Chapter 2
The train rattles as it screams back into gear, every new entry shuffling to gain their footing as the speed picks up, whether by grabbing the handles or pole, or by finding the few empty seats that remain.
Tommy snickers as a younger girl almost topples over, and goes to nudge Billy to get him in on the joke (kids falling over is funny, okay?), but he turns to find the man slumped over in his seat, face smushed up the window, sound asleep.
Tommy stifles a sigh. Go figure.
He considers nudging him anyways, because he really shouldn't be asleep on a public train, not that anyone in New York gives a shit, but you know. Safety or whatever. But Billy looked exhausted when he stumbled out of his room this morning, and barely ate anything, and almost didn't get ready in time in order to catch the train-
So Tommy takes pity on him. Because he's a good brother like that.
He turns back, only to stiffen as he spots the little girl looking directly at him. She's clearly upset, and must've hurt herself when she stumbled, because she's got tears in her big blue eyes and her nose is crinkled up, sniffling up boogers as she hiccups.
Tommy's nose curls, and he glances away. Gross.
He feels a strong twinge of guilt at the thought.
The kid and their parent gets off at the next spot, and Tommy can't help but to deflate once their gone.
Tommy counts the stops as they ring by, one, another, another, until finally-
He grabs Billy's shoulder and gently shakes him (it was gentle, he promises!), but Billy still jumps up as if he was shocked by a livewire, alert and ready. "C'me on, B," Tommy nods his head towards the doors as the train starts to slow, and their destination flashes on the sign above their heads.
Billy blinks, once, twice, before his jaw tightens and he stands, stretching out his back like a cat, Tommy grabbing his backpack and swinging it over his shoulder alongside his own.
They leave the station side by side, Billy only slightly lagging as his feet drag. "What class do we have?"
Tommy braces himself, "...Communications," A loud groan sounds from behind him, and Tommy grimaces into a snicker. "God, you're so dramatic. It's not that bad."
"Its the worse. The absolutely worse," He bemoans, "It's just emails and essays and presentations. Those are literally three of the worst things in existence."
"Even over physics?"
"At least physics isn't completely boring. Most of the time."
Tommy scoffs. "To you. To me, it's the most boring piece of shit ever."
"You aren't even in physics this semester."
"No, but I was in high school. Why do you think I'm not in it now?"
Billy laughs, a faint chuckle shoved into the collar of his coat, but it's a laugh, and Tommy revels in it. "Touché," Billy accepts, as they finally reach the glass doors of the building.
There is literally frost on the windows, and Billy seems to shiver just at the sight of it. Tommy just pushes through it, opening and holding the door open for Billy so he can rush inside into the warmth sooner.
He hasn't really felt cold since this whole "mutant powers making his molecules move really fast" thing. He's almost always hot, honestly (in more ways than one), so having the air have a bite to it is quite nice.
Billy doesn't seem to agree. "Brrrrrrrr!" He shivers violently, tuscling up his hair and curling further into himself. "It is cold!"
"Well, at least you aren't tired anymore?" Tommy tries, only to get a sharp glare in response.
Tommy gets about halfway through the lecture when he realizes, as he usually does, that maybe, just maybe Billy had a point.
This is boring (definitely), and useless (ish), and leaves his thoughts to wander without restraint (bad, bad, bad).
He tries to focus in on what the professor is talking about, on her speech pattern and the syllables of her words, but it all just turns into fuzz as he glances around the class. There's a few people looking similar to him, bored out of their minds, and a few similar to Billy, drained and exhausted (some are even asleep on their desks, lightly snoring away). But mainly, it seems that people are actually paying attention, focused and writing down notes, and it makes Tommy wonder if he's actually missing anything important-
He pauses. There's a woman, a few seats down from him, with her computer open, and she-
She isn't writing notes, shes glancing at pictures of children- her children, assumedly, and she's smiling, but she looks stressed, and the kids are so so young, one of them is a toddler, but one of them is a baby-
He remembers a few weeks, or months?, earlier when she had come to class with a carrier basket, only remembers because near the beginning of class, her baby wouldn't stop crying and he had wanted them to shut up- can remember, now, the pain and panic in her eyes, the worry as she had to pack up and leave class early, just so she wouldn't disrupt anymore than she had to, and-
The reality of- of everything smacks into him like somebody through a brick through his window of ignorant bliss.
