Module 4 - Part 1
Clarkenwell Preparatory Academy, Maine
September 1999
The stack of papers, neatly stapled together in the top right-hand corner, lands on Tommy’s desk with a soft thump. It’s upside down, hence the right-sided staple and the blank top page - and will be until Mr. Larkner gives his okay because while his classmates can maybe afford to cheat, Tommy cannot - and Tommy runs his finger along the edge.
Larkner moves past him, blazer tails brushing against Tommy’s arm. Tommy hears him say, “Put that away, Lacey,” but he’s not being a dick about it. Tommy kind of likes that about him. Not that anybody in this shithole is really any better than ‘okay,’ but Larkner’s one of the better ones.
The guy in front of him turns to sneer half-heartedly at Tommy, but then Larkner says, “Eyes in front, James,” to the sound of his footsteps carrying closer again. Definitely one of the better ones.
He fiddles with his pencil a little while Larkner passes out the rest of the tests and then returns to the front of the room. “Ready…” He makes a show of readying his watch in front of his face. “Begin.”
Tommy grapples with the slick paper for a moment before he gets it flipped around. Most of the parts at the top are already filled in - class, teacher, date - so Tommy just scribbles his name in the remaining blank space and lets his eyes skim downwards.
1) State the medical term for carrying the werewolf gene.
Tommy tries not to roll his eyes. It’s obviously Larkner’s customary give-away point for the jocks in the last row, considering the bold print at the top of the page reads, Module 4: Lycanthrophia. Tommy dutifully copies it down, going over one ‘h’ twice when it looks more like an ‘n,’ before turning his attention to Question 2: Explain what members of the werewolf community mean by the term, ‘breed true.’
Tommy sighs, wrinkles his nose, and gets to work.
“Tommy. Hey, Tommy!”
Tommy turns at the sound of his name, grin already spreading over his face.
Adam’s a big guy, and just on the chubbier side of average, and he cuts through the crowd of uniformed students like a bulldozer. Of course, they also twist away from him, carefully avoiding any actual skin-to-skin touches, but as long as Adam continues to pretend not to care, Tommy will pretend not to notice.
“Hey, Adam,” he says when Adam comes to a halt in front of him. “What’s up?”
They’re totally in the way, standing in the middle of the hallway between classes, still rocks in a veritable ocean of students, but the one thing that’s good about their status is that nobody will actually do anything about it. At Tommy’s old school, that shit would have earned you an elbow to the back at the very least. Here, people scowl and mutter, but no one actually touches them.
“Uh, not much,” Adam says, tripping over the words. There’s a hint of a blush on his cheeks. “I saw you leaving your class, that’s all. How was the quiz?”
“Not bad, I think.” It’s not hard to smile. Larkner might not be the greatest teacher ever, and the entire module made Tommy boil with madness at the unfairness of it all, but he’s a fair grader. Tommy has to give him that.
“That’s good.” Adam ducks his head, a ridiculous gesture on a guy his size. “Spanish was stupid,” he says.
What he means is that his study partner stole the homework off him and then talked shit at him for the rest of the lesson, because that’s what Spanish is like for Adam. It’s what Spanish is like for Tommy half the time, only the guy giving him a hard time is some rando at the next desk, because the girl Tommy is supposed to be study partners with refuses to even acknowledge Tommy’s existence.
“When is Spanish ever not stupid,” Tommy says, coaxing a smile onto Adam’s face. He reaches out to brush his fingers against Adam’s elbow. “Save me a spot for lunch?”
Adam nods and then shuffles away when the bell rings, and Tommy has to sprint up an entire staircase to make it to Bio on time.
They end up down by the ping pong tables after last period, because Clarkenwell is the kind of place that actually has outdoor ping pong tables for their students’ entertainment. Nobody ever stoops down low enough to actually use them, not when there are actual fold-up ones at the gym and in the common rooms, but they’re perfect for sitting on side-by-side, and nobody comes to bother them here.
Adam digs out some candy bars for them to share and then makes Tommy talk him through his math problems. He naively continues to cling to the belief that just because Tommy’s a year ahead of him, he actually remembers any of that shit; or, in fact, actually got it in the first place. Tommy gets out Brave New World that they’re reading in English while Adam curses his way through his homework. It’s not quite warm out, but still pleasant enough to shuck their blazers and roll up the cuffs of their starched shirts, elbows brushing every once in a while, Adam a flare of heat against Tommy’s skin every time. It’s a stark difference to the chill seeping into his ass and thighs from sitting on the table’s cold concrete surface.
Tommy still can’t really get used to that - to the weather. He’s spent the last two years and a bit here, and he should be comfortable with it now, but he’s a California boy through and through, and he spent all of his summer roasting around back home. He doesn’t know how to deal with wet-and-cold. It’s barely September, it shouldn’t feel like the middle of January yet.
The metal bracelet on Adam’s right arm clinks when he shifts, reaching up to turn a page. It’s so innocuous, nothing more than a ring of silver with a slender L engraved on the back. Tommy stares at it for a moment while Adam reads, mouth moving silently, but it doesn’t look any different than it usually does - just as unimpressive as the rest of the time. Most of the time Tommy’s grateful for that, but sometimes he wishes the markers were a bit more in-your-face. Like, a brand to his forehead, or something. It’s not like it’d make matters any worse, and it’s just so freaking… painful sometimes that the thing that’s completely screwing over Tommy’s life has got to be so damn aesthetically pleasing to boot.
