Chapter Text
Tommy was up late editing a video with no real interest. He just sat there, palm against his cheek, as the other hand absently paired clips together and cut away excess content that didn’t need to be there. It was a boring night with a handful of tics. The occasional jerking of his neck or slamming his fist on the table would disrupt the work for a moment, but otherwise it was fine. Mostly, he was just having a winking tic that would blind half his vision every few seconds, which was quite annoying. And like that, oh, he noticed his tics.
That wasn’t good. Now that he was hyper aware of the odd little movements, it would lead to them being triggered even more.
“ Wow! Fuck, goddamnit,” Tommy hissed out as he slammed his fist into the keyboard. He squeezed his eyes shut, afraid to look at the damage. The keyboard was fine, but it probably wasn’t good to hit it. Speaking of, his tics begged to hit it again. Tommy tried to divert the tic by hitting his fist into something else, but it simply worsened the dull pressure inside his brain.
He pushed his chair back from his desk, afraid of wasting any money on broken keyboards or computers.
He realized he failed when the hitting only diverted into hitting himself , his fist balled up and punched into his chest repeatedly, hurting the longer it went on. He cussed under his breath, head jerking and a whistle following after.
What a fucking nightmare, he thought to himself.
“ Wow! Fuck! Fuck you! ”
Tommy wanted to cry with how annoying the tourette’s were being to him. The winking one was making it so that he was nearly never having his full two eye vision, the punching tic was pounding so hard into his chest that he swore it was bruised now, his neck ached from it jerking, and everything was too much.
He wanted to say he was used to being in pain, but it was still just awful experiencing the tic attacks, especially when they were more on this violent side of self harm.
The nagging urge to call Wilbur pressed inside his aching skull, begging for the comforting words of one of his closest friend to drown away the pain.
Worried, he reached out for his phone, just able to catch his hand before it slammed into the screen. Tommy picked it up and quickly dialed Wilbur’s number, then put on speaker, then tossed it back away from smacking fists.
The voice of his friend cut through his thoughts moments later, “Hello?”
“Wilb-” Another whistle, “Wil-” And another.
Tommy gave up trying. Just let the hitting and swearing go on and on, and let Wilbur figure it out.
“Tic attack?” Wilbur hummed sadly.
“ Fuck you! - Y-yeah.”
Tommy’s head hurt, and so did his chest, his neck, his throat, his everything .
“It’s okay Toms, maybe putting on a song will help? Want to listen to some music?”
Tommy swore by accident as a response.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Wilbur chuckled softly, “Let me put something on for us.”
He shared his screen and clicked onto YouTube, before searching up some random playlist, featuring goofy cats on the thumbnail. It was something silly, full of lighthearted fun songs mostly from video game soundtracks. Nothing serious.
Tommy closed his eyes and listened to the soft tunes, the occasional little beeps and meows from the specific song made him feel young and safe. It was silly; it was comforting.
The two sat in call for a while, just listening to the playlist shuffle through happy songs, and before long, Tommy realized his tics were incredibly calmed down. He felt relief and thankfulness flood through his veins, having gotten out of the cycle of self harm and stress. Checking the time, it had been about 20 minutes, which was short for Tommy’s tic attacks. It didn’t make him any less grateful, and Tommy thanked Wilbur profusely for the suggestion of music.