Chapter 1
He blinks. Once. Twice. Thinking that maybe, if he blinks hard enough, for fast enough, or again, again, that maybe, it'll disappear.
Maybe that little, faint but clear blue line will fade into obscurity. Maybe its- just a trick of the light, or a smudge on his contacts, or something. Something. Something.
He places it back down onto the sink, ignoring the little clink that echoes in the smaller bathroom. Ignoring the rust covering the drain, the dirt on the tiles, the soot covering the cracks on the walls from people smoking where they aren't supposed to. The faint chatter and rumble of the outside, the convinence store he had only stopped in for a few moments.
What was supposed to be a few minutes. Had it been minutes? It felt like hours. It felt like infinity.
Why had he grabbed it anyways? He'd just come to get a candy bar, had sharp cravings for it the way he always did for chocolate, he'd always loved chocolate it wasnt- it wasn't anything else, it couldn't be.
The lines sneer at him in mockery.
He shouldn't have picked it up. He shouldn't have picked it up, and he- he shouldn't have come here at all, this was useless, what was the point of this? He couldn't, he wasn't.
He wasn't. He wasn't.
There's a rapid knock on the door that breaks Tommy out of whatever spiral he had fallen into, shaking his head to get rid of the lines etched into his eyes, his skull, his brain.
"Hold on!" He calls out, sounding so, so far away, snatching the stupid, stupid test off of the dumb off white ceramic, and throwing it a little too hard into the trash can beside it.
He quickly grabs some soap, rubs it inbetween his fingers, into the crevices of his palms, underneath his fingernails, before washing it all off underneath boiling hot water. Washing everything away. Not a germ left as he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs.
By the time he leaves the bathroom, with a polite smile carved into his face, whoever had knocked had left, making Tommy wonder if it had been a figment of his imagination the whole time. If that, maybe, all of this was.
He keeps that polite, polite, calm, normal smile as he escapes through the front doors, nodding to the cashier, the bag around his wrist sent swinging as he pushes the heavy doors open.
Walks just out of sight enough to run away with the wind, dropping the bag off at Billy's as he goes.
Maybe Kate would like a visit.
~~
Kate had chocolate, she always did. The fancy stuff, from chocolatiers in the Swiss alps or something. Tommy doesn't really care, as long as it tastes like chocolate and not like bitter, than it's good.
He leans against the white marble countertops, eyes closed and head thrown back, humming a little too loud as the chocolate drop melts on his tongue. Fuck that's good. Maybe he should pay more mind to the Swiss alps. Give those chocolate peeps a visit. Bathe himself in this shit, who knows.
Something similar to a tinfoil ball smacks into the side of his head. He doesn't even flinch, just grinning as he swallows. "Good evening, Katie-"
"Its 4 in the morning."
Tommy just forces his eyes open, lolls his head to look at her. Her hair is thrown into an extremely messy bun, with hair flying everywhere in her haste. She's wearing a purple nightrobe, and has a pocket knife in her hand, now closed. Her eyebrows are down, furrowed, and her darker, monolid eyes are gleaming with something akin to annoyance. But fond, because it's Tommy. At least, that's what he tells himself.
She's a mess, she's beautiful and she's everything. He wishes he could love her.
"Good morning," He corrects cheekily, fully expecting it when Kate grabs one of the hershey kisses out of the bowl and unwrapping it (that's where she's getting it from), before balling it and tossing it again, hitting him right in the middle of his eyes, at the tip of the bridge of his nose.
"Its four in the morning," She says again, with an intensity that would anybody running for the hills. Any normal person wouldn't want to interrupt Katie kates beauty sleep, or else they'd face her terrifying (and Tommy means terrifying) wrath.
Tommy, however, was not a normal man.
Not by any means, it seems.
He pushes that thought as far out of his head as possible.
He pushes himself off of the counter, so he can grab the bowl of chocolate (she has two bowls, full of chocolate, in seperate places in her kitchen. Rich people, he will never understand) off of the countertop, shoves his hand into it. "Which means you get to spend even more hours with your Best friend,"
Tommy grabs a handful and for a second, considers just eating them with the wrappers. They couldn't harm him, right? They aren't toxic. He sighs internally, and drops them all onto the counter to start peeling them individually.
Kate groans, loudly. Way too loud for someone who just said it was four in the morning. What about her neighbors? So rude. "I'm going to back to bed,"
"Katttiieeeeeee," Tommy whines, but she just ignores him, stomping back to the staircase.
"Nope! Come back in five hours!"
"Five hours specifically?"
"Goodnight, Tommy!"