And like, Tommy knows he’s being stupid. Clarkenwell’s a shithole, but there are worse places out there. Yeah, people are dicks, and it sucks ass being all the way across the country from his mom and sister and everything he knows, but at least the school makes sure they’ve got the nation’s average when it comes to werewolf population. 8% of the student population, faculty and staff is marked L. No less than that.
No less, but certainly no more, either. There is one werewolf in the faculty - Mr. Santora, who teaches Government & Politics - and one on the staff, a groundskeeper, who was brought in a couple of days after the one in the cafeteria got fired.
Adam looks up after a little bit. He’s got a supernatural sense for attention, perhaps because he hates it so much. He smiles though, when he catches Tommy looking, and taps the eraser of his pencil against a block of text. “Wanna be my hero?” he asks, mouth tilting wryly.
The chances of Tommy actually telling him anything useful are pretty low, but Tommy’s a sucker for that smile, even though he’d never admit it. “Hit me,” he says, bending his head over Adam’s book.
Adam starts in on a rant about square footage and derivatives and using functions to calculate the ideal length and width of a soccer field, which Tommy vaguely remembers but not well enough to actually figure out what Adam’s doing wrong, and they’re so wrapped up in the problem that Tommy doesn’t hear the footsteps until it’s already too late.
“Oh look, it’s the puppy dogs.”
The voice is loud and mocking and belongs, Tommy finds when he looks up, to Jesse Monroe. He’s got his buddies with him and he’s sneering, and Tommy would laugh at how cliché it all is, except there’s four of them and there’s nobody else around and it’s not funny, it’s really, really not.
Tommy slides off the ping pong table and tries to look like he’s taller and broader than he actually is. Adam stands up too, except he’s hunching over like he’s trying to make himself less threatening, and Tommy would ask What the fuck? if he didn’t know him so well.
“What do you want?” he asks Jesse instead, a little wearily. His heart is pounding in his chest, yeah, but it’s also a little bit like every teen movie his sister has ever made him watch, and really. If he’s going to get his ass kicked, can’t it at least be in new and exciting ways?
Jesse smiles vaguely. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”
The problem with Jesse is that he’s not just a dumb bully. He’s attractive, in a clean-cut, All-American way, he’s charming when he wants to be, and he’s such an ingénue at cheating on tests that Tommy has to reluctantly admit that he’d probably get good grades on his own, if he only bothered to study.
And yet, such a bastard.
“Enlighten me anyway,” Tommy says. “What’d we do? Breathe near you? Share a classroom with your girl?”
“Cute,” Jesse says. He gestures at Adam. “Does he ever talk?”
Adam goes completely stiff at Tommy’s side, breathing fast and shallow, and Tommy seriously has to fight to keep from reaching over and wrapping a reassuring hand around Adam’s wrist.
“Try to pay attention to the topic at hand,” he says, mock-easily. “I know it’s hard, but you can do it.”
Jesse lifts his chin up, annoyed but at least distracted. “You’re on our turf.”
Seriously? Turf? Tommy’s pretty sure nobody actually says that outside of 1950’s greaser movies. He pushes his hands into his pockets before he remembers that he might need them soon and pulls them out again. “Since when do you give a damn about the ping pong tables?”
“Since now,” Jesse says lightly.
“Because we’re on them,” Tommy deduces.
Jesse smiles sweetly.
Whatever. Tommy can do condescending too. “Do you even have a ping pong bat?” he asks.
“What’s it to you?” Jesse asks.
Tommy grins, wide and fake. “Well, if you do, you should take it and shove it up your ass.”
Because sometimes, Tommy’s got a situation teetering on the very edge of a precipice, and he just can’t help reaching over and giving it that final little nudge.
In the end, it’s Jesse who starts it, even though Tommy technically throws the first punch. But Jesse reaches over and like, slaps his cheek, like you would with a little kid except it stings like hell, and Tommy doesn’t even hesitate before throwing himself at him. He goes down immediately, of course, two fists coming straight at him the second he dares to move. It hurts like hell, too.
The thing about the werewolf gene, the thing that makes everything so fucked up, is that it doesn’t even help. Tommy’s not any stronger, or faster, or more intimidating than he was three years ago. He’s still kind of short and lanky and girly-looking and the only thing that’s changed now that he turns into a wolf one night out of the month is that people actually have a reason to pick on him. And they do.
He gets a set of knuckles to the temple and sees stars for a second, but he still tries and feels his hands and feet connect a couple of times. He’s even vaguely aware of Adam trying to help out and sort of pushing at Jesse and getting a split lip for his trouble.
Tommy gets his hand on Jesse’s ankle while he’s distracted and yanks hard and somehow Jesse goes down. Tommy wraps his legs around Jesse’s waist and heaves himself on top of him and pulls back his fist to destroy his fucking face, and of course, of course that’s when someone grabs him by the scruff of his neck and says, “What the hell is going on here?”
Wright, the tennis coach, pulls Tommy to his feet but keeps firm hold of his collar while Jesse gets to his feet, thumbing the corner of his mouth. Good. Maybe Tommy broke his fucking jaw.
His bloodthirsty thoughts must show up on his forehead, or something, because Wright gives Tommy a shake.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, Ratliff,” he growls. “You’ve got nothing to smile about.”
Which, yeah. Tommy already knew that. Doesn’t mean he can always help himself.
