squeezes his shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “Tell Uncle Frankie what’s wrong.”
“My sister lost her job because of me,” Tommy says. Quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but it really doesn’t hurt any less.
Frank quiets again, but it’s an angry quiet this time, tense and furious. “Because you’re a wolf?” he asks.
Tommy doesn’t even bother to nod.
“Fuck ‘em,” Frank says after a moment. “Seriously, fuck ‘em. I can’t wait for the revolution to mow those bastards down.”
“What fucking revolution?” Tommy asks bitterly, and then Ray’s pulling on Frank’s arm, saying, “We were due in stage thirty seconds ago, Frankie, Jesus Christ.”
They launch right into their first song as soon as Frank and Ray are in position, the kids in the front screaming in delight, and while Frank’s shredding with his usual enthusiasm, he keeps glancing Tommy’s way. When the last chords fade out, he takes off his guitar and leans it against an amp, ignoring the what-the-fuck looks the others are sending his way. The others minus Gerard, that is, who’s running through his usual welcome speech at the center mike.
He’s gotten as far as, “Hey everybody, we’re My Chem-“ when Frank’s suddenly right next to him, raising his voice to drown out the cheers.
“’Scuse me,” he says, ignoring Gerard’s wide-eyed look. “This is an unscheduled service announcement interrupting your current broadcast, because there’s somebody who needs to hear it.”
Somebody yells “I love you, Frankie!” but Frank just makes shushing gestures with his hands. A hush falls over the crowd eventually, and Frank pushes Gerard away from the mike before he plants his feet in front of it.
“I know you’re hopeless right now,” he says. “You’re so fucking terrified, trust me, I know. I can’t say I’ve been there, but I know where you’re coming from. I know how angry you are. I know how badly you want to hurt someone, just so you yourself will stop hurting.” He flicks his gaze downwards, at the rapt faces of the kids pushing against the stage, before he looks straight into the blinding lights. Tommy feels like he can see every single sweat drop bead along the line of Frank’s hair, even though he knows it’s just an illusion, but he’s so sure that he can almost taste the salty sting on his lips.
“You’re angry, and you’re scared,” Frank goes on. He fiddles with the stand for a moment. “But there’s one thing you’re not, and that’s alone.
“The world is full of kids like you.” He grabs the mike with both hands, and his words echo around the room, but the gaze he slants offstage is all for Tommy. “Kids just like you. Kids as lost and fucked up and angry as you. You’re angry, and you’re hurt, and you think you’re the only person in the world to feel that way, but guess what?”
The crowd roars at that, already anticipating what comes next, but Frank yells it out anyway. “You’re not!”
The yells only get louder, and Tommy feels his heart thump painfully in his chest.
“You’re not alone, you hear me? We know what you’re going through. We get it. We get it, and we’re here for you, and we’re going to change the fucking world for you.”
He turns, then, away from the audience to give Tommy his full attention and his biggest smirk. “Happy birthday, kid,” he says. “We got your back.”
When Tommy finally finds Frankie, he’s sitting on the roof of the van, drumming his heels against the rear doors and puffing smoke at the stars.
“Tommy!” he says, delighted. “Come on up, man.”
Tommy has to climb up over the hood and then balance across the slippery roof, which isn’t hard exactly but unfamiliar enough that it’s definitely out of his comfort zone, and he gratefully reaches for the cigarette when Frank hands it over.
Frank shoots him a look now and then, clearly pleased with himself, but he doesn’t say anything until Tommy’s smoked Frank’s cigarette down to the butt. Frank takes it from him and tosses it down onto the asphalt. Tommy shakes his head when Frank offers him another one, but when Frank sticks two between his lips, lights both, and then hands one off to Tommy, he takes it anyway.
“Fuck, man,” Tommy says eventually.
Frank grins, idly punches his shoulder. “I meant it, you know,” he says.
Tommy flops backwards, onto the van’s night-chilled roof, and stares up at the stars, so distant, so bright. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
The next night, Tommy sneaks out again, but he doesn’t sneak far. He finds their row of lockers, pausing to let his palm rest on the cool metal of the first one, and stares down the dark hallway. Then he digs the screw he liberated from the frame of his bed out of his pocket and sets to work.
