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Coincidences. Not really a thing Theo tended to believe in anymore. Accidents aren’t either. Theo believed in very little besides his own bad luck always managing to swing through at the last second and ruin whatever it was he had going positively for him.
Once was an accident, twice was a coincidence, three times was deliberate. And Theo didn’t believe in the first two.
“You were drunk.” He would say to himself.
“You were high.” He would insist internally.
And while, yes, both of those were true, neither of them mattered. Drunken words are sober thoughts, or something. There was truth to it. To say or do something while under the influence always means there’s an urge to do it when not. The alcohol or weed or whatever you throw back down your throat or nose at the time only weakens those barriers. The wall crumbles.
So, waking up to a warm body time after time in his bed not only became a normal feeling but an expected one. In fact there were a few times when Theo awoke with a panic when the air around him felt cold.
He never remembered it, not fully. Bits and pieces at best—the parts that stuck the most was the pain. It hurt. They weren’t careful. They didn’t want to be, or care to be. There was no need for it. Flimsy late night not-accidents but mistakes, maybe. One could argue they were the same thing, interchangeable. Switching out the words simply made the fuck up sound prettier, a little less bad. But not to Theo.
No, they were different. You see, an accident is typically out of your control. It wasn’t like Theo meant to drop a cup on the floor. It slipped. But if Theo looked at the cup, grabbed it, threw it on the ground and got in trouble—well, that was all his choice. And it was a mistake. Something you shouldn’t have done, maybe even known you shouldn’t have done, but still did.
A car crash is an accident. A bombing is an accident.
The two of them were not.
They were a mistake.
Yet they both knew that. Hell, it’s what made it fun. The thrill of screwing up over and over willingly and enjoying it. It certainly never seemed to stop them. Hesitation was a familiar feeling to a boy like Theo but it never came up during those times. It was probably the alcohol. It seems it always is.
They never properly brought it up either. Theo wasn’t sure if he liked that. His stomach twisted at the idea. But talking about it posed no better feeling. His throat would go dry and he’d be stared at, silently, and no good response would come of it either. There was a comfort in that in all honesty. Though part of him might be trying to convince himself more than anything.
But he didn’t necessarily want to talk about it. If there were to be any confrontation, which there won’t, it wouldn’t come from him.
Silence. He wasn’t sure how he felt about silence either.
If it dragged for too long the ringing would come back sometimes. It made his head spin, vision double.
He tried not to stew in it for longer than he ever had to.
Maybe that was why he liked the mistakes. There was never silence. Breath, rustling of sheets and clothing, sounds he’d likely never hear again—slurred or muffled into skin—but it was noise. Noise that drowned out the ringing, the thoughts. The ringing hurt more than the mistakes did. Mostly it didn’t hurt at all, only if he wasn’t tense. The alcohol helped with that.
A part of him worried that maybe bringing it up would ruin the noise, that it would be silent afterwards. Or maybe never happen again.
Sometimes if he was inebriated enough he didn’t feel anything at all. He switched between preferring those nights and hating them the most. Fingers burned his skin at every touch and some nights that’s all he wanted to feel, others he wanted to float away on a coked out cloud and have every sensation melt away.
It was easier to move past and ignore it until it inevitably happened again.
It always did.
And there was a comfort in that, too