The visitors’ chairs in the vice principal’s office are actually comfortable, is the kicker, and Mr. Schneider isn’t an ugly old creep. He’s actually a fairly attractive dude except for the way his eyes are set a little too close together, and he narrows both of them at Adam and Tommy, sitting side by side like naughty first graders. Jesse and his guys are out in the waiting room after they spent a solid twenty minutes telling their side of the story, with big handwavey motions that Tommy could see full well through the gaps in the blinds.
Technically, it’s supposed to be their turn to explain now, but Tommy only has to look at Mr. Schneider and his thoughtfully narrowed eyes to know they’ve already lost.
“Boys,” he says evenly, maybe like he’d say Criminals. “Mr. Monroe and his friends have explained what happened.” He blinks at them, once. “I’m afraid it doesn’t look too good for you, gentlemen.”
Adam goes a bit pale, probably like Tommy himself, but Tommy knows him well enough to know he’s not going to say anything. It’s probably the smarter choice. No one’s ever accused Tommy of being smart.
“Of course you’d take their word over ours,” he grits out.
“It has nothing to do with that,” Schneider says, waving a dismissive hand.
Tommy doesn’t bother asking what ‘that’ means, but he still rolls his eyes.
Schneider narrows his eyes at him again. “It’s four testaments against two, Mr. Ratliff,” she says. “That would be considered fair grounds to make a judgment call under any circumstances.”
“And the fact that we’re two wolves and they’re all bullies has nothing to do with anything,” Tommy says evenly. He’s a bit impressed by himself. He doesn’t let anything show on his face, but he hears Adam at his side suck in a sharp breath.
“I would appreciate it if you would refrain from making such slandering statements against your peers, Mr. Ratliff,” Schneider says. He steeples his fingers together underneath his chin. “But then, sufferers of Lycanthrophia are known to display frequent outbursts of unprovoked violence and aggression.”
Tommy really, really wants to show him an outburst of violence and aggression, but Adam makes a little choked-off, pleading noise at his side, and Tommy grips the arms of his chair tight enough to turn his knuckles white and forces himself to sink back into the cushions.
“Yeah, okay,” he says.
Schneider nods thoughtfully. “Your parents will need to be informed of these events, of course,” he says, all mock-regretful, like he’s not totally dancing with glee on the inside.
Next to Tommy, Adam makes a noise of terror, so quiet it’s barely noticeable in the near-silent room, but Tommy’s still pretty sure he sees Mr. Schneider fight down a satisfied smile.
“I highly suggest you give them a call this afternoon,” he says. “I’m sure they’d like to speak with you.”
If possible, Adam’s gone even whiter, clinging to the armrests like they’re Obi-Wan Kenobi and he’s Princess Leia. Tommy’s clenching his hands, too, but it’s mostly because he’s so fucking pissed off he might reach over and strangle Mr. Schneider if he doesn’t. With Adam, though, it’s probably just terror, plain and simple.
Tommy leans over a bit, trying to catch Adam’s eye, to somehow make him understand that it’s okay, it’s not their fault, no matter what anybody says. But Adam’s gaze is fixed firmly on his knees, and after a minute or so, Mr. Schneider clucks his tongue impatiently.
“If there’s nothing else,” he says, opening a folder, and while Tommy would love to take that damn folder and shove it down his throat, he unclenches his hands and makes himself no “no, sir,” instead.
Four to six in the afternoon are study hours at Clarkenwell, doors shut and corridors empty, so Tommy tiptoes down one set of stairs and over to door 2-27.
Luckily for them, Clarkenwell had once upon a time decided to be more exclusive and cut down the student population by almost two thirds, so now it isn’t just seniors and rich kids who are able to snag a coveted single room. Tommy isn’t sure what he’d do if he had to live in this hell and share a room with someone to boot, and he thinks Adam appreciates it, too, because Adam likes to crawl far, far back into his shell whenever the opportunity presents itself. Which can be annoying, but it also means that Tommy knows where Adam is at pretty much any given moment in time, and right now he’d bet cash money he’s hiding in his room even though they don’t have locks on their doors, the same kind of stupid honesty policy shit like with their lockers, pretending like that entire thing with the vice principal didn’t even happen.
He knocks, though. He’s being sensitive and respecting boundaries and shit.
“Go away,” comes from inside.
Tommy plasters himself against the door. “It’s me,” he calls. “Come on, let me in.”
There’s a silence, and for a moment Tommy isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do now (actually go away? Threaten to break down the door? What?) and then Adam says, subdued and gloomy, “You know it’s open.”
Tommy turns the knob with more trepidation than he’d like to admit to, but Adam’s not slitting his wrists or anything - he’s just sitting on the bed, pressed against the headboard, legs tucked against his chest. His room is tidy enough to make Tommy’s, with the two shirts scattered across the floor, look like a pigsty. Nothing new there, but for once, Tommy doesn’t feel like teasing him for it. It’d be like pouring salt all over a gross, pus-oozing wound, and Tommy may be an ass half the time, but he’s not an asshole.
Adam wipes his fingers over his eyes. To anyone who doesn’t know him as well as Tommy does, he’d probably just look insanely tired, red-rimmed and bright-eyed. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” Tommy replies, pulling up Adam’s desk chair next to the narrow bed and straddling it, wooden backrest digging into his forearms.
Adam reaches over to drop his handful of payphone quarters onto his desk. Some of them hit the edge instead, clattering into the thin space between wood and bed, but neither of them move to collect them.
