Chapter Text
It was two in the morning and Billy had left him on read for the eighth time.
Tommy rolled over, careful to avoid the danger zone on the left side of the ancient futon, where the stuffing was so flat it had created a chasm you could fall into and never return, and the creaking corner of the right. He threw his blankets over his cracked and smudged phone screen before daring to turn it on. He’d forgotten his charger in Kate’s car and his battery was dangerously low. He’d been obsessively turning it off and on since ten p.m., waiting for his fucking brother to text back.
The light safely hidden under the blankets, Tommy stayed huddled around the phone for as long as he dared, staring at the screen until his eyes watered.
Come on , he mouthed, as if he could send his intentions through the glass and wires and pixels of light, come on .
The battery dropped to seven percent. A little warning banner popped up, urging him to find a power source immediately. Stupid little thing. Tommy turned it off, unsure if he’d be able to do this again tomorrow. His stomach growled, and he pressed his hand to it, pee k ing over the covers and into the murky darkness of the hall beyond. His parents didn’t stir.
Inching across the battered futon, Tommy oh-so-carefully slipped the dying phone back into his backpack and zipped it closed, pulling a few teeth at a time until they were lined up perfect and tight. When he was done, he rolled back to the center of the futon, wincing when his elbow accidentally stressed the noisy right side of the frame. Down the hall, his father grumbled incoherently. H is parents’ bed creak ed .
He pulled the covers up to his chin. Armed with years of practice, he stilled his breath in seconds, mimicking the natural depth of sleep and letting his eyes flutter closed. His pulse throbbed in his throat.
The creak turned into a series of familiar noises—feet hitting the floor, a heavy tread down the hall, his father not bothering to be quiet as he dragged his lethargic body through the living room and into the bathroom. The light bled through Tommy’s closed eyelids as his father pissed with the door open. The whole trailer felt the toilet flush, improperly installed pipes rumbling dangerously under the floorboards. It felt like an eternity before the light switched off again and Dad lurched back to bed, leaving behind the winning aroma of stale beer and body odor.
The pain crept in like a cat investigating the mounds and valleys of his blankets, sniffing at his toes and inching up through his ankles, mild enough that he would have assumed it was nothing if he didn’t already know what it meant. By the time it was spiking through his calves, muscles tightening in stressful spasms, Tommy was wedging a corner of his pillow in his mouth to prepare for what was to come. He’d cried out the first time, and nearly bitten through his tongue the next. Now, almost a month later, he knew how to ride through the fits without waking his parents, even if it felt like someone was driving slivers of glass into the soles of his feet.
He tried not to writhe. No amount of movement would soothe the sensation. He was lucky, he supposed, that Dad hadn’t chosen to go to the bathroom later, or that the fit hadn’t come on earlier. He didn’t feel lucky, but he was sure he’d appreciate it once this was over. For now, he had to focus on getting through.
The pain reached his hips, which was where it always stopped. Feet burning, calves screaming, thighs clenched around a mound of sheets, cold sweat cresting the small of his back, Tommy bit down hard on the pillow as twin needles lanced the points where his legs met his hipbones. The agony was so deep inside him, he didn’t think anything could chase it out. The fabric squashed in his mouth was wet, disgusting, clinging to his chalky tongue. His fingers were cramping from being squeezed in fists for so long.
He shuddered, and the traitorous futon squeaked.
Even moored in dire straits, Tommy panicked, because this could absolutely get worse. He was almost grateful when the numbness set in, gracefully sliding down the same path the spasms had carved. Pain turned to cold, to ice, his teeth trying to chatter around the damp pillow. Goosebumps blistered through his sweat. He couldn’t feel his toes. The numbness, as always, climbed all the way up to his hips and stopped, leaving him with the unsettling feeling that he’d been severed at the waist. Moving was impossible.
He closed his watering eyes, and the tears that edged their way out despite his best efforts felt like they were boiling. His entire torso was a raw nerve, feeling everything to make up for half of him that could no longer feel anything.
When sensation finally returned, it was through pins and needles down his thighs and calves. He wiggled his toes against the uncomfortable feeling, relieved to be regaining it but somehow more annoyed by this part of the seizure than any other. Billy would call it adding insult to injury.
He fought the urge to check his phone again, not trusting his trembling fingers to silence, and huddled in his sweat-crusted sheets, wishing for water. The fits were lasting longer and longer, now, and even if he didn’t know it was almost time, he could sense his body fighting the urge to shut down. Something had to be done.
Thoughts spiraling, he stared at the shadowed room until it changed shape under his dry eyes, darkness warping into indistinct creatures and feverish roots. He eventually slept, but not well. His thoughts kept drifting back to his messages, and the tiny icons next to them that suggested his brother had looked straight at them and simply didn’t care.
Ivy Town was surrounded by forest. There was one road in and no road out, or so Kate Bishop liked to joke. Truthfully, the road went both ways, but nobody who lived in Ivy Town seemed to realize that except Tommy . As soon as he turned eighteen, he was taking his truck down the yellow brick road and he wasn’t stopping until he reached Oz. He had six thousand dollars in his glovebox and a ticket to Washington and no reason to stay.
The last thing before abject trees was the previously empty lot where David Alleyne had set up shop. Like everyone else, David had rolled into Ivy Town one day and forgotten to leave. He lived in a squashed little house next to the garage, but Tommy was pretty sure he slept with the cars. It didn’t matter when Tommy stopped by—David was always tinkering . He had a college degree in something fancy framed on the wall above his two-burner stove, but he seemed to prefer working with his hands.