Adam finds him in the boys’ washroom the next morning. Adam’s running late, as per usual - Tommy’s already showered and standing in front of the row of mirrors in his slacks and undershirt, shaving. He doesn’t startle when Adam practically bounces up next to him, though; he’s too used to watching for jocks that think it’s funny to make him cut himself by jumping out at him suddenly.
“Dude, it’s crazy!” Adam whisper-yells at him. “Have you heard yet?”
“Have I heard what.” Tommy lifts his chin, dragging the razor along the skin there, and meets Adam’s wide eyes in the mirror.
“Oh shit, you haven’t?” Adam makes bug eyes at him in the mirror.
“You gonna tell me what it is I’m supposed to have heard?” Tommy asks him.
“Like, with the lockers? Man, you’ve gotta see this, come on.” He pulls on Tommy’s arm. Tommy just barely manages to get the razor away from his skin.
“We should go to the guys’ tonight,” Adam declares, impatiently bouncing around while Tommy wipes cream from his half-shaved face. “They’ve so gotta hear about this.”
Tommy blinks at him, but Adam doesn’t seem to notice, and he barely gives Tommy time to snag his blazer and tie from the hook on the wall before he’s dragging him out the door.
“You guys are not gonna believe what happened,” Adam says before they’re even all the way into the basement.
Frank actually pauses his game. “What happened?” he asks. He twists around. “Dude, Tommy. What’s with the half-stubble?”
“Oh man.” Adam throws himself onto one of the couches. “Like, you know how you were pulling all of those pranks at school? Was that you? With the lockers?”
Frank blinks at him, and Adam shakes his head.
“Anyway, so, I guess last night somebody decided to copy you, or something, because-”
Tommy tunes out, here, digging around under the couch until he finds an unopened can of Coke that must have rolled there at some point in the last couple of days. He’d really rather have beer, but he also doesn’t want to draw to much attention to himself, and so he forces his attention back on Adam and a faint smile onto his face when it sounds like the story’s winding down.
“…and now, like, all the lockers have L’s on them and everybody’s freaking out, man, it’s crazy.”
“Fucking insane,” Ray agrees.
Gerard hums in reply, resting his chin on his fist, and then Frank gets Tommy a beer from the mini fridge, but neither of them actually says anything.
Tommy’s mom calls him one day and admits in a really roundabout way that they don’t have the money to fly Tommy home for Thanksgiving, and Tommy says it’s fine and not to worry, because what is he supposed to say, really? He manages to convince her he can go home with some friends of his, because he’s pretty sure Frank’s offer still stands, and by the time they hang up she no longer sounds like she’s about to cry.
“’Course,” is all Frank has to say on the matter.
Tommy grins, somewhat stupidly, and hides behind his beer. It’s not like it fixes anything - Frank’s awesome, and Tommy assumes his family is, too, but they’re not Tommy’s family. They won’t pretend to stab the turkey with manic grins before they start cutting it up, and they won’t hold a contest to see who can hang a spoon off the end of their nose the longest, and they won’t fight for the remote before the game starts. The thought of not being home for the holidays turns his stomach, especially because Adam’s going back, and sometimes he forgets that Tommy isn’t and starts to wax poetic about his mom and dad and brother and best friend back home and how amazing everything’s going to be.
But it’s not like going home is an option, apparently, so there’s nothing for Tommy to do but smile and remind himself that the other option is staying at school over the break. Which is just slightly more pleasant a thought than vacationing in Hell.
Nope, Tommy’d take Thanksgiving at Frank’s over Hell any day.
“Alright,” Larkner says, tapping the stack of papers in his hand with his finger. “This is your second test on Lycanthrophia, and coincidentally also your midterm. I trust I don’t need to remind anybody that it’s worth twenty-five percent of your grade for this term, but I do hope you’ve all been studying hard.”
One seat back and to the right, Tommy can hear Jesse scoff.
“Yeah, right,” he mutters, and Marc next to Tommy chokes on a laugh, but they both fall quiet when Larkner glares at them.
“No talking, no peeking, no notes,” he says. “And definitely no cheating. Trust me, you really don’t want something like that on your academic record, not unless your ultimate goal is to attend community college.”
He separates the top copy from the stack and lets it thud down on one of the desks in the front row. “Turn around on my mark only,” he says. “Good luck.”