“You talk to your mom yet?” Adam asks after a while.
“She had to go to work.” Tommy picks at the flecks of white paint chipping off the chair. “Said to call her later.”
That, and a whole lot of stuff about how disappointed she was, and that she hoped he had a really good explanation this time, and didn’t Tommy understand how lucky he was that the school had taken him at all? It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten that particular lecture, and it wasn’t like he didn’t try, but it was getting harder and harder to not tell her just what exactly he thought of this school who’d so graciously offered him a full scholarship.
“Lucky you,” Adam says without inflection.
Normally Tommy’s a big fan of calling bullshit on that one, but even with that phone call still hanging over him, he feels a lot better than Adam looks right now, so he’s willing to let it stand. “Wanna head over to Joey’s to see if we can bum his Gameboy?” he asks instead.
Adam shakes his head, gaze still fixed on the fabric covering his knees. “I have to do homework,” he says.
Fuck homework, Tommy thinks. He’s been doing that a lot lately. He used to be a pretty good kid, keep his head down and his grades up, but recently he finds himself just wanting to say ‘fuck everything’ and bailing at the first sign of trouble. Maybe it’s because of hormones or some shit, or maybe it’s because of the scar on his neck, and the fact that he doesn’t know just makes him even madder.
But Adam’s looking at him now with those big, pleading eyes, practically begging Tommy to just let it drop, to sit down and stay and be a good boy, and Tommy finds himself saying, “Yeah, sure, whatever. Let’s do homework.”
The smile that breaks out over Adam’s face almost makes it worth it. “Your history stuff is over there,” he says, pointing at a stack of books on his desk that Tommy probably forgot there the last time he came over to study. “So you don’t even have to go to your room or anything.”
“Stop sweet-talking me, man, I’m already sold,” Tommy says, but fondly, and turns around in his chair to dig through the stack of books while Adam fishes for his book bag and his homework. His bookmark is in the middle of last week’s chapter, which he already just-barely-passed a quiz on, so he flips forward to The Discovery of the Lycanthrophia Gene, with a reproduced sketch of a hairy, pointy-eared guy in a Victorian style coat and hat on the other page.
Lycanthrophia was first fully documented and defined by Englishman Lewis Gartner in 1894, the book tells him, although Darwin makes mention of wolf-like manbeasts in his On the Origin of Species. Gartner, setting the bar high for the many who would follow in his footsteps, first attempted to introduce this primitive culture of starved, isolated shifters into Western society, gifting them with education and civilization. Despite the charitable attempts of these scientific pioneers, however, werewolves remain among the most violent and volatile members of society one-hundred years later, oftentimes playing vital roles in brutal riots that shock
Tommy smacks the book shut.
Adam looks up, startled by the sound, pencil poised over his notebook. “Tommy?”
Tommy pushes the book away from him. He picks up the disorderly stack of textbooks and papers on the desk and dumps them on top of it, and then sets Adam’s pencil holder on top of the pile. What he really wants to do is shred the entire thing, but it’s a loan from the school and probably costs a million dollars.
Instead, he turns and gives Adam a smile that’s probably more frightening than reassuring. “Let’s do something stupid,” he says.
Adam gives him a wide-eyed look. He draws his legs up to his torso and wraps his arms around them. “What do you mean?” he asks.
Tommy attempts another smile, but it likely comes out more like aggressively bared teeth. “I mean, let’s do something fucked up, hare-brained, ridiculously stupid. Just for tonight. You know. Live for a bit.”
“We might not gonna live for very long,” Adam cautions him. He gnaws on his lip for a moment. “If we get caught, and the administration doesn’t kill us, then our parents definitely will.”
“My mom’s already going to kill me,” Tommy says, cheerier than he feels. His own daring sits thick and heavy in his stomach, but he’ll be damned before he chickens out now. “Might as well make it worth her while.”
“You’re crazy,” Adam tells him, very seriously.
“Crazy awesome,” Tommy says, going for light, but Adam isn’t having any of it.
“No, crazy stupid,” he says. “Dude. We have to keep our noses clean, okay? Now more than ever.”
“We have to get out of here,” Tommy corrects him. “Just for tonight, okay? This place is killing us, man.”
Adam puts his pencil down. He pushes his hair away from his forehead. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s pretend that getting out of here is even an option for a second, okay. Just - Tommy, where would we even go?”
He’s got a bit of a point, there, to be honest. The only town in walking distance is Ricker Hill, a good forty minutes by foot from Clarkenwell, and there’s really not a whole lot going on there. But Tommy’s thought this through. He’s maybe thought about it a little too much.
Tommy looks down at his lap. He chews on his lip for a second, and then he says, whispers really, “Desecration Row.”
“Desecration Row?” Adam breathes, like even saying the name aloud is an illicit activity. He’s not entirely wrong. “Isn’t that right in the sympathetic part of town?”
Tommy nods. It’s why he wants to go so badly, to be honest. He figures that out of all the places in Ricker Hill that might let in two underage (like, actually underage, not just too young to drink) werewolves, Desecration Row is pretty much their best bet.
“Yeah,” he says. He can’t quite make himself look Adam in the eye. “Yeah, they’ve got local bands playing every Friday and Saturday. I saw posters for it on my biology field trip.”
“A concert?” Adam asks hesitantly. He fumbles with his pencil. “You know that’s not allowed.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tommy says as casually as he can manage.
