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"Wilbur, can I ask something weird?" Tommy asks, one day, his bony legs sprawled in his lap like a spider's, the television quietly playing a documentary on city-based wildlife. Wilbur looks down, ready to crack a joke at him, but falters at his boyfriend's expression. He's serious - not uncharacteristically so, but it's unusual enough that a beat of anxiety picks up in his heart.
"Sure, Toms," he replies, schooling his tone into something as even as possible. "What's up?"
"Do you..." he trails off, and then starts again. "What does-" he sighs, sinking somehow further into the corner of the sofa, legs shifting against Wilbur's, hand nervously carding through his hair. "This is harder than coming out, I swear," he jokes, and his eyes flicker up to meet Wilbur's. Wilbur responds with a small smile, pulling Tommy's hand away from his hair and tangling it with his own.
"Never thought I'd see the day that Tommyinnit was lost for words," he makes a joke of his own, and relishes in the way a bit of tension melts out of Tommy's shoulders as he laughs along.
"Don't freak out," Tommy says, and that doesn't inspire confidence in Wilbur, exactly, but he nods. "I, um. I- hurt myself. Yesterday," and Wilbur freezes.
"That's not exactly a question, Toms," he says, faintly, and suddenly he's sixteen again.
He's always been a lonely kid. That has its obvious drawbacks, of course, but it has its benefits, too. When he turns sixteen and distantly, he recognises that his mind has been poisoned with the internet, and school, and just living in general, he has the advantage that he can take this knowledge and no-one around him cares enough to notice.
The way he discovers he has an addictive personality is like this:
-
It's his first time at a high school party, the kind the movies always warned him about. There are dark bottles of beer being passed around, and cups of who knows what sloshing with soporifics that make Wilbur's nose curl, and he takes a sip of his own.
This isn't the first time he's had alcohol. His parents have let him sip their wine before, just to taste it, and laughed as he scrunched up his nose at the bitter taste. Beer is different, though - it still tastes bad, but it's drinkable. And he knows what it does. The idea of losing control, for a bit, of maybe having an escape from the shittily-wrapped pass-the-parcel that is his mind, is an appealing one.
He doesn't get drunk, that night. He has two beers and goes home feeling like he's done an appropriately rebellious teenage thing, but the next time he sees his parents ordering a drink when they're out for dinner, he thinks about the heat in his throat and his stomach and feeling just a bit lighter than before, and swallows temptation.
-
Something feels so disgustingly stereotypical about it, but he knows, distantly, that there's something off about his relationship with social media. He gets a smartphone of his own on his sixteenth birthday, which in and of itself is a privilege, and gets a repetitive stress injury from hours at night spent scrolling through Reddit. He doesn't know how to escape the dopamine hit that comes with every comment notification, every piece of online validation he can muster, so he doesn't try.
There's nothing wrong with it, he tells himself weakly, because surely he can't be found at fault for craving information and interaction when it's right at his fingertips. He wakes up and goes to sleep with the words of strangers behind his eyelids. His assurance tastes like lies when his parents ask how he's going.
He's lucky they don't keep alcohol at home.
-
The penknife is cold, blade less than a centimetre long, and it's not sharp enough to pierce his skin. It stings as it drags along the surface of his forearm, the friction and its dull edge not enough to draw blood, but he examines the thin line that he's made with quiet satisfaction. When he stretches the skin there, he can see the blood threatening to spill, ready to bead up at the seam, so he takes his knife and presses down again.
He doesn't do it because he thinks he deserves pain, exactly. He might be depressed, but his self-deprecation stops at insecurity, not hatred.
The first cut was out of curiosity.
The second, and third, and every cut lined up neatly along his arm from then on, are out of desire.
He likes the pain, he finds, and doesn't care that it's fucked up. It quells the part of his heart that beats quicker when he thinks too hard. He's careful. It doesn't matter. The texture as he runs the pads of his fingers over the scabs feels good, raised skin in a pattern of bleeding stripes.
Replacement blades for his knife are easy to find. His hands barely shake every time he unscrews the blade and replaces it with a sharper one, ready to dig deeper, bleed a little more.
Tommy is an addiction too, of sorts, because Wilbur inhales the sunshine in his eyes and the adoration in every touch they share like a man starved of oxygen, and he can't admit to himself that he doesn't know what he'd do without him. Not anymore.
His throat is tight as he runs through the thousand things he should say. Instead of any of them, though, he just squeezes Tommy's hand a little too tight. "Why?"