Tommy’s not really the type to get nervous before tests, and he’s not this time either, not really. But usually his lack of panic is due to that low-level thrum of desire to not prove all the condescending bastards right. He still wants to do well, of course, for his mom and because failing tests always means mandatory tutoring that cuts into his bullshit-free time, but whenever he doesn’t, there’s a part of him that gloats at the fact that the poor little underprivileged wolf isn’t flourishing under Clarkenwell’s charity.
Today, though, today is different. Because Tommy knows this shit, this time. He knows it, and he actually kind of cares.
“Begin,” Larkner says.
There’s a rustle of paper when everybody flips their tests over, so Tommy does the same, and by the time he’s scanned the first couple of questions, his usual Zen has returned. There aren’t a whole lot of questions asking for an opinion - there never are, at Clarkenwell. Instead, it’s names and dates and freaking legislature, and Tommy may not be the best at paying attention in class, but he’s spent hours talking this shit over with Frank and rereading the essays Mikey photocopied for him at the local library until the ink wore off at the creases. He’s got this.
Jesse, apparently, doesn’t take too long to catch onto the fact. They haven’t even been working for more than two minutes - so far, the questions have been the name of the first World War 1 battalion to include wolves, the number of human casualties in the first wolf riot in 1954, and the topic of the latest wolf-related bill that passed in congress; easy - when somebody hisses “Move your damn arm,” and when Tommy glances over his shoulder, Jesse’s glaring at him.
“Boys?” Larkner asks from the front. Tommy whips his head around, meets the teacher’s frown for a full second and then looks down at his paper. He knows Jesse well enough to know that he’s gonna get his ass kicked after class if he doesn’t comply, so he obediently slides his elbow off the table and into his lap.
He’ll be damned if he’s gonna make this easy on the bastard, though.
The next question could be a or b - probably a though - so he clearly marks c for that one. The answer to question 7 is 1916, but that one’s obvious, so he crosses off the right one for that. Behind him, Jesse makes a pleased little noise, and Tommy presses his smile into the cuff of his blazer. He gleefully answers Budapest as the location of the first properly documented wolf at the time of his capture, and then flips the page slow and careful, giving Jesse plenty of time to catch up.
He finishes the test, Jesse copying his every answer, with quite a bit of time to spare, checking off December 19, 1976 as the date of President Carter’s first address on lycanthrophic integration with a confident swoop of his pencil. Then he turns back to the first page and sets about diligently going over his name until the lines are so dark they’re barely legible anymore.
Jesse holds out another couple of minutes, but as soon as Carlotta in the first row - she’s refusing to apply to anything but Ivy League schools - turns in her paper and heads for the door, he does the same. The second the door swings shut, Tommy frantically starts erasing all his answers and starts replacing them with the right ones. He still cuts it close, handing in the stack of paper with only two people left in the room and the eraser on his pencil worn down to a sad little nub, but whatever. It sounds crazy, but he’s starting to maybe get why Jesse and all those idiots like torturing them so much. There’s a sort of rush, a sense of sickly satisfaction at having screwed someone over and then gotten away with it. And yes, most of that is pure fucking pleasure at being the screwer for once, not the screwee, but it’s kind of amazing beyond that, too. No wonder Frank’s so keen on wreaking havoc all the damn time, if this is the way it makes him feel.
“What’s with you today?” Adam asks him at lunch, shooting a sidelong glance at the grin Tommy can’t quite manage to wipe off his face. “You’re all… smiley.”
“Just in a good mood,” Tommy shrugs, and ignores Adam’s choked-off little squeak when Tommy slides his hand between Adam’s thighs under the table.
The nice thing about being a social pariah is that Tommy is always one of the last to get picked for a team in P.E. - usually even after Fat Mike, whose stomach hangs over the elastic waistband of his gym shorts in a truly spectacular fashion. It’s great. There’s twenty-six people in his section, including him, so whenever they play soccer, four people get to sit on the bleachers and watch while everybody scurries around after some dumb checkered ball. Tommy loves that part. He gets to chill out with his fellow wolf Joey, far, far away from Fat Mike who refuses to even look at them. There’s a fourth member of their little slacker league, usually, ever-changing people who sort of hover awkwardly between the fat end of the bench and the wolf end of the bench, trying hard to not be associated with either and looking stupidly relieved whenever somebody comes over to switch.