Adam sets his jaw. It’s adorable, really. “So you know that’s a terrible idea,” he says.
“Maybe,” Tommy shrugs.
“Maybe?” Adam’s voice does a neat little flip. “Tommy, we might get arrested. Suspended. Expelled! There are so many things wrong with that idea, I don’t even know where to start.”
“It’s not that bad,” Tommy says, even though yeah, it totally is. “Remember Mariah McCorman? She like, went down to Florida for a week without telling anybody, and she barely even got suspended.”
“Yeah, but she wasn’t a wolf,” Adam says. “And now we have a McCorman wing in the library. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
Tommy shakes his head. “Aren’t you tired of that, though?” he asks. “Us not getting to do what everybody else gets to do just because we’re wolves? All over the country, teenagers are doing fucked up, retarded shit, and they’re totally allowed to get away with it. Why aren’t we?”
“I don’t want to do retarded stuff,” Adam says hesitantly.
“And we aren’t going to,” Tommy assures him immediately. “Nothing stupid, or illegal. Nothing you don’t want to do, I promise.”
“Damn right we aren’t,” Adam says with his usual lack of ferocity. He hesitates. “You really wanna do this, huh?”
“I really do.” Tommy pastes on his best pathetic face. “I can’t imagine anything I want more. And you don’t want to deprive me of that, do you?”
“No.” It’s quiet, but he’s said it, and he starts chewing his lip while Tommy tries hard to fight down a smile.
“But, Tommy, there’s like, no way this is gonna end well.”
“No one says it has to end badly.” Tommy slides his hand up Adam’s arm. “Trust me, Adam, okay? I’d never do anything to get you in trouble.”
Adam sighs, and he might not have admitted it, but Tommy knows defeat when he sees it.
“Tommy, if we get caught, we’re gonna get into so much trouble.”
Tommy smirks at him. “Then we better not get caught, huh?”
Tommy spends the last couple of hours before lights out trying to magic more clothes into his wardrobe through sheer force of will. Like, it’s not just a line - he legitimately has nothing to wear. His wardrobe holds four khaki slacks and five white shirts and two school blazers with matching ties. He can’t sneak out to Desecration Row in a white button down - he’d probably not even get in the door without getting his ass handed to him on a platter.
But at least the lack of options means he doesn’t have to take forever to decide what to wear. He has exactly one pair of jeans that he wears on flights and changes out of at the airport bathrooms, and he finds a Morrissey t-shirt crumpled up at the back of his closet and that’ll be enough. It’ll have to be enough.
Tommy’s getting out of here, tonight. He’s going to get out there and he’s going to find something better for himself than this stupid, ridiculous shithole, or he might just flip his lid and fuck some shit up, and he can’t afford to do that. Adam needs him. He doesn’t have any other friends, not really, and he’d be fucked without Tommy.
And maybe, just maybe, Tommy needs Adam to need him a little bit.
Sneaking out is like, stupidly easy, and Tommy can’t believe he’s never had the guts to do this before. Nobody’s paroling the halls, and even though the dorm building’s doors and windows are rigged to set off the alarm if someone opens them, apparently nobody thought to include the windows in the cellar. Tommy thinks about telling his mom when she calls, being all, See? I’m not any safer here than in Burbank, but with his luck she’d tell the administration, and Tommy has a feeling he might need these windows to keep him sane this year.
He slides the window almost all the way shut once they’re outside, both of them dressed in jeans and t-shirts, the least prep school-y things they have. Adam’s got a dark blue tee with a smudge of dust across the middle. Adam is also seriously not an athletic guy, and watching him struggle out the window would be hilarious if Tommy wasn’t so damn sure they’re about to get caught.
They cut through the orchard behind the dorms, bumping into bushes and each other and jumping every time one of them steps on a twig. The fence surrounding the property is a bit more of a challenge, mostly because Adam is seriously a graceless fuck, and he spends the better part of two minutes scrabbling for a foothold before Tommy finally gets tired of it and boosts him over. It still looks kind of like a whale flopping down a waterfall, or what Tommy supposes that would look like, ‘cause it’s not like Tommy has first-hand experience to compare it to.
Tommy has an easier time just by virtue of the fact that he’s lighter, not because he’s any fitter, and they’re both breathing heavily and kind of sweaty and gross by the time they’re free, but then they’re free and the entire thing just kind of falls by the wayside when Tommy feels a jolt of butterflies in his stomach. They’re out, holy shit.
It still feels weird to talk, though, even when they get into town, so they walk the streets in silence, Adam clenching and unclenching his hands at Tommy’s side. There’s nobody around, shops closed, streets deserted. Tommy has a bit of a hard time believing it’s a Friday night.
It’s not until they get to the dirty part of town, the sympathetic part of town, that a little bit of life manages to creep through the cracks. There are people sprawled out on porches, cigarette ends bright in the darkness, lights and noises spilling from a propped-open garage door. There’s still not much, but it’s getting to be more and more, the closer they get, until they can find their way to Desecration Row by nothing more than the beat of drums thumping in the cool night air.
Thank God for the noise, actually, because Tommy isn’t sure he would have found the place otherwise. Desecration Row is in an old storehouse in an alley behind an off-license liquor store, and they probably would have strolled straight by it if it weren’t for the black-hoodied couples clustered around a streetlamp. There are a few more of them in the alley itself, but no one waiting by the entrance, which probably means the party is already well underway. It also means no bouncers, which is good. Tommy doesn’t know what he’d do if he’d come all this way only to be turned away at the door.
