Chapter Text
The first time Thomas laid a hand on me in anger, it felt like the heavens had opened up and a choir of angels had started singing a very loud, very aggressive heavy metal song.
We were nineteen. It was a stupid argument about something long forgotten—probably the TV remote, or the last beer in the kitchen, or the fact that I existed in his peripheral vision. He had turned around, his void-like eyes narrowed into slits of pure, unadulterated loathing, and his fist had connected squarely with my jaw.
I stumbled back against the kitchen counter, the copper taste of blood immediately blooming across my tongue. My hand flew to my face, fingers pressing against the swelling skin. It hurt. It hurt like hell.
But as I looked up through my messy bangs and saw Tom standing there, chest heaving, knuckles white, and a fierce, triumphant glare burning in his expression, something shifted inside me. For the first time since I had moved into that godforsaken house, Tom was looking at me. Really looking at me. Not looking through me, not rolling his nonexistent eyes and tuning me out, but focusing every ounce of his volatile, chaotic energy entirely on me.
He was acknowledging my existence. And God help me, I could have sworn right then and there that I was in love.
You see, Edd was easy. Edd loved everyone, provided you didn't drink the last cola or insult his drawing. Matt was even easier; you just had to compliment his hair or call him handsome, and you were his best friend for the next twenty minutes. Their attention was cheap. It was handed out like flyers on a street corner.
But Tom? Tom’s attention was a rare, precious commodity. He guarded it behind walls of cynical silence, brief grunts, and a perpetual cloud of alcohol-induced apathy. To get Tom to notice you, you had to earn it. And I quickly realized that the easiest way to earn it was to make him hate me.
To a normal person, bad attention is a deterrent. To me, it was a lifeline. I grew up in places where being ignored meant you were forgotten, and being forgotten meant you didn't survive. I would take a black eye over a cold shoulder any day of the week.
The cold, metallic taste of blood in the back of my throat was always my favorite part.
It sounds sick, doesn't it? If Edd or Matt had ever looked closely enough to see the way my eyes glazed over whenever Tom’s fist connected with me, they probably would have committed me to an institution years ago. But they never looked that closely. To them, we were just Tom and Tord: roommates who hated each other. Fire and ice. Oil and water. A classic, predictable sitcom dynamic of endless bickering and property damage.
They didn’t understand the physics of it. Fire doesn't just hate ice; it’s obsessed with it. It wants to melt it and feel the hiss of steam when they touch, even if it means dying in the process.
So, I made a game of it.
"Hey, Jehovah," I’d sneer, leaning against the doorframe of his room while he was trying to tune his stupid bass, Susan. "Your music sounds like a dying whale. Maybe you should’ve learned to play before getting that guitar?"
Tom’s fingers would freeze on the frets. I could actually see the tension spike in his shoulders, traveling up his neck until his jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might shatter.
"Get out," he’d growl.
"Make me," I’d taunt, stepping closer, flashing him that sharp, grin I knew he despised. "What are you gonna do? Cry into your flask? Play a sad little chord?"
That did it. He dropped Susan onto his bed, lunging out of his seat with a speed that always caught me off guard. His hands would grab the collar of my red hoodie, twisting the fabric until it choked off my air, and he’d slam me against the wall.
"You think you’re so smart, you communist trash," he’d hiss, his breath smelling of cheap Smirnoff and mints. His face would be inches from mine, so close I could see the faint freckles across his nose and the sheer, raw malice dancing in those black sockets.
My heart would hammer against my ribs. My lungs would burn for oxygen. But inside my head, everything was beautifully, perfectly quiet. He was touching me. He was thinking about me. In that exact moment, I was the only thing that mattered in Thomas’s universe.
"Shut up," he’d snap, shaking me roughly. "Just shut the hell up!"
"Or what?" I’d wheeze, pushing him, pushing the boundary, begging for the strike.
And he would deliver. A sharp jab to the ribs, a hard shove that sent me crashing to the floor, or sometimes, his fingers tightening around my throat just long enough to make my vision swim with brilliant, sparkling stars.
When he finally let go and stormed out, leaving me bruised and panting on the carpet, I wouldn't cry. I’d lie there, tracing the places where his hands had been, a manic, breathless smile stretching across my face.
He touches me so beautifully, I would think, intoxicated by the pain. He hates me so perfectly.
As the years bled together, my addiction only grew. The simple insults weren't enough anymore. Tom was building up a tolerance to my petty provocations, learning to ignore me for longer stretches of time. It drove me insane. I needed my fix. I needed him to hurt me, and remind me that I was flesh and bone, that I was still alive.
So, I escalated.
I started messing with his prized possessions. I hid Susan’s guitar wax. I poured diet Smirnoff into his flask when he wasn't looking. I left spent cigarette butts in his favorite mugs.
One rainy Tuesday afternoon, I took it a step too far. I found his checkered tie—the one he pretended not to care about but kept meticulously hung up—and I used it to clean the grease off one of my disassembled pistols.
When Tom found it, ruined and stained with black industrial oil, he didn't just get mad. He went entirely feral.
