Chapter Text
Tanner is staring at the ceiling, thinking of nothing at a hundred miles an hour. Counting the squares on the wallpaper. One, two, three, four…
He’s sitting in his kitchen. He’s a thousand miles away. He’s floating out of his body. He can feel the cold tile beneath his feet. He can’t feel anything at all.
“How are you holding up, dear?”
His mother’s voice, tinny over the phone speaker, brings him back down to earth. She always seems to have that effect.
He sighs sadly. Tries to say something. Sighs again.
“Is it that bad?”
Yes, he wants to say, it is. I am turned away by everything good in the world. The moon shines for every living creature but me; the stars wink out when I dare gaze upon them; the warmth of the sun does not reach my skin. I am alone. I am a monster.
He settles for, “Mom, I messed up. And now Eric isn’t talking to me.”
“Oh, honey. Did you apologize?”
“Yeah.” He cringes as the memory of his tearful apology on-stream resurfaces. “It didn’t go well.”
“Well, you can’t make peoples’ decisions for you. You and Eric are good friends, right? He’ll come around.”
“Mom, you don’t even know what I did.”
“It’s true. I don’t. But I don’t think you would hurt anyone on purpose.”
“No… it wasn’t on purpose. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t hurt.”
“Give him space. He needs time to think. You can tell him how you feel once he’s had some time to cool off.”
What if that never happens? Tanner thinks to himself. What if this is who I am to him forever? What if I never change?
“Are you doing alright? You need to take care of yourself too, you know.”
He doesn’t know what that would even mean right now. There is nothing worth taking care of in the person that is him. It’s rotten to the core. It destroys everything it touches.
“I don’t know if I’m alright.”
“That’s okay. Sometimes we don’t know how to feel about these things right away. Don’t forget to get good sleep and eat enough. And go outside every now and again. I know you don’t like to hear that but it’s good for you.”
“Okay, mom.”
She’s talking to him like he’s a child. In some distant corner of his brain indignant anger rears its head, but it sputters and dies in the face of the consuming numbness pervading him.
In a way, he does feel like a child again. Friendless, helpless, staring down a sea of mocking sneers and disgusted scowls. Begging to know what he did wrong and receiving disjointed answers that seemed to make sense to everyone but him. The confusion and desperation to understand why growing into a bitter acceptance that this is how it would always be. He would forever be one step behind, forever left in the dust in favor of better people. People who understood other people. People who didn’t hurt their friends.
“You know I love you, dear.”
“Love you too.” It’s an automatic response.
“And you should call more often.”
“You say that every time I call you.”
“It’s true every time.”
“Alright, mom. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Tanner.”
He hangs up the phone and cries.
—
A week goes by. Then a month. Then two. His routine carries him through, shower eat stream eat stream sleep repeating daily like a mantra, like a prayer. On stream, he goes through the motions, but his heart is elsewhere. Tanner himself is weightless, empty.
Has he ever felt like this before? It’s like someone else is living his life, and he’s just watching. Days go by without him, his body moving on its own while he’s still stuck in that moment, that awful, singular moment when he learned what Eric really thought of him. The nightmare of seeing that all his worst fears were realized, and that he truly was as terrible of a person as he imagined himself to be. The guilt and shame overwhelm his every waking hour, leaving no room for anything else.
He’s had friends leave him before, more than once, and it’s never been like this. It’s not even that he couldn’t see it coming. Things had been bad for months before Eric got on stream and broke his heart.
One day (he doesn’t know which, nor does he care), the endless repetition is broken by a phone call.
“Tanner! How are you doing, dear? It’s been ages since you called.”
His mother sounds miffed, worried, and relieved all in the same breath. How long had it been since he called? He doesn’t remember.
He glances at the pile of unwashed dishes in the sink. The dirty clothes piling up on the chair and overflowing onto the kitchen table. His own breakfast, half-eaten and forgotten.
“I… It’s not good.”
“Have you been sleeping?”
“Yeah.” Maybe too much. Dreams make for an easy escape, he’s found.
“And eating?”
Oh. “Uh. Kinda?”
His mother clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “Eating well is not a kinda important thing, Tanner.”
“I know, I just… can’t bring myself to care.”
“That worries me a lot. Do you want me to drive down and visit? I can stay in a hotel if it would be easier.”
“No, mom, you don’t have to do that,” Tanner sighs. “It’s just a phase. I’ll get over it.”
“Honey, you and I both know that you don’t just ‘get over’ things.” She sounds exasperated, but her voice is kind. “If you don’t change anything, it’s impossible to let things go.”
I don’t want to let this go. I need to remember how this feels. I deserve it for what I did.
“Yeah. That’s true.”
“When are you going to move out of that tiny apartment? You know it’s not good for you to spend all your time in one room.”
She’s been nagging him about moving out for ages. There are many things she doesn’t like about his current place, from the lack of sunlight to the ancient carpet to the strange and frequent plumbing issues. None of them ever bothered him as much as they seemed to bother her. Then again, he’s never been great at taking care of himself, even when he’s not in a depression pit so deep that no light can reach the bottom.
There’s a part of him that says, She has a point. He’d been cooped up in his 8’ by 10’ room in this place since before he started streaming. His clothes and collectibles were starting to outgrow the space in his closet. He’d saved enough money to move for certain.
More than that, there’s nowhere in this house that isn’t contaminated by memories of what he had before. Competitions and games with Eric that stretched further and further into the night, long after they’d both shut off their streams. Discord calls at odd hours with less and less pretense for why they were happening. Eric’s voice soft in his headphones as they did house chores or ate dinner, apart but together. Tanner liked to pretend that they were just in different rooms, that he’d turn the corner and Eric would be there for real, his smile as radiant as the sun.
The thought of it now makes his stomach turn with grief.
He imagines throwing it all away. His home, his routine, his memories of Eric. Shedding it like lizardskin. Maybe his mother is right. Maybe change is what he needs.