Technically, there’s a third wolf in the class with them, but the guy in question, Sebastian Slaymeyer, is so stupidly talented at soccer that people pick him for their teams just because playing against him usually means losing. Sebastian tries out for the soccer team every year but, for some oh-so-mysterious reason, never makes the cut. He’s got the flu today though, apparently, so it’s just Tommy and Joey and Fat Mike glowering at everybody, and Joey’s a sweet guy who comes up with the best lines about their hardworking classmates and always shares his water with Tommy.
The not so great part about P.E. is that it’s Jesse’s free period, so him and his little gang come and stand on the far side of the field and glare and make threatening gestures that the coach pretends not to see.
“We’re not even doing anything,” Joey says after a while. “What’s so fun about mocking somebody who’s not even doing anything worth mocking them for?”
Tommy shrugs, and then cheers obnoxiously loudly when Tony Michaels steals the ball and sprints for a goal. Tony startles and promptly loses the ball again, and turns to give Tommy the stink-eye.
Tommy smiles back beatifically.
“Is that even your team?” Joey asks after a minute.
Tommy shrugs. “I don’t think I’m actually on a team,” he says. “I’m pretty sure they’d rather play with one man down than with me.”
Mitchell Something-Hyphenated hits the goal post and gets some slaps on the back. Across the field, Jesse mimes idiotic cheering while his cronies laugh.
“They dare each other to go out during the moon, you know,” Joey says. He nods his chin at Jesse and his posse of sheep. “Sneak out into the woods and stay there.”
“Fucking dumb-asses,” Tommy mutters. It’s not that he gives a damn about the stupid shit they get up to, not when they don’t try to turn him into their entertainment, but he still wakes up at night, sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his skin, remembering the weight on his back and the sharp, stinging pain at the back of his neck. If Jesse’s really willing to risk that actually happening to him, he’s even more of an idiot than Tommy thought.
Joey raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, well,” he says. He carefully untwists the drawstring of his shorts.
“They’re not the only ones getting up to that kind of shit, are they?”
Tommy cuts a quick glance at him, but Joey’s not looking at him anymore. “Oh,” he says finally.
Joey chews on his lip for a moment. “It’s dangerous, you know? That game you’re playing.”
Tommy somehow manages to smile through the adrenaline rushing through his system. “What game?” he asks, voice mostly wobble-free.
Joey gives him a look. “The thing is, I can’t even say I mind. Because I get it, I do, and sometimes I wish I had the balls you do.” He shakes his head. “And then I think you’re fucking idiots and gonna get yourself killed, and fuck everything up for the rest of us while you’re at it.”
They watch the ball make almost the entire length of the field twice before Tommy finally says, “We’re not trying to make life harder for anybody.”
“I know that,” Joey says. He smiles a little bit. “You could never be that much of a dick.”
“I’m not trying to be,” Tommy says. “But I can’t stop now. I don’t know if you understand that, but I know what it’s like now, what it can be like, and I can’t give it up anymore.”
Joey nods slowly. “Did you know that rats don’t start biting until after they’ve tasted meat for the first time?”
“So you’re calling me a rat,” Tommy says. He takes a sip of Joey’s water. “That’s great. Thanks for that.”
Joey laughs a little, but he catches Tommy’s eyes and nods once, and Tommy thinks he gets it.
Larkner keeps the stack of graded quizzes sitting on his desk in plain view until everybody’s fidgeting too hard to pay attention to him anymore before he relents and starts handing them out. Tommy’s practically drumming his feet against the floorboards, but it’s more anticipation than nerves. Larkner certainly isn’t helping any. He’s got the best poker face in the world, no lie, utterly straight-faced when he says, “97 %, Tommy, good job,” without so much as a twitch in his expression
Tommy replies with a quiet “Thank you,” dropping his gaze while he takes the papers. He can practically feel Jesse gloating behind to him, and it takes a shitload of effort on Tommy’ part to not burst out laughing pre-emptively.
He still sneaks a look over when Larkner moves to Jesse’s desk, watches the smirk melt from his face when Larkner says, quietly, “Come see me after class, please.”
He presses his mouth into his shoulder to keep them from hearing him snicker. Not even the death glare Jesse shoots him when Larkner moves on can put a damper on his good mood. He can’t fucking wait to tell Frank.
Tommy gets his ass handed to him in a bathroom during break, alone with Jesse while two of his cronies guard the door. He’s still grinning when they leave him to spit blood into the sink.
So worth it.