In a few months, he'll be in her place. In a few months, he'll be doing the exact same thing she did, coming to class with a carrier in his hands alongside his books, holding a baby, his own baby, and-
And he'll be learning, with a baby in his lap. He'll be struggling to get through his education with a child to take care of when he can barely even take care of himself.
He's eighteen years old, in his first year of university. He doesn't have a job, has no idea what the hell he's going to do with his life, and now, now, now of all times, now he's going to have to worry about another one, another life, another person.
Now, he's going to have a baby.
Now, he's pregnant, with a child of his own.
He's pregnant and he's in class and he's sitting next to his brother who has no idea- he can't tell him, he can't tell anyone, can't be more of a mistake than he already is-
No, no, no, he didn't- he didn't want his kid, his future children (because it was in the future, it was always down the line, far, far in the distance, but its the present, now, it's here and now, now, now-) to be like him, but now, now this baby is going to grow up knowing that they weren't meant to happen, knowing they weren't supposed to exist-
And it's all his fault. This is all his fault, and he doesn't know what to do, can't think, can't-
He can't breathe.
There's a hand on his shoulder (he recognizes in some strange way that he flinched, harshly, but the hand doesn't leave-), and there's words being spoken but they're muddled, like they're underwater or he's the one below the water, trying to stay ashore but drowning, drowning, drowning, he can't breathe-
And then.
Then, he's in the woods.
The trees are high overhead, leaves are falling all around him, in bright reds and oranges and yellows, the ones scattered by his feet much more brown in their dying state, glowing in the bright pink rising sun. Tommy leans against one of them, the bark biting into the back of his arms where his t-shirt doesn't reach, but he cant even feel it, can't even feel the bitter breeze nipping at his skin over the rush of adrenaline in this veins, the rush of anxiety coursing underneath his skin, making it bubble and itch and-
He rushes away, again, and collapses against the wooden structure, hearing faintly the poor rope stairs smacking against the tree trunk, grabbing at his neck as he wheezes and trembles, the wood lining darkening in spots as tears drip from his face.
He can't breathe, he can't do this, he-
He can't have a kid! He barely passes his courses, he just moved in with the Kaplans, he can't get kicked out yet, he can't afford to get kicked out, he'd have nowhere to go, he has nowhere to go, he was just- they were just-
He grips at his hair, places his forehead against the old wood, and tugs harshly, letting the pain ground him for a moment. He gasps in the cold smell of dust and dirt and pine, curls further into himself because god-
He's alone. He's alone and he's not alone and he can't-
He can't do this.
He can't do this.
The sounds of his cries echo in the wind, and the whistle of the wind soothes them away.
~~
He takes a long, deep breath, ignoring the way his chest rattles as the colder air tickles his lungs, ignoring the way his nose is clogged and running and-
Ugh.
He rubs his nose with the back of his hand, before curling it back around his legs, pulling them closer as he exhales slowly, shakily. Closes his eyes and leans his head back against the grimy walls of the abandoned treehouse, feeling so tired yet awake, present yet absent, aware and unfocused.
He doesn't know how long it's been. He knows he should go back, he probably scared the shit out of Billy and pissed a few people off by using his powers inside of the school and- but-
He just.
He blinks his eyes open blarily. The sun is beaming through the cracks in the structure. His breath comes out in puffs of smoke. He shivers, blinking around, gazing over the tiny torn up play table in the corner, the edges of papers once put up onto the walls, now torn and decaying on their pins, and finds the little window cut out in a cute little hole, too low for an adult but too high for a baby. Child sized. Child heighted?
The sky is blue through the spots between the leaves. It's midday, in this forest in the middle of Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, which means-
It's nearing sundown in New York.
Well, shit.
His stomach chooses then to rumble, too, reminding him that he hadn't eaten supper the night before, and only had an apple for breakfast this morning, and-
God he's a terrible mother.
Mother? His face scunches, head tilting. Is he a mother, just because he's pregnant? Even if he's a man?
When he had started having trouble going into puberty (and by having trouble, he means... just not going into it), his parents had brought him in for testing, where they discovered his... for lack of a better term, abnormality. (Though Tommy dislikes that word, because how can it be abnormal if he was born with it? When it was literally a natural occurance?)
He had a penis, had been raised as a man his entire life because of it, (and, once discovering the world of lgbt online spaces and discovering what gender was, continues to identity that way; feels comfortable identifying that way), but he didn't have any testes.
No, instead, he had a uterus, and fallopian tubes, and had estrogen running through his veins or something or other, and had a fucking vagina for fucks sake- and now.