"No, wait, please-"
He slams his mouth shut. Grits his teeth in his haste. That sounded way too desperate. Yuck.
He just. Can't be alone right now.
Kate pauses at the end of the stairs, sways for a second or two, before her shoulders drop and she turns. The black, metallic stairs creak as she walks down them, and Tommy wonders if he could get some WD-40, place it on the joints to help sooth the aches. Make it quieter.
He flattens out the wrappers of the chocolates in his hand, folds it over and over and over again until its a tiny little square, anything to stop himself from looking up into Kates seering eyes. Piercing. Analyzing in a way only Hawkeyes do. It's eery and it sucks and he hates every fiber of it.
You know what he doesn't hate, though? This delicious fucking chocolate. Man, whoever works for hershey needs to get a raise. Not the head guy, cause fuck billionaires (sorry katie), but all of the workers? Mm. They deserve it. This is the good shit.
"You wanna watch some of The Office?" Her voice cuts through the static, also known as his thoughts, and he swallows. Once. Twice. Getting every last drop of that good, good candy.
He grins up at her. "Season 10?"
"Hell yeah, what other season?"
~~
He clicks the door shut behind him, kicking off his shoes (they're filled with holes, and the soles are rubbed raw, but they're his, and he'd never ask for new ones, couldn't burden them even more than he already is), as he listens to the bickering in the other room. The sounds he now correlates to the Kaplan's. To this house and their existence in it. To his... home, he guesses he could say. It feels too permanent, though, too worn like the holes poking out of each crevice of his shoe.
"Took you long enough!" A voice way too similar to his snarks out, louder than before and pointed directly at Tommy, who does the Most Mature thing, and turns himself around solely to stick out his tongue back.
Billy just snorts from his spot at the kitchen sink, head rolled back and shoulders raising to crack at his back before going to back to washing the (1) dish in the sink. He doesn't even know why he's washing it. It's not even that dirty. There's nothing else in there.
But if there's one thing Tommy's learned in his few months here, it's to not trying to understand the mind of one Billy Kaplan. It makes no sense.
Billy would probably say the same about him.
Tommy also learned that Teddy is an angel send from heaven itself, or whatever exists in whatever afterlife, who's currently leaned over Aaron's shoulder and showing him how to do something with his homework, the younger boys tongue stuck out in concentration as he hums and nods along with Teddy's explanation.
Issac is nowhere to be seen, but that's also fairly normal, the middle child slowly starting to seek his independence by staying in his room more and more as he's allowed.
Tommy doesn't blame him. Not in the least.
"What's for dinner?"
"Why don't you cook something and find out?"
"Mr and Mrs. Kaplan have gone out for the night," Teddy cuts in, with a half dimpled smile that turns into a full one, chuckle and all, as Aaron's face twists.
"Date night," the thirteen year old grimaces.
Tommy knows he should say something. Knows he should make some type of comment about parents needing ~alone time~ and wiggle his eyebrows in that way that always makes Aaron giggle, and Teddy snort, and Billy roll his eyes-
But all he can do is huff out an airy laugh that ends as soon as it began. "Well, if you order something, let me know, yeah?"
He rubs a hand through his hair, shaking out the dust and soot and yuck stuck in it. He's need a shower. Badly.
Teddy does this dorky salut, that Aaron quickly imitates. "Aie aie, captain,"
Tommy rushes up the creaking staircase, ignoring the eyes he knows are burning into his back.
~~
He rubs the suds onto his chest, watching the bubbles appear in the lather, and quickly running down, to his legs, to the tub, to the drain.
Pauses with a hand on his chest. Stares.
Lowers it until its placed gently onto his abdomen. Inhales sharply. Exhales shakily.
Turns around quickly and shoves his head under the burning water, hoping the water can wash away his thoughts, too.
Just like those bubbles.
~~
His eyes follow the devets and cracks on the ceiling. Wraps around the big bumps, following the faint shadows from the lights that he didn't turn off, can't turn off now, the peaks of light on the tips of each rivet. Swirls around until he finds a crack, follows the harsh darkness with his eyes.
His neck is aching, his legs twitch to move, his arms are thrown haphazardly onto the blankets. He can feel the faint fabric under his fingertips, soft and then harsh and then soft again, as he moves from the comferter to the sheets to the mattress. Back again. Back again.
He should get up.
He can't get up.
He feels like he's spinning, but knows he's lying still. He feels like his thoughts are swirling, and yet, he can't pinpoint a single one. Can't articulate what any of them mean. What they are. What they mean.