Adam stops him at the door with a hand on his wrist. “This is a really, really bad idea.”
Tommy bares his teeth again. “That’s kind of the point.”
“Tommy,” Adam mutters, and Tommy can see in his eyes that he’s about to chicken out, so he pushes open the heavy door and heads inside. It’s mean, maybe, but if there’s one thing Adam’s more afraid of than getting in trouble, it’s getting in trouble alone.
The club isn’t full or anything. It’s not much of a surprise - there’s not enough people in this shitty-ass town, decent people, the kind who’d go to a show in a sympathetic club in a sympathetic part of town. It doesn’t matter though. The couple dozen people who are there are crowded around the stage like someone’s handing out free bottles of booze, and once he and Adam have pushed their way into the middle of it, there might as well be thousands of people gathered around them, all yelling and jumping and having a fucking good time.
It takes about five seconds for someone to elbow Tommy in the face, and someone else to step on Tommy’s shoes with fucking steel-capped boots, and Adam grapples for Tommy’s hand when the crush of teenage bodies drags them apart. It’s hot and sticky and the girl next to Tommy can’t sing for shit but she’s yelling her fucking heart out, anyway.
It’s fucking awesome.
Tommy keeps a tight hold on Adam’s hand, but he can’t keep from bouncing around like an insane motherfucker, screaming and throwing up the devil’s horns when the singer on stage does it.
The set ends a song and a half later and a whole bunch of hardcore metal kids disappear off the floor. Tommy would be disappointed, but there’s also a surge of people crowding forward, pushing themselves off the walls of the place and sliding off of barstools to head for the stage. They’re more punk looking, eyeliner thick on their faces, messages written across their skin in uneven black sharpie. There are techies on stage, carrying drums and guitars off and onto the stage, but the crowd is already gearing up for something big, Tommy can tell.
Somebody pushes into him from the side and he ends up in front of Adam who grabs his waist to keep him from getting swept away. Or possibly from getting swept away himself, who knows. Tommy throws him a grin over his shoulder and promptly misses the entrance of the band, not looking back until they’re all already at their instruments and everybody around them is yelling their approval.
The singer himself slinks on last, a skinny guy with a mess of black hair on his head, but his grin is infectious when he finally takes hold of the microphone.
“Hey, everyone,” he says, giving a little wave. “Thanks for coming tonight.” He grins into the bright lights trained on his face. “We’re My Chemical Romance, and we’re here to save your life.”
With that little weirdo announcement, he nods to the drummer to start them up. The beat’s solid, and the little guy with the guitar is seriously into what he’s doing, but they’re barely a verse into what might be a pretty solid song when the singer peers down into the audience at his feet. “No, man, don’t do that,” he says suddenly, across the riffs of his band members, and the chords peter out.
“No, seriously,” he says to somebody in the first couple of rows, bending down with his hands on his knees. “Like, man, look behind you. She almost got your elbow in the face, and that’s not cool, okay? Like, she can barely see behind you, what are you doing in front of her, anyway?”
Somebody says something, inaudible across the distance, and the singer nods seriously.
“I’m sure she’ll forgive you if you wanna be a gentleman,” he says. “Yeah, like that. Come on, guys, let her through.” He grins, quick and easy, and bumps fists with somebody in the crowd. “That’s what I like to see,” he says. “I expect you all to be gentlemen, okay,” he adds to the audience at large, looking like he’s gearing up for an entire speech, but the guy with all the hair leans towards his mike and says, “Gerard,” and Gerard looks over at him, expression turning sheepish.
“Right,” he says. “Right. He turns to the guy at the drums. “Count us back in?”
After a fourcount, they pick up where they left off, and it isn’t long before the crowd is bobbing along again. The singer’s voice isn’t as technically refined as Adam’s, not as polished, but he has a sort of magnetism to him that’s hard to resist. He struts across the stage and yanks his fellow band members’ hair and runs his hands over their chests, he snarls and growls and practically goes down on his mike, and somehow he still finds the time to get the entire place hyped up and jumping.
Tommy is so completely lost in the performance that he startles when Adam leans in close, a line of fire along Tommy’s spine.
“When I’m famous, that’s the shit I’m gonna do,” Adam says in his ear.
“They’re gonna love it,” Tommy tells him, and he allows himself to shift into the hand that settles on his waist.
He starts bouncing around again the second the next song starts, but he still feels Adam’s hand through his shirt long after it’s gone, even when the band stops playing and there’s another shuffle of bodies, the punk ones heading for the bar or the door while other, more harcore-metal looking ones push forward again. It’s a rougher crowd, overall, and Adam’s starting to look cagey and Tommy could use something to drink, too, throat parched from yelling along to whatever chorus he could pick up in the space of a song, so he prods Adam towards the bar.
Adam goes, looking vaguely grateful, and they manage to snag a stool and hang onto it until one next to it opens up. There’s two bartenders but they’re both alternately swamped or distracted by jailbait in low-cut tops, so Tommy takes a second to catch his breath, looking over every once in a while to make sure Adam’s doing the same. Now that the terror of sneaking out and the surprise of actually being at a damn cool concert’s worn off a bit, the thrill’s taking over. Tommy’s done being a good boy. Come on, world, do your worst. Fucking bring it.