Adam, unsurprisingly, doesn’t agree. His voice rises nearly a solid octave when he comes by Tommy’s room later in the day, like he’s never seen Tommy with a shiner, what the fuck.
“You should have seen his face,” Tommy says, batting at Adam’s hands. “Fucking amazing. You don’t even know.”
“I don’t wanna know,” Adam says. He barely gives Tommy’s hands a chance to drop away before he’s got his fingers on Tommy’s jaw again, turning his head sideways to inspect the damage. He bites his lip. “Maybe you should go see the nurse.”
Tommy draws back, moves his jaw a bit. It’s tender and puffy, and he definitely got some strange looks in his classes, but it doesn’t feel like it’s broken or anything. He’s fine.
“We should go see Frank,” he corrects. “Frank and the guys.”
“I’m sure Frank’ll be very proud,” Adam says tightly.
Tommy rolls his eyes. “What’s with the bitch face?” he asks. “I’m the one who got beat up, not you, remember?”
“Oh, I remember,” Adam says. “Doesn’t seem much like you do, though, is all.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Tommy asks. His jaw feels tight when he scowls.
Adam’s bitch face is beyond epic. “You need to lay off, Tommy,” he says, his lips pinched into a thin, pale line. “I’m serious. You’re going to get yourself killed if you don’t lay off.”
“Just because you’re scared,” Tommy says hotly, but Adam cuts him off with an angry movement.
“Yes, I’m scared,” he says. “And if you had any sense in your stupid head, you would be too.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Tommy says. His initial surge of anger’s mostly gone now, replaced by a cold, insistent rage. “You say smart, I say sheep.”
“Wanting to survive my high school years does not make me a sheep,” Adam full-on yells at him.
“No, letting douchebag strangers dictate your entire life makes you a sheep,” Tommy shouts back. Fuck this noise, seriously. Fuck it. “And it’s not even like you don’t fucking know they’re doing it. You’re just too fucking scared to admit it.”
“Oh, save it, Tommy,” Adam says, face dark. “You really think I can’t tell when you’re terrified?”
Tommy scoffs, but Adam keeps right on talking.
“You act like you’re so tough, like nothing can touch you, but deep down, you’re freaking out just as bad as the rest of us.”
“I’m not freaking out,” Tommy says. It’s stupid, is what it is, and he’s stupid, and he won’t let his stinging eyes turn into anything else, so he reaches up and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as hard as he can’t stand it. “I’m not.”
“Oh, Tommy,” Adam says, voice going soft. “Tommy, come here.”
Tommy doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t, but he doesn’t resist when Adam takes his wrist and pulls him over to the bed. Adam glances over his shoulder as he sits on the edge and then scoots backwards, forcing Tommy to straddle his legs or break his hold. Tommy resists for a second before he chooses the former, but he won’t relax, staying up on his knees. He’s refusing to make contact, too, and Adam gives him a second before he sighs.
“Tommy,” he says. He lets his hands rest lightly on the backs of Tommy’s thighs. “I worry, you know,” he says. “That’s all.”
The way they’re sitting (or not-sitting), Tommy’s almost a full head taller than Adam, and he’s fully prepared to exploit that when he’s avoiding Adam’s searching look.
“You don’t have to yell at me,” he says.
Adam hesitates. “I was scared.”
And that, finally, is enough for Tommy to look away from the branches of the sycamore tree outside his window and meet his earnest expression. “I got beat up in a bathroom,” he says. “Okay? Nobody even knew where I was.” He chews on his lip, because that’s the best way he knows to keep his face from scrunching up and his nose from running. “You really don’t have to yell at me right now.”
Adam’s hands move lightly over the fabric of Tommy’s slacks. “I shouldn’t have,” he says. “I know that. Okay?”
After a minute or two, Tommy lets his legs relax, settling into Adam’s lap and ducking his head into Adam’s neck when his arms come up around him.
“I’m sorry,” Adam whispers.
Tommy doesn’t nod, because that would look stupid, but he still manages a muffled ‘yeah.’ “I’m sorry, too,” he says, and Adam kisses his head and rocks him gently back and forth.
So it’s not like things are suddenly easy. But overall, yeah, life is pretty good.
And then one day Frankie peers at him, bleary-eyed and sweaty-haired, from where he’s huddled underneath a mountain of blankets on the couch, and says, “Hey, Tommy, you play guitar, right?” and all of a sudden Tommy’s playing a gig. He never actually agrees to play a gig - in fact, he says no quite a bit, but Frank runs his awesome idea of not cancelling the show they have on Friday night and just making Tommy play in Frank’s stead by the other guys, and they all seem to think it’s a brilliant idea.