He could take a guess, if he really wanted to, if he really put the effort in. But that feels dangerous, like one wrong move and he'll. Just. Snap.
The way they always expected him to. The way he probably will, one day.
God, they don't deserve him. They don't deserve this.
He hears a door jut open, pushing past the way it always sticks to the wooden framing, closing it with a click behind them. Shuffling footsteps, not timid, but cautious, almost. Shift, thunk, shift, thunk, until it pauses by the bed.
He sees a shadow above him, beside him, in his peripheral vision, but he doesn't turn his head.
"Hey Ted,"
It's a guess, but a strong one, and when the body sits on the bed and the bed dips deeply, he knows he's right. "Hey, Tom," His words are soft. Fragile, gentle, blowing like a warm breeze, as if he's walking on eggshells. It's the way he used to speak to Billy, way back when. He wonders if it bugged him as much as it's bugging Tommy right now. "You didn't come down for dinner, after."
It's not said accusingly, so Tommy doesnt take it as such, just humming. Once, low, as if he recognized that dinner was downstairs. As if he knew that the time had passed, like sand through his fingers. "I'll eat some later," He responds after a moment, making sure to sound as honest as possible, even if he has no plans to move. Doesn't think he could even if he tried.
Teddy just echoes his hum, "You should, when you get the chance. It's hamburger helper, your favorite."
Usually, he'd rush down in a cloud of dust to get some. Usually, he'd already be eating a slice, sat around the kitchen table, scarfing it down as Teddy stumbles down the staircase after him with that lopsided grin of his, all amused and giddy that he got someone to take care of themselves, and be good and nice to themselves the way he always wants them to.
Usually, he'd be able to get up at all.
Usually, he wouldn't be pregnant.
His stomach twists sharply, and he swallows. Forces a smile onto his face that he can tell looks fake, but he doesn't have any more effort to put into it. Continues to follow the etches of the ceiling with his eyes. "Can't wait."
There's a moment or two of silence (or, of mostly silence, it's never fully silence in the Kaplan household, not when it's full of kids stepping around and chattering, not when it's full of electricity humming, not when it's beside a semi busy street with cars rushing by at any given time), where Tommy waits for Teddy to continue to speak, but it never comes.
Teddy just pats a hand down onto his thigh, squeezes it once in some weird type of macho, bro-like reassurance or something?, before he stands, his knees cracking as if he was fifty years old and wiltering internally.
He moves out of Tommy's vision, so Tommy doesnt focus on him anymore, fading back into the fuzz of the world and the light feeling of non-existence floating around his head.
Until he blinks, and the lights are off.
He blinks again, thinking it was just. Him, his thoughts, his memory going fuzzy, or his brain playing tricks, but no.
It's dark out. The moonlight is glittering through the pulled over shades of the window. The room is encased in darkness. And Teddy is snoring. Loudly.
Tommy thought he had understood where Teddy's name came from when he met him, from his Teddy bear esque personality and the rings covering his ears like a Keychain. But no, no, it was really from the way he snores so goddamn loud like a fucking bear in hibernation.
He forces himself right-side up, surprised that his body actually moved with his brain this time, only to almost fall over as the room spins. Damn metabolism. Damn lack of food intake. Damn everything.
"This probably isn't good for you, huh?" He murmurs, barely a whisper, barely spoken at all. He pretends, once the words are out of his mouth, that he was speaking to himself. He's done it before. This is no different.
This is completely different.
He pushes himself up so, so slowly, allowing himself to adjust this time, before stumbling to the door. He shuts it behind him quickly, and blinks into the darkness of the hallway. Scurries across quickly to the bathroom, flinching as he flickers on the seering overhead light, and rubbing his eyes as they water.
The white ceramic sink looks all too familiar.
He rushes through his business, and plans to rush out of there as soon as possible, but freezes as his eye catches the mirror.
His hair is all over the place, flutters of white the shade of snow, if the snow was old, shiny and dirty, not with mud, but with grease. His eyes are hallowed, dark circles covering his eyes as if he got punched in their face, and his irises don't even look green anymore. They look brown, the way they used to, once upon a time. Before the rush, the speed, the- brother from another mother, literally.
It's almost. Drained. He feels drained.
'Is that your fault?' He wonders, before his shoulders fall, he huffs, and rubs at his eyes, his face.
He's doing a terrible job at ignoring the obvious. He wonders when he should drop the act, but he doesn't know if he can. Doesn't know what will happen when he does.
He drops his hands. Looks at himself once more. At the face of a father. A parent.
He's having a kid. A baby.
He swallows heavily.
Well, shit.