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“Over the phone?” Tom stares at him. “Fuck. That’s… Shit, man. That’s gnarly. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” Mark says. He can barely hear his own voice as he moves past Tom, going through the motions to clear his bunk of dirty clothes and the pile of comics he and Tom were going through earlier. It feels like sleepwalking. “It sucks.”
“Did she say why?”
“I can guess,” Mark mutters. He tosses another wrinkled shirt to the side, more forceful than he meant to. It lands somewhere on the floor, but he doesn’t care to pick it up. He’s shaking, he realizes distantly, barely holding in that great, terrible something that’s burning in his chest. Through his teeth, Mark says, “Not good enough for her. For anyone.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Mark makes a soft, derisive sound. “Yeah, right.” He kicks his shoes off and sinks down on the edge of his bunk, running a hand down his face. “Just leave me the fuck alone, Tom.”
“Mark—”
“Just leave. I don’t care. Leave me alone.”
Tom doesn’t move. Of course not. He’s standing in the narrow corridor between bunks, staring down at Mark with wide, dark eyes, and he looks so young, young and lost and out of his depth.
Fuck. Mark can’t look at him. He can’t tell him to leave again. He doesn’t want him to. “I don’t know why I even bother,” he says, and his voice slips from the tight control he has over it, breaking on the words. He thinks he could cry if he let himself, but he’d never stop. He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, grimacing. It’s not you, she’d said, but that’s never true, is it? Not in those stupid sitcoms and not in real life. It’s him. It’s always him. Maybe he’s the poison. Maybe he’s the shipwreck dragging everyone around him down with him into all his darkest depths. His parents, his girlfriends, everything he touches. “There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there? Jesus. There fucking has to be.”
At that, Tom takes a step forward. “That’s not—No. Mark, Jesus fucking Christ, you know that’s not true. Is that what she said?”
“Didn’t have to say it. I get why she left. I’d leave too. No one can fucking stomach being around me, can they?” Mark rubs at his eyes again. “Fuck. That’s why everybody leaves.”
“Hey.” Tom catches him by the arm, sitting down beside him. “Look at me. That’s bullshit, dude. I’m—Look at me. Fuck her. She doesn’t know you, she doesn’t know what she fucking had.” His eyes are almost black in the dim light of the bus, searching for Mark’s with frightening intensity.
Mark can only hold his gaze for a second before he has to look away. “Sure,” he concedes, voice flat. He shifts away and lays down on the bunk.
Tom just continues to stare at him. “I’m not gonna leave and you’re a fucking idiot if you think that,” he says. “You’re not getting rid of me, alright? Ever. So fuck what she thinks.”
Mark is silent. He curls toward the wall of the bunk.
Tom hesitates. His hand settles carefully on Mark’s back in awkward comfort, then slides down to his hip, fingers pressing down with gentle weight. “Scoot.”
Mark frowns.
“Scoot, Mark, fuck. Move your fat ass.” Tom pushes him and squeezes into the bunk beside Mark, throwing an arm around his waist to keep himself anchored on the narrow mattress. Mark jabs his elbow back at him, retaliation for the insult, and meets the sharp bow of Tom's ribs. It earns him a muffled yelp. “Fucking ow, you fucking—” Tom’s arm around his waist grows tighter. “Ow,” he repeats, whining.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Jesus. You’re a fucking dick when you’re like this.” Tom tries to make himself more comfortable, shifting closer. It’s a tight space that’s barely made for one person, let alone two, but they’ve done this often enough to figure out how to make it work. His chest presses up against Mark’s back, their legs tangled together. A pause. Then, quietly, he asks, “Are you okay?”
It’s easier when he doesn’t have to look at Tom, but Mark still struggles to find words. “I dunno,” he mutters, voice muffled against the pillow. “It’s stupid. I thought I’d marry her someday.”
“Fuck her,” Tom says again, and then, because it’s the most Tom DeLonge thing to say, all disarming sincerity and thoughtless charm, “I’d marry you.”
Mark doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t think he has any laughter left in him at this point, not after today, not even for Tom. “At least buy me dinner first,” he says flatly.
“I bought you that fucking burrito yesterday. That mean nothing to you?”
Mark doesn’t answer.
Tom sighs. He presses a kiss to the nape of Mark’s neck, dry and chaste and achingly careful. “I’d marry you,” he says again, the words so soft in the silence of the bus, pressed into Mark's skin like a secret, and all at once they don’t sound like a joke anymore.
Mark feels them tug at something in his stomach, something like fear and tenderness, but he’s too tired to do anything but find Tom’s hand where it’s splayed over his chest and thread their fingers together. He squeezes it and Tom squeezes back. There’s too many things he could say, too many ways in which he could somehow break this fragile thing between them the way he breaks everything else. “Stay?” he whispers, and he almost hopes Tom doesn’t hear him.
Tom wordlessly pulls him closer and sets his chin on Mark’s shoulder. He still smells like whatever cheap weed he smoked with one of the older bands last night after the show and his clothes have been worn one too many times, but his skin is warm where it touches Mark’s, and the slow, steady rhythm of his breaths soothes the sharpest edges of the grief and doubt biting away in Mark’s chest.
Just stay, Mark thinks. Nobody else does.