Work Text:
Your name is TAVROS CROCKER, and you have just ascended to GOD-TIER, along with your SBURB TEAMMATES. As everybody speaks around you, you try to include yourself in whatever conversation you currently hear snippets from; unfortunately for you, you’ve never exactly been good at that.
Vrissy makes quite the big deal out of ignoring you, pushing you out of the conversation at any and every opportunity. She consistently attempts to make sure you can’t insert yourself into the conversation as she brags about her new garbs to everybody around her, directly trying to avoid making it seem like she’s speaking to you.
Yiffany is the only one who tries to be even mildly interested in whatever you’re saying whenever you try to interject, despite not exactly liking or knowing you all that well. You can’t tell if she actually wants to get to know you, or just feels utterly sorry for you.
You pretty thoroughly end up feeling like a complete nuisance to be around at the end of the day. You don’t want to bother embarrassing yourself further.
This method, of trying to interject “casually” (or, more specifically, as casually as you can try with your awful social skills at play), doesn’t exactly work out for you. It may have if everybody in your general area wasn’t at your throat all the time, trying to make you feel as ostracized as possible. Which, honestly, isn’t all that hard.
You stand around, trying to lightly laugh and smile along with everybody else as they all brag, while you’re pretending to be mute, stuck in your stupid little outfit, envious, all while making you feel so much worse the more you think about it.
Completely, inconsolably sick of the social situation, that has only been made awkward because of your presence, which you have a habit of doing, you leave to make it easier for everybody else. You sneak away from the group with ease. You’re probably the only person who could do that without anybody noticing— Harry would notice if Vrissy had left, vice versa, and Vrissy and Harry would notice if Yiffany had disappeared, since everyone’s still so focused on her mere existence. Nobody has ties to you like everyone currently has to each other. You’re so disconnected from your peers in such an unfixable way.
You don’t announce your departure; you leave without a word. You probably didn’t even have to sneak away, really. You could have told everyone that you were going on a walk, and the three would collectively tell you not to come back. You look back one more time before the three turn to a blur in the distance.
Taking your solitary time to be in utter silence aside from your own loud thoughts, even if it’s for a short period, you try your hardest not to be one big conversational inconvenience to allow yourself to think about everything that’s currently going on. You genuinely hate this. You want all of this to be over as soon as possible, preferably. However, if you’ve learned anything from your father’s constant talk about his escapades while playing his own client of SBURB, it’s going to be quite the long ride.
Longer than whatever you’d prefer to be the length of this game that you had been roped into, mainly through the promise of feeling some semblance of an adrenaline rush from disobeying your parental figures.
Maybe carrying a dead clown’s body through the halls of your cousin’s school was enough to make you feel like you’ve been bad. Maybe being identified as a war criminal was enough. Maybe being held “hostage” by two of your aunts was enough.
Getting out of the house at night to feel just a little bit free already makes your heart pound and your hands sweat. You have no fucking idea how you’re not losing all composure right now.
Maybe you are.
Maybe that’s why you’re spiraling.
You don’t realize how unevenly you’re breathing before acknowledging that maybe dwelling on all the terrible shit you’ve experienced, for however long it’s been, has possibly not exactly been good for you. The lightheadedness probably didn’t help, either.
You wipe your gross, sweaty hands on your shirt uncomfortably and try to even your breathing.
Now that you’re dwelling on things that—depending on the person you ask—matter greatly or incredibly little, it leads you to consider a question that’s constantly in the back of your mind.
Have you ever, genuinely, been happy with any hand you’ve been dealt?
You have a distinct lack of childhood memories where you genuinely smiled. When you did, somebody was forcing you to.
Sometimes, it would be for a photo, other times, the worst of times, your mother would make you smile for her when you were miserable just so she could feel better about herself; to keep her fantasy where your godawful family was faultless.
You think that, possibly, out of all of the years you’ve been alive, you could count all the times you’ve smiled by your own accord on both of your hands. Have you ever even been allowed to make your own decisions in the first place? If you’ve never liked whatever you’ve been given, in any context, despite material possession, what else have you not liked without even giving it a second thought, because others around you have forced you into putting everyone before yourself from such a young age?
In your fifteen years of life, you’ve not once had the opportunity to deal with a big decision yourself. Somebody has to decide what you want.
You take a deep breath and start walking back to the group not-so-hastily. Everybody has their eyes on you as you walk back. They have a certain expression on their face: likely one that just registered that you left in the first place.
You suppose you’re either that good at sneaking away or you’re just that overlooked.