Like, brilliantly stupid, but nobody really cares what Tommy has to say. Instead, they talk Adam into bugging him about practicing their songs every single minute until day of, which aren’t really a whole lot, and Tommy spends most of them locked up in the music room with Adam as a look-out because what Tommy really doesn’t need right now is for a teacher catching him playing non-approved music and giving him detention until the turn of the century.
And then they’re almost late to the gig itself because Tommy gets caught by a supervisor tiptoeing down the hall and has to lie about going to the bathroom and gets told off for his jeans and has to go skulk around his room for half an hour before the supervisor finally decides to wander away.
Tommy thinks it’s a sign, personally, but Adam just frog-marches him off school property and towards Desecration Row without mercy. Which, seriously. What the hell. Adam’s supposed to be the reluctant one.
The guys don’t seem to be particularly surprised that they’re late, which is insulting but at least they’re not yelling at him, which is reassuring until Ray pushes a guitar into Tommy’s hands and tells him to warm up while Adam goes to check out the crowd. Which he does, because he’s totally a professional, or whatever. It’s not like he wants to fuck this up. But then he’s all done with his exercises and with running through the songs at twice their usual speed and he paces around the dressing room until Mikey and Ray both excuse themselves with some bullshit reason about checking the stage set-up or getting something from somebody or some shit like that.
It’s not like Tommy doesn’t know he’s freaking everybody out, but it’s not like he can help it.
“Dude,” Gerard finally says, peering at him over the top of some Superman comic. “Will you chill out, please? It’s gonna be fine.”
“You don’t know that.” Tommy swerves around and starts pacing the other way. “What if somebody recognizes me?” he protests, not for the first time.
“Then they’d actually have to admit to being here before they can get you in trouble,” Gerard says. It actually is the first time Gerard has deemed Tommy’s plaintive objections worthy of a reply. Maybe that means Tommy actually looks like he’s freaking out now, instead of just feeling like it.
Apparently he does, because Gerard leans over to give him a lazy push towards the bathroom. “Seriously,” he says. “Go splash some water on your face or puke or whatever. You’re paler than me, right now.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tommy croaks and stumbles away. He rubs his forehead and the back of his neck down with a wet paper towel and spits into the sink a couple of time, and then he clutches the porcelain with a white-knuckled grip and meets his own wide eyes in the mirror.
“I can’t do this,” Tommy whispers at his reflection. He hadn’t meant to say it - had meant to say, I can do this, but now the words are out of his mouth once he can’t not say them anymore.
I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this.
He almost jumps out of his skin when the door swings open, and Adam only takes one look at him before he’s by the sink, dropping the bag he’s carrying at his feet and running his hands over Tommy’s shoulders.
“Jesus, Tommy,” he mutters. “You look like you’re about to have a panic attack.”
Tommy shrugs, because he’s not so sure he isn’t.
Adam shakes his head. “Man, Tommy,” he says. “What are we going to do with you?”
“Not let me go on stage?” Tommy suggests, but the look Adam gives him suggests that that’s a completely ridiculous idea.
“Don’t be stupid,” Adam says. He bends down to pick up the bag. “You’re dying to go out there, and you know it.”
“Dying, yeah,” Tommy mutters. He nods at the bag. “What’s that?”
“What? Oh.” Adam puts it down on the counter and starts fumbling with the zipper. “Gerard actually suggested this to me,” he says. “’Cause you like his make-up, right, and you know how I’m always playing around with it.”
It still takes Tommy seeing the eyeliner in Adam’s hand for him to get it. “You wanna put make-up on me?” he asks.
Adam’s expression soothes into a smile. “Think of it as war paint,” he says. He pats the counter. “Come up here,” he says, “and let me work some magic.”
Tommy lets him, tries to follow Adam’s directions of “look up,” “mouth open,” “eyes closed” best he can. He twists his hands in the hem of his shirt to keep the rest of him still and Adam works quietly and doesn’t say anything when Tommy jumps at every bang and yell and crash coming from outside.
Finally he drags a thumb over Tommy’s cheekbone and eyes him critically, tilting his head to the side. After a moment, he grins. “I think I’m done,” he says. He drops the eyeliner into the case. “Go on, check it out.”