The guy next to him, the one who keeps elbowing Tommy in the back with his overly muscled arm while he’s practically in the lap of the girl next to him, has an opened pack of cigarettes in front of him, and it’s fucking easy to reach over and take it like it’s really his. It’s about half full, still, with a lighter tucked neatly between the stalks of paper. Fucking goldmine.
Adam sniffs and turns his head away, which is pretty par for the course. They’ve been here before - Adam’s told Tommy time and time again that he’d totally smoke weed if they ever got their hands on any, but he refuses to even try cigarettes. He cycles through reasons like Tommy cycles through underwear, anything from not wanting to fuck up his voice and not having the money to not wanting to age prematurely. Vain fucker.
The only real reason Tommy can think of to not smoke would be because it soaks into his clothes, making them reek in ways that the school cleaners couldn’t ignore even if they wanted to. But the only thing on his list of things to do tonight is piss off the fucking school as hard as he can, so he waggles the pack of smokes at Adam and slides off his stool.
Adam purses his lips primly but keeps his mouth thankfully shut.
There’s not a whole lot going on outside, which Tommy’s weirdly grateful for, after the crush of bodies on the floor and the beat of the drums he could feel all the way down his spine. He throws his arms into the air, trying to stretch out his back a bit, feeling the cool night air drift against his bare stomach. This - this is exactly what he wanted. Even if they do get caught sneaking back in, or somebody checks their room for whatever reason, it’ll so be worth it.
“Enjoying yourself?” The question’s friendly enough, but the tone isn’t, and Tommy feels his hackles rise before he even turns to the speaker, a short guy with fucking orange hair and a sleeve tattoo up one arm.
“Yeah,” he says slowly. The guy’s short, and not a whole lot older than Tommy, but he looks tough. He looks like he could kick Tommy’s ass out of sheer determination.
“Let me guess.” The guy drops his cigarette and grinds it into flakey pieces with the heel of his Nikes. “You’re at that posh school up on the hill, and you managed to sneak out for the night, so now you’re slumming it and feeling like a badass.”
“You’re from the band,” Tommy says, because he’s an idiot.
The guy smirks a little. “Yep, that’s me.” He pulls open the stage door, noise and light spilling into the alley. “Thanks for coming. Try not to help any old ladies across the street on the way home.”
He’s gone before Tommy can stutter out a reply about all old ladies being in bed at this point, fire door clanging shut behind him.
Lighting up isn’t particularly satisfying after that, and he ends up dropping the smoke and grinding it under his heel before he’s even halfway done with it. Shit. Some motherfucker’s always gotta rain on his parade.
Tommy’s vaguely impressed when he gets back inside and Adam is still there, sulk-free and unmolested. He almost looks like he’s enjoying himself, tapping his foot against the bottom rung of his barstool to the sound of whatever band is playing now, but he doesn’t protest when Tommy tugs on his elbow and says, “Come on, home.”
Contrary to one of the prime rules of the universe, the way back from the club doesn’t feel any faster than the way there. Instead it just seems to drag on forever, dark streets stretching on in front and behind them, and when they finally get to the fence surrounding Clarkenwell property, Tommy barely has enough strength to drag himself over it. It’s weird - he was totally buzzing with energy back at the concert, but now it feels like it’s all just leaked out of him. Like a soda can with a hole at the bottom, or something. He doesn’t even quite remember to be worried about someone catching them, even though he should, even though they’re being too loud and they’re already on the administration’s shit list and nobody would believe them if they said they’d just gone to the bathroom, or something. But the corridors are moonlit and deserted. Tommy gives Adam’s hand a quick squeeze before he heads up the stairs to his own room, gets into bed and pulls the covers over his head and doesn’t move again until morning.
It’s weird, after that. It’s like there’s something buzzing underneath Tommy’s skin, something big, something huge. It’s nothing new. It’s like it was always there, just below the surface, but now that Tommy’s given in, just the once, it’s feeding off his one night of rebellion and growing, growing until it can no longer be contained.
It’s like something big is lingering just around the corner, and going to his classes with that knowledge whirling around at the back of his mind is kind of bizarre. Not in a bad way, necessarily. In some ways, school and all its bullshit is easier to bear, now that Tommy knows there’s something better out there, just waiting for him to be done with it all. But it’s also harder, somehow, because there’s something better out there, just waiting for him, and yet he’s stuck at school dealing with the same old bullshit.
It doesn’t help that it’s a full moon two days later, when he’s still buzzing with the excitement of it all. There’s nothing quite as good at killing a mood as having your name called over the PA for the entire school to hear so you can trudge down to the cellar and let yourself be locked up until sun-up.
Adam’s already there when Tommy comes down the stairs, waiting at the second steel-enforced door on the right-hand side. Tommy goes to stand by the first, the one he’s been using since he got lost his very first moon at Clarkenwell and almost didn’t make it inside in time.
He’s barely gotten situated by the time the administration guys show up. They always let the heavy door at the top of the stairs bang shut, but it still makes a couple of people flinch, Tommy included. There’s two of them, one for each side of the corridor. Nate Novarro’s standing in front of the door across from Tommy, and their eyes meet for a split second, Nate’s dark and unreadable and so, so old, before they both have to shuffle aside to let the administration guys get at their doors with their five thousand keys.
