Chapter Text
That had… sucked.
Fulham didn’t know how he’d expected it to go. Better than that, in an ideal world, but nothing was ever ideal. Nothing ever even seemed to be decent, for him.
But that had been terrible, for all of his pathetic standards.
Probably no one else had even noticed. No one really looked at him. Only he was left with the bitter aftertaste, wallowing in his own misery. He meant nothing. To anyone.
He sank back in his chair, hands fisting in his hair, searching for some grounding. He wasn’t this pathetic. He wasn’t crying like a girl, in his own shitty chair, because he was too pathetic.
Tears leaked out, as he squeezed his eyes closed, and he concentrated on breathing.
What was even the point in breathing? He didn’t even matter. He couldn’t win, nothing he did mattered, and he didn’t matter. No point even pretending.
If he pretended he mattered, that meant he was lying to everyone, and it would make it even worse when they realised he couldn’t do anything, and then they’d hate him, and that would feel worse than dying, in its own way.
He should just die.
Dimly, he realised he was saying much the same, soft, strangled words slipping past his crumpling defences as he ducked his head between his elbows. He should die, he should just stop, he should kill himself, right now. It was classic adages. They just kept coming, and he was crying, and the only way out of this was through, now.
He felt numb, and like someone had soaked the cardboard clogging his heart and it had frozen to dry ice.
He was crying, and he barely felt like anything. Not many tears were even coming. He was fading, to utter insignificance. No one cared, if he cried or not, alone in his room, mentally stabbing himself with a carving knife until everything wrong inside him was spilt across the floor.
God, he could just stab himself now. No one would notice. His blood would spill across his desk, and his keys would be sticky as it dried, and his body would go cold, face down in a pool of his own dripping warmth. And he’d lie here for days, weeks, because the world would forget about him so easily.
Fulham sniffed, and he felt dirty, and everything felt cold and empty and wrong. He barely existed. No one was thinking about him, even as he sat here, because he didn’t fucking matter.
If he worked harder, he wouldn’t have to feel like this. He could pull himself together, finally lock in like he’d used to be able to, before it had all gone to shit and he’d lost any semblance of deserving to be a human being.
He just couldn’t do that, anymore.
He was useless, and he could feel it. Incapable of even the smallest thing, keeping a title a younger, more capable, enviable him had earned, hating himself every dragging step of the way. He was sinking, the longer he floundered, alone and helpless and abandoned.
Somewhere, too close to his numb hands, something buzzed.
Fulham raised his head, just a few inches, everything feeling heavy and impossible. It was his phone. Not worth it.
He dropped it again, but the buzzing kept up. That didn’t sound right. That only happened if someone was calling him, and no one called him, they just texted, if they did back, but they were always quiet after he’d lost something, because no one wanted to acknowledge a loser.
Fulham just closed his eyes. They’d move on. He was easily ignorable, when he didn’t matter, which was always. He wanted to be left alone, forever, and bleed out of his own stinging eyes.
It didn’t fucking stop.
Hissing, Fulham reached out, pawing clumsily for his phone, and flipping it over just enough to hit the decline call button, before pausing.
It wasn’t a call.
It was Feinberg, blowing up his fucking phone, and Fulham stared, for a second.
Feinberg: I’m calling your family if you don’t reply
More staring. He could process it, just waiting, seeing if some appropriate option would present itself.
Feinberg: Discord? Please?
Feinberg: I want to talk
Feinberg: I know you’re upset
Feinberg: Hax told me how you get
Nothing appropriate. Maybe anger, at Hax, for clearly fucking up something enough that Feinberg was pitying him. He was always the idiot blundering in, no regard for social niceties of Fulham’s self-enforced exclusion from civilised society. Feinberg didn’t understand he didn’t deserve that stuff.
Fulham would have dropped his phone again, and suffered through the incessant buzzing, but it wouldn’t stop. His thought were off, his chest was aching and empty already, there was nothing stopping him swiping clumsily at his keyboard, until he repositioned himself well enough to still feel curled in on himself, and manage to pull up Discord on his monitor.
Maybe giving Fein what he wanted would shut him up.
Fulham entered the VC, not planning on saying anything, just sitting, sullenly. Fein’s messages kept up for a moment, before slowing to nothing, and his icon lit up as he spoke, hesitantly.
“Fulham?”
“Yeah. What?”
“Oh, thank god. I don’t know how else to get to you.”
That would be because he was a lonely, useless loser.
Fulham kept that one to himself, and any response he could have given, his muscles feeling weird and unwilling to move, even to talk to Fein. He should be feeling sorry for and despising himself, right now. He didn’t take kindly to interruptions.
”You alright?”
“Yeah?”
”…Sure?”
“Dude, why?”
”That is… not an answer.” Fein sounded unnervingly grim about it, and Fulham felt watched, in some equally unsettling way, making him tense and glare at his shut-off camera. ”You’re beating yourself up about that, aren’t you?”