Tommy looks away, but squeezes back, and warmth bleeds into the crevice in Wilbur's heart that's been there since he was sixteen and lonely. "Curious, I guess," he mumbles, and winces. "Sorry, I know that's fuckin'- it's stupid, is what it is, because this is such a serious thing, and it kills people, but-" and he looks up again, trying to read Wilbur's expression, and Wilbur doesn't know what Tommy sees because he doesn't know what kind of face he must be making, doesn't know how to form words, "They always say you should tell someone, about this stuff. So I'm telling you."
All at once, his presence of mind returns to him, because of course Tommy is the only person who has the ability to pull him out of his own head like this. "I understand," Wilbur says, a whisper that sounds as fragile as he feels. Tommy frowns, but stays silent. Wilbur rolls up the sleeve of his sweater, coaxes Tommy's fingers to rest on his left forearm. "What do you see?"
The tips of Tommy's fingers are warm as they brush over the length of his arm, his face pinched in scrutiny. "Nothing?"
Wilbur nods. "Maybe if you squint really closely, there might be the faintest outline of discoloration, but," he rolls his sleeve up again. "I wanted the scars. I liked how they made me feel, to look at them," he tries to smile, reassuring, at Tommy, whose expression has gone very carefully concerned. "It's been what- six, seven years? Long enough that I can't remember, clearly," he laughs. "The scars stopped being visible after three." Tommy nods slowly, glancing down at Wilbur's arm, despite the sleeve covering it now, and then back up to meet his eyes.
"Why?" Tommy's question echoes his own, which Wilbur appreciates. It's like an exchange.
"Well, Tommy, there's something called mitosis, which is when cells make more cells-" Wilbur starts, his tone still soft but a grin stretching, unbidden, across his face. He catches the pillow Tommy whacks him with in both hands.
"Not that , you idiot, stop making up words and - you know what I meant."
"I was curious," Wilbur shrugs. "Same as you, I guess. Except I just didn't stop. I didn't - it wasn't because I hated myself, or thought I deserved pain, or anything like that. I just liked how it felt," he explains, and even though it's been years, he's still not sure if that's strictly true. It feels true, to him, but - he's not a licensed psychologist. Maybe a shrink could untangle the knot in his head.
Lips pursed, Tommy frowns. "That's a bit fucked up, even for you, Wil," he says, but his tone is somehow joking yet concerned in a uniquely Tommy way.
Wilbur laughs. "I know, that's why I stopped. I'm a bit of a headcase, if you hadn't noticed, Mr. Innit," he teases. "It's - stopping is hard. It's the kind of thing that never leaves you, where years later you catch yourself missing that specific sensation. But it gets easier, too," he smiles. "And I'm - infinitely better as a person and just, mental health-wise now, so you don't need to worry about me."
"I would never," Tommy doesn't miss a beat, instantly chiming in. "Imagine worrying about another man. Couldn't be me," he waggles his eyebrows a bit, making Wilbur huff with laughter. Seeing Wilbur laugh seems to brighten him up further, but the tension in his brow is still unmistakeable. "I'm not gonna, y'know. do it again, or anything. 'S not really my thing, I don't think. I just - you know how sometimes you just know about something, and you want to try it, and then you get an opportunity when you're really stressed and trying to avoid something else? That," he looks vaguely embarrassed now, and Wilbur isn't having that.
"Hey, it's okay," Wilbur says, and he gives up facing Tommy in lieu of reaching an arm around him and resting his head on his boyfriend's shoulder. There's a monkey trying to steal fruit from a street market on the screen, which is the ideal scenario. "It's not - I trust you. And I'm grateful you told me. And you know that if you do want to do it again, you can tell me too," he says. "I swear, I'd do anything within my power to make you happy."
"I know that, dipshit," Tommy is smiling, Wilbur can hear it in his voice. "I love you too."
Wilbur realises, absently, and then with clarity, that he was wrong. The truth of his words, a faithful confession that he would do anything to make Tommy happy, hits him with its weight, because he knows that if Tommy asked, he would leave. If his absence meant that Tommy could keep smiling like that, then he would ignore the pain of being without him. He was wrong, when he said that Tommy was an addiction, because he knows he wouldn't hesitate to step away the moment his presence became a source of pain instead of solace.
It's the kind of love Wilbur never thought he'd have for himself, thought he was too selfish for, but it registers when Tommy laces their fingers together and points at the screen and praises the langurs for their dirty crimes.
"That one looks like you," Tommy giggles, as a hyena with a sour expression scrambles out of a rubbish tip.
"You're the gremlin here, not me," Wilbur pokes him, feigning offence. "Oh shit, raccoons. How do they all manage to look exactly like you?"
"They are my brethren," Tommy declares, chest puffed. Wilbur's expression must have slipped into the territory of horrible fondness, because Tommy quirks an eyebrow. "You good there, big man?"