Tommy parked the truck next to the garage and jumped out, pleased to see the double-door of the garage was rolled up and all lights on inside. The sun was just beginning to rise. A steaming pot of oatmeal was hanging out on the hot plate David kept at his work station, kept company by a pot of coffee and two waiting mugs. Tommy’s stomach growled.
David’s legs were sticking out from under a 2001 Fiat , and Tommy kicked his sneaker by way of greeting before honing in on breakfast. He was too hungry to be proud.
The radio next to David’s thigh bounced between ads for local businesses and the morning show, as hosted by Kate and Noh-Varr, recent high school graduates with no particular aim in life but a storied talent in finding gossip. They were happy. Tommy was happy they were happy. He spooned oatmeal straight from the pot, burning his tongue in his haste. David had sweetened it with brown sugar and honey, probably to balance out the deathly bitter coffee he favored.
Tommy wasn’t a fan, but the smell of coffee and motor oil was uniquely David, and he loved it for that.
Eventually, David pushed out from under the car, first revealing a t-shirt riddled with holes and stains, then his bespectacled, disapproving face. Without saying anything, he climbed to his feet and took the spoon from Tommy, thrusting it back in the pot and grabbing Tommy’s chin.
“Ermph—“ Tommy grunted as David examined the fresh bruises on his cheek and opposite temple. His expression was dangerously blank.
David dropped his hand, moving to the side and spooning the oatmeal into two bowls. Tommy fidgeted next to him, feeling obligated to explain or apologize.
“I—“
“ Just eat .” David thrust the bowl into his chest . He raised the hem of his shirt to wipe his face, pushing his glasses onto his forehead before letting them drop back down. The tired lines under his eyes made Tommy feel guilty.
He buried his face in his breakfast. Sometimes the gap between seventeen and nineteen felt impossible.
“ Car’s a POS,” he finally ventured, nodding at the unpleasantly brown vehicle.
David leaned against the work table next to Tommy, elbow knocking Tommy’s side every time he took a sip of coffee. His fade was starting to look fuzzy, neglected during the fall rush. Tommy wanted to scrape his fingers through it. This being a uniquely bad idea, he kept his hands to himself.
“ Runs like shit, too.” David rested the mug on his hip, shaking his head at the car as if he could shame it into a better state. “ The e ngine’s okay, but fuck if it doesn’t scream thirty-year-old virgin when it putt-putts down the block. Gas mileage’s a joke. Had to explain to the owner twice that I have to special-order his damn tires from out of state, and that’s why it’s costing him through the nose to replace them.”
He scratched his nose with his free hand and shot Tommy a self-conscious look. “Sorry. You didn’t need to hear all that. People just keep riding my ass this week and I’m tired.”
“It’s a nice ass,” Tommy retorted, before he could help himself. “Can’t say I blame them.”
David studied the calendar on the opposite wall. Tommy went back to eating his oatmeal.
The notion of belonging was a bitch . He was stranger trapped between the walls of the trailer he’d grown up, but he knew the heft of David’s favorite wrench like he’d been born to it. He heard the wheeze of air vents in his sleep, craved the stench of gas and partly-burned coffee while he was stuck in the sterile halls of the high school, had long since memorized the precise curve of David’s wrist into the base of his thumb, the way the speckled skin begged to be touched.
And Tommy also knew there were rules to the world, and being lost didn’t make him exempt. David might have come in a tall, dark, mysterious stranger, but he was Ivy Town now, and Ivy Town didn’t believe in miracles. Tommy did not belong in this garage, even if it felt like home .
“ Are you coming in after school?” David asked. “Could really use the hands.”
“I’m kinda busy.”
David gave him a knowing look. “Fifteen bucks an hour.”
“I’m not certified,” Tommy hedged, like anyone gave a shit about that.
David tapped the rim of his mug against Tommy’s bowl. “I’ll make spaghetti for supper.”
Tommy recognized the offer for what it was, thinly veiled as David made it, but it was still tempting . Dinner, almost fifty bucks, and the glorious opportunity to avoid the trailer for another couple hours? Only an idiot would refuse.
“ I got homework,” Tommy said. “ Pre-calc. Busy stuff.”
David fixed himself a bowl of oatmeal. He didn’t push and he didn’t pry. It was one of the many, many reasons Tommy had started hanging out here last year, right up there with the artful rips of David’s shirt and the food that made his raised-on-Rice-A-Roni ass want to cry. David didn’t push, but sometimes Tommy wanted him to. Sometimes he didn’t. And most times he just wanted to make up his stupid mind one way or the other about it.
“ You should finish up if you want to get to school on time,” David said, coming to lean next to him again.
Tommy made a point of eating slower.
It was time to contemplate miracles.
Miracles were for television and rich people, kids on death’s door and churches that thought every brutal winter was a judgment from God. There was no reasonable world in which Tommy Shepherd deserved a miracle, but he was hoping for one anyway. Because that was how they worked, right? They were tiny pieces of universal mercy, and like lottery tickets, everyone was eligible. All you had to pay was your hope.
Hope was a nasty side effect of miracle culture. Tommy couldn’t kill it no matter how much he drank, couldn’t outrun it no matter how early he got up, couldn’t talk himself out of it any more than he could talk himself out of frequenting David Alleyne’s garage. He hoped and hoped and hoped and the days ticked on. Not long now. He was getting out of here. He wasn’t going to be Ivy Town any more.
And maybe, once he wasn’t Ivy Town—once he was somewhere else, with different people and different rules—his hope wouldn’t be rolled up in a glovebox with a wad of bills and a college sweater David didn’t know he’d stolen. Maybe it wouldn’t be stupid or shameful.
Maybe he’d get to live.