Now, that's come back to bite him in the ass (no pun intended).
He thought he was being safe too, that was the thing. He was usually cautious when it came to the people he let close, that he let in intimately, made sure they always wore a condom and used the right hole instead of the wrong one, and he could've sworn that they had worn a condom but-
Tommy had been out of it. Having a bad day and had just wanted someone to help quiet the thoughts. Had called up one of the old numbers in his phone of one of his old "friends" from his old school and-
He hadn't paid enough attention. Must not have, too lost in... everything.
He had played it risky one time. One time.
He really was the unluckiest person in the world, wasn't he?
He huffs out a loud, drawn out sigh as he pushes himself to stand. "That wasn't about you, promise," He says to nobody and everybody, blinking multiple times to get the spots out of his eyes before he shakes his head violently.
Okay. Okay. He can do this. He's done it plenty of times before. Just- gotta- think, and then-
He crashes into the kitchen island, slamming his shoulder harshly into the nice dark mahogany wood, and slowly falls onto his ass with his back against the wall, feet planted onto the tile.
"Jesus Christ!" Issac cries out from his spot on the couch, jumping about three feet into the air, and wincing when his parents snap out a quick, almost in time, "Hey!" And, "Language, mister!"
Before it finally seems to click in what just happened (mainly, because Tommy groans, loudly, from his place on the floor), and Mr. Kaplan rushes over from the other couch to stare down at him with wide eyes. "Tommy?!?"
He slips all the way down onto the floor, and throws an upside down, lopsided, painful grin towards the man. "Heya. Sorry about-" He throws a hand out, and then waves to himself, and then all around him.
And then, there's pounding footsteps down the staircase, and Tommy braces himself, can almost feel his presence before he even shows up in his peripheral vision- "Tommy! What the he- where did you go, are you okay?!?"
Tommy opens his mouth to respond, but it turns into a wince as his stomach growls again, this time with added fangs nawing onto his lungs. "Food?" He tries instead, grinning sheepishly.
Billy just stares at the ceiling with empty eyes, as if wondering how the hell he got into this situation in the first place.
~~
Tommy places the plate down onto the tablet with a ka-klink!, before he flops into the chair and starts stuffing his face with leftover hamburger helper from last night.
It's cold, because he was too impatient to shove it into the microwave, and slightly soggy, and overall kind of underwhelming, but it's food and it's good enough that Tommy can't stop shoving forks full into his mouth.
The chair across from him skirts on the tile, and Billy sits, but Tommy doesn't glance up. Mr. Kaplan is looking outside of the doorway, trying to look as if he's conspicously cleaning the picture frames on the walls that haven't been cleaned a single time since he got here, but Mrs. Kaplan has, thankfully, seemed to got the hint that this was a personal thing (or, at the very least, a thing between him and Billy), and has given them space. The other two boys are nowhere to be seen, probably kept away by Mrs. Kaplan as well, the saint that she is.
There's a burning on his forehead. Tommy keeps his eyes on his plate, progressively getting more and more empty.
The room fills with the sounds of clinking cutlery and scraping and faint shuffling as Tommy moves in his seat, the thump thump thump thump thump of Billy's leg bouncing. It gets grating, so much so that Tommy almost begs Billy to just ask him already, but then, Billy just puffs out a slow breath.
"Are you alright?" Is finally what he asks, what he seems to settle on after the minutes that felt like hours of time of him eating and Billy staring.
Tommy doesn't know what to say to that (he doesn't think that "Oh yeah totally I just had a breakdown cause I'm the stereotypical fuck up of a kid who got pregnant as a teenager-adult-ish thing" would go over very well, especially when Billy doesnt even know about what he is), so he just. Shrugs.
Which is probably more of an answer than he should've given, because it makes a weird, worried noise escape Billy's throat, and makes Tommy want to run that much more. "Is there any more of this?" He interrupts forcefully, with a wide, cut grin as he pushes himself up and rushes towards the fridge. "It was delicious and I'm starved."
"Tommy..." Billy starts, but Tommy flings open the door, and starts rummaging through the stacks of fruits and vegetables and packed lunches for both Issac and Aaron and- whatever Billy was going to say, he seems to have decided to let Tommy win, just this once. "There should be some near the bottom, right in front."
Tommy finds it, pulls himself back, and gleams.
Billy smiles back, and Tommy tries to ignore how its pinched at the edges.
He's fine. He is.
Totally, completely, 100% fine.
He'll figure this out himself.