“No-“
”Yes, you are.”
Fein was getting more insistent. Fulham stewed in it, for a while, displeasure twisting through his numbness.
“Maybe. Fine, yeah. I deserve it.”
That had been the wrong thing to say, if he wanted Fein off his back. Which he did. It might be a weight off his shoulders, to say it, to see what someone else would make of it, but Fulham resented every word Fein was coaxing out of him with barely any effort.
”There we go. No, you don’t. You didn’t deserve to lose, shit like that just happens.”
“To me. All the time. I- I really think I’m the problem, here.”
Fein made a stupid, laughable impression of an incorrect buzzer, and moved, somewhere on the other end of the VC. Was he in bed? Fulham would believe it, he should be too, really. He’d been sitting here for too long.
”Not you. The common denominator is that you’re trying. That’s all.”
“So I should stop trying.”
Fulham was trying to end this conversation. Definitely. That was why he’d sat back from his monitor, to invisibly symbolise how far away from here he wanted to be.
”Wow, you- you’re difficult.” Fein laughed, like it was something good, then sighed. ”Listen. I’m not great at this stuff, I know that. I can get Couri, or Hax, or… who do you normally hang out with?”
“No one.” It was the truth, sounding hollow in his throat. “I bother people.”
No one would want to willingly hang around with him. He pestered them into company, because he wanted to stay alive and sane, and he’d decided the cost of that could be any possibility of people liking him.
”I’m bothering you, right now.”
“You sure are.”
”Are we still friends?”
It was such a simple question, but it threw Fulham, for a minute. He felt infantilised. Stupid that he couldn’t see such an obvious lure, even dumber for not having a response ready.
“…of course, dude.” Fulham scoffed, supporting his chin with one hand, as the other toyed with his cuff. “I just… really want to be alone, right now.”
”You’re alone a lot. You can be alone for however long you like, if you don’t like this.”
Quiet.
Fulham was quiet, wondering. Wondering if Feinberg was watching him, or if he’d started hallucinating, some kind of psychosis meant to bring him to a childish sort of tears.
”Fulham? Don’t have- shit, I need to- you’d better not have disappeared-“
“I’m still here.”
That said a lot. Too much. Fulham was trying to be guarded, but it was Fein. If Fein was bothering to notice him, he had the horrible feeling he’d do anything. It felt like something, when his head was dark and numb and empty.
”And… staying?”
“What, you’re gonna stop me?”
”Nope. Please. I’m - going to run out of things to talk about, though. What were you thinking about, before now?”
“Fucking killing myself.”
Fulham could hear Fein’s intake of breath, and something bitter curled in his stomach. Everyone thought it, he shouldn’t be made to feel broken, just for wondering if he should break his skull open on the wall of the carpark down the road, and smash his brains against brick and graffiti.
”Fulham…”
“Not, like, seriously.” Sighing, Fulham conceded to Feinberg’s worry, backtracking reluctantly. “Just the normal amount.”
”The normal amount is fucking none, dude.”
“Bullshit.”
”No?”
Fulham’s scoffed, eyes lingering on the button that would ditch this whole tentative exercise. He was inclined to, when Fein was making him feel like some freak. But then Fein might call someone. A helpline, by the way this was going.
“Whatever.”
”Seriously, dude. Not normal. How- how often?”
“Dunno. When I lose. Often, man, who cares?”
”Me.”
He’d walked into that. It didn’t help, how Fein still sounded uncomfortably shellshocked, and Fulham felt weird.
“It’s not… serious.” Fulham was trying to be careful with his words, but it felt like a valve had burst, behind the back of his throat, and he was stumbling than he’d ever imagined he could. “How long it would- take to find my body. And stuff. I don’t…”
”Don’t…?” Fein seemed to finally have the sense about him not to say it aloud, and Fulham just made a sound of affirmation, earning a small, relieved sigh. ”Okay. That’s- good. Yeah. Keep not doing that, ok?”
“Okay.”
He had no reason to listen to Fein.
He didn’t know why he was still sitting here, listening to Fein.
”Still there?”
“I’m not leaving.”
”You sounded like you would.”
“…I’m not leaving now.” Fulham pressed a hand over his mouth, momentarily, letting himself squeeze his eyes shut and try to work out the knot of tension inside him. “I- I’m not leaving. Happy?”
”Happier. You don’t deserve to die, by the way.” Fein said it offhand, his easy voice hitting Fulham’s frozen numbness like smooth, heated stones. ”Everyone loses. We’re still here for you.”
“But-“
”No.” Still cheerful, Fein plowed right over him, and Fulham sunk a little, in his chair. ”Say it, Ful.”
It was a battle between his pride and his self-hatred. They were surprisingly interlinked, and it was painful, to feel warring inside him.
