Work Text:
“I’m disappointed in you, Tom”.
The words hang there, out in the clear air, heavy like weights. Tom looks up from his half empty glass, startled. He squints at Edd through a haze of inebriation.
“Wha?”
“The drinking Tom. Stop it. I need you to stop it or I have to kick you out. It’s not fair to the other people who live here. You get drunk, you get belligerent, you pick fights with Tord when you know he has issues he’s been working on. You insult Matt when you know he’s insecure. It’s damaging to the people around you. It has to stop.”
“You can’t tell me what to do just cause you’re the alpha,” Tom starts.
“This isn’t about status Tom. It’s never been about status,” Edd says, closing his eyes in exasperation. Frustration is an ugly look on him. He bends down to look Tom in his red rimmed eyes. Tom gets this full body flush when he drinks. It starts at his cheeks and travels downwards as he drinks. He looks positively smashed at the moment, and the flush is trailing its way down past his collar bone.
“It’s entirely about you, and your actions. Which you are solely responsible, regardless of whether you are drunk or not,” Edd says. His voice is even, calm. That’s how Tom knows it’s serious. When the laugh is gone from Edd’s voice, in its space is an emptiness that speaks a thousand words.
Tom gets up from the table agitated. He wants to poke a hole in Edd’s argument. Find some reason to validate his actions, to defend himself. But when he reaches out to find some sort of explaination…. All the answers are ugly half-truths that don’t justify his actions and merely reveal what a broken person he is. Tom feels his eyes prickle. God no not now. He doesn’t want to be the stupid cry baby omega stereotype. He tries to scrub his face with the back of his hand like he’s wiping away snot.
Edd’s face softens and he knows he’s been caught.
“Tom… do you want to talk about anything?”
“No.” And it’s an honest answer. The past is buried. He has dealt with it as much as he can. Done his best to fix the misshapen parts of him before putting them back away. But sometimes it comes back to haunt him anyways and so he drinks to bury old ghosts.
Edd approaches him cautiously, like some wounded animal. He takes Tom’s bottle of Smirnoff and puts it up high on the fridge where Tom can’t reach.
“I need that,” Tom says weakly.
“No you don’t. Addiction is a substitute for something you actually need,” Edd said softly, as he turned to come back to Tom. He gets a glass of water on the way and has Tom drink it. Then he is pulling him up out of the chair and Tom finds himself being half carried up the stairs.
“I’m not a baby.”
“You sure act like one.”
Edd opens the door to his room and sets Tom down on his bed. Here we go. A big lecture. More threats about getting kicked out. Maybe if he sheds some crocodile tears Edd will cut it short. Tom braces himself as Edd approaches. He sits down on the bed, the mattress dipping down slightly under his weight. Tom winces as Edd inhales and then exhales in a sigh, waiting for the lecture to start.
But it doesn’t. Instead warm arms clad in a faded green hoodie come up around him, tugging him into a soft hug and pulling him against Edd’s chest. Edd breaths out again, a long shaky breath.
“I don’t want to do this Tom. I don’t want to have to kick you out. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me? Please?”
Tom is about to respond when suddenly everything in his stomach decides to have a prison riot and attempt a jailbreak. In short he vomits on Edd’s hoodie and with that he breaks down.
“God I’m a mess,” he says, running his hands through his hair, hyperventilating.
Edd takes off his hoodie, careful not to get vomit anywhere. He leaves without a word and comes back a few minutes later, having deposited his hoodie in the laundry. He hands Tom a white rag they usually use for cleaning. He wipes his mouth with it.
Edd comes and sits by him again.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Do you feel better now?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“I just threw up on you.”
“I’m not angry.”
“I am.”
“At yourself?”
“Who else is there ever to be angry at? Excepting Tord,” Tom asked, putting his face in his hands.
Edd rubbed his back and pulled him into a hug. His chest was warm and Tom could hear the steady deep thud of Edd’s hard as his ear was pressed up against it.
“Resolve to do better, that’s all.”
“I don’t know if I can be better.”
“Well I do, so trust me. I’m almost never wrong. Think about all the stupid shit I’ve put blind faith in and had turn out okay¬¬¬¬¬.”
Tom gave him a wry smile. “Yeah you do fall into some pretty awful situations.”
“And yet here we are. Things have a way of working out if you let them.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Tom smiles a small, delicate smile, and Edd gives him a grin and pulls him into a crushing hug. He gives Tom a few pats on the back before releasing him.
The next morning his alcohol is gone from on top of the fridge. Tom thinks about getting a replacement. About grabbing a drink on the way home in the evening at dusk when all the old ghosts of his past seem to rise up from the ashes of a dying day. And then he thinks about Edd, and the way he smiles at him. The sound of his heart as it beats to its own rhythm. Tom makes it home emptyhanded in one sense, but quite fortunate in a million other ways.