Tommy’s guy moves carefully around him as he undoes the locks and pulls open the door for Tommy to edge inside. He’s blocking Tommy’s view, so he can’t even sneak one last look at Adam before he’s left alone. Tommy doesn’t really need to look around the room, but he still does it, takes in the bare walls and concrete floor and the single window high up in the wall, high enough that it’d take a boatload of upper-body-strength that Tommy just doesn’t have to pull yourself up to it, and then there’s still the fact that it doesn’t really open beyond a couple of inches.
Tommy stands in the middle of the room, motionless, listening to the sounds of people moving outside. They’re always impressively silent. It always takes forever, too - admin guy has to unlock every single one of the eight doors on Tommy’s side, and once he’s at the end he has to supervise all of them stripping out of their clothes and leaving them outside of the door. Wouldn’t want that precious school uniform to be damaged, after all.
Tommy bites his knuckle to keep from laughing, or maybe scowling, he’s not entirely sure. He sees these guys, his guy, every month, and he doesn’t even know their names. They probably don’t know his, either. They just show up, in suits but with blazers missing like they’re about to do unexpected but deeply unpleasant labor, unlocking their doors and then locking them again behind them. It’s probably a shitty job, but Tommy can’t say he has a whole lot of sympathy.
It seems like an eternity before admin guy shows up again. He kind of rolls his eyes when he sees Tommy standing there, still dressed, but he doesn’t tell him off for it. He never does. He doesn’t say anything at all, in fact, just motions impatiently for Tommy to get on with it, entirely unimpressed by the dark look Tommy gives him when he starts to fumble with his tie.
The guy watches him, face twisted in displeased boredom, while Tommy strips out of his blazer and shirt, while he unties his shoes and shoves his socks into them. He folds everything into a tidy heap and then, when the guy still hasn’t looked away, he takes a deep breath and shoves his pants and underwear down in one go. The guy watches while Tommy gathers up all his shit and drops it next to the door, outside the door, trying to move as little as possible, and then motions for Tommy to step back into the room and swings the door shut.
It locks with a heavy, deafening thud of metal against metal. Tommy’s already itching to get out of his skin. He just - there’s gotta be a way out of this. Around this. It can’t be right.
Still, though. Right or not, he’s still stuck here, and it fucking sucks.
He wakes up contorted on the concrete floor, neck sore and fingers scratched raw and nothing but snatches of memories; of being trapped, of clawing at the walls in terror, of curling into a shaking ball and howling his desperation into the quiet air.
Not even showering helps to wash away the chaos raging in his head, the last remnants of fear, and it takes everything’s he’s got to not just curl up into a ball on the tiled floor and not move until this fucking day is over.
It really doesn’t help that there’s a pop quiz waiting on his desk when he slips into his Chemistry classroom with thirty seconds to spare before the bell. He gets stuck halfway through calculating the half-life of sulfur-35, still half-caught in the nightmare of last night, and spends several precious minutes thinking of Adam, bleary-eyed and drooping in his American Lit class, probably trying so very hard to look like he’s taking in a single word being said. And then Mr. Butkovich raises his voice to say, “Feel free to turn in that test if you’re done, Mr. Ratliff,” and Tommy looks up long enough to catch a sympathetic look from the wrecked-looking Michael Schellener in the first row before he forces his head down and his eyes to focus on the x’s and the n’s.
The day drags on forever, his sleep-deprived brain making slow-going classes run longer still, and it seems like years before the last bell finally rings. He didn’t even see Adam at lunch, although Ryan Ross muttered something about the juniors saying something about Adam being held back after English because he was nodding off in class. Tommy’s got no clue if that’s true or not, but it’s something he wouldn’t put past this school, so he barely even pauses to stuff his books into his locker before he goes to find Adam in the study room at the very back of the library.
Adam’s already there, waiting for him with a book propped against the edge of the table. They haven’t gone back to the ping pong tables since that whole thing with Jesse went down. Tommy kind of wants to, just to spite him, but even he knows that there’s such a thing as tempting fate, so when Adam suggested the library as an alternate hang-out spot, he just smiled and tagged along.
“How are you feeling?” Adam asks hesitantly, climbing to his feet and folding his hands in front of his body.
Tommy dredges up a smile. “Probably as well as you are,” he says. “I’ll be better if we can just get the hell out of here.”
“No,” Adam says, as decidedly as Tommy’s ever heard him say anything. “No, Tommy. It was a dumb idea last time, and it’s still a dumb idea, and we’re not doing it.”
“Adam, come on,” Tommy says, but Adam just shakes his head.
“Forget it.”
“Can’t you just…” Tommy’s almost whispering now, but he can’t stop. God only knows what’s wrong with him, but he feels kind of small and dirty and really just wants to curl up into a ball and die. “For me?”
“Fuck no,” Adam says, and Tommy wraps his arms around his stomach and scuffs his shoes against the carpet, but Adam’s not done yet.
“No, no, and fucking no, Tommy. Of all the dumb shit you’ve ever come up with, this is without a doubt the worst, and I don’t know why I let you talk me into it last time but it was a mistake and it’s not going to happen again, so stop fucking asking me!”
“Please,” Tommy bursts out. He doesn’t look up from the floor. “Just… please.”
Adam doesn’t say anything for a while. Tommy can feel his eyes on him though, so he doesn’t look up until Adam draws in a sharp breath. He throws his hands in the air, all exasperated movement. “Alright. Alright, fine. It’s a terrible idea, but fine.”
“Thank you,” Tommy says quietly. Adam won’t look at him anymore, but that’s fine. This is worth it.