He takes a couple of steps back while Tommy slides off the counter and turns to face whatever Adam’s done to his face.
“So?” Adam asks after a while, when Tommy’s still staring. And he can’t quite seem to be able to stop staring, because holy shit. It’s pretty subtle overall, probably, not like, crazy swirls and color all over, but still. There’s dark eye shadow on his lids and thick liner around his eyes, and just a hint of gloss on his lips. It’s not much, really, but he still looks kind of. Otherwordly. Fey, if Tommy were the kind of person to describe himself like that.
“It’s okay?” Adam asks, shifting from one foot onto the other.
Tommy turns back around, away from his own reflection, and nods.
Adam clears his throat. “You’re gonna be fine,” he says. “You’ll see.”
Before he can think better of it, Tommy catches Adam’s wrist with his hand. “You’ll be there, right?” he asks.
Adam smiles, softly, letting Tommy draw him back in. “Front and center,” he promises. His lips on Tommy’s are soft and certain, utterly sure, and Tommy draws a deep breath into his lungs and thinks, This is happening.
The gig itself passes in a blur of oh shit oh shit oh shit and this is actually happening, what the fuck. He thinks he does okay, though, because Gerard and Mikey and Ray give him encouraging smiles every couple of verses and the crowd’s cheering rises in pitch when Tommy finally gets his bearing during the second-to-last song and dares to bang his head a little bit.
And then they’re walking off, and Mikey heads straight for the payphone backstage to tell Frank to chill the fuck out and everything’s fine, and Tommy stands there for a second, dazed and disoriented, and he has no idea if Adam was even there because he couldn’t see anything beyond his own two feet.
It doesn’t matter though, because Adam is right in front of him, catching his elbows and drawing him in for a hug. “That was amazing,” he crows right in Tommy’s ear. “You’re so fucking amazing.”
Somebody claps a hand down on Tommy’s shoulder and he turns and it’s Gerard, grinning at him. Telling him he did really well, but Tommy’s still half-deaf from the crowd and the speakers and can barely hear him, everything cotton-wrapped and unreal.
Gerard grins bigger still and says something to Adam, who tightens his hold on Tommy and says something that might sound like, “Maybe I should just take him home,” but then somebody they don’t even know crashes into them and yells, “After-par-tay!” and slings one arm over Tommy’s shoulder and hands him a bottle of vodka.
Tommy wakes up face down on somebody’s carpet, the short bristles leaving uncomfortable imprints in his cheek, with birds sitting outside. He finds a bathroom and retches for a bit, not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that everything stays down. There’s a sliver of grey-blue dawn visible through the milk glass window, and it takes Tommy a couple of minutes of staring out at it before he remembers that while it’s a Saturday and he doesn’t have a class to get to, it’ll still be impossible to sneak back onto school grounds once everybody starts wandering around, and there’s probably some game in the afternoon that they’re all morally obligated to attend.
Maybe he can find Joey and him and Tommy and Adam can all kick around at the top of the bleachers, looking just interested enough to keep the jocks and teachers off their backs.
He splashes cold water onto his face and rubs away the worst of the raccoon eyes his makeup has turned into, and then he goes to wake Adam who’s crashed out on the couch above Tommy’s make-shift bed, one hand hanging over the edge like he was reaching for Tommy in his sleep.
“Hey, Adam,” Tommy says oh-so-quietly. He curls his fingers around Adam’s shoulder. “Adam, wake up.”
Adam does, jerking upright with a quick intake of breath. He gets it faster than Tommy did, sleep-swollen eyes finding the window and the brightening sky behind it immediately before he falls back into the cushions with a heartfelt “Oh shit.”
They have to step over several conked out bodies in their search of the front door, and somebody even bats at Tommy’s ankle when he stumbles past, but they find a back porch eventually, and once they’ve picked their way past the rose bushes lining the side of the house, they even vaguely know where they are. There’s nobody around except for an overzealous kid delivering newspapers who gives them a suspicious look when he zooms by on his bike, and lots and lots of birds eager to express themselves.
After a minute, Adam finds Tommy’s hand with his. “I still can’t get over how kick-ass you are,” he says, grinning over at him.
It makes something warm blossom in Tommy’s chest, warm and comfortable, and he squeezes the fingers intertwined with his and lets that feeling carry him home.