I was sitting on the couch, pretending to read a hentai manga, when the living room door was practically kicked off its hinges. Tom strode in, the ruined tie clutched in his trembling fist.
"Did you do this?" he asked. His voice wasn't loud. It was a terrifying, ragged whisper.
I didn't look up from my book, though my pulse was already racing in delicious anticipation. "Do what, Jehovah? You'll have to be more specific. I do a lot of things to make your life miserable."
Before I could even blink, the manga was torn from my hands and ripped in half. Tom grabbed me by the front of my hoodie and dragged me clean over the back of the couch. We both went crashing onto the hardwood floor.
He pinned me down, his knees digging painfully into my biceps, trapping my arms. His hands wrapped around my neck, his thumbs pressing hard against my windpipe.
"I am going to kill you," he snarled, his face twisted in a mask of pure, unbridled rage. "I am going to tear you apart, Tord."
I couldn't breathe. The air was cut off instantly. My vision began to blur at the edges, darkening into a hazy vignette. But as I stared up into those empty, black voids of his eyes, I felt an overwhelming rush of euphoria. He was looking at me with so much passion. Sure, it was a passion born of hatred, but it was intense. It was real. It wasn't the fake, polite smiles Edd gave or the shallow vanity of Matt. This was Tom, completely unmasked, giving me every single drop of his raw emotion.
I choked out a wheezing, desperate laugh, the sound bubbling up through my restricted throat. I tilted my head back, baring my neck further to his grip, leaning into the pressure.
"Do it," I tried to mouth, though no sound came out.
Tom's eyes widened slightly. For a fraction of a second, he looked down at me—at my bruising neck, my flushed face, the twisted, ecstatic grin on my lips—and something like horror flickered across his face. He realized, in some dark, unspoken way, that he wasn't punishing me. He was giving me exactly what I wanted.
He abruptly let go, scrambling backward away from me as if he had just burned himself.
I collapsed onto my side, drawing in massive, ragged gulps of air, coughing violently. The hardwood floor felt cold against my cheek.
"You're a freak," Tom whispered, standing up and wiping his hands on his jeans, looking at me with a profound sense of disgust that cut deeper than any physical blow ever could. "You're a disgusting, sick freak, Tord."
He turned and walked away, locking himself in his room.
I stayed on the floor for a long time, the cold seeping into my bones. The marks on my neck were already turning a deep, violent purple. I touched them gently, my fingers trembling. He had stopped. He had pulled back.
A hollow, sinking feeling settled in my stomach. The game was changing. He was starting to see through it. If he stopped hitting me, if he stopped reacting... what would I have left?
Shortly after that, the pressure became too much. Not just from Tom, but from my own double life. The Red Army was expanding. My generals, Paul and Patryck, were sending increasingly urgent dispatches. I was a leader of men, a commander of a global revolution, yet I was spending my days getting choked out on a dirty carpet by a cynical alcoholic in a blue hoodie.
I had to leave. I told them I wanted to make it big in the city.
The day I packed my car, Edd cried. Matt gave me a framed picture of himself. Tom just stood by the door, arms crossed, his face an unreadable slate.
"Gonna miss me, Tommy?" I teased, leaning against my car door, desperately fishing for one last reaction, one last spark to keep me warm in the cold months ahead.
"Don't call me that," he said flatly. "And no. The house is finally going to smell less like tobacco and communism."
I laughed, but it felt hollow. I got into my car and drove away, watching his shrinking figure in my rearview mirror.
For years, I ran the army. I conquered territories, designed weaponry, and commanded thousands of soldiers. They feared me. They respected me. If I ordered a man to jump, he asked how high on the way up.
But it was empty. It was so incredibly empty. A thousand men saluting me didn't give me a fraction of the rush that Tom’s fist against my face did. My soldiers looked at the blue coat, the cigar, the title of Red Leader. But they didn't see me.
I became obsessed with going back. I needed my old life. No, that was a lie. I needed him. I needed to feel that agonizing, beautiful friction again. I needed to know if the fire still burned, or if the embers had gone cold.
So, I devised a plan. I needed to retrieve my giant robot—the ultimate weapon I had hidden beneath the house—but more than that, I wanted to see if I could make him look at me like that again.
Years later when I finally snuck in to get my things, there he was. Tom. Standing in the hallway, staring at me with that familiar, cold hostility.
"What are you doing here?" Tom spat.
Oh, it was music to my ears. The game was back on.
I played the part of the returning friend flawlessly. I bought them gifts, I laughed at Edd's jokes, I pretended to care about Matt's new hobbies. And just as expected, it drove Tom completely up the wall.
Every time I smiled at Edd, Tom would glare harder. When I took over his room, forcing him to sleep on the couch, I could feel his rage radiating through the floorboards. It was intoxicating. I was back in his head, renting space entirely for free, driving him to the brink of madness.
But I was getting greedy. I had been starved of his specific brand of violence for years, and a few angry glares weren't enough to satisfy the craving. I needed to push him. I needed him to break. I wanted him to destroy me, and in doing so, acknowledge that I was the most important thing in his miserable life.