Fulham struck middle ground, and spat out a short question, trying to hide his not-quite-reluctance.
“Say what?”
”You don’t deserve to die.”
There went that. No more dodging the question. Fulham hated himself a little more, then, for chasing himself into this corner. He didn’t want to fuck around with Fein, and he didn’t want to humiliate himself by taking orders. Everything was a bad option.
He’d always hated himself for making stupid decisions.
One hand pressed against his face, the other fumbling for his mouse, ready to drop shit and leave call if Fein said a single word in mockery, Fulham heard his own voice, muffled, reluctant, but audible.
“I… you think I don’t deserve to… to die, I guess.”
”Properly, dude.”
“I don’t deserve to die. Happy?”
”Partially.” Fein was grinning, but he wasn’t needling, and that was more acceptable than Fulham would like. ”Its definitely a good start. Can you do something nice about yourself?”
“No. This is- weird, and I- I didn’t ask for this?”
There was no response. Fein’s profile stayed quiet, and after a long, vaguely irritated moment, Fulham felt horribly, uncomfortably lonely. Like he’d left this unfinished, and he couldn’t live with that.
“Uh- I have you guys as friends?”
It was lame, and a bit of a copout, to bounce it back to them, and Fulham hated how nervous he sounded. Hated it, more than anything, because Fein had done next to nothing to coax it out of him.
”Also a good start. I’m done, don’t worry. Are you talking to anyone?”
“You?”
He was getting moody, now, half-sunk into his chair, but eyes fixed on the open voice call on his monitor. He wasn’t leaving. Fein had proved that much, and he wasn’t happy about it.
”I mean, like, a therapist.”
“No? I’m not- there’s nothing wrong with me.”
Again, Fein’s silence was telling. Fulham wanted to press himself lower, to phase through the floor and existence and be forgotten, like he deserved.
”Its wrong to think about killing yourself when you lose a tourney.”
When Fein did speak, it was soft, and quiet, even if he’d clearly been careful to be picked up by his mic. It was almost gentle, in a way that made Fulham freeze, and blink dumbly, for a moment, no longer watching the call with narrowed eyes.
“…really?”
”Little bit. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.” Fein moved, on his end, still speaking gently, but it wasn’t the same. Not quite. ”Just means your head doesn’t like you as much as it should.”
“There’s nothing to like-“
”Yes, there is. I suck at this, but… just don’t? Just don’t think that, please? If I tell you I like you, and I’d never thought of anyone else disliking you-“ Fein paused, for half a moment, and they probably both realised that just wasn’t the sort of thing he thought about. ”-Then can you believe it? A little bit?”
“Doesn’t make it true.”
They didn’t know how much there was to hate. How useless he was, because he ran away when it got bad, because people shouldn’t have to see him collapse like that.
”Yes, it does. If I leave, right now, will you really believe that? That there’s nothing likeable about you?”
Fein wanted him to say no. Fein underestimated him, and it made Fulham smile, a fraction, his chest aching at the misplaced care.
“Yeah. I’m a loser, Fein, just-“
”No. Nope. No, Ful, be quiet, please. I’m staying, until you say you won’t.”
He couldn’t do that if he was being quiet. Fulham didn’t like how he was taking Fein’s commands as law, like that, but it was an inconsistency he could pick at until he drew blood.
”…How long have you felt this shit?”
“Forever, I guess.” Fulham pushed himself up, not enjoying this conversation any more than he had been. Now they were just both miserable. “I’ve- literally never been good enough, for anything, so…”
”Bullshit.” More soft Fein, which Fulham was getting used to at an unnerving rate. His voice got quieter, and gentler, and he took a little more time to say the same stuff. ”You’ve got us, dude. That means you made it, in something.”
“Lying?”
”Can’t lie your way through a seed.”
“I used to be good. Doesn’t mean I still am.”
”Kinda does. Means you’re better than most other people.”
“Still not good enough.”
”You… are impossible. Can I just- yeah, no, say it again. You don’t deserve to die, Fulham, just because you’re not the absolute best at a block game.”
“Infume is.”
A quiet laugh, and Fulham’s instincts buzzed, his eyes fixing back on Fein in suspicion.
”Infume has his own shit, don’t worry. And he wasn’t always. He’s still not, depending on how you look at it.”
“…Can I go now?”
”Sure. Say there’s plenty to like about you.”
It wasn’t a condition. It was just an order, a suggestion, and Fulham could feel himself craving the comfort following it would bring.
“There’s stuff to like about me. Happy, Feinberg?”
”Very. Call me again, ok? After the next tourney. Or anyone.”
“Sure.”
”Promise?”
Fulham pulled a face. Of course Fein could get away with saying some sappy shit like that. And he was about to say it back, because why the hell not, at this point.
“I promise. Can I leave?”
”Whenever you want. Thanks for picking up.”
“Yeah, well… thanks for… something, I suppose.”